Mr MARTIN FERGUSON(3.50 p.m.) —I rise to support the motion of the member for Prospect (Mrs Crosio) concerning the need to protect workers' hard-won entitlements. As a former trade union official of 20 years full-time service, I speak with some experience and emotion concerning this problem. With all respect to the member for Menzies (Mr Andrews), I might suggest that the thrust of the proposition is somewhat different from a one-off loss of fee for service for a lawyer in an industry with some of the most restrictive work practices in the nation.

It is for that reason that in my very first speech in this parliament I suggested that one of the biggest issues now and in the future for Australians is security in life. Importantly, at the heart of this question is security at work. Unfortunately, as we all know, in recent decades the old security that most people used to have with their work and their futures has been drastically eroded.

A prime example of this is workers in the textile, clothing and footwear industry, who know all too well the insecurities that have been caused by the opening up of Australia to world trade. I also refer in passing to the orgy of company takeovers in the 1980s which added to people's job uncertainties and feelings of insecurity, in the same way as the current government's attack on the Public Service is doing across Australia—just as has, more recently, the destructive fad of downsizing among senior management under which a measure of the size of one's salary package is related to how successful you are in sacking workers.

For this reason, Australians are now demanding that politicians address their growing uncertainties in life—and we on the Labor side are determined to do so. The former Labor government, I am pleased to say, commenced this. For example, in 1993 it made employees' entitlements a higher priority than those of the tax commissioner when companies went broke—a major breakthrough.

I also refer in passing to the decision in 1994 to ratify an ILO convention for the protection of workers' claims in the event of company insolvency. Further, as the member for Menzies said, in accord mark 8, the Labor government agreed to examine and, if desirable, improve employees' protections in such cases.

The motion before the House is aimed at getting this parliament to now inquire—not resolve but inquire—into the possibility and the details of adopting a wage earner protection fund for all Australians. I regard that as the next vital step in a process of development that has been pursued over the last couple of years.

I suggest that, when companies fail through mismanagement or other causes, workers not only lose their jobs but unfortunately and all too often lose their wages and accumulated entitlements, including access to annual leave and long service leave. I believe that they are duly owed those entitlements and that we as a nation are obligated to go out of our way to ensure they receive their full and proper entitlements. There are also often delays in receiving their back pay when such a situation occurs. I know from personal experience as a union official the great hardship that such circumstances cause working people and their families, especially those in regional communities.

I also know that, more often than not, such hardship unfortunately falls on the lowest paid and less industrially strong in the community, because they all too often work in the industries confronted by structural change which results in many companies going under. On that note, I suggest it is crystal clear from previous investigations in Australia and from the experience of other countries that wage earner protection funds are economically viable and socially necessary in a civilised modern nation. We need a parliamentary inquiry now, not later, to ensure that we properly investigate this constructive proposal. We need it in order to push the policy debate along and to give Australians a greater sense of security and hope for the future in one of the most important areas of their lives: namely, their work and their security with respect to the capacity to look after their families.

Accordingly, I commend this motion to the House and ask that the government not walk away from its responsibilities to look after working people at a time of uncertainty and so ensure that employers are required to face up to their full and proper obligations with respect to workers' accumulated entitlements.