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Glenn Sterle, Senator for Western Australia
First Speech - 16/08/2005
Senator STERLE (Western Australia)
(5.26 pm)—Thank you, Mr President. I am
truly honoured to stand in this place today on
behalf of the Australian Labor Party and the
people of Western Australia who have put
their trust and faith in me. It is a great privilege
that has been bestowed on me and I will
honour that trust and faith at all times. I congratulate
my parliamentary colleagues who
are also here as a result of electoral success
last year. In particular, to the 14 colleagues
who, like me, are walking the red carpet corridors
for the first time this session as a senator:
my best wishes are with you as we fulfil
our roles on this great democratic stage.
While there is much that we in this chamber
might disagree on, I suspect that those of
us who stand here for the first time would be
united on at least one point, and that is the
appreciation we have for those who have
helped us to get here. I certainly did not
cross the Nullarbor to this place alone. I have
been fortunate enough to have a convoy of
hardworking members and officials of the
Transport Workers Union, the TWU, at my
side. They have steered my path to our nation’s
capital and provided me with perhaps
life’s greatest lessons along the way. I am
particularly proud to stand here alongside
other former TWU officials, Senator Hutchins
and Senator Conroy.
Mr President, I would like to acknowledge
the presence in the gallery of John Allan, Jim
McGiveron, Tony Sheldon and Alex Gallegher.
Together, these men form the Federal
Committee of Management of the Transport
Workers Union of Australia—an institution
that has for over 100 years fought, at times
bitterly, for the advancement of transport
workers. That resolve is no weaker today nor
will it ever cower in the shadow of an arrogant
government, like the one we face in this
country today. Like so many of our nation’s
other unions and union activists at this juncture
in our history, I am sure the Transport
Workers Union is poised and ready for battle,
because the protection of workers is not an
optional extra; it is a right.
That is not simply a hollow sentiment; it is
a creed that I have lived by since the first
time I heard it from a brash young TWU organiser
at a delegates meeting in the 1980s. I
heard and saw in that organiser exactly how
it should be for workers—always having
someone to stand up for those who are unable
to stand up for themselves; knowing that
there was a collective and unyielding drive
for workplace fairness and equity; and having
confidence that, while you got on with
your job, there was someone behind you at
every turn demonstrating a passion above all
else to fight on your behalf for what was
right. The organiser to whom I refer is Jim
McGiveron—a man who has never taken a
backward step in his life. He has charged
ahead without fear, been a leader and a
ground-breaker and, above all else, he has been a mate—and for that I am eternally
grateful.
In 1991 I became an organiser for the
Transport Workers Union and I was given
my chance to do what Jimmy had done for
me and so many like me: work to improve
the pay and conditions for hardworking men
and women of the transport industry. So, to
my wife’s great satisfaction, I traded in the
long hauls over our rugged and unrelenting
terrain as an owner-driver truckie and headed
into the even more rugged and unrelenting
terrain of a union office. While not every
battle was won in the 14 years that I was
with the TWU, I can honestly say that they
were all hard fought. The people of Western
Australia can expect the same of me here. I
will continue to stand up for the things that I
believe in and the things that matter. Like in
times past, irrespective of the challenge, I
will always fight hard.
A great deal of our journey here is steered
by those people who are waiting for us when
we leave our workplaces and walk through
the doors of our homes. It is to those people
in my life that I would like to pay homage. I
feel particularly lucky to have the support
and presence in the gallery today of members
of my family, both those chosen by nature,
my parents, brother and sister, and the ones
that came as part of a package when Fiona
actually said ‘Yes’ to my badly worded but
heartfelt marriage proposal all those years
ago. My life is certainly all the richer for
having each and every one of them in it.
My best friend for the last 27 years has
also been my wife for the last 23 years—
Fiona. She has been the most steadying influence
in my life. She has always supported
me through my years of trucking and my life
as a union organiser—which has been no
small feat. She is the one who had to play the
role of both mother and father to our two
children when they were very young as I was
nearly always away on the road somewhere
between Perth and Darwin. Fiona ran the
household and held our family together
nearly every day on her own. Working away
from home I could not be there at the end of
the day, and on many weekends, to share the
parenting duties and ease the load. I still
cannot imagine how hard it must have been
for Fiona when our second child was only
three days old and I had to head back to
Darwin. While many senators who are parents
can appreciate the challenges in taking a
newborn baby home, they will also appreciate
the lack of excitement a three-year-old
can have for a new sibling. But Fiona took it
all in her stride. The strength and conviction
I have needed to make choices in my life has
so often come from Fiona and the journey
that has brought me here today is no exception.
