On the Worker's Side (w/ Mark Buttigieg MLC)
NSW Labor MP Mark Buttigieg takes a deeper dive into the world of politics speaking to a wide variety of diverse guests about trade unionism, worker's rights and the future of the union movement in NSW and Australia.
On the Worker's Side (w/ Mark Buttigieg MLC)
Episode 5 - AWU Secretary Tony Callinan
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Here is the full drop of the 5th Episode of “On The Workers Side”. In this episode I had the pleasure of interviewing Tony Callinan who leads the NSW Branch of the AWU - the union that protects workers' rights by negotiating better wages, ensuring safe working conditions, securing fair entitlements, and providing legal support and workplace representation across a diverse range of industries.
G'day, my name's Mark Buddigig. I am the Parliamentary Secretary for Work, Health and Safety and Industrial Relations here in the New South Wales Parliament. Welcome to episode seven of On the Workers' Side. Tonight we have the State Secretary of one of Australia's, if Australia's most, if not Australia's most famous union, the Australian Workers Union. His name is Tony Callanan. Good bloke. Thanks for coming, Tony. Thanks, Mark. Appreciate you having me in. Good on you, mate. Much appreciated. Tony, um, I I might just start. I haven't actually asked you this before in private conversations, but it's always good to know. I gather uh you you got involved in unionism from the tools, did you?
SPEAKER_01I did, mate. Yeah, look, I um growing up in a strong union family, dad was a coal miner in the Hunter Valley. I'd done my apprenticeship at BHP Stirworks, and uh I first joined the union to get on the overtime list because the delegates used to control who got the overtime. So that was my first union engagement, and then I became the delegate, and then when the Stirworks closed down, I worked some contractors and then was always the union delegate, and then went into the Newcastle office of the AW. Kevin Maher gave me an opportunity at the old Newcastle branch of the AW uh about 21 years ago and eventually found my way through to the position that I wanted to hold today, being New South Wales branch secretary.
SPEAKER_00And when you started first getting involved as a Dello, did you ever think that one day you might end up as Secretary of the Union?
SPEAKER_01Not for a second, mate. No, I was just uh just busy doing what I needed to do. When I said I dad was a coal miner, I always thought in about 2010 I'd done some extensive training and I'd had time to reflect on where I got my union values and my organizing from. And initially I always thought it was from dad being a strong unionist, but my organizing capacity comes from mum. Uh dad used to always say, well, ever mum was alive, no one would have time to be bored. She would have us all run around for the soccer club doing all the community events. Um, we're always doing something somewhere, right? So just got my values from her parents and wanted to make a difference to help people out, and that sort of led me to the union. And yeah, couldn't think of doing anything else that I'd rather be doing at this point in time, mate. I love just still love getting out in front of workers and dealing with disputes and visiting work sites over Christmas. So jumped in the car and done seven or eight hundred K road trip around the transmission projects just to be out on the job and talk to the guys. I love getting out there.
SPEAKER_00Now, your union is a very uh uh old steeped in history, rich union. Uh has has uh connections with the Labour Party going way back since day dot.
