SHARON CLAYDON, MEMBER FOR NEWCASTLE: It’s a really exciting day for workers across Newcastle and the Hunter region, we’ve got our friend, colleague and Minister, Senator Murray Watt, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations in town. And you will recall some very significant legislation around Same Job, Same Pay was passed through Parliament, and we’re really here to celebrate some of the demonstrative kind of positive responses for workers in our region already. So this is a huge thing obviously for our mining sector, and I’ll come to that in a minute, but also we’re noticing impacts, positive benefits there for warehouse workers, people in meat processing. So whether you’re working for Steggles up at Beresfield or you’re at Kmart warehouse, there's benefits here about delivering genuine fairness and equity back into the workplace. This is about addressing the gross inequity, pay inequities, that did exist for people who were employed by labour hire companies and those that had permanent employment. So it’s a great thing to bring fairness and equity back into the workplace. They’re the guiding principles for our Labor Government. I’m joined, of course, today with all the Labor colleagues in our region, Meryl Swanson from Paterson, I’ve got Minister Pat Conroy from Shortland, and Dan Repacholi, who’s been a great champion of this legislation and done a lot of work with Government to steer this through, so, Dan from the Hunter. And, of course, we’re joined by Robin, District Secretary of the Northern District for the MEU, and a number of workers who’ll be able to talk to you about their lived experience and the difference it’s making to their workplaces and, of course, to the families and workers who are standing to benefit. So on that note I’m going to hand across to Minister Murray Watt, then we’ll go to MEU and directly to one of the workers. So you’ll have plenty of chance for questions, too. I’ll hand across to Murray. Thank you.
 
MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS: Well, thanks very much, Sharon. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here with you and our fabulous Hunter team in Newcastle today. This team standing behind me of Labor representatives fight hard every single day for the Hunter region, for working people, for families, to make sure that wages are rising here in the Hunter and to make sure that people are getting the cost of living support that they need right now. Just before I deal with the Same Job, Same Pay point, I might just also acknowledge the pain that a lot of people in the Hunter are going through right now as a result of these storms. Meryl is available to speak to you about the local impact if any of the media would like to talk about that. But I’ve been in contact with the Emergency Management Minister Jenny McAllister this morning and I know that she’s in very close contact with New South Wales services to offer any assistance that’s needed at the Federal level. But as you know, the reason we’re all standing here today, and I thank in particular the members of the Mining and Energy Union who’ve joined us here today, is to acknowledge some real progress under the Albanese Labor Government when it comes to getting wages moving again here in the Hunter. We were elected a couple of years ago on the back of a promise to get wages moving again after ten years of wages being kept deliberately low by the Coalition, of whom, of course, Peter Dutton was a leading member. For the ten years that the Coalition were in power, they boasted about the fact that keeping wages low was a deliberate policy of their Government, a deliberate part of their economic policy. And we said as a Labor Government and an incoming Labor Government that wasn’t good enough and we needed to get wages moving again. And I’m really pleased to say that that is now starting to happen as a result of the changes that we’ve made. We’ve seen four quarters in a row, or 12 months of wages, now rising above inflation in Australia across the board. And that compares to real wages falling under the Coalition when we came to office. And one of the key changes that we’ve made to get wages moving again that has been particularly relevant here in the Hunter is our Same Job, Same Pay laws. I’ve had some personal experience of these laws. As a Queenslander – I probably shouldn’t admit to being a Queenslander here in Newcastle – but, of course, Central Queensland and the Hunter are two of Australia’s prime mining districts, have supplied coal for decades to Australia and the world, and the coal mining workers who do that hard, dangerous work have deserved decent pay for a long time. And now under a Labor Government and our Same Job, Same Pay laws, that is beginning to happen.
 
When we came to office labour hire coal miners were being extensively used by big mining companies and they were being treated as second-class citizens, being paid tens of thousands of dollars less per year than the permanent employees of those big mining companies. And that is now beginning to change as a result of Labor’s Same Job, Same Pay laws. What those laws are all about is saying that just because you’re a labour hire employee shouldn't mean that you get paid less than a permanent worker and, in fact, labour hire workers now under Labor’s laws are to be paid at least the same as the permanent workers that they work alongside. Now, that law only came into operation in November last year, but already we’re seeing workers here in the Hunter and right around Australia benefit from those changes. In New South Wales alone, there are around 120 mine workers who are now being paid an extra $35,000 a year as a result of Labor’s pay rises. So, that works out to about 800 bucks a week more that those families are getting in their pay packets and able to meet their cost of living pressures. Even just in the mining industry here in the Hunter, we know that there will be at least 1500 more workers who will benefit from these laws as their applications go through the Fair Work Commission, so that is really important news for those families to deal with those cost of living pressures to get those pay rises. And, as Sharon said, while there has been a lot of attention on the mining industry and the benefits to workers there, this benefits workers in a whole range of industries that I know are important here in the Hunter as well – the meat processing sector, the aviation sector, the warehousing sector. All sorts of industries where we saw labour hire explode under the Coalition and people be exploited under the Coalition, and that is now changing as a result of Labor.
 
