Labor ignores One Nation’s Industrial Relations Fix

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For many years I have been pointing out the exploitation of casual workers who are paid less than workers doing the same job next to them. Despite Labor’s promises, they have failed to do anything to fix this problem.

My Equal Pay for Equal Work Bill prevents the exploitation of workers through the use of casual labour hire contracts in 7 industries where the award mandates full time employment, including the Black Coal Industry.

My bill targets large labour hire companies who are using enterprise agreements to allow mine owners to move full time employees over to casual employment, on rates of pay that are up to 40% less than the directly-employed mine employee working next to them.

Half of the workers in the Black Coal industry are now employed on these contracts.

The ALP have been promising to fix this problem since 2018 and have done nothing. This may be because the CMFEU has signed off on these enterprise agreements in return for union dues, superannuation contributions and a fee from the Mining Companies for each contract adopted.

Nationals Senator Perin Davey spoke against my bill today because in her words, the wording of the bill may allow the Minister to extend the provisions to agriculture.

The Nationals are giving half the picture. Any extension requires the consent of the Parliament by way of a Disallowable Instrument. If the Minister has the numbers for an instrument to pass, this would also mean the Minister has the numbers to amend the Fair Work Act 2009 on their own accord.

The Fair Work Amendment (Equal Pay for Equal Pay) Bill 2022 will not impact on rural or small businesses.

In opposing my bill the Nationals are using a dishonest argument to align themselves with labour hire companies against the interests of coal miners and coal mining communities.

With State elections coming up in NSW and Queensland, it is clear a vote for the Nationals, Liberals or the ALP is a vote for corporate interests over coal mining communities.

One Nation is proud to stand for coal miners, and with the workers affected by labour hire exploitation including airline air and ground crew.

Labor has also indicated they will not support the bill. So much for the party of the workers.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, my Fair Work Amendment (Equal Pay for Equal Work) Bill 2022 was drafted in response to exploitation of casual coalminers in central Queensland and the Hunter Valley. It’s since been widened. My bill was referred to the Education and Employment Legislation Committee for inquiry, and I thank the committee for organising a public hearing so miners could testify about their exploitation personally. The committee found there was a need for my bell yet then recommended waiting for the government’s version. Labor announced its hollow ‘fair work for fair pay’ idea back in 2018, four years ago. Labor and the unions campaigned on their bill in the 2019 state election in New South Wales and the 2019 federal election.

The problem is that Labor’s bill did not exist. I confirmed that and began drafting my bill in April 2021. Labor’s bill was not introduced into parliament until December 2021, a month after my bill was completed and three years after Labor first promised it. If the Labor Party were serious about fixing this issue, their bill would have appeared in 2018, not four years later after One Nation repeatedly called them out.

Labor’s bill was a dog’s breakfast, so the government has chosen to start over. Now, I accept the government saying it’s just started meeting with stakeholders, yet a briefing with the minister’s advisers last week revealed that consultation has only been with the companies and union bosses that perpetrated this scandal. The miners, air crew, ground crew and other workers ripped off for tens of millions in wages have not yet been consulted after six months, which of course means the Labor Party, the CFMMEU and the industry are trying to find a way to keep these labour-hire contracts going. I’ll explain why in a minute. And so I’m advancing my bill, preparing for a vote early next year. I thank Senator Babet for allowing me to use his bills time today.

Early in my career, I spent three years in the union as an underground coalface miner, including in the Hunter and Queensland. My father was an underground coalface miner, senior executive and later Queensland Chief Inspector of Coal Mines. He was awarded an Order of Australia for eliminating black lung in our state’s coal industry. Having completed an honours degree in engineering, I returned to manage coalmines, which involved daily interaction with the CFMEU in the Hunter and in Queensland. This issue is very personal to me because the CFMEU and its predecessor, the Miners Federation, were once strong unions that looked after and served their members. The reports I received in my Senate office in 2019 from Queensland and the Hunter have shocked me. After visiting these areas repeatedly and listening to miners, I was no longer shocked. I am outraged at the injustice.

The big picture is this. Labour hire companies were employing casuals in black coal industry production despite the award not allowing it. It was illegal. Exclusion of casuals extends beyond the black coal industry. It includes airline flight crew and other awards, which I will speak to in a moment. Back to the black coal award. Casuals are excluded for a good reason. Coal mining can be dangerous. It requires training and constant skilling to improve productivity and, most importantly, for safety—safety of an individual miner and safety of the whole mine and everyone in it.

Underground miners typically retire ahead of most other industries, when they can no longer do the physical work. That’s why proper unions like the old Miners’ Federation negotiated high rates of pay. The modern award is much lower than negotiated rates because it assumes miners can be reskilled and redeployed into other industries after they exit from mining, allowing for a full working life. That’s a fairytale. That simply ignores the reality of life in the coal industry. Labour hire contracts are used to cut miners’ wages. This represents a 40 per cent cut in wages against the pay a permanent miner earns in a mine’s direct employ, doing the same job, side by side. Two Australians working side by side doing the same job on the same shift, and one is getting 40 per cent less than the other. That is wrong.

