Government Fails to Produce Papers – Taipan Helicopter Ditching

The Albanese government is rushing through legislation that will effectively give them similar power and control to World War era demands for ‘your papers please’. I’m not saying this is the intention of the Albanese government, but it is the framework that is being put in place in line with the initiative from the World Economic Forum, an international body founded by Klaus Schwab.

It’s ironic then, that the government is failing to produce its own papers. The Senate orders the government to produce papers and the government refuses. Like this situation here in the Senate, where there was an order to produce documents over 6 months ago relating to a non-fatal Taipan helicopter ditching in Jervis Bay. The government failed to produce any details even after Defence promised they would. Why? The hierarchy in Defence is covering up their mistakes.

The Taipan helicopters should have been pulled from service a decade ago. There were technical shortcomings in their capability that could not be defended. There were dangerous, catastrophic safety issues that Defence knew about. Instead of dealing with those issues or grounding the helicopter, as they should have, Defence and the politicians kept it in service and flying. Now four personnel who piloted and flew in that helicopter have died in a crash. We hope their families, despite their enormous loss, will find peace.

With so much at stake, the Australian people deserve to know the details. The senate is the house of review and when the senate orders the government to produce documents, then that is what must happen. Without transparency and accountability, we are not much better than the regime mentioned above.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Pursuant to standing order 164 and, by coincidence, genuinely by coincidence, with the previous motion, I seek an explanation from the Minister representing the Minister for Defence, Senator Wong, regarding the failure to respond to order for production of documents No. 243, agreed on 22 June 2023, in relation to the MRH-90 Taipan helicopter incident at Jervis Bay.

Senator Gallagher: I am happy to follow that up. We didn’t have notice of the OPD that Senator Roberts was going to refer to, so the minister isn’t here and able to provide a direct response. Normally, a heads-up is provided so that we can prepare an answer. I acknowledge you came over in question time and said that you would be doing this, but you didn’t inform us of what minister or OPD you were after. So I would have to come back to the chamber at a later time with an explanation. Could Senator Roberts indicate the number of the OPD he referred to?

Senator ROBERTS: Certainly; it’s No. 200. I move: That the Senate take note of the explanation. So much for the Albanese Labor government’s promises to be transparent and accountable! Yet again, they’ve failed a transparency deadline, failing to produce the documents the Senate ordered them to produce six months ago. In March this year, a Taipan helicopter was forced to ditch into the sea in Jervis Bay. No people died. Two were injured. Thankfully, those injuries were minor due to the pilots’ skills—skills they shouldn’t have had to rely on yet had to, because Defence made them fly a dodgy helicopter. Separately, in July, a Taipan helicopter crashed in the Whitsundays, killing four Defence personnel. This order for the production of documents related to the non-fatal Jervis Bay incident in March. The government has failed to produce any details after the Defence brass promised they would produce such reports.

What you didn’t hear in the minister’s explanation is the true story of why these documents haven’t been produced. The hierarchy in Defence are covering up their mistakes. The Taipan helicopters should have been pulled from service a decade ago. There were technical shortcomings in their capability that could not be defended. There were dangerous, catastrophic safety issues that Defence knew about. Instead of dealing with those issues or grounding the helicopter, as they should have, Defence and the politicians kept it in service and flying. Now four personnel who piloted and flew in that helicopter have died in a crash. We remember now Warrant Officer Class 2 Joseph Laycock—or, as he was known, Phil—troop commander Captain Danniel Lyon, Lieutenant Maxwell Nugent and Corporal Alexander Naggs. We hope their families, despite their enormous loss, will find peace.

Next—and I do not say this lightly—the Defence hierarchy and politicians who allowed the Taipan helicopter to continue flying have blood on their hands. No-one in Defence can claim not to know about this helicopter’s problems. The MRH-90 Taipan helicopter was identified on a list of ‘projects of concern’ in 2011, 12 years ago. The Taipan remained on that list until it was grounded for good after the Whitsundays crash, 13 years before its planned retirement. During its lifetime, the Taipan was grounded no fewer than nine times due to ongoing problems, yet Defence kept flying it—or, rather, Defence kept soldiers flying it. Australian taxpayers spent at least $3.7 billion on the project. The Taipan cost $50,000 an hour to fly. I can hear Senator Shoebridge laughing, and I understand why. Compare that to the Black Hawk, which costs an estimated $15,000 an hour, 30 per cent of the cost. The Australian National Audit Office identified some of the MRH-90 Taipan’s many serious problems. These included engine failure—without an engine, helicopters fly like a brick; transmission, oil cooler and fan failures; poor availability of spares; on the Navy aircraft, problems with the cargo hook; and, on the Army helicopters, problems with door gun mounts and the fast roping and rappelling device.

