Dr LAWRENCE (5:29 PM) —That was a classic case of the confusion of ends and means. All of us would want to see improvements in every workplace in this country to ensure that we get the best value for every input of labour and capital that we possibly can. But we do not justify that by the means that this government has used. Using the arguments of the member for O'Connor (Mr Tuckey), he would, I am sure, quite happily have defended the moral rights of slave traders and the exploitation of child labour. You got a good outcome; it was very cheap—but there were people around this world who saw that as immoral. So let us look at this dispute and let us look at what this legislation is all about, not confusing ends and means and actually embracing a decent stance.

The events of 7 April will go down in history in this country; they have already. There were mass sackings around Australia. Let us remember what happened. Over 2,000 workers were locked out of their workplace in the middle of the night. In Fremantle 200 people lost their jobs. This included permanent and casual staff, the fully trained, the newly entered and apprentices. People who had just been taken on by Patrick got the sack. This was enforced by security guards with dogs.

Mr Martin Ferguson interjecting—

Dr LAWRENCE —Yes, we should protest about it. Absolutely! If there are any decent standards in this country we should protest about it. Not only were they there with their dogs on chains but they subsequently used mace. They certainly had canisters of it in Fremantle. They had police back-up where needed. The workers in Fremantle who were surprised and stayed in their workroom had to be escorted from the waterfront by police because of the behaviour of the security guards that night. They were frogmarched out of their place of work and locked out securely for over a month. There was no notice given, no letter of dismissal—in fact, many of them still to this day have not had a letter of dismissal—and no reasons given to them by their employer. As a result of those actions, there were families suddenly without income and many of them with dismal prospects of future employment. Some of the older workers, having lost their jobs, could look forward to no job in the future.

That is what happened on the night of 7 April. The next day Australians around this country woke up to find that their country—not the government's country but our country—had changed irrevocably and for the worse. Every newspaper, every television set and every radio station carried ominous images and sounds of dogs straining on chains, of security guards in black—images that are reminiscent of the totalitarian regimes of the past and present—keeping workers behind locked gates and fences. Remember, this was no strike. These people were locked out of their workplaces. In doing so, the employer and the government beside it breached longstanding principles of freedom of association—principles that we are signed up to in our own laws and in international agreements. The right to organise was defied and international labour standards were violated by these actions.

By that time it was absolutely clear that this was not just the actions of Patrick; this was part of a government inspired conspiracy—and I use that word because the government has not been prepared to come out and publicly say precisely what it did and when it did it. You have to conclude that that is because it was engaged in these clandestine activities. The first indication of that, of course, was when the Dubai work force was sprung.

But, following those events of 7 April, the first thing that showed how clearly the government was involved was the midnight press release of the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business (Mr Reith) welcoming the move. Barely had Patrick made the announcement than the minister responsible for workplace reform was out in the public arena, somewhere close to midnight, announcing that he thought it was a wonderful thing. He had really not had the time to estimate it, if he had really been distant from it; nonetheless, he immediately knew that it was fantastic. Of course, the next day we saw the introduction of this legislation just a few hours after the sackings. How was that possible unless they had been involved right from the start as part of the planning process?

On that day we had images that I will never forget—the leering smirks and the backslapping between the minister and the Prime Minister (Mr Howard). The Prime Minister did back down a little later when he realised that appearing to be so joyful about people losing their jobs was perhaps not so smart. But, at the time, when questioned, the Prime Minister made it very clear that the reason these people had lost their jobs, their cardinal sin—it was not because of anything they had done or had not done; it was not about productivity—was that they were members of a union. That was why they were sacked! Because they had the temerity to join together to work for decent wages and conditions.

The minister, of course, during all this time was triumphant and the incredible Corrigan was chewing up the airwaves with his deceit and his propaganda. He has been a bit more silent of late, after some court decisions that will make his future very uncomfortable. We have had later revelations by the disgruntled ex-Dubai co-conspirators and the infamous Dr Webster. I am sure we are going to hear a lot more about that.

Before long, not only did we see that these workers had been sacked and that the government endorsed it; we also had non-union replacements appearing out of the National Farmers Federation front at Webb Dock. The union's warning about that was dismissed. They were told they were paranoid, that this was not going on, but of course it was. And it was the result of a corporate scam which was announced with pride by Lang Corporation on 8 April, the day after the sackings. The Lang Corporation said at the time that the four Patrick companies had been put into receivership and that the primary employers of the 1,400 waterfront workers sacked the previous night had accumulated losses of $56 million. Accumulated losses! They had had funds ripped out of them. The company owed them money. These subsidiaries, they said, are the primary employers of labour in the Patrick group. They thought that was a very clever manoeuvre and were patting themselves on the back. It had been organised some time before, again with the understanding and agreement of the government.

At the time, they said they were going to resume stevedoring activities at the affected ports within 48 hours. They were ready to roll. The big plan was in operation through contracts with new labour suppliers—in particular, the National Farmers Federation. They said that they had entered into a number of alternative specialist service contracts. Specialist is right—using former soldiers who were part of the failed Dubai operation.