This has been going on for ten years under the Hunter CFMEU, working with some mining companies and with protection from the local Labor members, Joel Fitzgibbon and now Dan Repacholi. Casual coal workers on labour hire contracts supposedly receive a loading for loss of holiday and sick pay; yet their pay packets are still 40 per cent less. What caused this large reduction in pay was not the absence of loading, because that was supposedly paid. It was the very low base rate that the CFMEU installed.

In 2021 One Nation supported the concept of not enabling workers paid for casual loading because that was paid. What we did was to ensure that workers retained their rights under industrial laws to take legal action for illegal pay rates. Yet the CFMEU then lied, shouting that One Nation stopped workers from getting what was theirs. No, we upheld miners’ rights to pay and entitlements while at the same time protecting small business from being forced to pay casual loading twice, as some union bosses dishonestly demanded. It was the union that signed up on these enterprise agreements that robbed workers of 40 per cent of their pay. The Hunter CFMEU pocketed union dues from labour hire casuals and money from labour hire employers for dodgy enterprise agreements with low pay rates. It was the Hunter CFMEU that jointly directed coal long-service leave funds that under-accrued and avoided paying employer contributions to labour hire casuals. I exposed that, and a government review later confirmed me as correct. It was originally a Hunter CFMEU owned labour hire company that collected fees from the mines for supplying labour under a labour hire contract. The CFMEU is clearly directing labour to protect their nice little earner, even at the expense of the workers that the Hunter CFMEU supposedly pretends to represent, while hypocritically and deceitfully speaking badly of casual employment and workers.

The committee report accurately describes the effects on communities of the reduction in local spending due to taking wages out of the community. I was lucky enough to find a lawyer who drew these agreements up on behalf of Hunter labour hire companies and who has since seen the error of his ways. His advice informed my bill. Many exploited workers contributed to my bill. I have the most knowledgeable legal minds on labour hire contracts in the coal industry contributing to my bill, and I have generations of personal experience in the coal industry. What confuses my critics is that I’m not lining the IR club pockets with overly complex wishy-washy nonsense that opens more loopholes than it closes, as Labor’s short-lived dog’s breakfast did.

My bill will fix this mess. My bill sets an additional provision for Fair Work Australia to require an enterprise agreement to pass before being approved. It allows an employee to appeal an existing enterprise agreement to Fair Work if an enterprise agreement breaches this new provision. The provision is simple: a worker on a labour hire contract must be paid the same rate of pay, including allowances, as a worker who is directly employed doing the same job on the same shift roster. That is clear. If the whole crew is labour hire, then the commissioner must make a judgement on what the rate of pay should have been based on historical information and a comparison with similar mines in similar conditions. That is clear. The cost of using labour hire contractors will now fall on the employer rather than the worker. The intention is to require the employer to project their labour requirements, employ, train and nurture their people—like employers used to.

One complication is that some workers are on day shift and others on rotating shift. My bill takes that into consideration. Clause 3(b) of the bill expressly provides that the roster the employee is working must be considered in the assessment of equal pay for equal work. The committee report correctly identifies when labour hire contracts subvert the black coal mining industry award 2010 and the aircraft cabin crew award 2020. I’ve circulated an amendment to this bill to include the airline operations ground staff award 2020 which makes provisions for casuals that foreign companies bypass to exploit workers through labour hire contracts. I know Senator Sheldon is leading a fight against that exploitation. My bill will give him the ammunition to drag the whole situation back to Fair Work. I urge Senator Sheldon and Labor to adopt it.

My bill’s simplicity will prevent lawyers feasting because it allows Fair Work commissioners discretion to make value judgements. I reckon they’re up to it. The remaining awards are excluded in the Fair Work Amendment (Equal Pay for Equal Work) Bill 2022 as a line in the sand. While labour hire agreements are not being abused in these industries, explicitly including those awards in this legislation was designed to ensure labour hire firms do not treat these awards as a new profit centre once the opportunity for exploitation is removed from coalmining and aircraft operations.

Witnesses who discussed their treatment under labour hire contracts were pleased to have the opportunity to publicly testify, and I thank the committee. These workers were not always afforded that opportunity. Stuart Bonds, from the Hunter, listed case after case after case where miners have been employed under labour hire agreements with a 40 per cent reduction in pay rate. More troubling were the stories of exploitation and victimisation these workers received, especially following a safety report or physical harm.

Simon Turner testified to the committee on his inhumane experiences as an injured worker. He’s one of many, sadly. Workers like Simon tried for years to get justice. The mine owner and the labour hire company completely ignored him—tossed him on the scrap heap. The Hunter CFMMEU betrayed workers. Local Labor MPs let them down. Only when workers came to One Nation was progress made.

Another worker on a labour hire contract saw a safety issue—water trucks laying down too much water, creating slippery conditions—and reported it. This worker was required to report that safety issue. Her contract was terminated the next week. There’s no job security in labour hire contract arrangements. Workers injured at work were refused medical treatment and not paid workers compensation or accident pay as legally required. Workers were afraid of reporting safety issues for fear of being sacked.

Workers were rostered two years in advance to work 52 weeks of the year straight—no holidays. If you’re working a full-time 12-hour shift and being given these shifts two years ahead then you’re not casual. You are a permanent worker. Despite being, in effect, permanent these workers are unable to get home loans, car loans and provide a future for themselves and their families because banks won’t lend to casual labour hire employees. When I say exploitation I mean exploitation!

