Trade Unions

The Hon. G.A. KANDELAARS (15:44): The preselection and appointment of the Hon.  Peter Malinauskas has brought public focus to this place and its red leather. It has brought focus on people in this place, especially the government benches. Media outlets and the opposition seem to have taken great pleasure in reflecting on the fact that many government members in this place were once, like Mr Malinauskas, union officials. It has been noted that I too was a union official.

I joined my union within days of starting work as an apprentice for the then PMG department in 1972. I have also had decades of experience in the telecommunications industry; advocating on behalf of local communities and organisations; and sitting on a number of boards and committees, including nine years on the largest Australian corporate superannuation fund where I worked closely with some of the highest profile names in Australian business. But, ultimately, yes, I was a union official and I am prepared to stand up and say it, and I say it loud and proud.

Of course, the union movement has fought many battles over the years for working Australians. Sometimes we have worked together with businesses—good businesses—to advance the Australian economy in a fair and sustainable manner, and sometimes we have had to go out on our own to fight: to fight for shorter hours, to fight for compulsory superannuation, to fight to retain penalty rights and a fair economy, to fight against John Howard's WorkChoices, and to fight Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull's governments for 12 submarines to be built in South Australia. It is, certainly, something those opposite have done precious little of.

I have represented thousands of men and women working primarily in the telecommunications industry throughout South Australian and the Northern Territory. I have represented a woman who, having just returned from maternity leave, was directed that if she were to express breast milk she needed to go and do so in the toilet. I secured her a private and respectful area to do so.

I have represented a worker who, merely weeks after being stretchered from a worksite with a migraine that caused paralysis down one side of her body, was cautioned and given a formal warning for leaving to seek immediate and urgent medical help when she felt the onset of the same symptoms. I have represented a worker who was selected for compulsory redundancy on the basis of having taken a legal entitlement to sick leave because he had a serious heart condition.

I have represented workers in matters of work health and safety and in matters of enterprise bargaining. I have experienced good employers and bad employers, and good workers and bad workers. I have played social worker and counsellor for distraught members doing it tough, and I have publicly backed employers where they were prepared to do the right thing. I have seen a lot in my life and have broad professional experience. Being a union official has given me many of those experiences.

So, they may call me a union hack, but no amount of mockery or ridicule from those opposite will ever change the fact that I was a union official, that I have been a member of the trade union movement for over four decades, and that I will be a union member until the day I die. Union official: like the CEPU badge I wear on my lapel, the term is and always will be to me, a badge of honour.