Lang said in pride that its balance sheet had not been affected by the move into administration of the four companies. Game, set and match, they thought. Far from it. That scam has now been pulled apart and will be the subject of further court action. This particular scam was resonant of the bottom-of-the-harbour scheme. It is no accident that Mr Costigan came out and made the comparisons.

But the Lang shares climbed steadily—at least until recently when they started to drop off pretty dramatically—and those new workers began unloading ships around the country, albeit at a snail's pace. Some of the claims that have been made by members opposite are extraordinary. I stood on the Fremantle waterfront and watched the new work force, not surprisingly, unload containers at the rate of five, six or seven per hour—nothing like the rates claimed.

Members of the MUA around the country, other unions and fair-minded people all over the place, supported them in forming pickets to prevent the cargo leaving Patrick's. So, yes, they did get them off some ships, but they were piling up on the waterfront as people defended their rights to be members of a union and, importantly, their right to work, their right to be treated decently, their right to a future. International support was offered and civil rights campaigners everywhere objected to injunctions that were being placed against peaceful picketing. Some of those injunctions were subsequently overturned. These were events that no-one ever thought they would see in Australia; they are certainly events that I never thought I would see in Australia.

I am very pleased that the courts moved to insist on the reinstatement of the workers, justly, and concluded that there was an arguable case that a conspiracy to act illegally had occurred. That matter will, of course, be before the courts later. Right at this moment all of the workers around this country on the waterfront are still subject to manoeuvring by Patrick and the government. But, fortunately, most of them are back at work, albeit insecurely.

I think it is worth going back through some of the elements of that conspiracy—the arguable case for the conspiracy. It clearly began with the briefing paper that went to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business in March 1997. He was advised, and probably did not need much advising, in the following terms:

Stevedores would need to activate well prepared strategies to dismiss their work force and replace them with another quickly in a way that limited the prospect of, for example, the commission ordering the reinstatement of the current work force.

It was designed to get round their own legislation, both the spirit and the fact of it.

Following this, there were a series of secret meetings, and expensive reports and consultancies. Polling and media strategies were developed, and they are not available to the Australian public, even though the taxpayers paid for them. The object of all of these was to sack the entire Patrick work force and possibly, initially, even the P&O work force. The conspiracy involved training a replacement work force. First we had the Dubai shemozzle and then the National Farmers Federation front at Webb Dock. `Oh no, this is not just to train a work force,' they said, `this is a bona fide stevedoring company.' Pull the other one. There were consistent denials by both the government and Patrick of their involvement at any stage. They expressed surprise. They knew nothing about any of this. The story as it is now unravelling, because of the disgruntled former plotters, reveals details of a very elaborate scam indeed. Over time, I think more will be revealed.

Simultaneously, Patrick is restructuring the company to remove any assets and to load all the major liabilities on the labour hire companies to send them broke—to send them to the bottom of the harbour. But perhaps most lethal of all, from the point of view of this government involved in all this planning, is the engineering of a major government propaganda campaign. I use that word advisedly; it was not just an advertising campaign it was a straight out propaganda campaign. It was obvious to everyone that they were shaping up to a major dispute in which the goals were first of all to demonise the workers, to make the wharfies look like they came from another planet and to make them look like they were not deserving of any decent standards.

They manufactured rorts. The minister made them up. He stood in this place with daily rorts and he made them up. They did not exist. They exaggerated wages and conditions. They dehumanised ordinary workers. They misrepresented the objectives as being productivity driven and they misrepresented the facts. Inconvenient data were ignored. They played to envy and resentment in the community. These are tough times for a lot of people and if you can point to people who have a lot then sometimes you can get away with demonising them. They wanted to refocus anger away from the real parasites, the truly greedy, some of whom sit on their front bench.

The implication that blue-collar workers are not entitled to decent wages and conditions was through and through all of this discussion. We heard it a while ago. If you have a coat on and a collar and tie, if you are a stockbroker or a lawyer or a doctor or an accountant or a clerk, you can earn decent wages; but if you are a blue-collar worker, forget it. That is what this was all about. Of course, all of this was designed simply and directly to remove the Maritime Union from the waterfront and ultimately to return to the Bull system, where they were not able to cooperate with one another. This was the so- called hungry mile, where workers would compete with one another. You only have to listen to the minister to see that that is precisely what they are on about. It is worth quoting from Justice North's original decision.

Mr Moore interjecting—

Dr LAWRENCE —Another flunkey? We get an interjection from the minister at the table. Justice North is described by the minister at the table—I want it in the Hansard record—as `another flunkey'. What an extraordinary comment. I am sure that the honourable justice will be flattered by that description coming from you. Given your standing in this community he will probably wear that as a badge of honour. In his summary, he says:

The cancellation of the Labour supply contracts and the appointment of administrators on 7 April 1998 were made possible by a complex inter-company transaction which occurred in September 1997. By dividing the functions of employing workers and owning the business between two companies, the Patrick Group put in place a structure which made it easier to dismiss the whole workforce. It is arguable, on the evidence, that this was done because the employees were members of the union.

