This morning I talked to Marcus Paul about coal-fired power, the mess our Industrial Relations are in and the fact that the corrupt World Health Organisation actually said Australia could be where COVID originated.
Transcript
[Marcus Paul]
Malcolm, good morning, mate.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Good morning, Marcus, how are you?
[Marcus Paul]
I’m okay. I’m very well. Listen, I just wanted to ask you first off the bat, a question without notice because I know you’re very good on your feet. New research has found Australia’s coal fired power stations are routinely breaching their licence conditions putting our community’s health and the environment at risk.
The newly released coal impacts index reveals there have been more than 150 publicly reported environmental breaches since 2015. However, the spokes person for Australia Beyond Coal, David Ridditz says only a fraction of these, 16, have resulted in penalties or enforceable undertakings. Now, if coal’s to be a part of our reliable energy future, we need to clean up our backyard I think.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Well, if that’s true then certainly we need to. No one should be exempt from those regulations, Marcus. The environment is very important. It’s also important to understand that solar power destroys the environment as well because they’re leaking cadmium and selenium and lead into the soil and into the water.
In fact, it’s monstrous what’s going on north of Brisbane. A proposed Chinese development of a solar panel farm. They’re not farms, they’re industrial complexes, directly affecting Brisbane’s water supply for two million people. So, I mean, we’ve got to protect the environment. That’s the number one thing. The environment can’t exist without civilization being productive and civilization can’t be productive without the environment being protected. So, the future of our civilization, the future of our environment are interdependent and rely on each other.
[Marcus Paul]
All right. Anthony Albanese, the federal opposition leader yesterday, talked policy. He’ll be on the programme a little later this morning, but by the way, he’s promising workers a better deal with a suite of reforms to improve job security and provide minimum pay and entitlements to those in insecure work. What’s your take on this?
[Malcolm Roberts]
I think he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth. For a start, his policies on energy, his policies on lack of taxation reform, are cruelling job security. Secondly, his policies on energies just mentioned, don’t take into account the fact that Australian workers need to be productive and we can’t be productive when we’ve got energy costs that are now amongst the highest in the world due to labour policies under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and due to liberal national policies under John Howard and every prime minister since. So, what we need to do is look at the big picture.
But also, it’s very hypocritical and I believe dishonest of Anthony Abanese to talk what he’s talking about casual because Joe Fitzgibbon had plenty of opportunity to address the casual issues in the Hunter Valley. Instead, what he did was he tried to misrepresent me going after it and now, what we’re seeing is I was absolutely right, with Simon Turner and other’s in the Hunter Valley, loss of worker’s compensation, loss of their leave entitlements, loss of their long service leave, accruals being accurate, loss of their accident pay, being suppressed when they had an accident or injury and being told to cover it up.
Anthony Abanese has got to come clean on this. Joe Fitzgibbon had six years to fix this. So did the liberal party. They’ve done nothing until their big corporate mates get into trouble and now they’re wanting to take on the little guy again.
[Marcus Paul]
Well, all right, let’s move onto the World Health Organisation and that dopey, ridiculous, so called investigation into Covid.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yeah, can you believe it? That they think it might have come from our beef. I mean, this is absolutely monstrous. We know that the Chinese Communist Party and the UN, through the World Health Organisation, have colluded closely to suppress the news of Covid virus in China early last year. We know that.
That enabled the virus to get a march on around the world. I mean, the Chinese came out and the World Health Organisation echoed them saying, there is no human to human virus transmission, none at all. And then they suppressed news of that, they suppressed their own doctors of it and the World Health Organization’s chief has been beholden to China. So, this is not an investigation, it’s a cover up, it’s a complete cover up and can we really have confidence that this is a transparent and thorough investigation?
No, we can’t. What we need to do is get the hell out of the World Health Organisation and get out of the UN. That’s why I called for an Aus Exit from the UN back in 2016 and I keep calling for that. The UN is a corrupt, dishonest, incompetent, lazy organisation that is hurting our country.
[Marcus Paul]
Well, they say the likely scenario is that the virus passed from original animal host to intermediary animals including frozen and chilled animal products, including Australian beef to humans.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yes. I mean, it’s ludicrous. They wouldn’t allow an investigation for 12 months basically. They covered everything up, they weren’t allowed to go to the lab. I mean, this is not an investigation, it’s a stitch up.
[Marcus Paul]
All right. What about the Nationals, are they backing away from manufacturing policy? They’ve collapsed on coal, they’re backing net-zero 2050. It means they’re, in your opinion, opposing jobs.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yes. We talked last week about the fact that the Nationals came up with a lovely glossy booklet and the core of that booklet… Sorry, on their managing policy, but on the manufacturing policy, but the core of that booklet was a solid page on their support for coal.
Then we put a motion into the senate one week ago and we said we need to build a coal fired power station in Hunter Valley, which is exactly what the Nationals were proposing. In the face of the motion, in the senate, the Nationals ran away and voted with the Liberals against a coal fired power station in the Hunter, after they said just a week before, that they were supporting it. So, they abandoned coal last week.
Now, we see their manufacturing policy relies upon cheap energy, but with the net zero 2050, it means the liberal party will be opposing jobs and opposing cheap energy and opposing manufacturing. The Nationals have meekly rolled over again. Because this policy for net-zero, according to the IPA, will cost coal miners, farmers and steel and iron workers amongst the majority of the 654,000 jobs that will be lost by the adoption of Net-Zero. We can’t afford it. It’s absolute rubbish.
[Marcus Paul]
All right. Let’s move now to the north of the country. Western Australia in particular. The north west. Yet another overreach, you say, by Mark McGowan, the WA premier and closing down for some five days.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yes. Marcus, I was supposed to be calling you from WA, up in the north west, up near the Kimberlys today. But unfortunately, we couldn’t go there because Mark McGowan capriciously locked down parts of WA again and made it impossible for us to get there and come back in the time without some risk.
So, we need a better way of managing our community and business in the face of the virus being here. It’s just ludicrous where we get one case and people get locked down. We get people jumping on a plane in Perth, coming to Brisbane, by the time they land in Brisbane, five hours later, they suddenly find out WA’s been locked down and they have to go into hotel quarantine for two weeks at their own expense.
It’s just not right. We’ve got people in New South Wales contacted me saying they’d love to spend a holiday in Northern Queensland, beautiful up there, and they’re not going to do it because they just don’t know what Annastacia Palaszczuk’s going to do. McGowan, Palaszczuk, the control freak in Victoria, they’re using lock downs capriciously and even the UN’s corrupt World Health Organisation has admitted that lock downs are a blunt instrument to be used when things are out of control to get control.
So, the premiers of Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria simply admitting that they can’t control their states properly with the virus in their state.
[Marcus Paul]
Always good to have you on for your views. I appreciate it.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/bC8ypc3F8Jw/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2021-02-11 15:17:302021-02-11 15:17:46Each-Way Albo at it again
One Nation always aims to protect honest workers, protect small businesses and simplify our Industrial Relations (IR) system. The current IR reforms need a lot of work to achieve that.
Transcript
[Marcus Paul]
G’day, Malcolm.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Good morning, Marcus, how are you?
[Marcus Paul]
I’m okay. I’m just having a little chuckle at the wankfest going on in the United States at the moment. I get that it’s a momentous occasion. I understand every time a President’s inaugurated that they have to get celebrities up there to sing songs and carry on. But for God’s sake, enough’s enough, surely.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yeah, I’ve travelled through all 50 American States. I’ve lived there for five years. I’ve studied at one of the top universities over there and I’ve worked over there in eight different states. And I love Americans. They’re absolutely fabulous people, but they’re different. You know, in many ways they look like us. They dress like us. They have similar habits, they’re casual and they’re formal like us, they love us. But mate, they just go over the top when it comes to celebrating things. it’s just for Australians, it’s too much.
[Marcus Paul]
Well, you’d think that there’s no issue with COVID-19. You’d think that America is all this, there’s no social inequality. You think that there’s no civil unrest. It’s all, I don’t know, look, I’m seeing right now the presidential motorcade with the military escorting Joe Biden back to the White House, the bloke looks like he needs a good lie down.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yeah, it’s a contradiction in America. Wherever I went you can see contradiction. And, you can get a very energetic country like America but there are so many, so many inequalities as well. But there’s one thing that’s very strong in Americans and that’s the love of their country and their passion for freedom. And so, I think there’ll be a lot of Americans holding their breath right now.
[Marcus Paul]
All right, mate. Now you’re on the road driving down the New South Wales coast, you’re around Singleton, are you?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yes, and what a beautiful day it is. I used to live in Singleton, worked here several times but it’s a glorious day and blue sky. We just driven up the Valley from Singleton. We’re now in Musswelbrook and we went past Bayswater and Liddell Power Station. It’s just absolutely beautiful.
[Marcus Paul]
Yeah, nice, now the federal government’s so-called industrial relations reforms, you’ve had a fair bit to say about that ahead of Senate estimates hearings in March.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Well, they’re going to try and bring in the legislation into the Senate fairly soon, it’s an inquiry at the moment but we’ve had a good look at it and we still got a lot more work to do on it. But Marcus, you know, our aims are always to protect honest workers, to protect small business. And, in this case, to restore productive capacity. And you know, the government is really just playing at this, it’s not addressing energy, it’s not addressing tax, it’s not addressing infrastructure, it’s not addressing over regulation. It’s still making life hard for people. It’s not a real reform at all, it’s just tinkering to look after his mates and the overriding thing with this so-called industrial relations reform, it’s not reform, it’s tinkering with the deck chairs on the Titanic is that their aim seems to be to not upset anyone and to try and please everyone. And whenever you do that, Marcus, you’re coming out of fear.
[Marcus Paul]
Yes.
[Malcolm Roberts]
And so they’re afraid. And that means the country will suffer. These regulations, they don’t simplify and small business badly needs that. The key aspect of this supposed reform from the Prime Minister is to get jobs, mate.
[Marcus Paul]
Yeah.
[Malcolm Roberts]
It won’t get any jobs. It’s just gonna make things more complex. There are some positives in there but there are overwhelmingly a lot of negatives. We’re just going to have to do a lot of work on this.
[Marcus Paul]
All right, now, obviously, on this trip down the coast you’ve been catching up with people who may have reached out to you, made contact, what are you hearing on the ground?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Well, first of all, I’ve got to say how beautiful the country is on the coast coming south down through New South Wales. It’s just green, it’s glorious. And people, I’ve heard from small business, for example, a guy who run, well, I won’t tell you his business because it’s a boutique business and I don’t want anyone to come back on him but he was really talking about how difficult life is under state, federal and local government. Because they’re making things complex.
[Marcus Paul]
Absolutely, could you imagine all that bloody red tape a business owner has to go through these days? It’s just, it’s almost —
[Malcolm Roberts]
But, Marcus, he was telling me things like if you get a permit from the state government to do something and then by the time you’ve finished dealing with regulations for the local government, the state government permits have expired and you’ve got to get it again. And that means more fees. And he was talking about 20, $30,000, I think, 50, $45,000 in one case, just to get consultants in to do the work for the local government. You can’t afford that.
[Marcus Paul]
No.
[Malcolm Roberts]
But one good piece of news. We visited a workshop here in Philly, a large workshop here, well, in Rutherford which is near Maitland. And they’re telling us, they do a lot of work for agriculture and mining machinery and they’re telling us that the price of coal has gone up quite a bit and they’re hiring again which is good for the Valley. And it’s really good for the whole Hunter Valley and Newcastle because most people don’t realise this but for every job in the coal mine there are six other jobs depending upon those jobs. And so the price of coal and the use of coal is extremely important to everyone in New South Wales.