All this happened with the Hunter CFMMEU doing deals enabling mining companies more interested in profits than basic human decency. Labour hire deals and contracts are used to lower wages across an entire industry. Qantas pulled this stunt on their ground crew. They fired thousands of workers and re-employed them through labour hire companies at the lowest rate of pay. What’s a worker to do? Refuse the deal and have no job or take the deal and try to get by on 40 per cent less? Qantas are using these tricks on flight crew and pilots as well. Senator Sheldon can speak to this, so I won’t. Correct loading on a plane is vital to flight safety and people on the ground.

In my meeting with Qantas, their executives defended their behaviour as being ‘necessary to maintain viability’. Qantas have run their staff into the ground, cut staff pay to the bone, moved staff from full-time secure jobs to casual junk jobs, worked staff on shifts with not enough time to recover, provided insufficient training and supervision—and now things are going wrong. What a surprise! And they belted loyal, long-serving employees with COVID injection mandates. One Nation’s Fair Work Amendment (Equal Pay for Equal Work) Bill 2022 remains the only legislation before parliament designed to correct this unfair and dishonest corporate behaviour. It should have been in the government’s Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022, but it’s not. Yet it’s not too late. Here it is.

I’ll now discuss the specific topics in the committee report. Firstly, the bill does not act widely enough. My bill allows the minister to add more than the seven awards this bill currently covers by using a disallowable instrument where exploitation occurs. It allows the minister to remove that listing should an industry stop exploiting. This is surely best practice? Only act where there’s a problem, and only for as long as the problem exists. Adding 700-plus awards ‘just in case’ will needlessly add to the cost and complexity of our industrial relations system.

Secondly, definitions of key concepts. The definitions enabled every submitter to correctly understand my bill’s intent, yet some of them went on to say the definitions were incomplete after correctly identifying the meaning of the words used. The wording was chosen carefully because once a term is given a specific meaning, that meaning is considered the term’s full meaning. Cunning lawyers use detailed definitions to limit a term’s application. This allows for deficiencies in definitions to be exploited as loopholes. I will not play the industrial relations club’s game. It’s up to the Fair Work Commissioner to decide if a labour hire agreement falls under this bill’s provisions. Should the Fair Work Commission fail to honour this legislation’s intent, then and only then should we wander into the legal minefield of definitions that become exclusionary rather than inclusionary. It’s time to start using clear language expressing clear principles and rely on the Fair work Commissioner to exercise their wisdom and knowledge and to follow these principles in their judgements.

My bill’s intention and action: my bill provides a provision to existing provisions that enterprise agreements must pass to meet the Fair Work Commission’s approval. This test is in section 321 of the Fair Work Act 2009 to show this equal pay for equal work provision is separate and additional to the better off overall test—the BOOT test. Section 321 is exactly where this provision belongs.

In conclusion, the supposed downside that some vested interests attribute in broad terms comes from the same entities who turned industrial relations into a club for their own profit and power at the workers’ expense. These entities do very well from complexity. Workers pay the price in so many ways. This must stop. If the government is serious about equal pay for equal work, get on with it. I thank senators contributing to this debate and look forward to bringing the bill to a vote at the next opportunity.

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Rushed Industrial Relations Reforms risk wrecking workplaces

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Labor’s Industrial Relations reforms have been rushed through the Parliament. The entire crossbench had previously agreed to hold off on passing the changes until the 273 page bill filled with technical changes could be properly analysed and understood.

Unfortunately, Labor has secured support after horse trading with Senator David Pocock. Senator Pocock caving in means that the rushed legislation (which is still being significantly amended up to the final hour) will sail through Parliament before anyone can understand any of the unintended consequences.

This is not how we should run the country.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia and to the workers and small businesses of our nation, I want to firstly thank the minister’s staff and the departmental staff for their briefings. I want to thank the many companies, unions, employer entities and workers. We listened.

The Hawke-Keating years broke the previous harsh, adversarial, mutually assured destruction policy in industrial relations in this country. Then we went back with the Fair Work Act from Julia Gillard in 2009—complex, prescriptive. The creators of this act do not understand industrial relations. A senior practical Labor MP whom I regard very highly said that Gillard’s Fair Work Act was a ‘backward step’, damaging Australia. It’s failed. Many want it changed. I know that union bosses like David Noonan and Michael Ravbar, for whom I have some regard, and Alex Bukarica and the ETU’s Michael Wright say that we need to change, that we need to get back to basics. Employer and industry groups say the same. Parliamentarians in this chamber say the same. How hard is it for workers to know their entitlements with this? It’s impossible. How hard is it to run a small business these days? It’s very difficult. This thing justifies the industrial relations club’s existence. Workers now kowtow to the industrial relations club.

Let’s go back to basics. Unions were formed in the 19th century to protect workplace basics; to protect pay, safety, entitlements, job security, retirement; to ensure fairness; and to strengthen workers’ bargaining power. Then we got laws to protect state and federal workers. Unions were doing a vital job. Politically they were omitted from being held accountable the way other organisations and company directors were. After successful union campaigns, governments legislated worker protections in employment, safety, industry and health legislation. Unions were no longer needed for those basic protections because they were enshrined in legislation, yet they had immunity from many provisions under the law and were effectively monopolies, with no competition among unions within industries. As with all monopolies, this was the result of government legislation. As with all monopolies, they faced no accountability from competitors. As with all monopolies, some union bosses abused this privilege.