For that and only that reason. His Honour further said:

There is also evidence that the Patrick owners and other companies in the Patrick Group, together with others, agreed on the unlawful acts as part of an overall plan to replace the workforce with non union labour.

That particular judge `flunkey' certainly thought that that was your principal objective.

As the member for Fremantle I have watched all of this unfold very directly. These are my constituents. These are people who work hard in my electorate. They are families in my electorate. They are ordinary Australians. It has been uniquely awful in Western Australia with the connivance of the state government and the Fremantle Port Authority. We have seen the use of the Tactical Response Group to move protesters from their initial position, complete with helmets and batons drawn. This was a clandestine operation at 2 o'clock in the morning and the workers were pushed and shoved, arrested and then some of them released. They moved a little further away from the gate where they were being locked out. Remember, they were locked out of their workplace. The protesters established what is now known as Tom Edwards corner in memory of a wharfie who was killed in 1919 in a dispute that was orchestrated by another reactionary Liberal government.

The wharfies and their families were joined by many members of the local community, who were genuinely horrified by the infringements of civil liberties and human rights that they saw. There were threats, too, from the PGA and the WA Farmers Federation to breach the picket line, with testosterone pumped up farmers claiming to need containers urgently. They said they needed it for seeding. I am a farmer's daughter; they did not need anything for seeding and later they had to confess that that was the case because when they suddenly had access to the wharf they could not find the containers. They did not know where they were or what they were. They inflated the numbers they needed too. It started off being 200 and by the time they actually got onto the wharf there were maybe two or three.

At the instigation of the Court government, 500 police were massed, including recruits from country offices. They still had their khakis on. Suburban police stations on one night were left without any officers at all. Emergency numbers rang out. People who were actually being burgled could not get the police to come to their homes. These police then rehearsed proposed action in full view of the protest lines, very provocatively. Over one night they used helicopters and fixed wing aircraft for hours and hours to spotlight and intimidate the assembled crowd. They were going to move the Farmers Federation trucks through at any cost. They are supposed to keep the peace. One wondered what their objective was on that night. It was clearly to run over the protesters.

But, in the end, because there were more than 1,000 people gathered on the waterfront, the police retreated. I still retain images of that night. There were people there from all walks of life; elderly men and women lying on the road, sleeping while waiting for the police to go away and resume their proper operation in the community. The cost of this one night's operation to date has been estimated at over $1 million—and in the parliament at least part of that has been acknowledged.

There was continued harassment, even after this action and even after the High Court decisions. One fellow, for instance, was arrested for walking his dog without a collar. It would be interesting to see how that goes when it finally comes into the courts. And there have been provocative acts ever since, including slapping yellow stickers on these so-called `chardonnay workers' who have got not very high level motor vehicles; all of them copped lots of yellow stickers as they drove to and from the picket line. There have been provocative acts to breach the picket line, placing lives in danger: on one occasion, they used undue force to get in a fuel truck and mounted the kerb to get it there.

Even after the all-clear for work, the Fremantle Port Authority and Patrick's continued to prevaricate. Firstly, they had no maintenance crew. This dispute had been going on for weeks and weeks, the day comes when the courts actually say you go back, the administrators are ready to roll—suddenly nothing is going to happen because there is no maintenance crew. Then, the next day, when the TLC organised a maintenance crew, the paperwork from the Fremantle Port Authority is suddenly not done and they were not working over the weekend—this is a seven-day a week, 24-hour a day port. The urgency had suddenly gone out of it.

The workers—I am pleased to say—have finally gone back. They still have no security and they are still at risk as a result of this phoney company restructuring. Just a small note in parenthesis—perhaps an amusing one, but one can see that the workers are sometimes entitled to feel paranoid: I think it was yesterday that senior members of the union went to meet with the administrators to find that the consultant employed is one Victor Court—brother of Charlie Court—and the offices to be used are the offices of Hendry, Ray and Court. They walked out of there feeling a bit the worse for wear.

In this bill we have obviously got a tax on everybody to pay for the government's stupidity. The fund will not be subject to parliamentary scrutiny and it is effectively a payment for Patrick's mismanagement, their inadequacies and their admitted illegal behaviour. The taxpayers are being asked to fund that. There have been no consultations with companies other than P&O and Patrick's—many of whom resent being forced to pay the levy to assist their competitors. How will P&O and Patrick's be able to absorb it, as they claim? Clearly, as a result of duopoly pricing. It was very clear, even with the last round of waterfront reform, that a lot of the productivity improvements were not passed on to the shippers and producers; they stayed with the stevedores.

In the past, only genuine and voluntary redundancies were funded; not this time. In the past, those redundancies were the result of negotiation; not this time. They resulted from some analysis of what work force was actually required; not this time.

This fund is extraordinary, coming as it does on the back of a very vast conspiracy by this government, a conspiracy ultimately to do one thing: to undermine a union—that is all it is about—a `class enemy', as they see it, people who are prepared to work together for decent wages and conditions. The members opposite would rather they were all standing one at a time, at the mercy of the companies which would seek to employ them when they choose and how they choose. I, for one, as a member of this parliament will not ever stand by and let that go without comment and protest.