SPEAKER_01Um some would claim we started the party, Mark, and I think that's a pretty accurate reflection in Queensland. Yeah. I've visited the true knowledge and understand the history often say it's our party.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. So I just want to get your thoughts on how you see the unions movement relationship with the with the Labour Party and why it's so important. Because you do hear a lot of naysayers sometimes say, Oh, you know, the Labour Party is too influenced by unions and unionism, and you know, no one's in a union these days, all that sort of sort of view that you have. I just wanted to get your perspective as a secretary and a major affiliate of the party, right?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I I meant to say from the onset we know each other well, and you know I call a spade a spade, and my direct uh communication at times often you know sees me to conflict with people. I don't mean to be a fancy, but I have a really strong view on this. I've sat on the floor of uh state conference and national conference, and I've heard people talk about the unions having too much control of the ALP, and it's my view is quite simple. It's our party. The unions should have the ultimate control. The union movement started the party to represent the working class. There's no debating that the history is clear. And anyone in the Labour Party that thinks the union movement has too much control of the party of a simple message for them, they should leave the Labour Party and go and start their own because the union movement, it is our party, it is the Labour Party, it must be run by the Union Movement. We don't always get it right, and I don't always agree with every position that every union has. My own union makes mistakes at times, but uh we've got robust processes, democratic processes that must be followed uh to get the best outcome for the parties, and that's always got to be um with what's best for the working class, it's got to be at the forefront of every decision and every debate we have.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a good point, particularly now, I think, because I just want to uh see what you think about this this rise of um obviously coming out of the cost of living crisis and uh and people sort of reaching out for an alternative both on the left and on the right. Um I I want to get your view, and we've seen it unfold in America years in advance, where you know the results now, this this crazy guy Trump in charge of the biggest democracy in the world. I just want to get your view on to what extent is that a product or could be a product of uh left of centre parties like the Labour Party losing touch, divorcing themselves from that base.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, look, we're gonna have strong views on this. We've completely lost lost our way, I think. Um the party's trying to be everything to everyone, and I think we've lost our relationship with our true core voters, that is the working class. If we focused on employment, local procurement, jobs, jobs, and more jobs, health, education, aged care, disability services, there's not a member of the community that wouldn't support our policies. When we start talking about every marginalized group and you know trying to populise everything to everyone, uh we lose our core voters. Um and I get that a lot of these smaller, I'll call them fringe issues are very important to those people. And we've got to take strong positions on them. We should be supporting these groups, but I think we're often prioritizing that ahead of what really matters to our true core voters, and that is the working class. And that's why we see our primary vote where where it is, and the rise of people like Pauline Hansen. Like uh it's easy to promise everything when you're never going to be in a position to deliver anything. Yeah, you know, Pauline and One Nation can say whatever they want, they're probably never gonna I hope they're never in a position where they're able to implement anything, and when we push what their actual policy is, there's no substance, and what is there is along the Liberal Party because Hansen is just a Liberal. That's a fact. She's voted with the Liberals on everything. So when I see working class people and our members saying they're gonna vote Pauline Hansen ahead of Labour, I just we've lost our way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, in fact, a lot of uh a lot of the times when she's had the opportunity to vote for concrete reforms that would have benefited workers, uh, same job, same pay, all those industrial relations reforms that uh Tony Burks brought in, they voted against them, right? Yeah, she's no friend of the working class. No, it's funny how people kind of latch onto it as though she is.
SPEAKER_01It is, right? Because whether we like it or not, uh people have varying views, um, and not everyone supports a lot of the marginalized people in the community, and it's easy for Paul Wynn to come up with a a controversial statement that pleases a few. Um, but you know, privately a lot of people don't agree with a lot of our labour policies. That's in my my opinion, we should stick to the the core labour principles of you know, secure employment, well paid, safe jobs, yeah, good health services, good education, and look after our sick and elderly people.
SPEAKER_00So a lot of it's a a lot of it is a byproduct of us not realising that that's the problem. It's on us too, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_00Can I ask you about uh just one of these issues, which is sort of it's not a great one-on-one analogy, but it's sort of relevant to it. I know that um your union, the AW, and the uh newest union in Australia, the TFTU, that is the uh textile forestry uh Timber furniture. Timber union. I get the acronyms mixed up too. Basically, the timber workers and textile union, um, you've run a really strong campaign on the Great Koala National Park, which was a classic example of an issue where you you had this desire to protect the environment, koala habitat up on the north coast there, but it was also going to cost a lot of jobs, and we tried to sort of uh balance the two, but I think we could have done a little bit better in hindsight. You the unions ended up stepping in and making sure that the workers who are displaced got a good compensation package, but just thought it'd be worthwhile you're walking us through that because I think that's a classic issue.