Those are some of the problems. Yet Defence kept flying the helicopter. The Navy couldn’t hook cargo into its Taipans. The Army couldn’t fire guns at the same time that soldiers were in the helicopter. Our Australian Army consider the cabin and row equipment are not fit for purpose, as the seat size and harness cannot accommodate personnel wearing combat gear. Yet Defence kept flying it. They knew the engine could fail and the helicopter could drop out of the sky, yet they kept on flying it.

Defence analyst Marcus Hellyer wrote in 2021: Back when I worked in the Department of Defence, we used to occupy ourselves from time to time calculating how much money the taxpayer would save in the long run if we just walked away from the MRH-90 utility helicopter and bought Black Hawk helicopters instead. The answer was a lot. And the sooner you did it, the more you’d save, by avoiding sinking more acquisition dollars into the MRH-90 and realising the substantially lower operating costs of the Black Hawk. But even though those numbers were shared with Defence’s senior decision-makers, the department couldn’t bring itself to take that step.

Defence had all the information. They knew the Taipan was a waste of billions of dollars. They knew it could not do the job it was meant to do and supposed to do. They knew it had catastrophic safety risks. They knew all of this for more than a decade, yet Defence kept on flying it. That’s why this government will not answer this order for the production of documents after almost six months. The cost and particularly the fatalities—avoidable fatalities—are huge.

I also want to talk about another huge impact: the impact on the Defence Force’s morale. What happens when you ask someone to keep operating faulty, life-threatening equipment? What happens to trust? You know the
answer. Look at the hypocrisy of the Chief of the Defence Force awarding himself a medal reserved for those in action, when he was sitting a thousand kilometres from the action. How does that build trust? It destroys trust.

Some years ago, when I was working in the mining industry, I met two people who had come from the defence forces, officers from the Army specifically. One was so highly skilled that he had been asked on occasion to take six of his mates and go into the jungles of Vietnam, well beyond enemy lines, take on a job and come back. He rose to be in charge of jungle warfare training. Barry—along with John, who had been a captain in the army—told me the key to Army culture and Defence Force culture. That key is mateship. Barry had to lecture other countries’ defence forces and security forces on counterterrorism work. He said in most countries they did not understand what mateship was. It’s intangible, yet the impacts are so tangible.

He also talked about standards. Everyone who joins the Army, for example, comes into the Army and is then made equal with everyone else so that they get the feeling of looking after their mates. Then they’re trained to a very high standard, and they can rely on each other and those standards. I’ll tell you a little story. Barry and John both said that when you’re behind a log in incoming machine gun fire, the only thing worse than jumping over that log and going into that machine gun fire is running away and leaving your mate behind. That’s how strong it is in the Army. There will be lots of people from the Army who will be watching this parliament and will know exactly what I’m talking about.

The third part of mateship is trust. How can we have trust when the defence forces are going woke? I hear from so many soldiers and airmen and sailors that they’re sick and tired of the defence forces going woke and it will jeopardise their lives in battle.

That is not looking after our soldiers.

Then we talk about national security. All of that impacts on national security. I’ll say it again: the key strategic weapon we have in this country in our armed forces is at the mateship, the training, the standards and what used to be trust. The warriors are fine. The problem is the Chief of the Defence Force, the top brass and, as we’ve heard recently, the minister who is supposed to hold them accountable.

We’ve had some preliminary briefings, and I want to commend a young public servant who said that the problems with the Taipans are not just in the military but also in the politics and the politicians. These politicians and the top brass are responsible for deaths. They have blood on their hands. Even the slightest amount of scrutiny on this project will reveal the pervasive corruption in the Defence hierarchy, reveal politicians’ mistakes and show that these people in Defence and in politics have blood on their hands. One Nation will continue pushing to hold those in the Defence hierarchy to account and protect our warriors serving in the Defence Force.

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The Labor-Green-Teal Coalition Con

The Albanese government is doing dodgy deals behind the scenes with mates and donors, letting down workers while driving up the cost of living. Labor is horse-trading behind our backs with the Greens and Teals to get the numbers to fast track its Bills through the Senate without conventional review.

It’s obvious the Albanese government in the Senate is a Labor-Greens-Teal coalition that is repeatedly protecting itself from scrutiny, gags debate on key legislation and is doing dodgy deals to push the Greens’ destructive policies through parliament.