In recent years, in this cosy life with no competition and no accountability, we saw abuses in the HSU, the SDA, the AWU and the CFMMEU in which union bosses stole workers’ money for personal, financial and other benefits, including brothels. In the 1990s I was good friends with Jim Lambley, the then CFMEU vice-president. He shared with me his thoughts that the union, which was once strong and powerful and genuinely committed to miners, was sloppy and not providing a service to its members. Times had changed; it needed to lift its game because traditional services were already legislated. As a result of neglect of union members, union membership in the private sector outside the Public Service is just nine per cent and falling.

Not all large unions have a monopoly or bosses that want to exploit them. I single out and compliment the TWU. They’ve had turmoil, just like every entity, but they’ve sorted themselves out. They’re represented here by Senator Sheldon and Senator Sterle—excellent advocates for the trade union movement, excellent advocates for workers, excellent advocates for Australians. One of the reasons is that the TWU contains not only employees and truck drivers but small businesses. The TWU is the largest entity with the largest membership of small businesses in this country. They work together to provide a service.

I was going to discuss the sheer abuse and exploitation of people in the Hunter Valley at the hands of the CFMMEU, combined with BHP, combined with Chandler Macleod, which is part of Recruit Holdings from Japan, the largest labour hire company in the world. Instead, I will ask a few questions of anyone watching today.

Labor titles its bill the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill. Let me give you facts and ask you what you think. Firstly, the new bill omits any hint at the Fair Work Amendment (Equal Pay for Equal Work) Bill, my bill that has been pushed for months now and which aims to lift casual pay rates. Why? The Senate committee of inquiry agreed on the need for my bill. They said, ‘Let’s wait for Labor’s version,’ but it’s not in the bill that we see before us. My bill is ready to go, with certain awards that found no issues with it. How long do abused miners and airline staff need to wait? Let’s get the experience before widening it. Why not include my bill in this? We’ve researched it thoroughly. I asked last week and the minister’s staff said, ‘They’ve barely started consultation.’ Then they did so with the perpetrators of the heinous acts in the Hunter Valley and Central Queensland. They’re not interested in better pay. They’re not interested, and they’ve done nothing to include it.

Let’s look at job security. Well, look at COVID mismanagement; the phasing out of the coal industry and jobs under the Liberals, Nationals and Labor; the erosion of our rights and freedoms under COVID mismanagement; increasing energy prices; killing manufacturing and hurting agriculture; the lack of much-needed tax reform and much-needed economic reform; increasing debt; work health and safety systems being bypassed; Australia’s productive capacity being destroyed; the failure of our industrial relations systems and more; tax reform; high immigration flooding in and putting downward pressure on wages; and inflation. They’re not interested in job security at all.

Then let’s have a look at the summit. It was a sham. It was not a genuine, Paul Keating-style consultation. The government knew beforehand what they were going to do after the summit. The key items in this bill that they’ve now got in front of us in the chamber were not even raised in the summit topics. I wrote to Joel Fitzgibbon, the previous member for Hunter, on the abuses in the Hunter valley, and he refused to reply to me. It was the same with his replacement, Dan Repacholi, and the same with Minister Burke. They are not interested in job security, fairness or the law.

Now we’ve got a bill before us that is another 249 pages plus government amendments—150 amendments to their own bill in the lower house. That’s another 34 pages. They’re going to add more complexity, make it thicker, make it more difficult for people to understand. These 150 amendments confirm that the bill was hastily introduced and not thought through. If there are so many amendments needed and so many flaws can be identified in such a short time, how many will implementation in the real world expose, and who will pay for that? Workers will pay for that. Small business will pay for that. This is so flawed the government is making amendments to its own amendments!

This is a spit-and-hope bill. When the Australian Building and Construction Commission was introduced, there were months of consultation. When it was abolished, there was none. The same should apply to the whole bill. It needs debate. It needs to be deferred and considered properly. Who pays for this mess? The people: union members, small businesses, workers, communities and the nation.

Let’s have a look at the bill now. There are 27 parts, 13 substantive. Some are simply tidying, and that is good. Some are worthy improvements—minor but worthy—and that is good. Some big issues are not thought through. Some big issues have been thought through yet deceptively hidden because they don’t want the people to see them. Some issues were designed deliberately to confuse and to obfuscate. All is slapped behind the false labelling of enabling a pay rise and more secure jobs. This is what you get out of the south end of a north-facing bull. There is no mandate for stuff that’s been hidden—no mandate at all.

On 22 November 2022, Minister for Small Business Julie Collins failed to answer two core questions: how many small businesses will be drawn into wage bargaining and how much it will cost. They added another definition to the already 140 definitions of ‘small business’ across government departments. The government tells the people of Australia that the whole rationale behind this bill is to get wages moving, yet there’s no specific detail: how, when, who? There is nothing concrete, just broad, fluffy statements, typical of the Labor-Greens-teal coalition governing the Senate. Labor claims it will improve the bargaining position of small business and workers, so why do thousands of small businesses oppose it? Could it be due to this?