SPEAKER_01And it is, and it's a it's it was a very uh long and drawn-out process. We dedicated a lot of time and resources to it. Uh, we sat on the koala advisory panel, or if she used to call it the great koala park, or just call it the koala park because I don't think it's that great to be honest. But um, we went for a very thorough process, and the committee came up with three recommendations: a smaller park, a medium-sized park, and a large park. Everyone was on a unity ticket industry, um national parks business said that the medium-sized park is let's uh sustainable forestry industry prosper. Um the large park would have been problematic, and then when it went up to government, we ended up with a park nearly four times bigger than the largest proposal, which I was astounded by. Um and forestry, in my view, I'm not a green activist, I'm a unionist. Um I'll talk more about our friends from Lean in a second, but um, forestry is Mother Nature's very own carbon capture and storage system, right? We all learn at a young age that plants take um you know oxygenate the air and store carbon in them. Um it's a green industry. Australia's forestry is one of the most the best regulated in the world. In New South Wales, out of the hundreds of thousands of hectares of native forestry, less than one percent of that is logged per year. So just when that doesn't sound like m like uh a small amount, right? But that means that if we start today in a hundred years, we still won't have harvested all the trees. Um 50, 60 year life cycle, uh new growth trees, regrowth trees growing at a faster rate than old growth forests generate, you know, more store more carbon, they're better for carbon sequestration. Uh the latest expert advice says heaps of koalas, as the their numbers were drastically underestimated. And yet we still see Lean and the left of our party at Country Labor Conference trying to move motions for more koala park. Well, my message is clear to them. We need a forestry industry. We can have koalas and we can have forestry. Uh, and consistent with my discussion before about people who don't like unions in the Labor Party should go and join their own. Well, there's a party for the environmental activists and it's the Greens. And our friends from Lean and the ones hiding in the left of the party that prioritise environmental outcomes ahead of jobs and outcomes for the working class, particularly in regional New South Wales, should perhaps reconsider buying a Labor ticket and go and join the Greens. It'd be my message to them.
SPEAKER_00But this is the point, isn't it? It's not like uh uh both your unions have been advocating a path where you can have both something that's sustainable and retains employment and economic growth. And these people forget these regional towns rely on all the downstream of economic benefits. But it's the absolutest view of no, we've basically got to shut the whole industry down because we want to go for nice bushwalks and see koalas, like and again, lots lots of people that utilize state forests think they're in a national park.
SPEAKER_01Like if you get go on to Forest New South Wales website, there's lots of campgrounds, there's lots of walking trails, they're well maintained. Most people wouldn't know that they're in a state forest, they think they're in a national park. Yeah. Um, you know, forestry has some of the best AW members in forestry are some of the best firefighters there are. Um when you talk to the other agencies, they'd they're glad to fight fires alongside our members from forestry because they're very well trained, well equipped, equipped, and they manage their asset well. Uh, I think it's just an extremist view that you can't have both. Um and when we've seen the latest scientific proven data come out about koala numbers, quickly the the activists switch to the greater sugar glider or the next the next animal, right? But the reality is when those forests burn and we've seen catastrophic bushfires up and down the east coast, it kills all the animals. The gliders, the koalas, and everything in between, where a well-managed um responsible logging operation doesn't have the impact that a fire, you know, a wildfire has on these environments, and we will see those fires come again once forestry closes down. And you know, the act of saying, well, forestry's losing millions of dollars a year, but they maintain as much public land, more actually, than than national parks. So when that land is shifted from forestry to national parks, the cost to maintain national parks is going to increase.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um so forestry on paper might make a loss, but it generates a lot of income for the government, it provides a lot of employment, particularly in regional towns. There's some towns on the north coast that we decimated when the industry shuts down. And I've said to government ministers and others, it's not like we can send tourists into a hundred thousand hectare block of virgin forest on the north coast and say, just walk down that path and you'll see a koala. You could wander around out there for months and not see one. So I just don't buy that there's going to be tourism jobs. Yeah. Uh and our members in forestry, they look at a tree and they don't say, geez, that'd be nice to sit under. I wonder if the koalas like it. They've been brought up in families about whole generations that look at tree and they go, How many cubic metres of tip floorboards can I cut out of that tree? Right? That's that's them, that's their history, that's their industry, that's their heritage.