This is hurting Australians and taking our country backwards.

No wonder this government is being slammed in the polls. The people didn’t vote for this coalition with its nation-killing agenda. The tail is wagging the dog.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I listen to people from across our country. Many are hurting because of the skyrocketing cost of living due to record
immigration, with 2.3 million people in Australia on visas—there are 100,000 student beds, yet the Albanese government issued a record 687,000 student visas in one year—as well as skyrocketing house prices, with foreign owners buying and locking up homes; green jackboots suppressing builders and suppliers; and ESG choking companies. People in Gladstone, Bundaberg and other regional towns and cities are living in cars, in caravans, in tents and under bridges. There are skyrocketing rental rates, if people can find a rental. High inflation is destroying wealth and being a tax—inflation due to printing money and splashing cash and to supply side restrictions.

There are high energy prices, due to solar and wind. All countries with high proportions of solar and wind have very high electricity prices. Plus there’ll be the future $60 billion in additional costs for transmission lines to hook the solar and wind into the grid that has not been budgeted for.

One Nation raises solutions to meet people’s basic needs, like cutting immigration to zero, net; ending foreign ownership of property; ending net zero electricity policies; stopping endless money-printing and cash-splashes. Labor responds with ridicule, showing contempt for people’s needs. This destroys confidence in the government.

We’re on a highway to hell because Anthony Albanese has not grown into the prime ministership. He still acts as though selfies, music-band T-shirts and empty symbols are substitutes for thoughtful governance and hard work. They’re not.

In proposing his recent Voice referendum, his arguments were shallow and condescending. He offered only a vibe and an emotion. His government tried to con the people. This is not leadership; it’s floundering. This is not governance—

The Acting Deputy President (Senator Chandler): Order, Senator Roberts. Senator Urquhart, on a point of order?

Senator Urquhart: I think the senator is actually impugning by saying what he said about the Prime Minister, and I would ask him to withdraw that.

The Acting Deputy President: Senator Roberts, perhaps if you could clarify your comments and then continue your remarks, noting the point of order that we’ve heard?

Certainly. I said that his government has tried to con the people, not him.

The Acting Deputy President: Please continue, Senator Roberts.

This is not leadership; it’s floundering. This is not governance; it’s deceitful irresponsibility. This is not transparency and consultation; it’s dodging scrutiny. This destroys confidence in the
government. Look at their legislation processes that are bankrupt. Last week’s water amendment bill entered the House of Representatives with 31 amendments, from the government; plus 20 amendments in the Senate, from the government—a total of 51 government amendments to its own bill—plus crossbenchers’ and Liberals’ amendments, for a total of 69 amendments. Consultation? Hah!

The Identity Verification Services Bill 2023 was suddenly sprung on the Senate in a deal between the globalists in Labor and the globalists in the Liberals. It includes provisions for facial recognition of every Australian 16 years or older going about their everyday life, including in travel, using ATMs, in supermarkets for shopping, driving their car, in financial services—everything. It’s a basis for Labor’s digital identity bill that they rushed into the Senate—again, hiding from scrutiny. They were trying to rush the IR bill next, then delaying passage of what Labor said were four urgent schedules.

There was Minister Burke falsely creating the dishonest label ‘closing loopholes’ to hide the Hunter Mining and Energy Union’s complicity in aiding some labour hire firms in Australia’s largest-ever wage theft, worth billions of dollars; protecting the Fair Work Commission for blatant breaches of law in approving the Mining and Energy Union enterprise agreements enabling systemic wage theft; protecting the Fair Work Ombudsman for using a fraudulent document covering up the Mining and Energy Union’s enterprise agreement systemic wage theft. They’re throwing workers to the wolves and hiding mates and donors from scrutiny.
There’s the nature repair bill—the arrogance! The Greens stated they were opposed, clearly. Yet the Greens now support the bill because Labor agreed to allow the Greens to move amendments to the EPBC Act. The Greens support Labor’s disastrous bill in return for Labor’s support for the disastrous Greens amendments to an existing law that is not before the Senate—without debate. They’re hiding political mates and bosses from scrutiny.