[Marcus Paul]
Well, look, you know, you’ve got a bloke up there in the Hunter who is making a fair bit of noise. I’m sure he’s scaring the pants off of Joel Fitzgibbon but, I don’t know, if things are looking okay or a little better up there in the Hunter maybe Joel might hold on a little bit.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Well, the problem with Joel is his party. His party won’t let him do things. His party has got their foot on the throat of the coal industry and they’re determined to kill the coal industry. I mean, some of the senior people in the labour party have admitted that and said that is what they want to do. And it’s insane. One of the things I did coming down the New South Wales coast, I’m doing a bit of research in southern New South Wales in the next couple of days and I stopped in Port Macquarie and worked for a day and a half with an absolutely astounding Scientist there who’s been going through the Bureau of Meteorology records and mate, the records are just so shoddy and he’s done advanced statistical analysis. Once he’s removed all the the deliberate movements or adjustments. And there’s no warming at all going on. So, this whole thing about coal is just a beat up.
[Marcus Paul]
Yep, all right. Now, well, just on coal, of course, the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, he’s had a lot to say. Oh, by the way, when you visit these places, do you don on your high vis shirt and you untuck the top of the collar just to show a little bit of chest hair, look all macho like you’re in the moment? And do you have your professional photographer tailing your every move for a photo opp, Malcolm? I’m just wondering.
[Malcolm Roberts]
No, that’s not me. What I’m doing is I’m driving by myself. This morning I’ve got some of my, one of my staff with me but I’ve been driving down the coast on my own. I make all my own arrangements. Take my own notes, I just listen to people because you can’t listen to people through others. You’ve got to listen by firsthand, direct.
[Marcus Paul]
Fair enough.
[Malcolm Roberts]
So, I don’t go for all that crap.
[Marcus Paul]
Well said. All right, mate, listen, we’ve got a listener Gail Thornton who follows the programme. We want you to say hello. Can you just do me a favour, say, good day, Gail. Hope you’re having a wonderful morning. Just say that for me.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Good day, Gail, hope you’re having a great morning.
[Marcus Paul]
See, Gail says on our Facebook page and I’ll have to tell you, you got a little bit of hate on our social media. Mind you, I get a lot of hate on my social media as well. That’s just what it’s all about. But your posts, when we re-share things that you know you and I have a chat about a certain issue, it’s one of the, this is what I don’t get, this is the hypocrisy with it all and on this programme, we will speak to anybody, labour, liberal, callithumpian, you know, we have Pauline, yourself and also Mark Latham. So, we listen to all sorts, we try to as much as we can. We would love to have the Prime Minister or the Premier on here, but they don’t even know we exist or they probably know we exist but their media people don’t want them to come on because they’re probably upset that I’ll- first question to the Premier would be, when are you going to resign? And the second question to the Prime Minister would be, do you take any responsibility for robo-debt? And what about the thousands of people that have possibly taken their lives? So, that’s why they don’t come on. But your stuff that we talk about is well-received, you know, you gotta have your haters for those to really like you, Malcolm, but Gail says, there’s no way that we will listen to anything Malcolm Roberts has to say. So, I just wanted you to say good morning to Gail. She’s one of your biggest fans, I think.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Well, tell her that I’ll be very happy to meet her. And I look forward to her giving me evidence that contradicts my arguments.
[Marcus Paul]
Well, that’s it. Good on you, mate. Always great to catch up, drive safely. You can’t drop by and visit us, I hear.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Not this time, I was wanting to do that and I’ve got two outstanding retired people in Sydney that I want to meet because they’re both very, very good on water. And that’s a critical issue for us but I was hoping to drop in. But if I go anywhere near Sydney, then, mate, I’ve got to lock up in quarantine in Brisbane when I go back. So, even if I just don’t get out of the car. I’ve just got to lock up. So, I’m going to drive through Mudgee and then that way down through Bathurst and then to Canberra that way, so it’s an extra drive but, hey, that’s the way it has to do.
[Marcus Paul]
Ah, look, we’re broadcasting out into those regions right now and it’s pretty good out there as well. You reckon it’s green on the coast. You should see it inland. It’s just gorgeous around 2MG Mudgee area and out to Bathurst to our station 2BS and out to Orange . I love it out there, mate. Look after yourself.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Thanks Marcus. We’ve got to look after this country and stop the wombats ruining it, the wombats in Canberra.
[Marcus Paul]
All right, mate, bye-bye. Malcolm Roberts, Marcus Paul in the morning.
Last week in Canberra I was unable to give this speech in the Senate so I recorded so you could hear. The government is proposing changes to the the Industrial Relations system and I wanted to put my views on the record and say to the government that the IR system is broken and needs fixing. And simplifying.
Transcript
I serve the people of Queensland & Australia and want to discuss our shared need for:
Improving industrial relations to protect honest workers and employers
the bigger picture and a vision for a secure future.
And I will shine a light on the Industrial Relations Club, known as the IR Club. The root cause of most IR conflict.
We have listened to workers – casual and permanent – across Queensland and Australia. From Thursday Island to the Hunter to Tasmania, from Brisbane to Perth. We have listened to union bosses and union bodies. We have listened to small and medium sized businesses. We have listened to employer and industry groups.
We have listened to the government and to the opposition. I’ve worked underground at the coalface in five regions across our country, managed mines and negotiated and introduced IR changes improving safety, productivity and security. As a mining executive I introduced the Australian coal industry’s first radically new enterprise award, one proudly based on matching employees needs and employers’ needs.
Our people set records that stood for decades with extremely high worker retention and Australia’s best safety performance for large underground coal mines. Listening reveals that across our country, people are hurting, feeling vulnerable. Afraid for their jobs, afraid of the future.
Add to that Australians are hurting from the economic fallout from COVID with restrictions and lock-downs keeping us away from our jobs, businesses and loved ones. People feel confused, often despairing, even hopeless. Many feel powerless to improve their situation or their business, frustrated that this government didn’t listen and just listens to the IR Club.
And people like HV miner Simon Turner crippled, exploited and discarded due to abuses proving the complete failure of current Industrial Relations laws. People are angry. The “Industrial Relations Club, the IR Club” is alive and well. It keeps its members fat, well paid and secure – lawyers, courts, employer peak bodies like the BCA, major UB’s.
Driven to perpetuate conflict so they have something to “fix,” a reason for staying in existence. Using complexity to conjure issues that need lawyers and UB’s to sort. The primary workplace relationship between employee and employer has been shoved aside. The IR system is broken. And that’s destroying Australian industry and exporting jobs to China.
The IR Club perpetuates artificial restrictions that needlessly destroy productivity and job security and suppress wages. Restrictions hurting workers and employers. The Building & Construction General On-Site Award is almost 150 pages long with 80 separate allowances on top of the prescribed wage schedule.
Australia’s cabotage is another IR Club casualty – and guts national security, sovereignty and tax revenue. The IR Club’s other victims are small and medium sized business. Our economy’s engine room. The IR Club insists on a one size fits all from large multinationals with huge teams of lawyers through to small businesses. Queensland’s 445,000 small businesses are now under even greater pressure as a result of the govt’s COVID response.
And, as a result of the IR Club, small businesses are left with complex, unworkable IR rules that are not fit for purpose. The IR Club is one reason why small businesses and honest big businesses are angry. We need honest, competent leadership making decisions based on solid data and facts with strength of character and a willingness to serve our country’s people, Australians. A Prime Minister who tries to do good, not just look good.
One Nation protects workers’ rights and knows that only employers, entrepreneurs, small businesses and workers create jobs. The govt’s COVID restrictions have done enormous damage. Yet the govt-induced collapse is not an excuse to cut pay or job security. Instead, let’s reform IR together properly.
On Tuesday we supported 2 of 11 amendments to the JobMaker scheme but on receiving new information on Wednesday afternoon we changed our position. We listen and when we get new data we have the courage and integrity to review our position.
There was concern that employers would put off older workers and only employ younger workers to receive the JobMaker scheme.We now know this is not the case. The legislation only offers JobMaker for businesses who increase their payroll & head count. Sacking an elderly employee & hiring an under 35 wouldn’t qualify for a subsidy.
The Treasurer advised Pauline that unemployment in people 35 years of age or younger is 10.4%. In people older than 35 is 4%.There is a crisis for those in our community under 35. A job can make all the difference. When Covid restrictions came in unemployment increased 100%. And unemployment among younger people increased 150%.
Transcript
Hi, we just had a bit of a kerfuffle in the Senate about the job makers scheme. It’s to subsidise hiring of two groups of people. Those from 16 to 29 years of age, and those from 30 to 35 years of age. Yesterday, I spoke strongly opposed to it. And we then supported two amendments, two of 11 amendments. We rejected nine of Labor greens amendments, rejected nine, we supported two.
One was on reporting and the other one was on duplication. Here’s some new data. And when we get new data, we look at it, because we use these things, this thing, and our heart, and we assess the data honestly, and we don’t care what people think just because we changed our mind. We have the courage and the integrity to change our mind.
So here’s some of the data we got from the treasurer through Pauline today, she went in to see the treasurer, and we were told that the unemployment rate for those under 35 years of age is 10.4%. The unemployment rate for those over 35 years of age is just 4%. So that means the young have been really hammered. We’ve got to get those people back to work.
Another set of figures, the increase in unemployment, across all of Australia, due to the COVID restrictions, was 100%. The increase in unemployment due to the COVID restrictions on people under 35 years of age was 150%. So it’s really savaged the young. And we have to help these people back to work. Now, the treasurer gave us this data, and as I said, that caused us to rethink.
He also reassured us about the two amendments that we had previously supported. One was about reporting, and he assured us that the ATO will do that. And we also were reassured that the data will be reported to the COVID inquiry, the COVID committee. The second amendment was about duplication. We’ve been reassured on that too. The treasurer gave us the facts.
We have the courage and the integrity to change our position. Sadly, the Labor party and the greens are pitting old versus young. We know that that’s crap. That’s complete rubbish, because Australians care. And Australians who see those figures will do exactly what we’ve done. They’ll try and help the young and everyone. We know that all Australians care and will want this fixed.
And this programme is necessary to get the young back to work quickly. There are other programmes for other groups, and they’re at work already and have been at work in some cases for months. So that’s why we changed our position, because we’re honest and straight. No deal done, simply facts. Labor and the greens can’t understand that, because everything they do has to be grubby.
For over 12 months I have been trying to find solutions to an unfair industrial relations system that has caused serious issues in the mining sector in the Hunter Valley and Queensland. There is a systemic issue of ‘full-time casuals’ who are being paid 40% less than their full-time counterparts and not receiving casual loadings or entitlements.
Additionally, these casuals are hired by labour-hire firms who have classed them as ‘office workers’ rather than ‘production workers’ and when injured are not covered by injury or workers compensation. During Senate Estimates this week I questioned the Fair Work Commission on why they allowed this unfair Enterprise Agreement in the Hunter Valley:
FWC said that there had been no proposal to change the Black Coal Mining Award by the parties, yet we know there was in 2017 when “the Fair Work Commission rejected the application by a major employers group to extend the casual employment provisions in the Black Coal award to Production and Engineering Employees” CFMEU News 6/7/2017.
Commission has no governance to ensure that workers actually agree with an enterprise agreement before the Commission rubber stamps it.
The FWC is part of the problem not part of the solution.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for attending. Ms Parker, could you tell me briefly your role, please. What’s the core of your role?
