Mr MARTIN FERGUSON (6:24 PM) —I rise to support the Coal Mining Legislation Amendment (Oakdale Collieries) Bill 1999 and, in doing so, to briefly refer to the history of this dispute. As we all know, back in May of this year, the workers of Oakdale Collieries turned up to work only to find that their jobs had disappeared. Their company had gone into liquidation and they were, like many other workers in similar situations, left on the unemployment scrap heap. I raise those issues because, in historical terms, I think the Oakdale dispute is going to turn out to be an exceptionally important dispute. It has, once and for all, caused this parliament to face up to the fact that Australian working men and women are entitled to the proper protection of employee entitlements in the event of employer insolvency.

The problem today is that, yes, the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business has released a discussion paper—the Labor Party will respond to that paper in due course—but, despite having released that discussion paper, the minister does not want a proper discussion in the House. It is the minister, as the Leader of the House, who has short-circuited the time allowed for what I regard as an exceptionally important debate. I say that because, when you think about an insolvency or redundancy situation, you should refer not only to the nature of the bill before the House today but also to the other expected add-ons from the government. These add-ons are about trying to ensure that a worker who loses his or her job not only appropriately receives their employee entitlements—their rights—in an insolvency situation but also can look to government for a helping hand, for assistance to try to get training or access to alternative opportunities to enable them to transfer to a new employment opportunity, be it in their local area or a region nearby.

The tragedy of the Oakdale situation is that, yes, perhaps at long last—because of the Oakdale dispute, the leadership of the CFMEU and the support given to the Oakdale workers by the Labor Party and the communi ty—we will resolve the issue, if there is proper debate and consideration of the issues, that has plagued working people for many years: their right in insolvency situations to receive their just entitlements. Let us be clear: all they are receiving are their entitlements—their accumulated annual leave, annual leave loading, access to long service leave and severance pay entitlements. It is not as if this is manna from heaven. It is something that these workers have worked long and hard to build up, almost as if it were a bank account, as a result of the sacrifices and hard work they have put in as workers in a given employment situation.

Here we have a bill which is about giving a small section of the Australian work force that is being faced with such a situation their just entitlements—their employee entitlements—when their employer walked away from his responsibilities, his personal responsibilities, to ensure that these workers and their families were looked after. So I congratulate the Oakdale miners, the CFMEU and the Australian community for giving these workers and their families support. I am not sure that this government will fully deliver a proper system to guarantee workers in a similar situation in the future. But I tell you what: on our return to government, we will clean up any unfinished business on which this government has left the door open and ensure that, once and for all, we have a system in place that guarantees workers' entitlements in the event of an employer insolvency.

I would also raise in the debate the need to ensure that, in addition to a regime that guarantees employee entitlements, we have side by side with such a regime a system of labour market assistance which guarantees that those workers who are displaced do not have to draw upon their entitlements—their personal savings in the form of annual leave, long service leave or annual leave loading. More importantly, we will ensure that those workers have as a right, through government assistance, access to decent training opportunities which ensure that, if they are displaced from a given industry, they are able to engage in training and skilling so that their employability is improved for the purposes of gaining alternative employment opportunities in the future. That is exceptionally important.

This government wanted to walk away from the Oakdale workers and the broader issue of employee entitlements in the same way that they walked away from the broader issue of ensuring that displaced workers have an entitlement to decent training opportunities. These opportunities mean that they will have skills to get alternative employment opportunities when they are displaced, be it in an insolvency situation or any other situation which leads to them losing their jobs. That is why I say that the issue before the House is important. But it is only part of the debate about the assistance that should be made available to workers in the event of insolvency. I commend the bill to the House and congratulate the CFMEU, the Oakdale workers and their families and, more importantly, the Australian community for forcing the hand of the Howard government, the government that was going to walk out on the Oakdale miners and their families.

Sitting suspended from 6.30 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.