During deceitful COVID mismanagement, Liberal and Labor governments used Labor state premiers to steal basic human rights and freedoms. The Australian Bureau of Statistics data confirms that COVID injections killed tens of thousands of people—homicide! Livelihoods and homes were lost due to injection mandates. Health bureaucrats, with plenty to hide, dig in. And what does Labor do? It covers up, and that makes them complicit. Prime Minister Albanese breaks his royal commission promise to instead propose a whitewash to cover up the Labor states’ mismanagement and deceit—hiding political mates from scrutiny.
In practice, the Albanese Labor government seeks to suppress, silence and control. That’s why people have lost confidence in Prime Minister Albanese and his government. Remember the Rudd slide and the Gillard slide? After just 18 months, the media is already referring to the even steeper Albanese slide. That’s why the people have lost confidence in this government

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How to Fix the Housing Crisis

The housing unaffordability crisis is one of the greatest issues facing Australia. Australians want to have their hard work and savings rewarded. They want a place to call their own and a place where they can stay to raise a family.

Mortgages are skyrocketing and two thirds of young Australians believe they will never own their own home. Rents are also rising on the back of a record low national vacancy rate of 1%. Experts consider a 3% vacancy rate to be tight — a national average of 1% is an absolute crisis.

Right now, many Australians simply cannot afford a roof over their head.

Supply and demand controls the housing market. Yet decades of successive governments have mismanaged both sides of the equation.

One Nation would properly manage our economy and deliver cheaper houses and cheaper rent. How? First, by stemming the flow of overseas arrivals which is driving up unsustainable demand. Over the last year, Australia gained an additional 2.3 million visa holders. We cannot sustain this level of overseas arrivals. Powerful lobby groups reliant on high immigration have been able to label anyone talking about this problem as racist.

Secondly, many Australians can’t afford housing in Australia banning foreign ownership is the only answer. It would increase housing supply and stop pumping up the profits for the Big Banks. As the Reserve Bank raises interest rates, the big banks pass that on at up to 7%, yet the banks borrowed long term funds from the RBA at just 0.1%. They’re pocketing the huge difference leading to record-breaking profits.

On the supply side, government and its red and green tape must get out of the way and let our tradies build homes. Homes for Australians to stem the tide of tent cities and misery that decades of indifferent governments have caused.

Affordable houses, lower affordable rents and a flourishing economy is all possible under One Nation.

Transcript

I thank Senator Pocock for his matter of urgency and for validating the concept of net immigration that we’ve been pushing for quite some time. Mortgages are skyrocketing, rents keep increasing and two-thirds of young Australians believe they will never own a home, and it’s easy to understand why.

The housing unaffordability crisis is one of the greatest issues facing Australia. In Brisbane, the median house price is 10 times the median income. Experts consider a three per cent rental vacancy rate to be tight. Rents are rising on the back of a record low national rate of one per cent. As in all real markets, there are two things, and two things only, that affect house prices: supply and demand. Successive governments have destroyed both sides of the equation.

This is how One Nation would deliver cheaper houses and cheaper rent. In the short term, we would stop pouring fuel on the fire. Excluding tourists and short-stay visitors, there are 2.3 million visaholders in the country likely to need housing. In addition, there are roughly 400,000 tourists and other visaholders in the country. In the middle of our rental shortage, this high demand is motivating owners to convert housing to full-time Airbnbs. Two point seven million visaholders, more than 10 per cent of Australia’s population, are in the country right now fighting Australians for a roof over their head. The country cannot sustain this level of overseas arrivals. That number must be cut to help housing availability and affordability.

The biggest winners from high house prices are the banks. As the Reserve Bank raises interest rates, the big banks pass that on at up to seven per cent. Yet the banks borrowed long-term funds from the RBA, the Reserve Bank of Australia, at just 0.1 per cent. They’re pocketing the huge differences, leading to record-breaking profits. One Nation would never repeat the mistakes of the COVID period, where the Reserve Bank was allowed to create $500 billion out of thin air.

That led to the inflation that the Reserve Bank is now trying to fight, and the tool it uses is to send mortgage holders broke.

Finally, on the demand side, we need to ban foreign ownership of Australian assets. A single real estate agent in Sydney sold $135 million dollars in property to Chinese buyers in just six months. Australians can’t own a house in China, so why should we let foreign citizens buy property here? And on the supply side, the government needs to get out of the way with its restrictive building codes, so called green land restrictions and a spider web of employment law.

A home is a castle. Decades of indifferent governments from both sides of politics have ruined the Australian housing dream for many Australians. Only One Nation has the guts to make that dream a reality for all Australians.

Affordable houses and rents and a flourishing economy are all possible under One Nation. We just need to start looking after Australians first

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Proposed Pumped Hydro at Cressbrook Dam

Thank you to the residents west of Cressbrook Dam who took the time to tell me their concerns about a proposed pumped hydro at the site along with huge clearing proposed for associated transmission lines.

