Questions Without Notice
Workplace Relations
Ms SWANSON (Paterson) (14:54): My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. How is the Albanese Labor government's 'closing the labour loopholes' laws delivering a better deal for workers, including in the mining industry. Are there any threats to this progress?
Mr BURKE (Watson—Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Minister for the Arts and Leader of the House) (14:54): I thank the member for Paterson, who has had a very strong commitment to closing the labour-hire loophole. When she spoke last year in November on the 'closing loopholes' legislation, the member referred to workers in the mining industry trying to get a permanent shirt. Workers in the mining industry, working side-by-side with other workers, doing the same job and the same hours, but some are employed by a labour-hire company and some are employed directly. I'm pleased to report—and some of you may have already seen this in an article that Ewin Hannan published in The Australian—that the pay rises as a result of us having closed the labour-hire loophole have already commenced.
What I think might have surprised some people was the extent of the underpayment that some of these workers were receiving. Remember, this is an underpayment that those opposite said no to closing the loophole on. They said we had to keep this underpayment. So, for workers doing the exact same work, going to the exact same meetings at the start of every shift, working the same rotating roster and sharing their breaks in the same crib huts onsite, it turns out the pay gap for these workers—at the Mount Pleasant coal mine in the Hunter Valley, operated by Theiss, though some of the workers are not employed by Thiess but by a labour-hire company called, interestingly, Programmed—the underpayment was between $37,000 and $45,000 a year. Now, only because the law was changed, those workers, it was announced last week, are now going to be directly employed.
What does that mean in terms of your weekly pay? From 1 July, they're not just looking at a pay rise; they're also looking at a tax cut. And when you combine for these workers the pay rise—because of the laws we changed, law changes those on the other side opposed—and the tax cut—a tax cut they also didn't want us to deliver—these workers are looking at getting $500 more in their pay packet every single week. Those opposite and this Leader of the Opposition didn't want them to get the pay rise and didn't want them to get the tax cut. One of those workers, Danielle, has been there for 2½ years, working at the labour hire company. She said: 'For us to all be on the same rate of pay and have the same conditions will be a game-changer. We all do the same work. There's really no difference between someone wearing a Thiess label or a Programmed label in terms of what we do day-to-day.' Well, there is a difference in a government is a says yes to them getting $500 a week and a Leader of the Opposition committed to saying no.