So we recognise as a Government that things are still really tough for many Australians out there and we’ll keep working hard to make sure that wages keep rising and people get cost of living support. And what we need to remember as we approach the next federal election is that it is absolutely guaranteed that if Peter Dutton and the Coalition win the next election workers’ pay will be cut. When he was in office previously under the Coalition for 10 years they kept wages low. In opposition Peter Dutton and the Coalition have voted against every single change we’ve made to workplace laws to get wages moving again. And he’s already on the record saying that he’s going to unwind workplace rights if he’s elected. They’ve said they’re going to review Same Job, Same Pay with a view to taking it away. Just this morning in Rockhampton radio the Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume confirmed that if the Coalition is elected they will give employers the power to decide if someone is a casual and pay them as a casual, even if in reality they are a permanent worker. So unfortunately, at these tough times for Australians the Coalition is promising to cut pay and make jobs less secure, whereas you’ve got Labor promising to keep wages rising and make jobs more secure. I’ll leave it at that for a moment. Happy to take questions. But we might hear from Robin from the Mining and Energy Union, and Reece who’s a worker whose colleagues have been benefitting from this first. Thanks very much.
 
ROBIN WILLIAMS, DISTRICT PRESIDENT OF NORTHERN MINING AND NSW ENERGY DISTRICT OF THE MEU: Yeah, thanks, Minister. Well, the Mining and Energy Union for more than a decade has witnessed what we say is a pay rort. We’ve had mining companies in our area simply paying casual contractors significantly less than what they pay their permanent employees. Those employees that are being paid less because they work for a contracted company are being paid less just because they work for somebody else and they’re not directly employed by the company. Now, it’s been a rort. It’s been going on for a long period of time. As a result of the change in the new laws as they took effect in November we did have some cases, we made applications a bit before the 1st of November. And some companies, in fact, they rolled over and started to employ workers directly. We’ve seen workers now in receipt of somewhere between $15,000 a year to $40,000 a year increase in their pay. Those workers have always done the same work as people employed directly by a mining company. It’s just been mining companies pocketing that money. Those people can now get home loans, they can spend the money in the community, they can prop up the local businesses, and it’s probably the greatest thing that I’ve seen happen to workers, certainly in the mining industry, for more than a decade. So I would implore people to make sure that when you go to the ballot box next time around, if you think that the alternative government being a Coalition Government, is going to deliver some benefits for workers, you need to rethink your thought process, because it’s a Labor Government that’s going to continue to provide benefits to workers, and people need to be under no illusion that that’s not the case. So I’ll leave my comments at that and I’ll pass over to Reece. Now, Reece is a worker, he directly works for a coal company at Wambo Mine, and Reece can attest to some of the, I guess, issues that have been raised directly with him by people who have got permanent jobs as a result of these laws and, in fact, people who are speaking to him about the increases that they’ve received. So I’ll pass over to Reece.
 
REECE HOWELLS, MINE WORKER: Thanks, Robin. I’ve been in the mining industry for about 19 years and I’ve spent some of that time, in fact a lot of that time, with labour hire myself. So I can attest to the fact that these laws are some of the most important laws that have come in to affect coal mine workers. I work with a lot of labour hire workers and the fact is they do feel like second-class citizens, having to come to work, work exactly the same rosters, exactly the same work, same everything for $42,000 a year less at our site specifically. It’s disgusting and it’s great that it’s finally coming to an end. Thank you.
 
JOURNALIST: I was just going to ask what were your colleagues from the labour hire – what was their reaction to this coming into play, and how quickly were they able to see that benefit come through?
 
REECE HOWELLS: So we haven’t actually seen the benefit directly on our site yet, it’s still going through court. But the reaction from my co-workers was elation. They can see it coming. They can see the financial benefit to them. They can get mortgages, they can look after their families. Although we haven’t seen a direct benefit via the laws at our site yet, there has been a lot of people, labour hire people, be converted over to permanent employees, such as myself. And we can safely say that is a direct result of these labour hire laws.
 
JOURNALIST: So you were converted over as a result of these laws?
 