Ms Parker: I’m an independent statutory appointment, and I’m responsible for implementing the functions under the Fair Work Act. That includes: providing education, assistance, advice and guidance to employers, employees, outworkers, outwork industries and organisations; promoting and monitoring compliance with workplace laws; inquiring into and investigating breaches of the Fair Work Act; taking appropriate enforcement action; and performing the agency’s statutory functions efficiently, effectively, economically and ethically. The Fair Work Ombudsman—as in myself—inspectors and staff constitute a statutory office established by the Fair Work Act 2009.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you very much. We’re very concerned about so-called casuals—I say ‘so-called’ in reference to the fact they’re not really casuals; they’re permanents. I’m referring to employees in the Hunter Valley in particular, but there are some aspects that translate into Queensland. This so-called casual coalminer issue has dragged on for years. What are you doing to fix this problem?
Ms Parker: We’re well aware of the issues, and, as you know, you and I have written to each other a couple of times. We take the matter really seriously; I can assure you of that. Where it’s about long service leave, I think we’ve mentioned before that there is a Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave) Funding Corporation, and we don’t have anything to do with that. Long service leave is not our purview. We do provide basic information around that, and we refer specific inquiries to that corporation if they’re about long service leave. The Fair Work Commission, who you spoke with earlier, has jurisdiction to resolve long service leave disputes under the Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave) Administration Act. The Fair Work Commission can assist with disputes under the act as well, when a modern award provides for a procedure to deal with disputes.
We don’t have power of that kind. We can provide general information about the long service leave scheme in the black coal industry. We’re aware of a number of class actions that are being pursued around issues in the coalmining industry. We’re obviously watching those, but they are before the court, so I won’t be able to comment on those, as you probably can understand, or about the circumstances of any individual who has sought our assistance in regard to the matter that’s before the court.
Senator ROBERTS: You did broaden it by mentioning coal LSL, so I might as well put the whole scope in there. I know you can only access or reference or work on some of those. These are in relation to miners in the Hunter Valley: loss of workers compensation; no accident pay; safety issues; nonreporting of injuries; pay rates; leave; loss of leave entitlements; long service leave, which you already mentioned—some of these are beyond your purview—security; threats; intimidation; and bullying. As I said, they’re not all your responsibility, but I’m particularly concerned about the definition of ‘casual mineworker’ and the award. As you know, your website has said and, in a letter to Simon Turner, one of your advisers said that there is no classification of ‘casual’ in the black-coalmining industry award. Specifically on pay and leave, there are no leave provisions in the enterprise agreement. These people are working full-time production roles, but casuals can’t work in production; they’re working extended rosters with no leave; and they’re being underpaid relative to their peers in full-time employment. They also have been neglected by the unions. Sorry, I’ll make that very clear and specific: the Hunter Valley division of the CFMMEU, not the whole CFMMEU. These people had no-one to turn to. They turned to you. They’ve written to you, as I said, and one lady said, ‘There is no classification of ‘casual’.’ How can they do a BOOT when there’s nothing to compare against?
Ms Parker: Senator, we’re talking about the enterprise agreement that was negotiated with the unions and employers and approved by the Fair Work Commission.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, it was rubber stamped by the Fair Work Commission.
Ms Parker: It does include casuals, as you said, in some categories. The fact that the award doesn’t have casuals does not preclude the enterprise agreement having casuals. I think Mr Hehir said in his evidence that it is the Fair Work Commission’s role to make sure that the enterprise agreement is fair once it’s agreed.
Senator ROBERTS: How then can BHP’s Operations Services recent application for an enterprise agreement be knocked back, and yet the Chandler MacLeod 2015 enterprise agreement be passed even though the BHP OS pay rates are higher than the Chandler MacLeod pay rates?
Ms Parker: It’s a matter you’ll have to ask the commission, I’m sorry.
Senator ROBERTS: I did.
Ms Parker: They are an independent tribunal and they will have had witnesses in front of them, people providing evidence to them, before they made that decision.
Senator ROBERTS: I asked the Fair Work Commission about anybody applying to vary the black- coalmining industry award about casuals, and they said they’re not aware of any. But I notice on one of your websites and also from the CFMMEU in Queensland, that the Fair Work Commission rejected an application to vary the black-coalmining industry award 2010 to enable the engagement of casuals across all classifications of the award. That was an application from a large employer group. The CFMMEU opposed that, and it was defeated. So how would the Fair Work Commission not be aware of that?
Mr Hehir: If I recall Ms O’Neill’s evidence, it was she didn’t believe there had but that she would take it on notice and check. I think that’s where she went to.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s pretty stunning, Mr Hehir, that this issue’s been going on six years and we’ve made such a big fuss about it in the last 12 months and she wouldn’t be aware of it. Anyway that’s for her, as you said. Recently I asked you, Ms Parker, how many casual black-coalminers from the Hunter Valley have referred complaints or matters relating to their pay and entitlements to your office since 2014. Your response was ‘none’. Since that time you’ve been forced to admit that Mr Simon Turner did lodge complaints during this time period. Can you advise if there were more cases? In all instances please advise the outcomes of their complaints.
Ms Parker: We do apologise that we advised ‘none’. We were certainly not trying to hide that. It’s in terms of our search facility. You have to be very precise. This is black coal, and it’s a specific area of black coal. So I apologise. We did correct the record. We’ve had one that we’re aware of, and we’re pretty confident that that’s all we have. As I said, the system searches are maybe not as surgical as we would like. But we’re very much aware of one.
Senator ROBERTS: I take it that the Attorney-General’s Department now, and the preceding minister who looks after industrial relations, are responsible for changing the regulations or the legislation. Who is responsible for advising them of the need to do so? Because casualisation and the abuse of casuals has really been an issue for quite some time, yet now it has landed employer groups and many hundreds of thousands of workers in problems.
Ms Parker: In terms of our role as the Ombudsman, we enforce and apply the law as it stands. As you say, we are not responsible for the policy or legislation.
Senator ROBERTS: No, I didn’t imply that you were responsible for the legislation, but I would have thought that you could have been advising the Attorney-General or his predecessor of the need to resolve this problem, which has been going on now for at least six years.
Ms Parker: We certainly have regular conversations with the Department, Mr Hehir, about a whole range of matters.
Senator ROBERTS: About this issue? When did you start talking about this issue?
Ms Parker: I haven’t discussed this particular issue. We’ve talked about the WorkPack v Rossato issue, how we interpret casuals, and what advice we provide to the public on casual employees. We are aware that the government’s review of the IR system and the working groups are looking at this area of casual employment. We are monitoring that, and we will provide advice and data. We’re happy to share with the committee what we do with the casuals issue and what advice we provide. But in relation to the legislation, that is a matter for the government.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s my understanding that the Fair Work Ombudsman told Mr Turner to ‘go and get a lawyer’ in order to resolve this and that you have denied the existence of casual coal production workers. You are, I hope, aware of the significant damage that this stance of yours has caused both employees and employers, who now have been taking advantage of this and have racked up a huge liability.
Ms Parker: I don’t believe that we would advise anybody to go get a lawyer. We provide advice to people about all the various areas of assistance that are available to them. Where we are unable to help them, as in we do not see that they are eligible for payment based on the definition in the legislation as it stands, we will advise that they may be able to go to small claims or they may be able to take a court case. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, there is a class action being pursued at the moment on this particular issue.
Senator ROBERTS: Have you done anything to actually help Mr Turner and casual employees like him? Why has it taken so long and it’s still not resolved? These people are in limbo, they’re living out of garages, they’ve been traumatised—why?
Ms Parker: We provide assistance to everyone who contacts us. I’d rather not discuss Mr Turner. We don’t talk about specific requests for assistance. We haven’t asked Mr Turner if he minds us talking about him in Senate estimates.
Senator ROBERTS: Mr Turner has assured me that I can inquire about him. He is very distraught about the lack of support he’s received from anyone, including the union; the employer; the mine owner, BHP; state and federal bureaucracies and agencies; Labor MPs; Liberal ministers—he’s at a loss.
Ms Parker: All I can say there is that we have provided—our website says that only staff employees can be casuals under the award. And the webpage references schedule B of the award. It sets out classifications for staff employees et cetera. We’ve provided the factual information that we have on the actual award. Some people were not satisfied with that answer, so the only option we have is to refer them to those other sources of help, including their ability to go to court if they wish to. We’re not a court or a tribunal.
Senator ROBERTS: So there’s a problem here. Obviously within the legislation there’s a problem, and some people are taking advantage of that. You’ve just said, tough, that’s the way the legislation is. You haven’t referred it to anyone who can change the legislation or investigate changing it or advise changing it? These people are still out in the cold.
Ms Parker: The government’s aware of the issues around casuals, and as you know—
Senator ROBERTS: So how long have they been aware of the issue around casuals? Mr Turner has been writing to people in the government since 2014.
Mr Hehir: Sorry to interrupt. I think we’ve talked broadly around the government’s intent to legislate for a definition of a casual and to legislate for casual conversion rights. I accept that the casual conversion rights may not work at this point in time for the individual you are referring to. The issue that perhaps would be worthwhile us meeting with you separately on is how the enterprise agreement definition has actually impacted on the other issues that you raise. What I’m not clear about is how an enterprise agreement arrangement would impact on somebody’s right to workers compensation. So perhaps we could meet with you separately to try and tease out how this all flows to end up where the actual problems are arising. On the face of it, there’s nothing, to my knowledge, that would mean that somebody who has an enterprise agreement isn’t entitled to workers compensation. I’d need to get into more detail to actually understand what’s occurring to cause that break.
Senator ROBERTS: Ms Parker raised Coal LSL, and when she did, I said let’s go to the full scope of how these people are being abused, exploited and neglected. You’ve now raised workers’ compensation as well. That’s not the main issue. The main issue here is the complexity of the issues, and nobody is fixing it: not the state government, not the federal government. No federal or state agency, no politician is fixing this thing. These people are continuing to face this after six years of neglect and exploitation. I asked Ms Parker a simple question: how long has the government known about it? She said, we know the government knows. I want to know how long they’ve known about it. Was it last year, the year before, 2014?
Ms Parker: I was talking about casuals in general. I apologise if I confused you.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s not hard to be confused on this issue, I can tell you, because there are several people who know one thing very clearly: they are not being protected by employers, unions, agencies federal and state, politicians, governments, ministers at all. These people have been left out in the cold. We now know there is no legal pay rate for a casual mine worker. So someone made it up then; otherwise you wouldn’t be able to do a boot test.
Mr Hehir: Senator, that’s not the responsibility of Ms Parker.
Senator ROBERTS: With respect, Mr Hehir, you said it wasn’t the Attorney-General’s responsibility, and I took it that you implied his predecessor. It wasn’t their responsibility. You said look at the Fair Work Commission. The Fair Work Commission told me it’s not their responsibility; look at the Fair Work Ombudsman. We’re getting running round in circles. This is a magic circle.
Mr Hehir: My understanding of the evidence provided by Ms O’Neill was that in assessing the enterprise agreement that you referred to the relevant commissioner, under the legislation, would be required to assess whether that award was better off overall compared—
Senator ROBERTS: I get that, but how can you refer to a rate when there is no rate? I offered her the opportunity of giving her the full-time roster that these people were employed on as casuals. Could you cost that?
Mr Hehir: It’s a very complex process that the Fair Work Commission undertake to make sure that people are better off overall. I think Ms O’Neill’s evidence was that they’ve changed their practices to try and insert more rigour into that.
Senator ROBERTS: But that indicates that there was a problem before the change last year. So what is going to be done to look after the people who were affected by the ‘unrigorous’ system?
Mr Hehir: As I said, you’ve raised a number of issues and circumstances around this particular individual and, you say, others which—
Senator ROBERTS: Hundreds of others.
Mr Hehir: As I said, it would be useful if we could meet to go through the relevant issues. As I said, some of the things that you imply arise from the enterprise agreement definition. I’m not clear how they would cause that. So I’d need to work through that and understand the interaction with the New South Wales workers’ compensation laws. There is a separate worker occurring around the long service leave. But certainly I’m not aware of a circumstance in which the arrangements under an enterprise agreement would impact on workers’ compensation, so I’d need to have a look at that.