Why are union bosses given the power of veto to frustrate the bargaining process? Even if employees agree with the employer, they still can be vetoed by remote union bosses. Why are smaller employers locked into a process they do not support if they have a head count of more than 19 people, including those who choose to work only a few hours a week? Why isn’t the full-time equivalent used? As a result, large businesses can negotiate conditions smaller businesses cannot compete with. That aids large businesses to kill off smaller competitors, leading to fewer jobs, plus small businesses lack the resources to deal with the red tape.

The abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission illustrates the government’s aims and intent: rewarding union bosses with power. That’s what’s behind this bill. It means a return to the damaging days of industrial thuggery. Remember the BLF? The Dyson Heydon royal commission revealed so much thuggery in the CFMEU. There were court cases and criminal convictions. The ABCC worked. Labor abolished it. The coalition reintroduced it. Labor is now abolishing it. There were millions of dollars in fines. What will happen to them? There was violent behaviour, industrial blackmail, killing small businesses and restrictive work practices that cost taxpayers an additional 30 per cent on building costs. Who’s going to enforce the law now?

This bill will in the long run harm unions. It gives more power to union bosses over members and industry and generally in the community. Monopolies discourage responsibility and competitiveness of service and they reduce accountability. This bill entrenches the monopoly and makes it stronger.

Unions may receive a short-term boost, yet, long term, it will accelerate, sadly, the slide of declining union membership. Look in Queensland. Premier Palaszczuk aims to kill the Red Union. She is protecting the Queensland nursing union, who are big donors to Labor. She is trying to kill the Red Union, which is starting freely, because she wants to kill any competition to her union bosses that donate. This is not about higher pay and job security; it’s about giving union bosses power over industries, over companies and employers and over workers. Instead of returning to the pre-Hawke days, we need the reverse. We need to restore the primacy of the workplace, the employer/employee relationship, with employees free to bring in unions when they choose.

The big picture is that industrial relations needs comprehensive reform. We need to get away from the industrial relations adversarial approach that has plagued this country. It locks managements, executives, union bosses, consultants and lawyers into industrial relations games and not into improving businesses. Instead of having the brightest and best lawyers and accountants focused on how we can smash the opposition in this country, we need to focus on how we can smash the opposition in South Korea and Japan and China. They are our overseas competitors.

Industrial relations reform needs to be comprehensive, focus on the primacy of the employer/employee relationship and return to the days of Hawke-Keating, at least for a start. People need to focus on their business, not the corporation. Always around the world in workplaces people are focused on their workplace—that’s what people love. We need industrial relations reform that develops responsibility for the business. We need a short bill, instead of this monstrosity. We need about 20 pages of basic entitlements, and, instead of getting off the hook through lawyers with this monstrosity, we need clear provisions so that, if these basic provisions are violated, people go to jail. Workers are getting abused in this country. Small businesses are getting abused in this country. We need simple provisions and severe penalties.

Let’s consider the teals—David Pocock as a teal and the Labor-Greens-teal governing coalition. The governing coalition in this Senate is Labor-Greens-teal. Fifteen amendments he announced on Sunday. The government was going to do nine anyway! Four are corrections and another four are corrections to government oversights in the bill! The JobSeeker rate is irrelevant to the bill—horse trading! That leaves one amendment that Senator Pocock initiated. Union bosses will still be able to drag small business into multi-employer bargaining, and to get out of multi-employer bargaining those businesses will have to engage in expensive litigation. Welcome to the new Labor-Greens-teal coalition running this country, where the love of power is more important!

In conclusion, instead of the lies and pretence of this bill, we need honesty. Instead of boosting union bosses’ power, we need to make the employer/employee workplace relationship the focus to get Australia’s talent to the fore and to make us competitive again. Instead of adding more complexity and regulations, we need comprehensive industrial relations reform—simplicity, honesty, efficiency and real protection. This mess bypasses protections and leaves workers vulnerable and exposed. Above this building, we have one flag. We are one community, we are one nation and we work like hell to protect workers, protect small business and restore honesty in governance.

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High Speed rail isn’t practical for Australia

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High Speed Rail! It’s a great slogan for politicians in election campaigns, but it just doesn’t work for Australia.

Our cities are too small, the distances too long and geography too complex to build it cheaply enough.

Our money is much better spent on other infrastructure like dams, power stations and a national rail circuit that’s up to scratch.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak to the High Speed Rail Authority Bill 2022—or, as I prefer to call it, the ‘elect Chris Minns as New South Wales Premier bill’. It’s not a coincidence that this bill provides for the national high-speed rail network proposal to start with just one section: between Sydney and Newcastle—just in time for the New South Wales state election in the coming March. Oh, the photo opportunities and announcements! I can see them now—for example, ‘Vote Labor and we will get you to work in 40 minutes.’ What dishonesty. What treachery.

I appreciate that that the Central Coast and Hunter are now dormitory suburbs of Sydney. Every day, more than 100,000 residents use rail and road on their daily trek to Sydney for work. High-speed would be a wonderful way to make that trip. One problem with making that promise is that high-speed rail on that route is never going to happen. It’s impossible. Here’s why. The route consist of mountain ranges, massive sandstone cliffs and waterways. Unless the High Speed Authority sprinkles magic dust, there is no way it will make a straight, flat track with the solid foundations necessary to sustain high-speed rail through the Hawksbury, Central Coast and Lower Hunter.

