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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-05-06 Daily Xml
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Labour Hire Practices

Ms VLAHOS (Taylor) (15:28): I wish to speak today about something that aired on the ABC, the Four Corners program 'Slaving away', on Monday night of this week. The program discussed the practice of certain employment contractors in the horticulture industry around Australia and how they are taking advantage of workers on working holiday visas, subclass 417. Large parts of the electorate of Taylor in the northern Adelaide Plains are intrinsically linked to the horticulture industry and the region is home to a highly dense cluster of horticulturalists in farms, poly and glasshouses. The region currently produces fresh produce, with an approximate farmgate value of $250 million a year in production.

I have been actively working with industry stakeholder groups, such as Primary Producers SA, the Horticultural Coalition of South Australia, Potatoes SA, the HortEx Alliance and the National Union of Workers over several years to ensure that we develop and enhance the productivity, employment and investment opportunities of the horticulture industries in the Northern Adelaide Plains without compromising worker conditions. Every worker in South Australia deserves a fair day's pay for a fair and safe day's work and I am very pleased today that the Premier has announced an inquiry into labour hire practices. No worker should ever have to endure mistreatment, exploitation or harassment at work.

I am very pleased that the Weatherill Labor government will refer the matter of labour hire industry practices to the parliament's Economic and Finance Committee for an inquiry, and I look forward to working with the committee to air any malpractices that are going on. The predatory actions of these rogue labour hire companies deserve to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I repeat that we should not do this without talking to the workers themselves. They bravely spoke out on Monday night about the practices going on around Australia.

Many horticultural businesses in my electorate are family-owned companies that are operated by themselves and have close connections with their staff, treating them as extended family. They, I know, would be disgusted by the content of some of the stories in Slaving Away. The larger companies in the Northern Adelaide Plains have taken action promptly and swiftly. For example, D'VineRipe—one of the largest tomato production sites in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere—have cut ties with the labour hire company that has been underpaying employees at its site and instituted new auditing steps to ensure that the appropriate rates of pay and awards are fully met and that workers have ethical entitlements to a fair day's pay for a safe day's work.

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