SPEAKER_00And we haven't managed this idea of that's another subject, I suppose, which it just occurs to me we should probably talk about. This um you have similar or arguments in the coal industry, right? It's shutting these industries down, but not forward planning the transition. I don't like using that just transition, terrible word, but there's this view oh, it doesn't matter, there'll be new jobs created and they can go off and be XY. If you're a 55-year-old forestry worker or a coal miner or whatever, you basically want to keep doing your job for another 10 years or something.
SPEAKER_01All they know in some cases, right? Yeah. And you know, for I don't know, 15 years or so ago, the AW started a campaign to reserve some domestic gas supply, and back then we're saying prices could quadruple and go up to $12. Well, I think they're up over 50 or 60 at one stage before the federal government intervened. Um and we look, you know, for years we've talked about this 50% renewable target, and I've been saying, where's the other 50% going to come from? No one's maintaining any of our coal-fired generators, they're closing them down, they're reaching the end of their lifespan. Something's got to keep the lights on when the wind's not blowing and the sun isn't shining. Uh we seem to be not planning for that transition. We all know we want to increase renewables, I support it. Every house should have solar panels, but in the meantime, got to keep the lights on, not just for homes, but for industry. Like Tomigo Aluminium uses you know a thousand megawatt hours, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, which is about twelve and a half, nearly thirteen percent of New South Wales power consumption. Wow. We've got six over six hundred members there, there's twelve hundred direct jobs, and for 18 months now I've been working with the state and federal government to try and secure the future of that plant. It's one of two, only two left. Uh, and with what's happening in the Middle East, uh, it's a sovereign capacity issue, and we need to s we need to have a aluminium smelting industry in Australia. Um, and we need support from governments in the world.
SPEAKER_00So what the issue there's the um the issue there's the electricity costs. Electricity costs, mate.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's just through the roof. They've had a 30-year uh power supply agreement that runs out at the end of 2028. Um, and thankfully we had you know Prime Minister Albanese up there before Christmas making an announcement that the federal government's determined to keep it open. I've been working with Premier Mins and other members of the New South Wales government to ensure that they, you know, contribute and assist the federal government. And that deal's not finalised yet, but I'm still working on it. And um, you know, we need to save that industry because it is crucial to our sovereign capability. The Hunter region, again, there's thousands of jobs up there. We've got members that have worked there for 30 years, it's the only job they've had in 30 years, they don't want to be retrained to you know, they've got they want to see it out. And the other thing that nobody talks about when you talk about just transition, it takes a long time to unionise the workplace. We've been bargaining at Tommy Go since enterprise bargaining was introduced. We've got good wages and conditions, and we've got lots of union members and well-trained delegates. If they all go and disperse into smaller industries and uh non-unionized industries, they'll be on lower wages and conditions. And you can't reunionise or unionise industries overnight. No, it takes a decade to lift wages and conditions and safety.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't think enough it does it that we don't put enough effort into we talk about these transitioning out of industries and renewables and all the rest of it, but we don't really talk about how we're gonna do it in a methodical way, so that's the piece that comes first rather than an afterthought.
SPEAKER_01And we've got these large companies that for a long time have just been, like Tommy have said, they're an aluminium manufacturer, and we're talking about federal government's talking about future made in Australia and investment. And it's good that we've got smaller companies starting up, but some of these larger companies should be gearing up to take on this work, you know. We look at transmission tower construction, which is an area we've got a lot of members in. There's next to no local steel. Well, there's no local steel in the towers, there's very little Australian steel even in the reinforcement in the in the footings. Um, you know, we've got another 10,000 kilometres of transmission tower to do in the next decade. Somebody should be, you know, building a mill up to make that steel here rather than import it from China for the next decade. Yeah. Nobody's thinking that far ahead. It's just like we've got to get this done.