The current discussion involves sending high-speed rail along the existing alignment through the Central Coast, through the Gosford waterfront, through residential areas to Wyong and then via YE into the lower Hunter. The area’s geography makes any other route almost impossible, at least without substantial environmental impact, meaning massive, long tunnels and cuttings through national parks and equally long and heavily engineered bridges across the frequent waterways and soft ground.

Anything can be done at a cost, although the cost here will ensure a white elephant for taxpayers that will never recover the investment. I shudder to think how much the tickets will cost, certainly more than working families can afford, the families who are being targeted with this false, deceptive promise.

While Australia does need a modern rail network connecting our capital cities, airports and major ports, high-speed rail is not the answer. The federal government last examined the possibility of building a 1,748-kilometre high-speed rail link from Brisbane to Melbourne in 2013, when the cost was estimated at $114 billion, with the Sydney-to-Newcastle section costed at $17.9 billion. At that time, by the way, the Inland Rail was costed at $4 billion. It’s now $20 billion. That’s five times higher. So I would expect this same inaccuracy factor would apply to the fast rail, costing out the Sydney-to-Hunter section alone at $90 billion in today’s dollars.

The Grattan Institute has found high-speed rail projects have little chance of passing the cost-benefit test based on the typical discount rate used for transport infrastructure of about seven per cent. Marion Terrill, the current director of the Grattan Institute’s Transport and City Program, has said:

Australia is just not suited to high-speed rail because our cities are too small and too far apart.

Too small means the passenger volume will not be sufficient to justify the capital expenditure, leading to prohibitive fares or massive government subsidies—or, most likely, both.

To illustrate this point, when New South Wales XPT trains were purchased in 1982, the intention was to create fast rail in New South Wales. The XPTs are designed to travel at just 150 kilometres per hour. So what stopped fast rail at that time was the inability to build a track capable of supporting those speeds. This is essential for safety and reliability. Our rail lines curve around too much. The Great Dividing Range provides serious hurdles to fast rail, and our waterways along the coast complicate the flat sections that we do have. For clarity, fast rail is generally speeds up to 150 kilometres per hour. High-speed rail is 250 kilometres per hour to 300 kilometres per hour. Fast rail requires entirely different and substantially more expensive rolling stock and track.

It may be feasible with a large government investment to upgrade existing rail lines on the Sydney-to-Hunter route to travel express services at fast-rail pace rather than high-speed rail pace. One Nation would strongly support immediate feasibility studies on upgrading the Sydney-to-Hunter line to fast rail since New South Wales already has the rolling stock.

Senator McKenzie will be moving an amendment to this bill that will introduce Productivity Commission oversight of proposals and a transparent reporting system. If this amendment is passed, this bill will gain the checks and balances it should have had all along, and One Nation will support it. Without those checks and balances, One Nation will oppose this bill. We have one flag, we are one community, we are one nation, and we don’t lie for any reason—certainly not to the public to get votes.

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Wrap up of the National Anti Corruption Commission

The National Anti Corruption Commission (NACC) has passed Parliament and will be established next year.

So what’s covered by the NACC and what is One Nation’s view on these issues? I spoke on this in Parliament this week.

Something to tackle corruption is long overdue, we’re looking forward to having this body up and running and fine tuning it so that corruption is punished.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I support the National Anti-Corruption Commission Bill 2022. Shoddy governance is Australia’s greatest problem and biggest threat. The absence of data in making policies and legislation—some parties go to great lengths to avoid data and substitute emotion. That is partly corruption, but this bill that we are discussing today goes to real corruption, illegal corruption.

Initially I thought parliament contained the procedures for self-accountability. After two years, I realised I was wrong. Then I started participating enthusiastically in presentations and discussions in this building and outside, around a national crime and corruption commission. I thank that many people I listened to—lawyers, judges, former judges and everyday Australians concerned about corruption. I appreciate the conversations that I had with former senator Bill Heffernan. I realised when I spoke out about the fact that we need to have a commission in place to provide oversight of four main groups: federal members of parliament, federal bureaucrats and public servants, federal judges and federal police.

Now I turn to the government’s proposal. For too long corruption in government has been almost impossible to deal with because current protections are totally inadequate. Each state has a body to deal with corruption at the state level of government. All the state bodies, however, face jurisdictional and evidential hurdles. Whistleblower protections, particularly for private-sector whistleblowers, have failed to provide assumed protections. In recent years, many whistleblowers have had their lives and/or careers publicly and privately trashed—destroyed. Some have faced criminal charges or been destroyed financially through civil actions.

Integrity as an expected attribute of those in public office has been invisible and left to chance. That lack of integrity destroys the people’s trust in the governance of this country. This bill, when passed with appropriate amendments, will go a long way towards setting up a workable scheme, ensuring that integrity becomes a fundamental feature of our legislative and executive arms of government.

