Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I hear a babble from Senator Sterle and I look forward to his contribution to this debate later on. I hope it is a little better than the contribution by the previous speaker, Senator Bilyk. My hearing is not all that good, but I kept hearing her talk about 'the Howes report' or the 'Howes inquiry'. I think she was referring—and perhaps she was saying this and I just did not hear it properly—to the Howells review. But she could have been talking about the Paul Howes review, because this is another instance where policy—a whole lot of new regulation—is being thrust upon the Australian public at the behest of the union movement, in which Mr Howes is a very important and significant person. When Mr Howes and Mr Bill Ludwig, from my state of Queensland, say something, the Labor Party and the government jump. If those union leaders want to make it hard for employers to employ foreign labour, the Gillard government will do exactly as they are told. This is a government run by faceless men, most of whom are outside parliament.

I wanted to make a contribution on this bill firstly because I have an aversion to needless regulation and secondly because it is desperately difficult—particularly in Northern Australia, where I come from and which I have coalition responsibility for—for employers to get labour at appropriate times to do appropriate work. I also have some issues to raise which relate to my role as chairman of the Senate Scrutiny of Bills Committee. While listening to Senator Bilyk speak, I was thinking that her speech had probably been written by Mr McTernan, Ms Gillard's new imported worker from Scotland. I wondered, whilst I was thinking about that, whether Mr McTernan is here under some sort of work visa. I can understand why that might be the case—clearly Ms Gillard cannot find anyone in Australia to give her decent advice on how to increase her popularity.

I know the provisions for importing workers into Australia require you to try to get local experts first, and clearly Ms Gillard has tried and tried and tried—