In terms of the actual decision, I think Ms O’Neill was clear: if someone didn’t think that decision was appropriate or that enterprise agreement was correctly decided in terms of passing the BOOT, they were able to appeal it. I think Ms O’Neill identified that that particular enterprise agreement has nominally expired and that the other option there is for someone to apply for the agreement to be terminated. They are the technical processes that need to be followed. As I said, there seems to be a complex web of interactions here. It would be useful if we could meet with you to go through those.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m happy to meet privately with you and go through them, but we’ve had several meetings and nothing has happened. What’s my main concern, Mr Hehir?
Mr Hehir: Senator, your main concern seems to be that the individual is stuck in limbo—
Senator ROBERTS: And hundreds of others like him.
Mr Hehir: and that he cannot find a straightforward answer from the Commonwealth government or the state governments.
Senator ROBERTS: He’s wanting more than an answer. He and I are wanting a solution. I’ve got three aims for this, and I’ve said this from the start. This goes back to May last year, and I first raised it around about July last year and then in Senate estimates and so on. My first aim is to make sure that Simon Turner and other people like him get their fair entitlements—morally fair as well as lawfully fair—and I want him to get some compensation for the trauma he has suffered for the last six years. The second aim is to make sure these practices are stopped right across the coal industry. The third aim is to bring some justice to the perpetrators of this, who in my opinion are BHP, Chandler Macleod and the Hunter Valley division of the CFMMEU. That’s what I want. Is there any way you can help us in achieving some of those three aims?
Mr Hehir: We can certainly look at what the legal entitlements. In terms of the moral entitlements, I’m not sure exactly what you mean by that. The legal entitlements we can certainly examine.
Senator ROBERTS: If you go beyond the nitpicky words of the law and you look to the intent of the law, he’s been diddled by some mistakes, some ways of interpreting the law wrongly. Everyone knows that a minor who works in a black coal mine is entitled to workers’ compensation under coal miners’ insurance. There was nothing for him. I’m not going to ask your salary, but he’s existing on $20,000 a year—a fraction of what he used to have.
Mr Hehir: As I said, I’m not aware of what impact his enterprise agreement status would have on his workers’ compensation. I’ve offered to meet with you to go through the details to try and understand how that flows.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ll happily agree to that. But my second concern is that this has been going on unresolved for 16 months now, and I don’t see any sign of it being resolved. These people are still being left in limbo. They’ve just been discarded. My concerns now have become: What are the federal government agencies doing, and is the government at all interested in doing this? How can we possibly support changes to legislation when they’re not even enforcing the current legislation or leaving people out in the cold and there doesn’t seem to be any intent or desire to fix it?
Mr Hehir: That’s certainly not my understanding of the Attorney’s view. As I said, I’m happy to meet to go through the detail. I know that there’s work underway in relation to long-service leave, which was the issue that I recall you—
Senator ROBERTS: After first being denied that there was an issue and then admitting it—that’s a pleasant sign. It took us months to get that.
Mr Hehir: As I said, there is work underway to try and resolve the long-service leave issue. In relation to the actual approach around the enterprise agreement, as I said, I’m happy to have a look at the interaction with other matters. But the enterprise agreement was a document that was accepted by the Fair Work Commission once the employees had voted on it.
Senator ROBERTS: After what we now see—an admission that it’s been tightened up and made rigorous, which implies to me that, before, it wasn’t. So there’s been no investigation of that from what it seems.
Mr Hehir: Ms O’Neill, I think, was at pains to point out that she wasn’t making the statement that the previous process had caused any issues with that particular agreement.
Senator ROBERTS: But there were changes to make it more rigorous, implying that it wasn’t as rigorous before. What I’m seeing is that the Fair Work Ombudsman is not taking responsibility for suggesting changes to a problem or solutions or even identifying the need to investigate a problem to the Attorney-General, and I’m also seeing that it’s not the Fair Work Ombudsman’s responsibility to come up with a solution. So how does the Attorney-General possibly identify this? This just sits there, and Simon Turner keeps sleeping in a garage.
Mr Hehir: As I said, the responsibility for the actual awards and the approval of the agreements is the responsibility of the Fair Work Commission. Ms O’Neill has outlined what she believes are the alternatives there and taken some questions on notice. In relation to the issue around whether Mr Turner was a genuine casual or whether he was should have been classified as an ongoing employee, the Attorney has identified that he intends to introduce legislation in this calendar year to deal with the definition of a ‘casual’ to make it clearer for both employers and employees of what their actual status is and to also provide greater clarity and certainty around the
right to convert. So, in terms of the future, that particular aspect is certainly being looked at. As I said, I’d need to have a look at the interactions with the other jurisdictions.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m concerned that the application that the government has submitted to be part of their Rossato case—I don’t know the technical legal term—was accompanied by some pretty inflammatory rhetoric. All I see in the Rossato case is a decision that says: ‘You tried to have these people passed off as casuals. They’re really permanents.’ So I think we need to have a lot more openness, candour and honesty from the government on Rossato.
Mr Hehir: As I said earlier, the government’s primary interest in Rossato is clarifying whether any claim for the National Employment Standards made by someone who believes they were never or are no longer a casual is able to be set off by the loading. That’s where our interest is, and that’s where the focus is.
Senator ROBERTS: In my opinion, the Rossato decision makes that clear. But that’s up to you, of course.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, how long do you think you’ve got?
Senator ROBERTS: Probably another two questions.
CHAIR: That’s okay. Then I’ll go to Labor.
Senator ROBERTS: I have some questions for you as a participant in this process, Ms Parker: Is the industrial law in this country at the moment too complex? Is it impossible to cover everything, impossible to enforce and impossible to understand? How can an everyday worker who doesn’t want to become a lawyer possibly understand what’s going on? He relies on other people to interpret for him or her.
Ms Parker: For the bulk of the workforce, who are on awards or agreements, it’s relatively simple. They don’t have to read the whole award. They don’t have to read the whole agreement. They obviously need to understand what they should be getting paid and what their entitlements are. We provide a lot of assistance to people who phone us and ask us. If they have concerns then we help them. We have a pay and conditions tool that they can look at to work out what they should be paid. There’s a lot of information out there to assist workers, and we do that to the best of our ability. There is some complexity in the system but, for an individual worker looking at their own individual entitlements, it should not be that complicated. Obviously, if you look at the whole Fair Work Act and see how large it is, you’ll say it’s really complicated, but most people don’t need to look at the whole Fair Work Act; they only need to look at a small component of it.
Senator ROBERTS: Mr Turner impresses me as being very intelligent, very capable and very astute, as does Stuart Bonds, who’s tried to help him with this issue for 16, 17 or 18 months now, and they just can’t get through it. I don’t think it’s a matter of the complexity by itself; it’s a matter of the complexity of all the hangers-on they’re trying to drag with them and trying to shake some sense into. There’s something in this mess that’s causing these people to be discarded and exploited. First of all, a company like Chandler Macleod can exploit them. The Hunter Valley division of the CFMMEU enables that, and BHP gets away scot-free and avoids its corporate and moral responsibilities. These people are tossed on the scrap heap. So there’s something wrong with this system. The whole system has broken down.
Ms Parker: This is clearly a complex case. It’s clearly a complex award and a complex enterprise agreement. Our role is to try to make it as simple as we can, but we can’t change what the agreement actually says. It was negotiated; it was approved. It therefore is in play. What the Fair Work Ombudsman—
Senator ROBERTS: So, after six years with the Fair Work Commission, the Fair Work Ombudsman and the Attorney-General’s predecessors, they’re still here. I think we’ve done this enough for now. You know where I stand.
During Senate Estimates earlier in the year, I was able to get Coal LSL to admit that there were discrepancies in hours worked reported by employers and to start an audit. Since this questioning, many other workers have come forward with issues and questions they wanted asked in Senate Estimates. Accountability and transparency seems to be lacking and workers are in the dark as to best manage their long service leave entitlements.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair. Thank you both for appearing today. Could you tell me, firstly, what has Coal LSL done since last estimates to address the errors and wrongs identified in employer data and when will people be compensated, and what is the total value of the errors to date?
Ms Perks: I’ll start with—
CHAIR: We’ve lost you, I think, again. Hello? Can we hear you? Can you speak again?
Ms Perks: Yes. We’re getting a delay.
CHAIR: You’re getting a delay; a delay on your voice? So there’s an echo? We might pull the plugs out. We will suspend briefly again, so can you log off and log on again, please? Thank you.
Ms Perks: We will.
CHAIR: Thank you. Senator Roberts.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair. What has Coal LSL done since last Senate estimates to address the errors and wrongs identified in the employer data and when will people be compensated, and what is the total value of the errors to date?
Ms Perks: Thank you, Senator. The six individuals who were identified back in October who were employed by the Programmed TESA Group have had their records adjusted and it has resulted in a change of 55 hours of entitlement for the total six out of the eight that were identified. Since October, Programmed Tessa, who was the employer—
CHAIR: I think what happened there is that there was more feedback.
Ms Perks: We’re getting the question coming back, circling.
CHAIR: Okay. So the question is on repeat. That would be amusing. It’s a very important question, Senator Roberts. We will suspend again briefly and we’ll do it through Chorus Call. Someone from the secretariat will be in touch to advise you how to do that. We will get you on the phone but not via videoconference.
Ms Perks: Okay.
CHAIR: For the third time, Senator Roberts is going to ask his question. Senator Roberts.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair. What has Coal LSL done since last Senate estimates to address the errors and wrongs identified in employer data and when will people be compensated, and what is the total value of the errors to date?
Ms Perks: Since the last Senate estimates in March the focus of the organisation has been on getting visibility of the issues that were identified. The six individuals who were addressed in the October Senate estimates have had their records updated, which resulted in a change of 55 hours of entitlement for the six in total. Regarding the other two individuals of the eight, it hasn’t resulted in a change in their record on that review. Now, in saying that, what has commenced outside of those six individuals has been a commitment by Coal LSL to commence an audit of the employer data for any employers who have casual employees within the Coal LSL scheme. That audit has commenced and is in train. We don’t have visibility yet of what the outcome of the audit will be or any changes to individuals’ records as a result of that audit.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. The second question: why doesn’t a casual get the same Coal LSL payout as a permanent employee when they both work the same hours and roster on the same site in the same role? If this is because of the act, why hasn’t Coal LSL referred the matter to the government and why hasn’t the government fixed this?
Ms Perks: If a casual employee works a 35-hour week, which is a full-time equivalent, they will accrue the same long service leave entitlement as a full-timer. Our records for the employee are held in hours, and if the employee does work for 35 hours during the week their records will be at that full-time equivalent maximum entitlement.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Are casuals made aware that they can waive the Coal LSL scheme and have the contribution paid direct to them? As you will appreciate, this would benefit a lot of casuals that may not stay for the eight-year qualifying period.
Ms Perks: I can’t talk to whether casuals, in particular, have visibility of that. It was an enhancement in our legislation back in 2010 to include waiver agreements as an option for all employees in the scheme. I can take that question on notice. From memory, we have as minimal as four waiver agreements, but I will verify that number and confirm that.
Senator ROBERTS: Sorry, what was that last sentence you said?
Ms Perks: From memory, I think we have four waiver agreements in place out of 426,000 records, but I will take that question on notice and verify that.
Senator ROBERTS: Why, if a casual does take the Coal LSL waiver option, do casuals only get paid two per cent when the Coal LSL payout is based upon 2.7 per cent?