SPEAKER_00And you need some assistance to do that, right? Because the domestics market's so small. But once it starts to grow, we're a growing, we're a growing economy now. I think we're what above 30 million people, so you've got to have some foresight with these things. Tony, tell me about this uh the the palm workers scheme. That's an interesting, long-running campaign that the AW has been involved with, where I think we basically import labour from the Pacific Islands, and the idea is that they get to come and fill the gap in uh demand for labour that we have here, and they also earn, in theory, earn some money, and both parties benefit. Tell me where that's gone off the rails.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so when we when I first got involved, it's seven or eight years ago, um, there's a lot of exploitation, and there still is, unfortunately. Um, you know, these are these are our proud island neighbours. They're supposed to be our close friends, and they're wonderful people. Uh, we have organisers right up and down the east coast, and we have organisers all around Australia uh working with these palm visa workers, and they come back year after year. They do things like picking blueberries and tomatoes, they work in in uh fairly difficult circumstances and provide as part of the agriculture industry the food that we we all need. Um but we see I've seen circumstances on the Mid North Coast where I visited a site and uh our members were living in shipping containers, like not uh demountable buildings, actual steel shipping containers, no ventilation, no power, no air condition, two sets of double bunks, so four people in each shipping container. And for the pleasure of living in there and not having any linen or anything that's provided out of bare bunk, they were getting deducted $175 a week out of their wages. The same people getting a deduction of $50 to $60 a week for a bus to take them to and from work. Um, so we've done a lot of work again with the federal government and the scheme is better. We've got a sort of bit of a uh regulation scheme for the labour providers in that. We've really lifted our profile, we've got reasonable membership density and some good activists.
SPEAKER_00Um they fall under the they all fall under the federal jurisdiction for the work act. Yeah, they do, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, as um federal system employers. So yeah, you know, we've got we've employed um uh some good staff in our national office to focus on that. Some of them they've um, you know, from Pacific Islands, so they're they're natives over there, and it's a lot of work. Larte does a lot of work in good work in that area with our organisers. We had an event on Saturday night up the North Coast with the the responsible supply uh sorry, the uh retail supply chain alliance. So it's the AW, the SDA, and the TW.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_01And the concept there is from the farm to the to the shelf. We have a supply chain. Uh Carl's and Woolworths are very good and they're part of that. So we have an event and we invite, and supported by Coles and Woolies, we invite the palm workers along, we put on them some food and drinks and um educate them about their rights. Uh, we also do some pre-departure from uh predominantly Fiji at this stage. We've got an arrangement where we do a sort of pre-departure induction.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01And they're educated about their rights. So when they get here, they know what their rights are as a worker in Australia. Uh and national officers run a fairly big campaign around superannuation for those people. We've done a lot of work and its scheme's not perfect, but it's it's better now than it's ever been.
SPEAKER_00And we're slowly unionising the workforce and getting some good outcomes. Yeah, it's a good campaign. The other one I wanted to talk to you about was the um the AW is one of those unions that looks after so many different roles and classifications. Across the economy, the quantus uh technical people, I think, that's another long-running campaign.
SPEAKER_01So we have a bit of coverage. Sometimes uh it's a blessing, other times it's a bit of a bit of a nightmare, to be honest. Like if for arguments say if I work for um one of say the fire brigade union or the police union, I have to know one award where we've got to know everything from graviggers to hairdressers to construction workers to manufacturing, but and including Quantus. So we we have members in Quarnus under a couple of different enterprise agreements. Um some of our members are they are responsible for the cleaning of the planes, they call them the the appearance, and others are in the engineers alongside. We've got an alliance with the AMW and the ETU. Um, and they're burning some industrial action. Quantus is no surprise to anyone or a notorious hard hard employer to bargain with. Um they're impossible to get decent wage increases out of. You know, members had a wage freeze there, not just from our union, and the TW's done some amazing work there. They have um had some great wins there. But Quantis is a notoriously hard employer, and you know, our members have had a number of disputes there and been on strike, and they're just they're not don't seem receptive at all to that Quantus. Um I think they're a law unto themselves, and I think they just show disrespect for their workers and for the public that that utilise their services, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because it I mean we we discussed this in previous podcasts, this importation of the American industrial relations philosophy under Joyce, uh even under the new CEO, Vanessa Hudson, I think her name is, it's still there's still some remnant sort of she's I think she's doing a better job in that respect, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, she is. And look, at some stage when you you know, I I don't know the exact numbers in the TW case, it's one of Australia's largest penalties, and um you know, great work by them, but surely the company's got to think this rethink their strategy at some stage, right?