Pumped Hydro is another scam only necessary under the net-zero pipe dream.

All of the environmental destruction this project would cause is unneeded if the government simply allowed Coal and Nuclear to power the country.

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Net-Zero Pipe Dream is Killing the Environment to “Save It”

I’m standing in the middle of an 80 metre wide, kilometres long clearing made for power lines, and these are small ones.

The net-zero lunatics are planning on bulldozing straight lines through national parks, koala habitat and forestry for tens of thousands of kilometres to connect up the many dispersed wind and solar projects to the grid.

Thousands and thousands of square kilometres will have to be cleared, and that’s before anyone clears land for the solar and wind stations.

The net-zero pipe dream is truly killing the environment, “to save it”.

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Natural Carbon Dioxide Experiment Proves the Real Inconvenient Truth

In 2020 the world conducted one of the largest global experiments ever seen.

Countries across the globe completely shut down their economies, locked everyone in their houses and stopped industrial production on a scale never seen before (and we hope to never seen again).

This unprecedented reduction in human activity and the burning of hydrocarbons should have been a climate activist’s dream – none of that pesky carbon dioxide being put into the air!

Yet through one of the largest industrial shutdowns the world has ever seen, the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air kept going up. It didn’t even deviate at all.

The question has to be asked, if the response to COVID – shutting down almost everything – didn’t even make a dent in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, what will?

The answer is that nothing the net-zero climate lunatics tell us to do will make a difference. Human production will not affect the level of CO2 in the air over and above natural variation.

Anyone trying to tell you differently is selling a scam.

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Australia’s Infrastructure Death by Labor’s Secretive Cuts

The Albanese government is deliberately opposing my motion to reveal the infrastructure review it’s using to justify cutting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of badly needed infrastructure projects around Australia. Projects like dams for towns and agriculture, transport projects and visionary nation-building projects. It’s cutting costs in areas where we need to spend, while sending huge sums to the United Nations and Tedros the Terrorist at the WHO.

Australia needs a productive infrastructure so that we can build our competitive and productive advantage and stop relying on other nations who buy our raw materials such as iron ore, for example, for steel and other building materials. Why are we exporting raw materials and buying back finished products instead of making the whole product here? Australia has everything it needs to be self-reliant, except for a government with the common sense to facilitate it.

How many more times will this Labor government be exposed for the secrets its hiding from the Australian taxpayers?

Australians deserve the transparency and accountability they were promised, and the infrastructure this country badly needs.

Transcript

The Albanese government is making secret cuts to infrastructure projects. Twice now the Senate has passed my motion, forcing the government to hand over the full infrastructure review that they used to justify cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in projects. Twice, the government has opposed transparency and accountability about its secret infrastructure cuts. How many more times will the Labor government keep secrets from Australian taxpayers? 

This is the Labor review that concluded the Emu Swamp dam at Stanthorpe should be cancelled. Only three years ago, this southern Queensland town was in severe drought and ran dry. They had to cart in millions of litres of water by truck just to survive. Up to 50 trucks carted water hundreds of kilometres every day for 15 months. On what basis did the Labor government conclude Stanthorpe doesn’t deserve a dam? We might never know. The government has so far refused to hand over the review that justifies the decision. If Stanthorpe doesn’t have water, Stanthorpe will die. The Labor government needs to answer why they believe Stanthorpe should be left to die in the next drought. It has literally been hung out to dry. One Nation will keep fighting for those answers and we will fight for more dams across Queensland. What we need in Australia is productive infrastructure to build our competitive advantage—our productive competitiveness. We need dams that agriculture can use to boom. We need cheap power, from which the entire economy will benefit. We need functional roads that don’t have potholes big enough to destroy a car’s suspension. 

Australia needs visionary, nation-building projects—infrastructure projects like the Iron Boomerang. Right now, every year, we send 900 million tonnes of iron ore and 360 million tonnes of coal overseas. We ship it overseas. Those are two essential ingredients to making steel, which we largely import. We put that dirt on a boat, places like China buy it, they turn it into steel, they make things like unproductive wind turbines out of the steel, they put them on a boat and they ship the wind turbines back to Australia in the form of steel, where our dopey government buys it off them. 