To get this bill right, a number of issues need to be addressed through internal or external amendment. One thing this bill does not address is third-party corrupt conduct, where the person being dealt with is an otherwise innocent public official dragged unknowingly into a circle of corruption. This is a scenario included within the jurisdictions of most state anticorruption bodies, except those of Tasmania and Western Australia. To be comprehensive, the bill must include this scenario to ensure that corruption, even involving innocent public officers, can still be investigated for corruption.

It’s important to understand that this bill is not designed to be purely or only punitive. It’s much more than that. It’s designed to get to the root cause of corrupt processes, practices and systems, to rectify, eliminate and prevent corruption and to systematically do that and systematically prevent corruption. This provision will assist in identifying relationships vulnerable to abuse and exploitation so that processes may be introduced to provide effective risk management, oversight and accountability. This will be an alternative to relying on the ability to satisfy the restrictive requirements of proving crime beyond reasonable doubt. That’s highly restrictive. We need better than that. Another power that should be clarified in the bill is the commission’s power to commence investigation of its own volition, without being reliant on external referrals from other agencies and individuals. This clarification would ensure that the source of complaints or information did not limit the full ambit of justification for investigations.

The issue of public hearings has challenged those in favour generally of establishing this commission. It has been suggested that holding public hearings may expose a person to vilification of their reputation, and potentially there may be insufficient evidence to establish an offence. People are worried that this will be used as a mechanism to turn into unjustifiable political witch-hunts, as we’ve seen in some of the states. This was one of my concerns, and it was the reason for my rejection of the bill in its earlier form. To address this, the bill indicates that hearings may be held in private unless the commissioner is satisfied that exceptional circumstances—exceptional circumstances, as it says in the bill—justify holding the hearing in public and it’s in the public interest to do so. The phrase ‘exceptional circumstances’, if included in the bill, would make it virtually impossible to hold public hearings, as it would require a court to determine whether circumstances are in fact exceptional. That’s a lawyer fest for sure. The removal of the requirement for exceptional circumstances is essential, and there are proposed amendments before the Senate that will fix this problem. I support these amendments. It would be appropriate that, if a public hearing were held, the commissioner or a deputy commissioner preside, because they are legally qualified to deal with the more obvious legal issues.

Another concern raised with me is the composition of the proposed parliamentary joint committee, where the chair is required to be a member of the government. This raises questions on the independence of the joint committee. A better solution may be that the chair should not be a member of a political party forming government or should at least be a person enjoying bipartisan support of the committee. It’s important that an extensive whistleblower protection authority be established to ensure protection for genuine disclosures. The government assures me that the introduction of such an authority is imminent and an essential supportive element of this bill’s operation.

Next, I raise what Senator Bill Heffernan has raised with me in extensive personal discussions, as well as senior judges and practitioners of the law. What’s missing from this bill is the jurisdiction to overview the misconduct and actions of the judiciary. This option is desperately needed, and there is information showing that this jurisdiction has been overlooked for far too long. It needs to be included—it must be included. It would be welcome to think that our judges are all free from human weaknesses, but they’re human. In practice, it’s not a realistic conclusion that they are free from human weaknesses. Judges are human and susceptible to the human frailties that may lead to misconduct in their offices. We know that. The judiciary must have a mechanism that provides independent review of the conduct of its members.

I look forward to the development of a bill to cover judges and senior police and associated amendments to strengthen the safeguards designed to protect our society from evildoers hiding behind public office—a bill the government has flagged with us. The Australian public deserves protection and reassurance. The people deserve integrity. To be effective, government must be trusted. We do not have trust in governance at the moment, but that’s what we need. We have one flag above this building, one flag for the nation. We are one community. We are one nation. And we support the integrity of our political representatives and public officers whose duty is one of service to the people.

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Liberal/Labor running a protection racket for the banks

Another party is in Government but it’s still the same old protection racket being run for the banks.

Whether it’s bail-in, regional branch closures or restricting cash, Anthony Albanese’s Labor Government is continuing the Liberal party’s tradition of running protection for the big banks.

Transcript

It seems Stephen Jones is to the Labor Party as Josh Frydenberg was to the Liberals: the bank’s man in the government.

Whether it’s defending the right of the banks to bail in the cash in your account; whether it’s turning a blind eye to banks closing their rural bank branches, which has increased this year under Minister Jones; whether it’s allowing the King’s currency to be shunned so the banks can force everyone onto electronic banking, with every transaction helping bank profits and every sale providing a data- and profit-rich environment for the banks; or whether, as it is today, it’s letting banking executives off the hook for egregious behaviour, that should be criminal.

These hideous, inhuman banking crimes were brought to light during the Senate’s Select Committee on Lending to Primary Production Customers in 2017, an inquiry that Senator Pauline Hanson got and that I chaired.

Four years later, not one of those victims has been compensated nor a banker prosecuted. Minister Chalmers is protecting the banks over the best interests of the people.

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Lowering the voting age, it’s a trap

If you know a 16 or 17 year old send this video to them.

To you, 16/17 year old, don’t worry about protesting the end of the world. Focus on having fun, hanging out with your friends and getting your P plates.

We adults wish we had more time to do that.

Transcript

This is my message to our 16- and 17-year-old Australians. You can okay boomer me as much as you want. I’ll happily cop it. Yet, as someone who is 67 and grey haired, I want to let you in on a little life secret. The Greens over here want you to think voting makes you an adult. It’s a trap. It’s something that no one here has really mentioned, but I remember that when I was your age you really don’t want to be an adult yet. Trust me, it kind of sucks and it’s hard.