Ms Perks: All employees, irrespective of their employment status, would be paid based on certain criteria in the legislation which my colleague Mr Kembrey will talk to. The two per cent that you’re talking about is our payroll levy and is not correlated with an employee’s long service leave entitlement. That percentage is in relation
to the payroll levy that employers are required to pay. It is a tax that’s imposed, and that levy of two per cent has been in place since 2018. Prior to that it was 2.7 per cent, but it was reduced in 2017 to that lower level. It’s a rate that’s applicable to all employers who are registered in the fund.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you please provide details of the number of casual employees who have contributions made to the scheme for them and detail how they may have been paid out? How many have left the industry and how much money does this represent for those employees who have not returned to the industry in, say, over three years? In other words they haven’t been paid out and they’ve left the industry.
Ms Perks: I could talk to the amount of casuals who are active in the industry today. According to our records, in round figures it’s 9,000. I will need to take your other questions on notice. They are quite detailed questions that will need to be responded to.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, that’s fine; take them on notice. They are very important to us. Can you explain in detail why the amounts contributed by employers to Coal LSL for eligible employees, both permanent and casual, are different to the amounts paid out for those employees? Could you please explain the reasons for the discrepancy in detail, the break-up of what funds go where and the total value that this represents annually?
Ms Perks: There are two important components of the fund. The payroll levy is a tax that’s collected on behalf of the government. That is received monthly by employers. It is remitted to the commonwealth and appropriated back. Separate from that is the records that we hold for all employees in the fund, and that entitlement is accrued in hours. The payment that’s made to the employee will be reliant on their employment agreement. Our legislation does specify the minimum that should be paid. Mr Kembrey might be able to refer us to the section in the legislation that talks about minimum payments that are required on termination or in-service leave. But it is a different part of the legislation to the payroll levy collection act, which talks about levies that are received for the fund.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Is Mr Kembrey going to add anything?
Mr Kembrey: The best way to break down the question is that the payment of levy is not necessarily correlated with the accrual of the entitlement. When entitlements are paid, they are paid at the rate that the employee is earning at the time that they take that long service leave.
Senator ROBERTS: Can you please reconcile the difference between employer contributions and employee payouts? Please also advise what happens to, firstly, the funds where an employee leaves the industry prior to qualifying and fails to return to the industry and, secondly, the total amount of these funds where employees have left the industry, how much is dispersed, and to whom, on an annual basis over the last seven years.
Ms Perks: The fund is a pooled fund. It’s important that employees of the fund understand we are very different to a financial institution and super funds. The fund is a pooled fund. The nature of portable long service leave means employees can move in and out of the industry, and they can have a maximum break from the industry of eight years before their qualifying service accrual is impacted. That’s important context. We must hold the funds for that period of a break in service of eight years, in case that employee returns to the industry, so that we can continue to ensure that we have sufficient funds to pay out for future long service leave.
The actuary assesses and protects the fund’s assets and liabilities based on important assumptions. One is investment returns. There is also the probability of employees reaching eight years of qualifying service. In regard to the employees that you’re talking about, the probability of an employee meeting that eight years of qualifying service starts at a base of 50 per cent. Our data tells us that an employee that’s been in the industry for less than one year has a 49 per cent chance of meeting that eight years of qualifying service. We hold the funds as a pooled fund through that duration of a maximum of eight years break period to anticipate that future liability that the fund may incur. It is a complex calculation that the actuary conducts. It has fundamental assumptions that underpin that assessment of the fund’s assets and liabilities.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you please tell us how much money is involved in people who have gone beyond the eight years and are not in the industry, and won’t ever get a payout? What happens to their money?
Ms Perks: Senator, can you ask that question again, please?
Senator ROBERTS: If someone leaves the industry and a period of eight years lapses, what happens to their money?
Ms Perks: The fund is structured as a pooled fund. Employers pay a tax to the government that is appropriated back to the fund. The actuary assesses assets and liabilities. We hold an entitlement in hours for the employee. We do not hold an asset which is financially attributed to that individual record. I’m being specific but the record doesn’t have a monetary dollar correlated with it at the record level. It is reported in hours. The actuary assesses
based on the hours that we hold, and 55 million hours of entitlements were held at June 2020. The actuary assesses the likelihood of paying liabilities out of the fund based on the entitlements that are held in hours.
Senator ROBERTS: You would still have to account for everything in a dollar sense if it’s a pooled fund, wouldn’t you? Some people are not going to come back after eight years, so what happens to that money? What happens to those hours? Where do they end up?
Ms Perks: If an employee has a break from the industry for eight years or further, their records will cease to accrue. If they return to the industry they would start from zero years of qualifying service again. So it is an eight years break, which is the most generous break that any long service leave provision allows for. The actuary assesses the likelihood of someone returning to the industry. In that assessment the actuary says that the fund needs X dollars to pay out future liabilities. With that they correlate a payroll levy that is appropriate to be imposed on employers in regard to the collection of future levies.
In the situation where we have seen a larger number of employees not returning to the fund, one would assume that could result in the pooled fund increasing and the liabilities would decrease. If our assets are in excess, that could result in us recommending to the minister to reduce that payroll levy further from that two per cent to a lower rate. The assets and liabilities are correlated continuously by the actuary to assess whether the payroll levy that’s imposed on employers is sufficient to meet the liabilities that are projected to be incurred by the fund in the future.
Senator ROBERTS: Are you saying that if someone is out of the industry for more than eight years, if they come back after that, they will go back to zero and start again? If there’s a surplus or an excess of funds in the pooled fund, the minister will have a recommendation to reduce the payroll levy?
Ms Perks: That is it, in a simplified manner, yes. The three correlate, yes.
Senator ROBERTS: In 2019 I drew to your attention discrepancies and outright employer misreporting. What have you done to fix all employee entitlements? What steps has Coal LSL taken? If this response took the form of, say, a review project, when will the project be completed, how much will the project have cost and will Coal LSL be prosecuting employers who have negligently or wilfully misreported or mispaid Coal LSL contributions?
Ms Perks: The important action that Coal LSL has taken since March is to commence an audit of employers of casuals; 9,000 casuals are active in the industry to date. That audit program will extend to review those records. That is in train. The outcomes of that audit will be assessed, and certainly they will be reviewed as to whether rectification or penalties would be appropriate if there’s any understanding of deliberate misreporting of hours.
Senator ROBERTS: You have the ability to penalise employers and prosecute them; is that right?
Mr Kembrey: In certain circumstances, that is correct. In terms of the time lines, it will be a rolling time line. We’re in the early stages of this. We’d expect to see some results of the audit in the next month or two, and that rolling out over the next 12 months.
Senator ROBERTS: If Coal LSL is not prosecuting any parties for negligent or wilful misreporting, could you please advise us of the assessment process that Coal LSL went through, how this assessment process was managed, by whom, and also explain in detail, despite the evidence of misreporting, why no parties were held to account? You won’t be able to do that for another month, at least, but would you be able to do that, please?
Mr Kembrey: Certainly, we can take that on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Could you please report whether any members of the Minerals Council of New South Wales were parties or related entities to those who misreported, and provide a list of same, including the number of instances by entity? You can take that on notice as well, because that won’t be able to be done for at least a month.
Mr Kembrey: Yes, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I also have concerns, as we’ve spoken about in the past, with regard to the governance of Coal LSL. I’d like some data, please. Could you provide an Excel spreadsheet that includes all employers registered with Coal LSL covering the period 1 July 2012 to 30 June 2020, including the company or business name, their ABN, the authorised officers, active dates, and details of payments or reimbursements made to each registered employer for the subject period?
Mr Kembrey: Senator, that would be an extensive task. Potentially, we could discuss what the information is that you’d like from that, over an eight-year period. When you say ‘authorised officers’, I’m assuming you mean directors?
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, the people you’re dealing with.
Mr Kembrey: Often we’re not dealing directly with directors; we’re dealing with employees of the company. Senator, perhaps we will take this question on notice and we can talk further about how we could present the material that you’re after.
Senator ROBERTS: That would be great; thank you. Could you also please provide details of the process used to calculate payments to entitled employees; that is, how the amounts received, the entitlement and other costs, or inputs and outputs, are calculated? I’d like to understand the process.
Ms Perks: We’ll take that question on notice. We can certainly give more context to the payroll levy collection, the calculation of the entitlement and the employer reimbursement rules that relate to the outflow.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Can you please provide details of where Coal LSL funds received for workers who leave the coal industry are held at all material times—I know you talked about them being in hours—who has the records, and the details of the process following the cessation of contributions for employers? Could you tell us where the hours or money goes? Could you also please include full details of where these funds are ultimately repatriated and full details of any service fees, costs or commissions paid and who they are paid to?
Ms Perks: We can take that on notice, Senator. I can say there are no commission service fees in regard to payments, but we will take that question on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Could you please provide an Excel spreadsheet of all entities that Coal LSL pays or transfers funds to, including but not limited to company business name, ABN, authorised officers, dates and details of payments or reimbursements made to each entity, including total payments, and an explanation as to the payment—for example, fees et cetera?
Ms Perks: Is that in relation to the employers in the fund or are you talking more broadly of every transaction that the fund incurs?
Senator ROBERTS: No, just the payments that are made to people who are entitled to have Coal LSL.
Ms Perks: We’ll take that on notice, yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I’m led to believe that registered employers have great difficulty in reconciling the payments made to entitled employees by Coal LSL as they don’t seem to correlate to the employer contributions. Could you please detail the reasons for any differences between employer contributions and the total amounts paid to eligible employees and, in this regard, please advise where unallocated, surplus or remaining funds or hours are allocated and please advise whether this allocation complies with your constitution and governance framework? Have these matters been raised in any internal or external audit over the period 1 July 2012 to 30 June 2020?
Ms Perks: The first part of the question I’m taking as being similar to a previous question; so we’ll answer that in light of the previous question. Coal LSL is audited by the Australian National Audit Office annually. The audit has been completed. There are no findings in the audit and we’ve had no findings in our audit for the last two years. We can give you a copy of that audit report. It is included in our annual report, which is going through the tabling process currently; so that is available for the public’s review.
Mr Kembrey: I note that in that question there were about five questions; so we’ll take a number of those later ones on notice. I think the first point that you raised was in regard to employers struggling to correlate the reimbursement to the payment to employees; is that correct?
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, that’s correct.
Mr Kembrey: The matter of what is paid to an employee is a matter that is to be decided between the employer and the employee. Then the employer requests a reimbursement for that payment and we need to see some evidence that the money that they are requesting from the fund was paid to the employee. And with the reimbursement, there needs to be some correlation with the levy payment that they’re paying—in a sense, the salary, the payment or the wages that they’re paying a levy on—so that we can ensure that either they’re not being over-reimbursed or the employee certainly is not receiving the reimbursement in full. That’s where the correlation should be. Without any specifics, it’s difficult for me to talk to it.
Senator ROBERTS: Then we might be in touch with you for more on that. I’ve raised many concerns in regard to the treatment and payment of Mr Simon Turner. I note that you’re aware that Mr Turner was forced to leave the coalmining industry due to workplace injuries at the Mt Arthur coalmine that left him totally and permanently disabled, TPD. I note that, approximately three years after my raising these injustices in Senate estimates, Mr Turner has had his case only partly reviewed and that Chandler Macleod, his employer, and Coal LSL have yet to resolve his termination status as being TPD. When will this status be updated and when will Mr Turner’s outstanding questions be addressed?
Mr Kembrey: As we discussed back in the estimates in March, we have been assisting Mr Turner for a number of years now. And the difficulty with that particular issue you’re raising is that that is a dispute between Chandler Macleod and Mr Turner. We have been trying to mediate that and obtain some factual evidence to support the position put forward by Chandler Macleod. At this point in time the parties are holding their positions and they don’t agree with each other. The last we were advised is that those matters are subject to court proceedings in the Federal Court at present. So there is not anything more we can do to try to resolve that, unfortunately.