We should let private enterprise build the Iron Boomerang track linking our iron ore and coalmines, so we can make the steel right here in this country. The government doesn’t even have to build Iron Boomerang. They just have to promise they won’t get in the way, and then private money will pay for it. That money is already knocking on the door. These are the kinds of nation-building infrastructure projects that would be on the horizon if One Nation had our way. We certainly wouldn’t be cutting productive infrastructure, like dams, in secret as the Labor government is doing. Before all of that we need accountable and transparent government. Labor continues to prove it will never be transparent. Their secret infrastructure cuts are just the latest example of a government that’s afraid of explaining itself to the voters.  

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Bushfires a Threat Created by Greenies, Not Climate Change

Watch out for climate change scam artists claiming every bushfire is because of climate change.

As this summer shapes up to be dangerous (just like every other bushfire season for decades has been dangerous) the real threat are the pretend greenies that have stopped us doing reduction burns.

Any home lost to a bushfire is the fault of people that stopped reduction burns and has nothing to do with “climate change”.

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Dirty by Nature

The Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 is a deceptive name for a dirty bill that the Albanese government is rushing through the senate more than four months earlier than the committee requested.

What it’s really about is the federal government using the public purse to financially coerce farmers to lock up their land or walk off it altogether to satisfy the dictates of foreign, unelected climate change bureaucrats.

What’s the hurry to get this through? Does this government feel the winds of change blowing in its direction?

Transcript

Senator Roberts: I seek leave to make a short statement. 

The PRESIDENT: You have one minute with leave. 

Senator Roberts: The government’s motion to rush this inquiry report through today, more than four months earlier than the committee requested and the Senate agreed, is a dodgy, dirty deal. The Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 is a deceptive, arrogant title. It’s really about the federal government financially coercing farmers to lock up their land or walk off it to satisfy the dictates of foreign, unelected climate change bureaucrats, like COP28. No wonder the government wants to cut short the inquiry into this bill and rush the bill through this week. All of the climate rent seekers are happy to support this bill because, eventually, it will lead to money in their pockets from the people of Australia. While farmers are paid to lock up their land, a lack of agricultural production will cause untold human misery both in Australia and overseas. One Nation will be opposing this rushed dirty deal. Give the committee the time it originally requested to make its report. 

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: The question before the Senate is that the motion moved by Senator Chisholm seeking a variation to a reporting date of a committee be agreed to. 

The Senate divided.

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Labor Hides Corrupt Cronies from Scrutiny

We need more accountability, not less. This Bill will promote power for union bosses over workers and is full of unintended consequences.

It’s a Bill all wrapped up in pretty paper with good measures that are widely supported and with poison pills buried inside. The Trojan Horse approach is becoming a bad habit with Labor.

Industrial Relations Minister, Tony Burke, introduced key topics that One Nation completely supports and we already have voted for them separately in November. Yet the government left those bills gathering dust over political issues instead of thinking of the workers. Instead of looking out for workers, the government is more interested in protecting mates and donors while getting away with dodgy legislation.

The core of Minister Burke’s legislation is designed to cover up the permanent-casual rort in the coal sector. Every so-called “casual” coal miner is employed under an unlawful Enterprise Agreement (EA) that the Mining & Energy Union/CFMEU agreed with and signed. So-called “casual” miners are employed under EAs that the Fair Work Commission (FWC) approved against their own protocols and against the law.

These “casual” miners are subject to breaches of law that the FWC and Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) have ignored, and when held accountable it’s been proven that the FWC/FWO resorted to using fraudulent documentation to get away with their shocking failure of duty.

We will continue our work to get “casual” miners ten of thousands of dollars in stolen back-pay.

We will continue to push for restoring all workers’ rights, protections and entitlements.

Transcript

I will be taking up Senator Sheldon’s invitation to put my cards on the table, and we will be putting our cards on the table. I will be doing exactly that.

The Australian Labor Party is Australia’s oldest continuous political party, so you’d think that it would have got the hang of government by now—but no. This week has been a shocker. Perhaps 122 years is enough. It’s time to find a nice twilight home, put your feet up and listen to Alan Jones, enjoy a juicy steak, read the Spectator and contemplate this government’s many, many failures—so many failures that the Labor heartland are turning against Labor. The polls are an indictment of the performance of this one-term Labor government. Now the ALP thinks that doing dodgy deals to get parts of its signature industrial relations policy through will quieten the heartland—a heartland that can’t pay their mortgage or rent, who can’t buy groceries, whose kids are taught a hidden agenda at school and who will now be stalked at every turn, using Labor government sanctioned cameras. This bill doesn’t fix those things. This bill doesn’t fix those basics.