The Greens are adults. Listening to their speeches, do they seem like happy people? Adults have lots of bills: car rego bills, electricity bills, water bills, gas bills, car insurance bills, private health bills, dental bills, phone bills and more. You might even have to start paying for your own Netflix. Then you have to go to work everyday, on repeat, daily, for 40 years until you retire or die. It’s 9 am to 5 pm—at least!—in an office. It’s up early before the sun rises if you’re a tradie. Don’t forget to do all your laundry in between as well. Then, if you work really hard and get a good job, the government will start stealing 33 cents out of every dollar you earn and waste it on something. These are just some of the responsibilities that come with being an adult.

As fun as I’m sure all this sounds, there’s much more. These are just some of the responsibilities that come with voting. They will all come more quickly than you think, and you will be voting sooner than you realise. Until then, just focus on finishing school or choosing a trade. Don’t listen to the people saying that you need to protest or the world will end. It won’t. For decades we’ve been told the lie that the world will end in five years or maybe 10 years. Hang out with your friends. Just have fun and practise to get your P-plates. You’ll soon have plenty of time to protest and vote and do all the boring stuff that comes with being an adult. It will be sooner than you think—much sooner than you think.

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Will sportspeople stop going woke yet?

It feels like everywhere you turn politics is mixing with sports. Is it too much to ask that sports celebrities be good at the game they are playing?

When you get down into the details of their grandstanding it never stacks up. Just play the game and do your team proud, Australia already hears enough of the politics.

Transcript

The Australian netball team rejected an offer of sponsorship from Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting because they refused to wear their logo. Who is this company our netballers rejected? Hancock Prospecting grew into one of Australia’s largest companies on the strength of their Roy Hill iron ore mine. Iron ore is still their largest product—Hancock mines coal as well. Since the Greens seem to be ignorant of metallurgy, let me educate you lot: the only way to make steel is using coal to heat iron ore. The Greens talk about green steel as an alternative—it’s not. Green steel is so brittle it’s unusable. There’s no realistic chance of green steel ever being used to replace coal-fired steel. Green steel does have a role as a photo opportunity to sustain the green steel lie designed to destroy the coal and steel industries for whatever visible reason the Greens advocate.

Australian netballers rejected steel. Senator McKim’s motion is rejecting steel. I hope that all those who feel as Senator McKim does go home tonight and rip out their steel stoves, turn off their steel fridges, throw away their steel microwaves, their cutlery, their knives, their saucepans—you get the idea. How will Senator McKim and his steel haters get home? Not in a car or even an electric vehicle. Those are made from steel and other products made with coal and hydrocarbon fuels. These other products include aluminium, glass, fibreglass and plastic. They can’t travel in a train, bus, cycle or scooter—more steel, more oil. Walking home is, of course, an option—just avoid steel-capped work boots or any boots made with steel tools. The hypocrisy in this motion is breathtaking!

Hancock Prospecting enjoys strong relations with the local Aboriginal communities, who benefited over the last seven years from mining royalties totalling $300 million. We have one flag, we are one community, we are one nation—coal-powered and steel-built thanks to miners.

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Net-Zero means strip mining the sea floor for rare earths

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The Earth simply doesn’t have enough of the rare earth materials used in batteries and net-zero products to reach net-zero.

That’s even when you take into account the materials gained from strip mining the ocean floor and covering the surrounding ecosystem in silt.

One Nation supports real environmental protection, not the environmental destruction the UN net-zero is pushing.

Transcript

Unreliable, weather-dependent solar and wind power has put a price tag on our oceans. The phrase ‘blue economy’ is used to soften the ugly truth that, to achieve Australia’s transition to net zero, the world’s oceans must be strip-mined for rare-earth minerals. Batteries, solar panels and wind turbines are produced in China, in part using materials that companies, mostly Chinese, mine from the sea floor. Polymetallic nodules needed for solar panels, wind turbines and batteries lay along active volcanic rifts mostly found on the seabed. Giant vacuums suck up the seabed ecosystem to bury and choke the surrounding area in a thick layer of silt. Animals, eggs, sediment, plants—everything is taken off the seabed.

A Greenpeace research fellow, distressed with what was being done, said:

In all cases, seabed mining will, by its very nature, destroy species and habitats within the mining zones. There is no justification for a ‘gold rush’ to mine the seabed …

International waters, particularly in the Pacific, contain more value than the combined mineral wealth of Earth’s continents.

The Pacific is ground zero for this green rush, with China holding the majority of licences that the United Nations International Seabed Authority handed out. The UN International Seabed Authority supports undersea mining because it aligns with the UN’s 2030 so-called—and bogus— Sustainable Development Goals. The former head of the Office of Environmental Management and Mineral Resources at the UN International Seabed Authority is on record saying that the UN International Seabed Authority is ‘not fit to regulate any activity in international waters’ in part due to a perceived conflict of interest with mining giants. Corporations are in control, and, on behalf of those corporations, climate warriors are destroying everything they touch. Explain that to our children. We are one community, we are one nation, and we want our oceans protected from crazy climate warriors.

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