Senator ROBERTS: What sorts of records would you turn to for proof?
Mr Kembrey: We would turn to contemporaneous correspondence that evidences the reasons. As you know, this is a dispute about the reason why Mr Turner was terminated by Chandler Macleod back in 2016; so we have requested contemporaneous material that supports the position that Chandler Macleod put forward or justifies that position, and that has been provided. We’re not in a position to make a legal assessment of that, because that is not our role; the Fair Work Commission has the power to do that. But I believe that Fair Work Commission proceedings are on foot and those proceedings have been transferred to the Federal Court. Hopefully, for Mr Turner, there is some resolution to that matter in the near future.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, just before your next question, we will be breaking at quarter to four for the afternoon tea break and concluding with these witnesses and I know that Senator O’Neill does have some questions. If the two of you could perhaps have a conversation about timing for the remaining nine minutes that would be fantastic.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ve got four more questions that I’ll put to you on notice, Mr Kembrey and Ms Perks, but I’ll ask this question: Queensland and Hunter Valley coalminers and coalminers everywhere expect Coal LSL to maintain a high standard of probity. Casual coalminers expect that you will do the right thing by them and give them the freedom of choice to waive the Coal LSL contributions for them to receive the 2.7 per cent or the two per cent as additional income. I just want to make that point on the record.
All right, it’s now 16 minutes away from 8:00. Malcom’s with us on the programme. Hello, mate, how are you?
[Malcolm Roberts]
I’m very well.
[Marcus Paul]
Excellent.
[Malcolm Roberts]
I’m very, very well, Marcus. And, by the way, I understand this is the first time I’ll be speaking to you while you’re in the Grant Goldman Studios. So well done.
[Marcus Paul]
Wonderful. Yeah. Brand new studio. We’re loving it. Everything seems to be working a-okay. Where are you at the moment? Still up north?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Back up north again. Yeah, up in Townsville. And we went through Airlie Beach yesterday, but Grant, with Grant, I enjoyed meeting Grant and working with him. He was a fabulous man.
He really looked after the people because he connected with what was really going on. He had the guts to tackle big issues, and he was just a wonderful character. I know you’ve got a caller called John Mcreigh who told me about the way Grant’s supported Lawrence Heinz and at his own costs. It’s just amazing, the courage of the man.
[Marcus Paul]
Yeah, wonderful, and I know you had that relationship before, and we’re very grateful that we continue to talk to you on this network and certainly on this programme, mate. So thank you very much. Now, let’s talk about changes to the university system. You support the government’s changes. Why?
[Malcolm Roberts]
They’re reducing the fees for courses that will meet the needs for the future of our country, and jobs, practical courses that will, like engineering, like nursing, like teaching. And they’ll be making courses like humanities, which have little direct relevance, sometimes, immediate relevance, and that’s what they’re doing there to make universities more affordable and also to more practical.
And what they’re doing is also making sure that taxpayer funds are based on the skills that the country needs, so that’s why we’re supporting general. But we also see this as an opportunity to go further, to ensure responsibility among students and reduce the taxpayer load. And also to restore accountability in universities and to restore academic freedom. ‘Cause as you know, that’s been smashed.
[Marcus Paul]
Well, let’s look at some of the figures here. We do need to address the growing $60 billion outstanding HECS debt. Australian debt is now pushing $1 trillion and money could be used productively if repaid. We need to limit student entitlement to seven years’ full-time equivalent.
Certainly, it takes on average around 10 years for a student to repay a HECS debt. And if you’re getting people, students into some of these humanities courses, and I’m not knocking them, I did one. I did a bachelor of arts, obviously. I majored in journalism, but we need to ensure that whatever our kids are studying at uni will get them into gainful employment once they’re finished, because we need these debts repaid.
[Malcolm Roberts]
That’s right. And we’re very concerned. Pauline in particular has been raising this issue for a number of years now that the HECS debt is going up and up and up and it’s currently around 60 billion and growing as you correctly pointed out. I love the way you use data. Pauline has been advocating that we reinstate the 10% discount if fees are paid upfront.
Now that’s because people who can afford university should not be getting a concessional interest rate. They should pay it upfront. Let them do that and that’ll, give the government better use of our funds. And also we want to reduce the threshold for income above which people start paying off the HECS debt. It’s currently at $46,000 per annum income before you have to start repaying.
We want to reduce that so that people start paying it back earlier because we’re all we’re seeing is the HECS debt rising incredibly and people basically on fee-free university education. We also want to raise the standards by which they’re allowed to continue so that if they’re failing, then they don’t continue.
[Marcus Paul]
Well, that’s right. It’s important, I think, to have our institutions, our tertiary institutions, monitor students’ academic progress. And if they are repeatedly failing, well, then they should stop getting fee help. Particularly if they don’t pass half the subjects.
[Malcolm Roberts]
That’s right. And we need to make students aware that they’re getting something from taxpayers and they’re getting money that supports their courses. So we need to make students more accountable for that. It’s not just continue to live off the taxpayer. We’ve got to get job-ready graduates.
And so we applaud the government for this initiative, but we want to take it further to bring back that accountability in the universities and also on the students.
[Marcus Paul]
All right, I want to go to this issue here of, the fact that you’re doing a lot of travelling there in Queensland, which is wonderful, Malcolm, because that’s how you get on top of grassroots issues. You speak to the punters out there and constituents. Again, you’re still hearing the businesses can’t find anyone willing to work.
Fruit pickers in southern Queensland, in tourism and hospitality, charter boat operators in the Whitsundays are cancelling cruises. The retail sector is struggling at Airlie Beach. Why can’t we fill these positions? Is it getting down to the fact that job keeper and job seeker to an extent is so generous at the moment?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Well, it’s really not job keeper, Marcus. It’s job seeker that’s the problem. Job keeper has actually kept some businesses going, kept them afloat. We’ve got to be careful about that.
There are some businesses that haven’t been able to get job keeper and they should be able to, but anyway, that’s another issue, but job seeker is what’s keeping some people on the couch instead of getting off their backside and going and doing some work. Fruit pickers in southern Queensland, but I think we talked about that a couple of weeks ago as well, strawberry pickers, raspberry pickers.
They just can’t get people, and they can’t get locals, can’t get Aussies. And what we’ve relied upon is backpackers to do that job. Just a couple of days ago we were in Airlie Beach in Whitsunday. Yeah, I know. Someone’s got to do it, mate. But anyway.
[Marcus Paul]
Ah, terrible, Malcolm, yes.
[Malcolm Roberts]
But anyway, the tourism and hospitality sector are finding it difficult to get even boat crews they’ve had to cancel charter boat operators in the Whitsundays, cancel cruises because they can’t get people to do jobs because it’s too easy, too attractive on job seeker.
And then retail. We see shopkeepers who are desperate for staff, but we’ve also seen, at a time when we’ve got a massive growing debt and lowering productivity, we’ve also got shopkeepers paying inordinate amounts for electricity, especially government charges.
[Marcus Paul]
Sure.
[Malcolm Roberts]
And they’re saying themselves, all they’re doing is picking up a huge risk and picking up huge stress. They have to work longer hours because they can’t afford it. We’ve got a complete need to look at how we treat people and how we treat businesses, taxation, regulation. We’re destroying our country, Marcus.
[Marcus Paul]
All right, well, the prime minister today is about to spruik a modern manufacturing strategy. There’s a little bit of renewable energy thrown in the mix. I mean, I dunno, we’ve got a conservative premier in New South Wales who’s gone on the record as saying, we’re not real good at building things, but the prime minister says we are.
I like the idea of it, kick-starting manufacturing and building manufacturing jobs and really investing in the sector in new South Wales and round Australia. But is this more marketing? Are these going to be more slogans today? Can the government really back this up? Are you sceptical?
[Malcolm Roberts]
I am completely sceptical, and you hit the nail on the head. It’s just marketing from Scott Morrison. Look, the basics of manufacturing are electricity charges, and we’re pushing the UN agenda and driving our electricity through the roof. And what we’re doing is exporting those jobs to China, India, Asia, because they’re generating electricity at eight cents a kilowatt an hour using our coal that’s been carted overseas for thousands of kilometres.
We’re selling electricity in this country at 25 cents a kilowatt an hour. And that’s ridiculous because we’re using the same coal, and the only difference is the regulations that the government has put in place due to the UN. And the second thing is we’re over-regulated. We’ve got so many regulations in this country.
The small business just cannot compete. Large business cannot compete. That taxation structure gives incentives to foreign multinationals rather than local companies. And then we’ve had the Lima declaration that both parties signed, Whitlam Labor Party signed in 1975 and Frasers Liberal Party ratified it the following year.
And that has exported our jobs, our manufacturing. Until we start restoring our political sovereignty and national sovereignty, we are not going to restore our economic sovereignty. It’s that simple. And Scott Morrison on October 3rd, I think last year, was talking about the unelected, international bureaucrats and unaccountable international bureaucrats.
And then since then, he’s advocated giving the UN’s World Health Organisation, a corrupt organisation, increased power. So the man says one thing and does another. We will not get anywhere until we stop the UN.
[Marcus Paul]
All right, well said, as always. Great to have you on the programme, Malcolm. Let’s chat again next week. Appreciate it. You take it easy up there at Airlie Beach, Townsville. You’re not taking a little charter boat over to Maggie today to really rub it into me, are you?
[Malcolm Roberts]
No, no, no. We’ll be heading down into the Galilee Basin and the Bowen Basin coalfields to listen, pushing some things on safety there.
[Marcus Paul]
Well let’s hear a little more about that next week when we get you back on. Thanks, Malcolm. Take care.
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Academic-Integity.png?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=110801920Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-10-01 15:05:032020-10-01 15:21:22Ensuring Academic Integrity – 2SM with Marcus Paul
Over the past 12 months I have been working through an issue and story that has, at times, brought me to tears. It is about a miner, Simon Turner, who was severely injured on site doing his job. The accident left Simon totally and permanently disabled; he can never return to work. But it is also about the tens of thousands of workers across the country who could end up in the same position.
Instead of receiving the support and workers’ compensation we would expect, and that coal miners are entitled to, he has been abandoned. Instead of receiving proper entitlements such as accident pay at a full wage, he lives below the poverty line in a garage. The way this has happened has been unlawful, unjust, immoral and unethical. What we’ve uncovered is that this tragedy can happen to anyone and we must fight to have this gap in our industrial relations laws fixed.
This is Simon’s story. It is the story of how any Australian can be thrown on the scrap heap by all the people and organisations who should be there to protect us.
Simon’s injury
Simon worked for Chandler Macleod, a labour hire company who employed him at Mount Arthur, a BHP Billiton Coal Mine in the Hunter Valley. He was an active person and he recounts that he enjoyed his job. At the time of his injury Simon was working on his shift at the mine driving a coal truck.
A coal digger did not see Simon’s truck because of dusty conditions and struck his vehicle. The massive collision directly injured Simon, causing swollen L3, L4 and L5 discs in his back, a pinched sciatic nerve, pinched cranial nerve and a lateral tear in one of the discs. The lateral tear in his back leaks fluid into the spine and the resulting nerve damage goes all the way down his left leg leaving him permanently in pain. As a result, Simon’s leg collapses without notice and he deals with ongoing post-traumatic stress disorder and depression from that day.
Simon’s injuries have meant he is deemed totally and permanently disabled (TPD) and he cannot return to work.
After the accident he was taken to hospital by ambulance where x-rays were not done due to a broken machine, but a doctor indicated Simon should be off work for at least several weeks. During his return from the hospital a BHP representative asked Simon if he would meet with the coal superintendent. Simon agreed and met with him when he returned to mine site.
