Page 325 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 7 March 2007
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permission, and in fact if they talk to a delegate they can be deemed to be taking part in industrial action? That is WorkChoices for you!
Mr Mulcahy interjecting—
MR HARGREAVES: No, what I am saying is that people should be able to go and receive workplace safety information relevant to their work sites.
Mr Seselja: Rubbish! Bring back the BLF.
MR HARGREAVES: I hear across the chamber, Mr Speaker, that it is rubbish—that a worker can go and seek occupational health and safety information relevant to their worksite.
Mr Seselja: That’s not what the unions want; the unions just want to bully—
MR HARGREAVES: Well, that tells a story about WorkChoices, doesn’t it?
Mr Seselja: The BLF just want to bully again, mate; they want to be in control.
MR HARGREAVES: When was the last time you did it? That just shows these people’s approach to WorkChoices, Mr Speaker. They are not concerned about workplace safety. They are not concerned about the safety of the people who, on building sites, are often asked to put their personal physicality on the line. The people there run the risk of being injured every day they go to work. What we are all about is saying that they should be allowed to go to work, to put in their hours at work, to get a good day’s pay for a good day’s work and to go home safely to their families. And right now WorkChoices legislation is getting in the way of that.
I cannot find anything positive to say about WorkChoices at all. It puts the balance of power too far on one side. There is no equal negotiation about this. People are prevented from having their say and they cannot legitimately withdraw their labour, according to this legislation. We are about to stick 12-year-olds down a mine with a canary in a cage if these guys are allowed to keep going the way they are. This is just an absolute joke. To suggest for a second that there are positive aspects of WorkChoices is beyond the pale. I do not think anybody in their right mind can support these amendments.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.40): Mr Speaker, I congratulate Mr Hargreaves on a fairly outrageous filibuster. While we are talking about WorkChoices and the measures that we are going to, I would like to draw people’s attention to the impact that the buses are having on people’s incapacity to meet their work requirements: they cannot get to work because of the things that have been done by this minister for transport to the bus drivers—
Mr Gentleman: Relevance, Mr Speaker.
MRS DUNNE: and the people who put together—
MR SPEAKER: Order!
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