SPEAKER_00Um you know, you can't just keep you know taking Australian workers for granted, particularly when they're using the Australian brand name, the flying kangaroo and all the rest of it. Um the other one I wanted to raise with you was uh, and this is a particularly good one um because it sort of went under the radar for many years. Silicosis and the exposure to silica, so you've got this emblematic sort of uh for many years when I was growing up in the workforce, it was asbestosis, mesothelioma, which has a quite a long gestation period. Took us a long time, James Hardy cases, PPE, removal of asbestos, all the rest of it. But then silica started to be come to the fore in the last sort of what 20 years where um young people cutting up engineered stone but also drilling uh tunnels in the city.
SPEAKER_01So we we started a campaign around uh silicate dust five or six years before anyone even thought of the bench tops, right? So we we launched a campaign many, many years ago in relation to silicosis. Our members in tunnelling, particularly here in Sydney with the sandstone. We've done a uh a lot of tunnelling in recent times, but also in quarries. Um Victoria branch had a member in an office worker in a quarry, um, young mother with two daughters, I think. Remember it had two children. Apologies, I can't remember her name. I should remember her name. Um, she was diagnosed with silicosis working in the office at a quarry. So we started this campaign years and years ago. Um obviously, bench tops have a much higher concentration of silica, the old benchtops. Um, and it was good that you know the unions, well, everybody got on board, and we seen a band of the engineered stone, and now we've got alternate products, but it's still an ongoing problem in tunnelling. Uh, we see young workers, um, fit, healthy young workers diagnosed with what will ultimately be a terminal illness. Um, and the government's done a lot of work, particularly, you know, Minister Kotsis has done a heap of work with us and acknowledge the work she's done. Um the register. The silicosis register. And I sit on the um tunneling industry dust task force safety group. Um, the minister's got me on that and doing a lot of work about improving safety and an education program. Um, we done some training in the OAW Office of Granville a couple of years ago uh around Silica for organisers from right across the country, and I'd organise for them to visit a tunnel site just to have a look. Uh, I won't name the name of the tunnel, but just down the road here in Sydney, it's now finished and open. And they welcomed us on. We had about 13, I think 13 or 14 organisers. They knew we were coming, they provided a bus and they're giving the organisers a tour. And when they got down to the tunnel face, you couldn't barely see the machinery from the dust and the filtration systems weren't working. And our organisers said, if this is what it's like when you know we're coming, what's it like when we're not here? Imagine. Right? Yeah, um, and so that was a big program to educate our members in tunnelling too, because they're very proud workers, they're hard workers, they want to get the job done. They're often competitive to see who can get the most meters done. Um, but they're slowly killing themselves. Yeah. Or not so slowly killing themselves. Yeah, yeah, that's true. And not just silly kids. Young men dying. Yeah, young men and women dying.
SPEAKER_00And women dying, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Tragedy.