More importantly, from the perspective of the union bosses, this bill, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023, is about forcing people to join the union. That won’t fix their declining support. The very thing that turns people off unionism these days—the thuggery and cronyism and backroom deals that only favour the union bosses—will enable more of it. We need more accountability, not less. Union bosses, and some large companies, have become accountable to no-one because they are arrogantly enshrined in a cosy monopoly of being the only union for their sector. Nothing here will claw back the reduction in real wages per capita that Australia’s workers have suffered since Labor took over—a six per cent reduction in real wages in just 18 months, a reduction that just keeps getting worse with every new piece of economic data, as we saw again yesterday.

This bill will be full of unintended consequences, as any legislation that is written out of dodgy ideology always causes. Let me review the detail of this bill. There are four measures that the Senate has already passed. Easier access to PTSD support and compensation for first responders: we voted for that. Domestic violence protections: we voted for that. Asbestos and silica safety: we voted for that. Protecting redundancy entitlements: we voted for that. These four were passed by the Senate, with One Nation’s support, and they’ve been sitting on the books down in the House of Representatives, left by the government to gather dust because it would be too embarrassing not to pass measures the Senate passed in defiance of the government. So much for workers—the government doesn’t give a damn. Instead of looking out for workers, the government is more interested in looking good.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Grogan): Senator Roberts, I’ll ask you to mind your language.

Now the government has brought on this bill, which contains those four uncontroversial measures and wraps into it four more issues for eight in total. The four additional issues in this package of Tony Burke, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, include the criminalisation of wage theft and industrial manslaughter. We support both of those; we agree with them. But his legislation introduced with no notice this morning includes two poison pills wrapped up in the uncontroversial. Those two poison pills are unfettered right of entry for union bosses and the deceptively named same job, same pay framework. It is deceptively named, as I’ll explain.

Again we are seeing Labor wrap up a bundle of things everyone supports with the most-controversial proposals in industrial relations law. The right to entry allows union bosses to enter any business at any time under the pretext of safety issues. There are no criteria for what satisfies ‘reasonable entry’, because the assumption is that union delegates should never be prevented from entry. Union bosses will abuse this. Union bosses in some lawless large unions already are concocting safety reasons for claiming entry to businesses and then, inevitably, hanging around to apply pressure on employees to join up. If a business believes the right to entry has been abused, it has next to no recourse. The Australian Building and Construction Commission used to enforce workplace entry and union conduct in workplaces—no more. Employers can’t complain to the Australian Building and Construction Commission because the Labor Party disbanded it for being a check on the unreasonable behaviour of union bosses.

I turn now to the real poison pill: same job, same pay. It sounds good. One Nation totally supports a fair day’s pay for a fair days work. Let everyone in this chamber remember that I introduced into the Senate the first bill for same job, same pay. Let me tell why and then explain why we knew it would cover up the real problem, which is wage theft that the Mining and Energy Union formerly under the name Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union enables—not just sanctions, but enables and drives. I’ll tell you why I support same job, same pay. A courageous miner in the Hunter Valley, Simon Turner, and some of his mates came to see me about what was going on. I thought it was a major coal company and a major international labour hire firm were colluding to screw workers. Then I found that the CFMMEU in the Hunter enables these agreements, that it drives these enterprise agreements. Not only do they not pay the award, not only do they not pay the enterprise agreement of the host company—the employer, the mine owner—they underpay the award, sanctioned by the CFMMEU in the Hunter. It is sanctioned by them, driven by them, resulting in the theft of over a billion dollars from miners. Tony Burke, the minister, knows because we have provided the details from miners on dodgy enterprise agreements that dodge the Fair Work Act. It is something we have been working on relentlessly with the miners in Central Queensland and the Hunter for 4½ years since it was first brought to my attention. Miners provided them directly to senior ministerial staff, to senior staff of his Department of Employment and Workplace Relations in personal meetings the miners had that we arranged.

The provided the details in writing with documented evidence. There were details that I put in writing to the minister himself twice. The loophole is a fabrication that Labor senators echo like propaganda through this chamber. In the mining industry, that is false. There is no loophole. The core problem is that the Fair Work Act has been breached repeatedly, systemically, systematically and cold bloodedly. The underpayment of miners in the permanent casual rort is possible only with enterprise agreements signed by the Mining and Energy Union, formerly the CFMMEU.

In some cases, that union sold enterprise agreements to labour hire firms. In fact, speaking of labour hire firms, the Hunter CFMMEU started the first labour hire firm in our coal industry and pretends to oppose labour hire. It enables labour hire and rewards labour hire companies with dodgy deals, enterprise agreements and paying below the award.