Pressure
In that meeting the BHP coal superintendent pressured Simon to not report his injury. He says that there have been too many Lost Time Injuries (LTIs). LTIs are reported incidents where an employee can’t come into work because of an injury.
The coal superintendent tells Simon to not report it, that BHP won’t be reporting it and threatens Simon that the way the industry is now, he won’t have a job if he does report it. Casuals like Simon have no job security.
Simon is later asked to come into his next regular rostered shift, ‘just to ensure he gets paid’. Simon goes to site and sits on a steel metal bench for four hours and does nothing. The following shift, Simon is pressured to sign a return to work program which he refuses. It isn’t clear who has made the return to work plan and it certainly hasn’t been done in consultation with Simon.
At this point Simon still has no doctor, no x-rays, no diagnosis and no idea what injuries he has suffered. In Simon’s words, ‘No one knew what was wrong with me and they wanted me to go back out into the pit and start working.’
All of these factors lead me to believe it was an unethical attempt to avoid reporting an LTI. By Simon returning to work for the four hours, even though he did nothing, the mine avoids reporting an LTI because they say he clocked in and therefore returned to work.
It is unlawful to not report a serious injury.
The flaws in the safety system
We now know that some superintendents and supervisors within the mining industry are paid a safety bonus, which is directly related to the number of LTIs that happen on their watch. The less LTIs, the higher the bonus.
The bonus system creates a perverse incentive for superintendents and supervisors to hide injuries and not report them. Simon has been a victim of this perverse incentive.
At the time of his injury Simon, like most of the employees on site, was classed as a casual/labour hire employee. Yet during the year of his injury and the surrounding years, there are no labour hire company employee LTIs reported.
Some labour hire employers are far more concerned about money than they are about people and especially people who stand up for their rights. Simon was terminated without even being told. He found out six months later indirectly through a government agency.
Some companies are known to understate the number of employees on work sites and to describe miners as ‘administration staff’ to get lower insurance premiums – if we did this what would happen to us?
Tragically, we also know that Simon is not the only affected worker. I’ve personally spoken to seven others from the Hunter region who have found themselves in similar situations and believe there are hundreds more in NSW, Queensland and WA. We aren’t talking about just broken fingers.
Their injuries were debilitating. Broken backs, legs broken in half and a myriad of severe and permanent injuries that left people trembling just from talking about them. There have also been suicides within the group. Simon recounts that, ‘I didn’t want to live … three times I’ve thought about killing myself.’
Recently, I presented a submission to the Queensland Board of Inquiry into the Queensland Grosvenor mine explosion that could have had fatal consequences. Here I pointed out to the Board that casuals are not even represented on safety committees, yet they make up such a large part of the industry today.
Mine owners like BHP Billiton and labour hire companies like Chandler Macleod don’t care about anything but money.
The loophole
Under the Black Coal Award, a worker in a coal mine is afforded accident pay and specialised treatment for injuries. However mines avoid their responsibilities by using labour hire companies for their workforce – they are cheaper and have less job security.
In some ways and in some cases, employees aren’t classed by the work they do or where they work, they are classed based on their employer. Importantly when it comes to accessing award entitlements, the employer must be in or about a coal mine. Employers like the mine owner BHP easily pass this test. However, a labour hire firm like Chandler Macleod, the one that employed Simon, is not considered in or about a coal mine and therefore the protections and entitlements don’t apply.
Some mine owners use and explicitly abuse this to avoid their responsibilities to workers like Simon Turner.
Simon worked side-by-side with BHP employees, doing the same job, on the same long-term rosters, on the same site and he came home every day with clothes covered in black coal dust. We believe the current method of classification for miners has led to hundreds of cases of exploitation – pain, poverty and injustice – and this must be addressed.
Simon has not received his accident pay or the specialised treatment he needs to live as good a life as he can with his injuries. He receives a pathetic disability payment which is below the poverty line.
Simon contacted everyone he could – the mine owner, his employer, the workers’ compensation authority, Coal LSL, the Fair Work Commission and the Fair Work Ombudsman, his local federal elected representative Labor’s Joel Fitzgerald MP, local state Labor MP, NSW Ministers, NSW government agencies and many more – all of whom ignored his calls for help.
The people and the organisations that should have cared for him did not, and you could be next.
If it had not been for people who cared like Stuart Bonds of One Nation in NSW, nobody would be standing up for Simon Turner today.
Please watch our full video with Simon to learn a bit more about his case and you will see why One Nation stood up for Simon and why we stand up for everyday Australians like you.
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/MineSimon.png?fit=2250%2C1688&ssl=116882250Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-07-27 18:45:002020-07-27 15:29:57Miners are being left behind by those who are meant to protect them
Mr Simon Turner was an employee of Chandler Macleod, a labour hire company, and worked at the Mt Arthur coal mine in the Hunter Valley.
The mine owner BHP and his employer called him a casual, even though he worked on the same long-term coal production roster and had the same duties and responsibilities as BHP’s permanent full-time workers, doing the same job.
After being severely injured on a mine site, Simon discovered that he was not getting workers’ injury compensation, accident pay and other entitlements that are part of the Black Coal Award.
In fact, his employer did not even classify Simon as a coal miner and instead classified him as office administration, apparently to lower the workers’ compensation premiums. Simon lost all the benefits of the Black Coal Mining Award including workers’ injury compensation.
During our investigation into the issues surrounding Simon, we uncovered a number of actions that you should take to ensure that you are being protected from similar unscrupulous practices. This checklist can help you to be sure that you are being treated fairly and are covered in case of a workplace accident:
Hi, I want to discuss a story of enormous courage and resilience that brought such anger to me and such tears. The whole industrial relations system is broken and complicit in what is happening to people. The deeper issue affects 10s of thousands of men and women, right around this country, especially in Central Queensland and the Hunter Valley.
I worked in one of the industries that this is involved with from the age of 18 to 53 and I have never seen anything like this. The exploitation, the abuse, the negligence, it’s horrific, it’s unethical, immoral, and unlawful with deliberate breaches of laws.
I want to introduce Simon Turner, who’s been fighting this for six years, and he’s going to tell us his story. And I also want to introduce Stuart Bonds, who has developed the trust in the Hunter Valley and he came to us with it and because he did listen to people, and he’s been pushing it at a time when state and federal governments had abandoned it.
BHP had abandoned its responsibilities, Chandler Macleod Group, the CFMMEU in the Hunter Valley has abandoned its people. Politicians, state and federal, labor and liberal have avoided this issue and done enormous damage. So Simon, can you tell us your story please?
[Simon]
I worked for Chandler MacLeod which is a labour hire company at Mount Arthur, BHP Billiton Coal Mine in Hunter Valley, largest black coal mine in New South Wales. I was severely injured at work, while working in dusty conditions.
I was asked by the BHP Superintendent of Coal not to report my injury, which was clearly a lost time injury. They asked me to come into work and not report my injury at all and BHP weren’t going to report it. Now my employer Chandler Macleod, they didn’t report my injury at all which they both have the same duty of care to report anyone that’s injured at work.
Now, they can’t ask someone not to come into work if they’re injured because that’s also a breach of workplace laws, which they clearly don’t care about. They just get people to do what they need them to do so they don’t record a lost time injury for the mine site.
I started at HVO and then moved to Mount Arthur open cut. I enjoyed my job, I loved it a lot. And then one day we were working in conditions that were very dusty, I was hit by the coal digger because he couldn’t see me.
Now the pit was shut down for dust we were still operating ’cause they “still had to get coal out” as they say, he did not see me as there was too much coal dust and hit a metre behind the back of where I was operating the truck and my injuries are swollen discs L3, 4, 5, pinched sciatic nerve, pinched cranial nerve and a lateral tear in one of the discs, that’s leaking fluid into my spine, and then that nerve damage goes all the way down my left leg.
My left leg collapses without any notice and I’ll just drop. I also have severe depression and PTSD caused by what happened that day.
[Stuart]
So I’m in the coal industry, so I know what’s meant to happen. But do you want to tell us what did actually happen to you?
[Simon]
Well, what happened that day, I was taken back into the first aid and emergency area at the mine site, they then called an ambulance. So I was taken to Muswellbrook Hospital via ambulance. I got there, and they assessed me. I was sucking on the green puffer whistle for pain.
They wanted to do X-rays, so a doctor came in and saw me, and gave me some medication for the pain. And they were going to do X-rays at Muswellbrook Hospital, but then they told me that the X-ray machine wasn’t working. Someone from BHP then turned up at the hospital and he waited there.
The doctor said, “Well, you can go, you got to go and have X-rays. We can’t do the X rays here, you’ll be off for a couple of weeks.” So we go back to the mine site and on the journey back in the car, I was asked if I’d go meet with the Coal Superintendent.
I said, “Yep, okay.” When we got back there, I met him in his office. He said to me, “How are you?” I said, “Pretty sore.” He said, “Listen, I don’t want you to report this. We’ve had too many LTIs.” That’s a lost time injury He said, “Don’t report it, we’re not going to report it, and the way the industry is at the moment, if you report it, you won’t have a job.”
So that’s what happened. Then, they told me to come into the next lot of rostered shifts that I had. Just come into work sign on, I’d only have to stay there for four hours and then they’d send me home and they’d make sure that I got paid. So I went in.
The following day, on day shift for four hours I sat there on a steel metal bench, did nothing. On the night shift someone came out, the fill in OCE and asked me to sign a return-to-work programme, and I didn’t even know what injuries I had, I still hadn’t had the X-rays.
No one knew what was wrong with me, and they wanted me to go back out into the pit and start working.
[Stuart]
So why do you think they wanted you to come back for the four hours?
[Simon]
Well that way, a lost time injury, what we know now is that superintendents and supervisors within the mining industry, their coal bonus is directly related in the amount payable with regards to lost time injuries, so the least lost time injuries, the more bonus they get.
[Stuart]
So lost time injuries in a day lost when the employee can’t come back into work. So when you come back to work, you’re counted as being, worked that day.
[Simon]
Yep.
[Stuart]
Even though you sat on a cold steel bench sticking stickers on hard hat.
[Simon]
I didn’t stick anything, I just sat there. I didn’t stick anything on anything. I actually-
[Malcolm]
You’re in pain
[Simon]
Yeah, in pain. And I actually I was on a fair bit of medication. I went and seen the the ambulance guy. He was on site there at the mine site full time, he gave me a heat pack, that was it, it’s all I had.
And then I never went back after that day ’cause I refused to sign the return-to-work plan because when I looked at it, I didn’t know who done it, it wasn’t done in consultation with myself. It wasn’t done with a doctor. I didn’t even have a doctor at that time.
And my employer who was supposedly Chandler Macleod, hadn’t even spoken to me, so.
[Malcolm]
Now Simon as I understand that you’ve got some graphs which we’re going to put in the video. Can you tell us about those graphs for 20… On the year of your injury?
[Simon]
The year of my injury and the year prior to that and for another two years after my injury, the statistics show for LTIs recorded in the mining industry. When I was injured and I know other people have been injured because they have contacted me, I say there were zero LTIs.
[Malcolm]
And we’ve talked to some of those people.
[Simon]
Yeah, you’ve spoken to them, and they’ll come forward and there’s a lot of people.
[Stuart]
Zero injuries at that mine?
[Simon]
In the whole Hunter Valley. Not just that mine, in the whole Hunter Valley and there is hundreds of injuries, reportable injuries, LTIs where people have not gone to work.
Now, the important thing with that those statistics are coming from Coal Mines Insurance and Coal Services because they’re the monopoly insurer for the industry. Now, when my claim has been put through, it hasn’t been put through on that. I’m not a coal miner I’m employed in the New South Wales Statutory System. So-
[Stuart]
You don’t show up in the mining statistics
[Simon]
It doesn’t show up.