SPEAKER_00Um, what about the um, and this has been a big one in the national debate, the um gas reservation policy. Tim tell us about that and how how that works.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so WA has a a gas reservation policy which requires, and it's only a very small percentage, I think around five percent of their gas to be reserved and used for domestic use. It's been in place for decades. And we've been working with the federal government, and I know Premier Mins has has been open to the idea here for the East Coast as well, and I know that you know the the government, New South Wales government's been a big supporter of the Narrabri Gas Project again. A lot of our uh left unions, or some of which probably should be in the greens, are against gas, but the facts are we need more gas to assist with our transition to renewable energy. Um so it's a pretty simple process. We let these multinational companies come here, um, extract our gas, liquefy it, export it, and then we're paying the world price for it. We've got nothing, you know. It seems crazy that we don't make them contribute to Australia.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's amazed me. It's it's gas is one, and there's a whole range of other sort of natural minerals and resources, and we just let it all go overseas and don't make any money out of it either.
SPEAKER_01Um I get they've got to make money and they need certainty for investment, and the former government coalition government issued all these licenses and export license of gas companies, but you know, I'm confident we've been working with the federal government and we're we're quietly confident there'll be some announcements in the near future that will do go a certain way anyway, probably not as far as we would hope that they would go, to ensure that we have a domestic supply of gas and we have increased availability because manufacturing, one of our again, one of our workplaces out in Western Sydney, they manufacture food, particularly potato crisps. And a few years ago their gas bill went up by more than two million dollars. Um now this I get there's probably a fair margin made on packets of potato chips, but two million dollar extra on your gas is a lot of money. And industries that people don't think of, like we're not just talking about large um businesses, but things like gas, um, glass, cement, aluminium, steel, right down all the way down to food manufacturing need affordable energy, and a full part of that is affordable gas and a good supply of gas and power.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, hasn't the conflict in the Middle East brought that into sharp relief? I mean it was a big debate prior to that, but after this, short memory.
SPEAKER_01Well we've got short memories, Mark. If we think back to COVID when we couldn't get imports, now we started making things like hand sanitizer and other products in Australia, and we said we need to be a country that makes things and keep, you know, keep them industries alive. It's only a short period of time since COVID and we find ourselves in the Middle East conflict, and we've made the same mistakes all over again. Look at oil refinery and fuel and uh, you know, said Tomago aluminium. If we lose Tomago, we're then beholden to the world aluminium market, and when you don't make it yourself, your international competitors can charge you what they like for it. You need it. Um, we've got to maintain our domestic capacity in these areas.
SPEAKER_00We can keep going for hours, but there are a couple of things I want to quickly touch on before we wind up. Uh industrial manslaughter. Uh, and we uh instituted those laws a couple of years ago, but you've got a protection unit, I think, industrial manslaughter protection unit. You want to walk us through that?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I think it's a it was it's a great bit of legislation. A problem with a lot of this stuff um is then we hope we never have to use it, right? But ultimately, tragically, we do have deaths on site. Um and it comes down to you know who who does those prosecutions. It's a lot of work, unions have limited resources. Again, the legislation itself was a really great move, and again I congratulate the government on on the changes they've made to the Work Health and Safety Act and that, particularly the industrial manslaughter. But I often wonder whether it's ever gonna, you know, be fully utilised the way in which it should be, because we still see people being injured and worse killed on site. Um while the industrial manslaughter's, you know, a positive change. Don't get me started on workers' comp or we will be here all night. You know, I think um we have mem we have members, we have workers injured and killed regularly, and you know, I think the la one and I'll preface this by saying the the both state and federal Labor governments have done some marvellous things. I'm always a supporter of Labour, but I make no apology for calling them out when I think they get it wrong.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I make no apology for pushing them to do better. We definitely got the workers' comp wrong, but I won't dwell on that. I think lots of the other positive stuff. Um we've just got to now put it into practice, you know. Once we have a few prosecutions, um people will take safety, you know, more seriously than they do now. So again, great work by the government to introduce that legislation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but then you've got to get the access to prosecute and the experience. And then the resources, right? Yeah. It's a big job. Yeah. Um, just finally, uh you sort of started with your experience of being exposed to unionism. You had the family background, your mum was a really good organiser, you had a positive experience of union in the workplace. Um, sometimes I know from my experience when I was an organizer, it's hard. You want to hold on to those people who have got it in them and that passion to become delegates and then hopefully organizers and you know the lifeblood of the union. Um, I know you've done uh uh some union summer intern programs, which is a really good program, but I just want to get your view as a secret as a leader of a major union on how you maintain that enthusiasm and how you pick these people from the workplace, the new leaders of the union movement coming up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, leadership I think is uh is a funny thing. You don't pick leadership, leadership picks you, right? Um your peers decide who the leaders are. So I I've got a policy in our branch and I'm I'm pretty, you know, very consistent with it. We try and select our best delegates to be organisers. I try and visit every delegate's training session we do this year in New South Wales. We're doing 25 or 26. We'll train about 500 delegates. That's something I've really ramped up since become the second.