As a former coalface miner and later a mine manager, I am absolutely appalled at what I see going on at the moment in the coal industry and in a union that used to be very proud and strong. Elements of it are now gutless and crooked. The Hunter CFMMEU approved and signed a statutory declaration as part of the Fair Work Act process for approving enterprise agreements. All of the deals were done with the signature of the CFMMEU. The Fair Work Commission oversees the process of developing an enterprise agreement. Repeatedly, it has breached the statutory process. It has broken its own law repeatedly. When we’ve drawn the Fair Work Commission senior management to that fact, they have done nothing. They don’t give a damn about workers, whom they’re supposed to be protecting.

It’s duplicitous. When miners draw the Fair Work Commission’s senior management to that fact, the Fair Work Commission does nothing. We have told Minister Burke, and he does nothing.

Miners have made formal complaints to the Fair Work Ombudsman, who were stumped until they were given a bevy of documents including court rulings, an Australian Taxation Office declaration, PAYE slips and PAYE group certificates. Those are legitimate documents. To those legitimate documents, they responded with a fraudulent document that a labour hire firm fabricated. The Australian Taxation Office has said that it is a fraudulent document.

And then the Fair Work Ombudsman’s senior managers used that fraudulent document in the Fair Work Ombudsman’s office knowing it was fraudulent. We will not fall for Minister Burke’s cover-up of his mates in the
CFMMEU. We will continue to fight for back pay for thousands of coalminers. We will not allow this cover-up.

We will not look the other way, as Senator Lambie and Senator Pocock have. We will double down and hold Minister Burke accountable.

How was it done? Let me give you a hint. The Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union, formerly the CFMEU, own 50 per cent of coalmines’ insurance and workers compensation for coalminers—Coal Long-Service Leave and AUSCOAL Super. They have co-directors, who approve various contracts. For example, the Coal LSL administration was contracted out to AUSCOAL. A director was on both of those boards when the contract was signed. This is really sloppy stuff. I’m surprised with Senator Lambie, as I said. After I arranged a meeting with her and a particular miner in the Hunter Valley, she spoke with the miner and confirmed it with me.

Senator Pocock was offered the same opportunity. As miners caught in the permanent-casual rort know, the solution is simple: enforce the Fair Work Act and get the more than $1 billion in back pay that miners are entitled to. Simon Turner and other miners in the Hunter initially thought that, yes, the same work, same pay bill that I introduced to this parliament was needed. Now they know, having dug deeper and seen the corruption that’s gone on, all that’s needed is to enforce the Fair Work Act. This bill pretends to be closing loopholes. In reality, though, every time you add a page of legislation, you just create an extra loophole for lawyers to find. The answer is less legislation, not more. The current legislation is too complex and hides protections from miners and small business and makes it easy for the industrial relations club or large union bosses, large employers and industrial groups to clobber workers.

Minister Burke, stop burying the evidence. Face up to the fact that your mates in the CFMMEU are directly responsible for wage theft of more than a billion dollars, as you’ve been informed. The solution is not covering up the rort or fabricating an imaginary loophole. The solution is simply to enforce the Fair Work Act. That is your job as minister.

We will not fall for this bill’s deceit. We will continue to fight for workers to be paid their full entitlements and make up for wage theft and for workers to obtain their full lawful entitlements.

When I started working with miners in the Hunter 4½ years ago I put forward—and they agreed with this—three aims. The first was to get Simon Turner his lawful and moral entitlements in full. We are still chasing that. We have gone part of the way. The second was to stop this permanent casual rort across the coalmining sector. We’ve heard from one large employer group. They’re coming to the party. The third was to bring justice to the Hunter CFMMEU, which is now the Mining and Energy Union, and the Chandler Macleod group, the perpetrators at the Mount Arthur mine. We will continue to fight for industrial relations reform. We will continue until all my three aims are achieved for the miners in the Hunter and Central Queensland.

One Nation will always fight for workers being able to understand their rights and fighting for those rights. The first step towards doing that is making them simple enough to understand. This bill does nothing to help that, and we will be opposing it. The big gorillas in the room—to use Senator Sheldon’s term—are the Mining and Energy Union in the Hunter; the CFMMEU; the Chandler Macleod group; Recruit Holdings, the largest labour hire firm in the world; the Fair Work Commission; and the Fair Work Ombudsman. Hiding mates and crooks from scrutiny will not get the Labor Party out of this. This bill will be the Labor Party government’s death knell.

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