SUBJECTS: Visit to Moranbah; visit to Queensland; insecure work; undermining of wages and conditions; impact of insecure work on workplace health and safety; impact of insecure work on mental health; the Government dumping resources from Cabinet; commitment to return to Moranbah; local roads; workplace health and safety. 

HOST: Good morning Moranbah and surrounds. Hope everyone is having a fabulous Monday. Gorgeous weather out there today. We are pretty excited here at 4RFM. We’ve got a special guest with us in the studio. We have got Labor Leader Anthony Albanese. Good morning.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Good morning. Great to be in Moranbah.

HOST: I know. Well it’s great to have you. As a Labor girl myself, it’s pretty exciting to have you in here. But it’s exciting for Moranbah.

ALBANESE: That’s quite a CD collection you’ve got here, I’ve got to say. Old school.

HOST: We do. It’s our favourite wall. We have a wall of CDs in here and our dedicated volunteers burnt every one of those songs onto our system. So we’ve got some hard workers come through here at 4RFM. We’re very lucky. And speaking of workers, you have been out here with a particular interest in speaking to workers, not just from here, you’ve been doing a bit of a regional tour.

ALBANESE: I certainly have. It’s been a big tour. I’ve been to Toowoomba, looking at the Wellcamp site potentially for quarantine facilities there, and been in Brisbane, been in Redcliffe, we talked with aged care workers trying to get vaccinated, we were up in Cairns talking to the tourism sector, we were in Mackay at Komatsu looking at manufacturing, in Gladstone we were talking to people at a GP clinic again about vaccines and the impact of the pandemic and then yesterday I had a fantastic meeting at the Workers Club here at Moranbah. It’s a great facility, I’ve got to say.

HOST: It is an amazing facility.

ALBANESE: I’m told the heart of the town.

HOST: It is.

ALBANESE: And I was with Michele O’Neil as well, the ACTU President, and Russell Robertson, or Robbo as he’s known by everyone, I think he knows everyone in this town, talking about miners and talking about their conditions, talking about labour hire, the undermining of permanent work that’s happening, and people coming along who are the local lodge presidents and secretaries and others talking about their experience first-hand. It was a fantastic opportunity to talk with people and then I met with the mayor and the deputy, Anne and Kelly.

HOST: Who are also wonderful.

ALBANESE: And I met the other councillors as well from the Isaac Regional Council and then had a feed with them last night. It was a really good afternoon and evening, really hearing first-hand about working conditions, primarily about secure work, about the concern that’s there. Smythie the secretary of the union was good enough to be here with us as well and talking about just the insecure work that’s there. The figures are quite astonishing of where it’s gone from permanent employees in the coal mining industry and what’s happened over a short period of time now, whereby less than half are now permanent employees. And that means an undermining of wages and conditions, which is critical. I met Simon. I’ve spoken to him during Zoom calls before so it was great.

HOST: You met all our local celebrities by the sound of it.

ALBANESE: It was great seeing him first-hand and actually meeting him. Him and one of his mates have done Zoom calls. I’ve asked questions about it in Parliament, actually, of Scott Morrison about two people working side by side doing the same job but one of them being paid $40,000 less and not having annual leave, not having sick leave, not having the conditions that come with permanent work. It’s not fair. And it is of course feeds through to an undermining of working conditions, which, one of the things that we heard about yesterday as well is the impact it has on occupational health and safety. If you’re not a permanent employee, if you don’t have that security, you’re less likely to come forward about issues and to make sure you’re in a position to have the security to say, ‘Hey, we think this is a potential problem’. And we know that mine safety is such a huge issue.

HOST: And that also comes back to mental health, I suppose. Because if you’re living in, you know, a workplace where you’re scared, so if you’re scared to say anything because you’re afraid to lose your job, if you’re scared to speak up about anything, it puts a lot of pressure on you mentally.

ALBANESE: Exactly. And this is a tough industry. It doesn’t need things being added on top of that. And it’s mental health, it’s also the mental health concerns that come from insecure work, whereby it’s hard to get a mortgage, it’s hard to think about when you’re having your first kid or your extra child, if you’re not secure in your employment, if you’re not getting those entitlements, you’re not getting the support economically. That can have a real impact on you. And people here work hard in this town. They deserve security. They deserve respect. And it’s been really good being here with Robbo talking to people first-hand just about what their concerns are. And I’ve been very determined to get out and about and to listen to people, is the important thing. Politicians are good at talking. We need to listen to what the concerns are.

And one of the other issues that was raised yesterday and again today is the abandonment by the current Government of resources being even in the national Cabinet. When Barnaby Joyce took over it went out of the Cabinet, which means that resources aren’t sitting around the main table when the discussions are taking place. Now, this is an industry worth $310 billion. There’s a million Australians, direct and indirect, impacted by the resources sector right across the country. But particularly here in Queensland it’s important. And I think it is just so hypocritical of a Government that says they care about resources. You never actually hear them talk about resources in terms of workers. And now they think it’s just about the owners of the capital, the shareholders, not the people who make the wealth. And the people who make the wealth are the workers.

HOST: We have these discussions a lot about that.

