Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like many in this place, I'm a very strong supporter of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to the parliament. It's pretty simple in my mind. Should Indigenous Australians be recognised in the Constitution? Well, that's a resounding yes. Should Indigenous Australians be consulted on matters that directly impact them? Again, yes. Doing these two straightforward things doesn't diminish anyone else. It doesn't come at anyone else's expense. They're matters of common sense and common decency. Consulting people who are impacted by policy will always result in better informed policies and better informed decision-making. When people have a voice, not only does it deliver better outcomes for those people but it also tends to deliver better outcomes for the community at large.

I'm not only talking about the Voice to Parliament; I'm also talking about people—all people—having a voice at work. That means having a say over your pay and conditions. I put a very simple question to all senators in this chamber: should working Australians have a voice at their workplace? I would hope that every person in this place, regardless of political affiliation, would say yes. If we can all agree that all Australians deserve a voice at work, then I'm sure we can also agree that that voice must be heard and respected. A voice that can be silenced or ignored without reason or consequence is no voice at all, and I hope that we would all agree on that very obvious point. I know there are many employers that agree with that proposition, but, unfortunately, there are some that don't. Some have made it very clear through their actions that they have no respect whatsoever for the right of their workforce to have a voice.

Take Woodside, one of the largest and most profitable companies in Australia. Eight months ago, a majority of the Woodside workforce at its North West Shelf offshore platforms voted to bargain collectively through the Australian Workers Union and the Maritime Union of Australia. Rather than respect the decision of its workforce, Woodside launched 11 legal challenges, which dragged its workforce through the Fair Work Commission for eight months. Each one of these legal challenges was more ridiculous than the last, and every single challenge was thrown out.

Let's take Qantas, which illegally sacked 1,700 people because, as the Federal Court found, Qantas did not want its workforce exercising their workplace voice. Qantas has also been prosecuted by SafeWork for sacking Theo, a cabin cleaner and health and safety rep, because he used his workplace voice to speak out about Qantas's unsafe work practices.

Take Aldi, the most profitable supermarket in this country. Unlike Coles and Woolworths, Aldi refuses to commit to safe and sustainable standards for its truck drivers and its supply chain. When Aldi drivers and their union representative spoke out about this, Aldi tried to silence them through the Federal Court. Thankfully, Aldi failed to silence its workforce and the court threw its claim out.

Or take Amazon, the wealthiest company on the planet—a company with a reputation around the world of spying on its workforce, as detailed in the Amazon report by UNI Global, and a company that has invested heavily in intimidating its workforce into not having a voice, including in Australia, where they were caught red-handed spying on workers talking to the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Union. Amazon is a world leader in silencing its workforce, but even they have been borrowing a few tricks from the former prime minister, John Howard. I've seen them wheeling out the exact same line that Liberal Party hacks have been wheeling out since the Howard government. The line I'm talking about is how important it is, apparently, to protect the right of people to not join a union, rather than protecting the right of people to join a union.

We need to call this ridiculous phrase out for what it is. It's a dog whistle to employers like Amazon, Aldi, Qantas and Woodside to crack down on their workforce's voice. When we talk about people having a right to paid leave, we don't talk about ensuring that people have a right to not have paid leave. When we talk about ensuring that people have a right to superannuation, we don't talk about having a right not to have superannuation—of course, unless you're Senator Bragg. When we talk about people having a right to the minimum wage, we don't talk about ensuring that people have a right not to earn the minimum wage—well, except when those opposite defend the right of gig workers to not get a minimum wage, of course.

The way you hear those opposite talk, you'd think there was a crisis in this country of people everywhere being forced to join a union. I shudder to think what that would look like! For starters, according to the ABS, union members earn 32 per cent more than non-union members. That's a gap of $350 per week. Imagine being forced to earn $350 more per week! The last time I checked, our problem isn't that too many Australians are benefiting from highly paid, secure unionised jobs; the problem is that we had a decade of the worst wages and job security decline in the history of this country, thanks in large part of those opposite encouraging companies like Amazon, Qantas and Woodside to vigorously and often illegally engage in union busting.

What the data actually tells us is that 34 per cent of non-union employees would join a union if they were able to do so. That was a finding of the Australian Workplace Relations Study just recently. That means there are 3½ million Australians who are being deprived of their desire to join a union and to have a real voice at work. As is often the case, the reality is actually the complete inverse of what those opposite are saying. The concept of protecting the right to not join a union is Orwellian doublespeak. But this complete nonsense is now so deeply ingrained in the psyche of those opposite that they've lost the capacity to think about these issues rationally.

Now, I don't want to single out Senator Hume, who I'm sure is a smart and competent person who legitimately believes she's in this place to help working Australians. But her comments to me at the recent public hearing of the cost-of-living committee were astonishing. At this hearing, on 1 March, I asked a panel of major supermarkets a series of questions about the rates of pay that their workforce receive. These are literally the largest private employers in Australia. Senator Hume, who's the chair of the committee, turned around and admonished me because apparently my questions were irrelevant to the cost-of-living inquiry. In her mind—and I'm sure she was being genuine—the question of wages, the question of how much money you take home, is irrelevant to the cost of living. She said they were industrial relations issues and not relevant to the cost of living. It really does boggle the mind, especially considering that Senator Hume is the shadow finance minister. You might think she would appreciate that when you look at a budget, whether a government budget or a household budget, the amount of revenue coming in is pretty relevant. But, over that side, ideology now trumps reality. All they know is that unions are bad; bargaining power is a made-up construct; you can't have a pay rise when inflation is high, because it's inflationary; you can't have a pay rise when inflation is low, because businesses can't afford it; and, as former Senator Stoker told me at estimates last year, if you're getting exploited at work it's your own fault because you made the choice to work there. And don't worry, because the free market will fix everything. That's their post-truth world.

Over here in the real world, we actually need to work urgently on how we can restore a voice for people at work. That means ensuring that loopholes that some employers use to get around collective agreements are closed. That means ensuring that unions have right-of-entry powers to enter worksites. That means ensuring that 3½ million Australians who want to join a union but can't will have the ability to do so. We need to get back to protecting the right of people to have a voice at work. We need to get back to protecting the right of people to join a union.