REECE HOWELLS: Not me myself.
 
JOURNALIST: But others?
 
REECE HOWELLS: Others.
 
JOURNALIST: Okay, around how many people would you say at your business?
 
REECE HOWELLS: It’s in the dozens.
 
JOURNALIST: I’m happy with that. Maybe a question for yourself?
 
MURRAY WATT: Sure.
 
JOURNALIST: Yeah, thank you. Obviously we’ve just heard Reece say that it hasn’t actually come into fruition yet; it’s still going through the courts. Do we have a date or a time line about when that will come into play?
 
MURRAY WATT: The way this is working is that we passed these laws over a year ago, and every single Member of Parliament standing behind me voted for these laws and every single member of Peter Dutton’s Coalition voted against these laws. Let’s remember that. So the laws were passed a bit over a year ago. They commenced in November, and what we’ve seen since then is a number of mining companies read the tea leaves and see that the law has changed and have agreed voluntarily to pay labour hire workers the same as the permanent workers. We’ve also seen, as you heard from Reece, a number of mining companies who’ve also acknowledged that they should just make their labour hire employees permanent now as well. So it’s had that benefit as well. There are other mining companies who so far have resisted this and are being taken to court or the Commission by the Mining and Energy Union, but I would think it’s very likely that those companies will be ordered to pay their labour hire workers the same as the permanent workers before long. So those will progressively work their way through the Commission. But I think over the course of this year what you’ll be seeing is thousands of workers in the Hunter and right across New South Wales have a pay rise because of Labor’s changes to the Same Job, Same Pay laws.
 
JOURNALIST: I overheard you saying before of a specific case, someone got a 40k pay raise and then a home loan?
 
MURRAY WATT: Yeah, sure, happy to talk to you about that. I was in Rockhampton in Queensland this week talking about this issue as well because, as I say, that’s another big mining district in our country. And one of the workers who I met with there, Brodie, he was telling me that because of this change he received a $40,000 a year pay rise which was incredible for his family, but also the fact that his employer made him permanent meant that he was now able to get a home loan for the first time. And that’s changing his life. He was saying this has changed his life. And I have to say, what he was also saying to the media there was that if Peter Dutton gets elected and takes this law away not only would he have a pay cut but he’s worried about losing his house because he would go back to being casual. So this has very real consequences for people now when we know that people are doing it tough and they need every single dollar in their pay packet, Labor’s laws are delivering more money into people’s pay packets, creating more jobs - we saw yesterday 1.1 million jobs created since we came to office. That’s what we want to continue if we have the privilege of being re-elected this year.
 
JOURNALIST: Some businesses would say perhaps times are tough for them as well and they can’t really afford to pay these extra costs. What would you say to them?
 
MURRAY WATT: I think particularly when we’re talking about the mining industry, let’s be honest, we’re talking about big multinational companies who have been making very large profits for years on the back of the labour of their workers. And I think it’s important that workers in that industry get their fair share of their hard work. So it’s no surprise that we have seen big employers in the mining industry acknowledge that the law has changed. They need to pay that fair share. I feel very confident that the mining industry in Australia can afford to pay labour hire workers more while still achieving profits for their shareholders. So I think that that can easily be done, and the facts show that those mining companies are still operating very successfully while also paying their workers what they actually deserve.
 
JOURNALIST: You’re spruiking wage growth, but heading into the election in coming months how do you convince those who don’t actually feel they’re better off, they’re still struggling?
 
MURRAY WATT: As I say, and I know all of my colleagues agree with me on this, we absolutely acknowledge that the last couple of years have been tough for Australians, whether it’s here in the Hunter or anywhere else. Australia has not been immune to the global inflation surge that we’ve seen all around the world that has driven prices up. Now, our Government every single day has been focused on two things to deal with that: lift wages and provide cost of living relief. And, as I say, Peter Dutton and the Coalition have voted against every single one of those things that we’ve done to lift wages and to provide cost of living relief. And now as we approach an election, we see them promising to cut wages and also to remove some of the cost of living relief that we’ve provided. They’re out there every day talking about how we’ve got to have big spending cuts, what they’re talking about is cutting things like age pension rises, cheaper medicines that we’re providing, energy bill rebates. We haven’t just thrown money up against the wall, the money that we’ve been spending as a Government has been about providing people with important cost of living relief, and Peter Dutton and the Coalition say they’re going to take that away. So we acknowledge that a lot of people are still hurting out there but imagine how much harder it would be if people hadn’t been getting those wage rises and hadn’t been getting that cost of living relief. And that’s what Peter Dutton wanted to do to them.