[Stuart]
Under the Black Coal Award as a worker in a coal mine, I know that you’re afforded 78 weeks of accident pay under the Black Coal Award and specialised treatment for your injuries. And that’s given from the monopoly insurer, which is Coal Mines Insurance. So what did you actually receive?
[Simon]
I’ve been receiving $400 per week from two other insurers, at first started out as CGU and then change to GIO, New South Wales Statutory Insurer. So I haven’t received any of the Coal Mine entitlements of the full wage for 78 weeks.
So it’s below the poverty line, what I’ve been living on the whole time. Our Enterprise Agreement had provisions in it for 78 weeks accident pay, which is straight from the Award.
[Stuart]
Can you return to work?
[Simon]
I can’t return to work. I’ve been demmed TPD
[Malcolm]
Totally and Permanently Disabled?
[Simon]
Yeah, I can’t work
[Stuart]
So your $400 is-
[Simon]
$400 a week is for life. That’s it. That’s all I get.
[Malcolm]
That’s $20,000 a year, where you were earning about 92,000 earning less than a quarter.
[Simon]
Yeah. So and that’s… had massive ramifications. for me personally,
[Stuart]
So who’s paying? If it’s not Coal Mines Insurance, who’s paying you, who is paying?
[Simon]
The New South Wales State Government has been paying an injured coal miner from the day that I got injured and the claim was filed with CJU
[Malcolm]
And so that’s the uninsured workers?
[Simon]
Yeah.
[Malcolm]
The uninsured workers-
[Simon]
Uninsured Liability Scheme, that’s where I get paid from.
[Malcolm]
So that’s mums and dads who own small businesses and pay workers compensation, premiums are going up, they’re paying for your injury from a multinational company that’s foreign owned and avoiding its responsibilities. And that’s why your workers compensation premiums for small businesses are going up.
[Simon]
And I’m not the only one. There are a lot more people exactly employed with Chandler Macleod and worked at BHP Mount Arthur.
[Malcolm]
And we met with eight of them when we went to Williamtown near Newcastle, and we listened to 8, the bullying, the harassment, the intimidation, the injuries, were just gross. These people some of them are shattered.
[Stuart]
Yeah, we’re not talking broken fingers here, we’re talking broken backs, legs broken in half severe, permanent…
[Simon]
Bullying and harassment it’s-
[Malcolm]
And people who shake and tremble when you talk to them.
[Simon]
Yeah, there’ve been suicides, we know of suicides that have happened.
[Stuart]
The accident pays there to tie you over until you can return to work. Obviously, deemed TPD you can’t return to work, on $400 a week, running out of money, losing your house. What happened at that point?
[Simon]
Oh, that point. I was about to be evicted. I’ve been deemed TPD so I can’t work again. So I called Coal LSL to check on what long service leave I had accrued. They then tell me that I’m not accruing any because I was sacked. And I said, “Okay.” Now my employer terminated my employment a week after I was injured.
They sent a Separation Certificate to Centerlink. They notified AUS Coal superannuation in January of 16, that I was terminated. They terminated my employment to Coal LSL on the 7th of January 2016. And I find out six months later that I was sacked. I was the last person that got told I was sacked. So they tell everybody else except me.
It’s illegal to sack anyone within six months of them being injured and on workers compensation. So not only have they not paid me what I’m entitled to I’ve been paid from a policy that can’t cover me.
They’ve also sacked me and haven’t told me. On the separation certificate, they say, there’s a question on there, has a workers compensation claim been made or will one be made in the future? And they tick no, and this was filled out six months after I’d been on workers comp.
[Malcolm]
So how did you feel when you find all this stuff out and you’re about to be thrown out your house?
[Simon]
I just couldn’t believe anyone, could be so ruthless and do something like this. I just wanted to give up that’s probably why, you know, the depression and everything and that sets in, I didn’t want to live. Yeah, three times I’ve thought about killing myself.
[Stuart]
So whilst you’re on workers comp, you’re not meant to be getting your entitlements whilst you’re on it. You’re super’s meant to be paid your long service leave still meant to be accruing. So that’s how you found out that you’re sacked? That you weren’t, those entitlements
[Simon]
I found out through Coal LSL only because I rang up six months later. That’s how I found out and then I find out that none of those entitlements
[Stuart]
Were accruing.
[Simon]
Were accruing, all gone.
[Malcolm]
Okay, Simon, so let me just check with you. You were… You’ve lost your Award entitlements and protections, you’re 40% underpaid compared with your BHP employees doing the same job, same responsibilities, same duties, right next to you. And your Coal LSL Long Service Leave provisions were under reported.
And when I asked them questions about that, they had never done an audit on individuals. They – They hadn’t done an audit. And then when they did an audit after I pursued them in senate estimates, they came back and admitted that you were correct. Is that correct?
[Simon]
Correct. Everything was correct.
[Stuart]
So our entire industrial relations system is set up with a series of checks and balances, because we have a federal award and we have to make sure the awards are minimum standard.
So to check all this, you’ve got the Fair Work Commission, the Fair Work Ombudsman, you’ve got union bosses that go to negotiations, you’ve got your HR department of your labour hire companies, you’ve got mine safety inspectors, lawyers, senators the State Insurance Regulatory Authority, Coal Mines Insurance, Coal Services, Workers Compensation Independent Review Office, which is WIRO, you’ve got the media.
How many of these people have you engaged with and told them what’s going on?
[Simon]
All of them, hundreds of emails.
[Malcolm]
There’s even two more points I would raise. You forgot the Local Federal Member, Joel Fitzgibbon. Now he illustrates what was going on here, because I’ve written to him, he hasn’t responded.
[Simon]
I wrote to him six times.
[Malcolm]
You’ve written to him six times. and in the interactions we’ve had through the media, we’ve explained the enormous scale of this problem, the depth of the problem, he’s come back and said, “Roberts doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s just about the casual employment.”
Well, that’s a misrepresentation of what’s going on. But you’ve also got the fact that some of these players enabled this to happen, they actually created the circumstances. The Hunter Valley Branch of the CFMMEU looks like it has set this up.
[Simon]
It’s the only way, it can happen.
[Malcolm]
Yeah, it can’t happen without that. BHP have been complicit, the Chandler Macleod Group have been complicit. They have stolen part of your life from you. The CFMMEU in the Hunter Valley has done the same. Some of the bureaucrats have done the same.
[Stuart]
Well, you’re meant to have the Fair Work Commission, Fair Work Ombudsman overseeing all this, to make sure that this exact scenario doesn’t occur.
[Simon]
But it doesn’t have to get to that point. And this is what they fail to say in some and some of the media and social pages that they like to comment on. Not once have I put it in for dispute before it was voted on. They can’t say oh, you voted on it or they approved it. If it gets put into dispute before it even gets to that point, nothing happens. No one’s employed as a casual.
[Malcolm]
So the system is rotten Simon and Stuart the system is rotten. But worse, there are senior players in the system that actively make it happen. Make the corruption happen.
[Simon]
Correct.
[Stuart]
Okay, so you were talking before about putting agreements into dispute before they even get to the Fair Work Commission, to challenge them, to make sure they’re better off overall. So the union have recently contested an Enterprise Agreement which was for BHP’s in house labour hire firm.
So that was the OS agreement at Mount Arthur Coal, which was exactly the same Coal Mine that you were employed at, exactly the same Coal Mine that they have Chandler MacLeod’s still working alongside them, but it was for more money. Am I correct in saying that?
[Simon]
Yeah, the Chandler Macleod agreement pays even less than what the OS agreement does.
[Stuart]
And the OS agreement was thrown out, because it didn’t meet the better off overall test. Yet, there’s people being paid less than that working on the same mine site.
[Malcolm]
And correct me if I’m wrong. They don’t have the conditions and protections that even the OS Agreement has got in it, but that was thrown out.
[Simon]
Yep. That’s right
[Malcolm]
How does this go on?
[Simon]
Well, there’s a letter from Chandler Macleod to the CFMEU that says, “You will not take any legal action against us now or in the future.
[Stuart]
Yeah.
[Malcolm]
What?
[Simon]
I’m serious.
[Malcolm]
I was an underground coalface miner in the ’70s. in the Hunter Valley, I was a mine manager in the ’80s in the Hunter Valley, I worked in the Hunter Valley as a consultant in the 1990s and in the 2000s. There is no way on earth or even underground that the Coal Miners Union would have let this happen. What did happen?
[Simon]
Well, you would think that but basically, it’s their own business model, the union they own the labour hire company, employing casuals, started out as United Mining Management Services, and then basically progressed on to being owners within Tesa and then selling that model on to a larger company called Skilled.
And then basically endorsing EA’s with casual employment.
[Malcolm]
And the bar graph that the stacked bar graph that we’ll put on the screen here that you showed me yesterday indicated that there’s some pretty dodgy deals happening involving union bosses most likely, making money out of it.
[Simon]
Yeah. it’s … They’re business partners with the big mining companies. They basically, they own Coal Mines Insurance along with the New South Wales Minerals Council, which is all the mine owners. They’re a joint venture of Aus Coal Superannuation with New South Wales and Queensland Minerals Council.
And then you’ve got them on the boards of Coal LSL and Coal Services.
[Stuart]
So if one… We’ve see we’ve seen how easy this is to stop, I mean, you just put the enterprise agreements into dispute, they stop the OS Agreement. So we know it’s possible to happen. So if one person or one government body had done the right thing, this wouldn’t happen. This a eight billion dollar black hole doesn’t exist.
[Simon]
So there’s no external scrutiny whatsoever. They control the whole industry.
[Stuart]
They control their own oversight and auditing. So if the… So this is a mine owner, is in bed with the union, and the government’s turned a blind eye, and you have all got screwed.
[Simon]
Yeah.
[Malcolm]
So some of the mining companies want cheaper labour rates. Some of the dodgy union bosses enable that to happen, and they get a cut on it, by the side. So what we can see here is a need for an investigation of all these entities.
We’ve got Coal LSL, Coal Mines Insurance, We’ve got the State Governments Safety Inspectors, We’ve got Fair Work Commission, Fair Work Commission Ombudsman, we’ve got some politicians that we think, we’ve got union bosses all need investigating.
And what that means is that people are no longer protected by the political, by the industrial or by the unions, and they’re certainly not protected by some of these grubby companies.
What it means is that if this can happen to you and hundreds of people you know, and that we’ve met it can happen to anyone in Australia, it can happen to you.
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/dominik-vanyi-Mining-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=117072560Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-07-27 18:45:002020-07-27 20:08:21REVEALED: Shocking abuse of workers in mining industry
See the bottom of this article to get your checklist sent directly to you to ensure that you are protected from similar unscrupulous practices.
Mr Simon Turner was an employee of Chandler Macleod, a labour hire company, and worked as a coal miner at the Mt Arthur coal mine in the Hunter Valley. The mine owner BHP and his employer called him a casual, even though he worked on the same long-term coal production roster and had the same duties and responsibilities as BHP’s permanent full-time workers doing the same job.
After being severely injured onsite, Simon discovered that he was not getting workers’ injury compensation, accident pay and other entitlements that are part of the Black Coal Award.
In fact, his employer did not even classify Simon as a coal miner and instead classified him as office administration, apparently to lower the workers’ compensation premiums. Simon lost all the benefits of the Black Coal Mining Award, including workers’ injury compensation.
During our investigation into the issues surrounding Simon, we identified a number of actions that you can take to ensure that you are protected from similar unscrupulous practices.
Enter your details below and we will send you your benefits checklist.
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Mine.png?fit=2250%2C1688&ssl=116882250Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-07-27 13:43:442020-07-27 14:34:55CHECKLIST: Are you a miner? Find out if you’re getting ripped off
