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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 13 Hansard (20 November) . . Page.. 3797 ..

MS GALLAGHER (continuing):

The middlemen between retailers and outworkers often work as godfather figures, offering help with Centrelink processes and tax forms, providing loans and of course providing work contracts. They also often lease sewing machines to outworkers. Some of the machines are 30 years old, making the production of garments 40 hours a week an arduous task and a substantial health risk. Fear plays a big part in this relationship, with many outworkers too frightened and too intimidated to do anything about their circumstances.

Every large metropolitan centre in Australia is presumed to have outwork industries, whether in primary manufacture of textile, clothing and footwear products or in value-adding measures like embroidery. Although there are no obvious factories here, there is no reason to presume that the ACT is excluded from this norm.

Outworkers are trapped in an industry which seeks to hide their exploitation through the height of a fashion catwalk or a new season release.

By endorsing this motion today, the ACT Legislative Assembly will be taking the first step in ensuring that the legal and socially accepted standards of wages and conditions are enforced for outworkers.

I would like to briefly speak now of the broad social coalition which supports these changes. This is important because all layers of society, from all political perspectives, have recognised that there must be a social consensus around the issue and it must focus on securing employment justice for outworkers. In New South Wales similar legislation received bipartisan support from the chamber. I hope we can forge that sort of cooperative approach to this social problem today.

Church groups right across the country have endorsed moves to encourage compliance. This includes the Uniting Church, which has involved itself actively in the outworker case. The broad-base community group FairWear has emerged to educate consumers and campaign for change in the industry. The Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union endorses this approach. It endorses it because it allows for closer scrutiny of all textile, clothing and footwear contracts and allows retailers who enforce the award to be rewarded in a public fashion. The Australian Retailers Association has approved a new code of conduct to eliminate exploitation.

If this motion is endorsed today, it will be an example of legitimate community concerns being developed into effective policy, negotiated with all stakeholders and put into practice. In supporting this motion, we would be setting new consumer standards and doing our part to complement the developments of other jurisdictions.

It should be stated here that this is part of an integrated strategy by Labor governments across the states and territories to tackle what is a national problem. With New South Wales and Queensland already having implemented these reforms and Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and other jurisdictions promoting reforms, it is not tenable for the ACT not to act in this area.

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