Grandstanding is clearly more important to the Albanese government than actually governing.
Last week the Senate voted to pass four measures from the Government’s own industrial relations bill that all parties agreed were urgent. Because the vote was led by the crossbench, the government then refused to deal with the bills in the lower house.
What everyday Australians can learn from this ‘dummy spit’ by Prime Minister Albanese is the government is more interested in playing politics than protecting workers. The government’s actions are quite honestly a disgrace and a betrayal of working Australians.
This is my speech in support of the motion by the crossbench, supported by the Liberals and Nationals to suspended standing orders. This allowed the Senate to send a message to the House of Representatives to vote on the bills immediately.
This motion was passed and the ball is back in the Prime Minister’s court. Will he now vote to pass his own legislation or continue his childish antics?
Transcript
What an opportunity for the government to show that it believes in truth, integrity and honesty. What do they do? They run away from it. Senator Watt’s talking about the delays. No, it’s scrutiny. It’s proper scrutiny. That’s all we want. We want some urgency around bills that the government brought into the parliament saying that they were urgent and vital. What do we see? He’s leaving. They’re running away from it. Urgent bills? That’s why we want to support this suspension: so that we can vote on the motion of Senators Pocock and Lambie.
This is about the Senate exercising the will of the Senate. The will of the Senate said, ‘We want these bills passed urgently.’ It went down to the House and has been put on the bottom of the order. To me, that shows the inconsistency with what Labor is saying about these bills and what the truth is. It proves that Labor is lying about the urgency of these bills. Senator Pocock reminded us very clearly of the long time frame for the wage theft provisions to be put in place—2025, I think he said. What is the government covering up?
We’ll see more when we get to scrutiny of the other five sections of that bill, but I’ve been championing the cause of Hunter Valley and Central Queensland coalminers, and the only way that an enterprise agreement less than the award can be put in place is through an agreement with the Mining and Energy Union in the Hunter Valley. That’s the only way. There is no loophole in the coal industry; it just needs enforcement of the Fair Work Act, which the Fair Work Ombudsman has dodged, the Fair Work Commission has dodged, the MEU has contravened deliberately, and some employers and some labour hire firms have deliberately compromised. There’s no loophole; this is just designed to deflect and cover up. We will be getting to the bottom of this because I’m tired of these miners in Central Queensland and the Hunter Valley being put down. They’re still on below-award pay despite what the government is saying.
We want scrutiny. We want it now.
Good work Malcolm, 🙂
You know a Really good idea, would be a bill “THAT” under scrutiny, any motions passed by a polititian, proven “BAD”
for the country & people, while they were in office, can anytime be removed in hindsight, even after “THEY” have left Politics, !
RIGHT, For instance they “MUST” be held accountable in history. Like for instance Gillards NDIS, . she must be held accountable even now… Howards WAR crimes, & destroying our domestic fuel supply, he Must be jailed.
What a glorious bill that would be to enshrine accountability.