ALBANESE: It’s a very distorted view of the world that they have. I’m concerned about all workers. And I know Michele O’Neil and the ACTU are running a big campaign about secure work and I committed, last night again, I spoke about our plan for secure work that’s about making sure that security of employment is one of the objects of the Fair Work Act, that we deal with casualisation, that we deal with Same Job Same Pay, all of these issues. On casualisation, it’s a big issue, we know that the miners’ union have taken action for their members, the Skene case was a big one in the region, and other cases have found themselves in court, with the Federal Government backing the mine owners not the mine workers in terms of saying that, I think Smythie put it yesterday, the idea of saying that someone’s a permanent casual is by definition a tautology. Like, it doesn’t make sense. And that’s really what the court cases have found, is that if someone has the same shifts, and they’re given them over a period sometimes a year in advance, they’re not a casual employee and they should receive proper conditions. But the Federal Government have undermined that. They’ve undermined it in legislation. And I must say the One Nation Party voted with the Government to undermine permanent work and to support increased casualisation, so their hypocrisy has shown up. And for the Greens party, of course, they don’t get resources at all. And we need a resources sector. Change does happen in the way that things are done. But you’ve got to look after communities. And that’s what Labor’s about, making sure that workers get looked after.

HOST: I was saying earlier, it’s great to have you up here in our community because we do quite often miss out on visits and on kind of recognition, I suppose. Like you said, the industry is massive. And it sometimes feels like, obviously not speaking personally, I work at the radio station, but our workers out here you know have a massive contribution to the major centres in this country and we miss out on that recognition. And not only that, we miss out on speaking and being heard. So I applaud you on doing this listening tour and getting out there and listening to everybody and I’m sure everybody is being very blunt and giving you their honest opinions which is what the miners out here are very good for.

ALBANESE: Straight talking, which I am as well. Apparently this is the first time a major political leader has been to Moranbah since Julia Gillard.

HOST: Yes, it is very exciting. I was saying earlier I remember her coming.

ALBANESE: It’s been almost a decade basically.

HOST: It has. We get a few come up sometimes.

ALBANESE: I will be back.

HOST: Great. I will hold you to that. We have long memories here in Moranbah. It will be great to get you back. But after you leave here today you guys are headed over to Clermont?

ALBANESE: We are going to Clermont, which will be great.

HOST: And you are going to be at the Commercial and The Grand I hear.

ALBANESE: We will, the Commercial and the Grand. So come and say g’day to me and Robbo and we’ve got Senator Murray Watt, who is the Shadow Minister for Queensland Resources and Northern Australia.

HOST: He’s a bit of a regular in here.

ALBANESE: I think this is his fourth visit here this year.

HOST: He is just making sure he is well known. It’s good.

ALBANESE: He is a great part of my team and I want Robbo to be part of my team as well. We actually need someone who is a miner, who is from this community, who understands the sector, who will be a strong voice for the community. And we are going to Clermont and then to Emerald. And there I will be with Matt, our candidate for Flynn, the great Mayor. He is doing really well and we will be meeting with the Mayor there in Emerald and having other meetings. So getting out and about.

HOST: Definitely, covering all the bases of industry and everything. That is wonderful to see.

ALBANESE: Indeed. Well, it’s a diverse country and it is made up of many different parts and if you want to lead the country I think and you’ve lead the whole country and you’ve got to get out and listen to people and to engage and to learn as well. There’s an old saying that we have two ears and one mouth for a reason, and we should use the two ears to listen twice as much as we should talk. And last night at the forum - I’ve got the say, we had a huge turn-up at the club, it was great - and it was terrific just to hear from people first-hand and hear about a whole range of issues that they are concerned about including issues infrastructure.

Roads are a big issue around here. We heard about that certainly from the council. The fact that the council here has to provide services for so many fly-in, fly-out and drive-in, drive-out, but in terms of the way that local government funding works they don’t really get the funding that takes into account that there is not just a permanent population here, but it swells because of the nature of the workforce.

HOST: Its always very frustrating when they do the stats every couple of years in the census because the FIFO workers and DIDO workers don’t count as permanent residents, but if anything were to happen then they still need our facilities.

ALBANESE: Exactly. As the councillors said to us last night, if they need an ambulance, they need one to be from here, not from Mackay or Townsville or Brisbane or wherever it is that they are from.

HOST: That’s exactly right.

ALBANESE: So those sorts of issues really hit home and that is the great benefit of coming and listening to people.

HOST: Wonderful. Anthony thank you so much for coming and talking to us. You have said you will be back so we hope that you will come back and chat to us. Safe travels on the rest of your trip. So Clermont, Emerald, anyone who is listening and wants to have a chat, throw out some questions ...

ALBANESE: Well we are going to the Miners’ Memorial too.

HOST: Oh wonderful.

ALBANESE: Which is important here to recognise that it is a dangerous industry.

HOST: It is an amazing memorial. It is beautiful.

ALBANESE: It’s just a reminder that we have to keep safe. I know that Australians are worried about staying safe from COVID at the moment, quite rightly. But a lot of people who go to work are in dangerous occupations and we need to make sure that they are kept safe each and every day because that is not something that you can be immunised from. It’s something that you need to look after each and every day and the trade union movement, if it wasn’t for them then we wouldn’t have the safety provisions that are there today which is why it is so important.

HOST: And you need to be not afraid to speak up.

ALBANESE: Absolutely.

HOST: All right. Thank you and thank you for being and advocate for the working men down there in Canberra. Greatly appreciated and we look forward to getting you back in.

ALBANESE: Thanks very much. Looking forward to getting Robbo as part of the team.

HOST: Excellent and yes we will be behind him all the way.

ENDS