SPEAKER_00You do that in-house, do you?
SPEAKER_01We do, a full-time trainer. Um Tony Stewart ran it for us for years. Tony retired the end of last year and I've employed a full-time resource now to do it in-house. We do them right across the state. I travel to you know, Wagner and Griffith and Tamworth, and we we train hundreds of delegates. Um, but identifying those people tend to identify themselves. Yeah. The next the next problem from on then is you know, I like to see more unionists in politics. As I often say, you know, there's a lot of uh, you know, wannabe politicians pretending to be unionists and not enough unionists in politics, you know. Um but when we get good people, I never hold anyone back from our organization. But uh I'd like to see a number of my staff move into political roles into the future because I know we can get so much more positive change working in, you know, better cohesion with our Labor governments and our unions all working together. Um but it is a we're selecting from a small pool. If you look at our union membership, our density is probably the lowest it's been in in decades, not probably definitely is for decades. So it's a small pool of people. Uh when you're like me and you've got an opinion and you're not afraid to share it. A lot of people look at you and think you're you're a lunatic. That's okay. I'm happy to be badged that. I make no apology for what I believe in, and I'll I'll stand up for our members all day, every day. It's all I do. I say to our staff, our members come first, second, and third, and our delegates are our most important people in the AW. And that's the motto we run by under my leadership, and my team's 100% committed to to growing our union, building our power. Uh, you know, we've in we've now got twice as many regional organisers in our branches when I become a secretary. The AW was born in the bush, uh, and some of my predecessors through mergers and other bits and pieces had competing priorities. We've certainly focused on regional New South Wales, and I'll continue to do that. Um we're growing in regions and our regions need the support of the Labor governments, and I think if the Labor government starts thinking about what people in regions need and delivering for that, um yeah, we'll be in a better place in the future than we are in the world.
SPEAKER_00We might start picking up seats in the regions.
SPEAKER_01We might start actually winning some seats in the bush again, like we used to, right? It's pretty obvious that um you know the coalition's not delivering for regional towns again. That's why a lot of you know our national voters are looking to Pauling. Yeah. Um where Labor is the union of the bush. We've just lost them. Yeah. And we need to win them back. Um and you know, focus on all those little fringe areas where we don't see too well with some of our people in the regions. Again, that you can't see a doctor if you're living somewhere like Walgott or Warren or you know, they've got to travel hundreds of kilometres for what we take for granted. You need cancer treatment, if you need dialysis, you could be traveling four or five hundred Ks each way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's not okay. And then you've got the same problem with education and age care, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and all and all the decision making is going running out of Sydney Metro or all the all the denser urban areas because they're out of touch with how hard it is in those areas.
SPEAKER_01I guess that's where the votes are, and you've got to win enough seat to form government because you can't do anything from opposition. But if we're truly going to get back to what I would say the Labor Glory days, we need to recon reconnect with our core voters, which is the working class, which includes peoples in our regions.
SPEAKER_00Well, on that note, Tony, it's probably a good time to wind up, even though we probably could walk for another one. So again, thanks for having me on. Good on you, mate. It's been really interesting. Appreciate you coming along.
SPEAKER_01Awesome, thank you, Mark. All the best.