That is why I know that, whatever the
challenges ahead, with Fiona by my side
they will never be too great. To our two children,
Kirsty and Daniel, you are the reasons
why I try to be the best I can. You have made
my life far from ordinary and you are a constant
reminder that all of us who come before
have an obligation to pave an easier way for
those who come after us. Thank you both.
Thinking back to my own childhood I can
say that life was certainly different when I
was growing up with my younger brother
and sister in the state housing commission
suburb of Langford in Perth’s east. Langford
was the typical working-class suburb. It was
created in the early 1970s when low-income
earners had the chance to live the great Australian
dream of owning a home. Simple
pleasures like a Mr Whippy ice cream were
something we very rarely experienced in
Langford, but we never felt disadvantaged
because no-one in our street got one. In fact,
it must have been a big decision for Mr
Whippy to even enter Langford knowing it
would probably cost more to run the van
than he was going to earn in sales.
My dad was a truck driver and my mum
was a nurse. It was often the case that as one
of our parents stepped in from work the other
stepped out to work a night shift. The importance
of working hard was instilled in me by
my parents from a very early age and it is an
ethos that I have carried all through my adult
working life. It was my dad who introduced
me to the furniture removal industry when I
was very young. He was a truckie who travelled
the length and breadth of Western Australia,
across the Nullarbor and into the Eastern
States. I will never forget the first time I
actually got to go with dad down south in his
truck to deliver a load of furniture. I was
nine years old and the thrill of riding in the
cab of a truck was a dream come true. Although
I was just a kid, the one thing I knew
was that my future as a truckie was only a
matter of time.
I officially entered the work force in 1977
as an assistant furniture removalist at
Wridgways, working up to a driver and then
becoming an owner driver in 1980—hauling
road trains into the Pilbara, the Goldfields,
Kimberly and the Northern Territory. At that
time I only occasionally ventured across the
Nullarbor. Funnily enough, one such occasion
was to deliver the very seats that our
parliamentary colleagues on the other side of
this great building sit on. For those who do
not know, the seats in both chambers of the
federal parliament were made in Western
Australia. Even back then in 1987, as I
loaded a road train full of the green leather
seats, I had a much stronger preference for
the red ones that sat alongside them in the
furniture factory, located in the Perth suburb
of Riverton. It says a lot about the opportunities
provided in this great country of ours
that a worker who once delivered the seats to
this parliament is now working from one of
them, representing the people of Western
Australia.
As a worker in the transport industry I developed
a keen interest in the union movement
and before long I became a union delegate.
I was particularly drawn to the TWU’s
proven ability to achieve success for its
members, and it was when I attended a union
meeting in my early 20s that I learnt the true
meaning of collective responsibility. Workers
can achieve anything they desire as long as
they, alongside their union representatives,
are prepared to make the hard decisions and
stand united in their convictions, but also
provided that their elected parliamentary
representatives do not treat them with contempt.
In the same way, Australian voters can
achieve anything provided they play an active
role in decisions about our country’s
future. That means always voicing an opinion
about who will lead, how they will lead
and whether or not the leaders are doing the
job they expect of them.
It seems like an eternity since I first rode
on the engine cover of that truck with my
dad, and it is a long time since I sat behind
the wheel of a road train hauling furniture.
But regardless of the time that has passed
there is one thing that remains very fresh in
my memory and that is when another conservative
government saw the need for
workplace reform. In the 1990s individual
workplace agreements were introduced in
Western Australia by the Richard Court led
coalition government. This was an era that
saw tens of thousands of Western Australian
workers protesting in the streets of Perth
against an archaic wave of industrial legislation
that did nothing other than erode the
take home pay and conditions of workers
across the board. This was an era that I lived
and breathed as a union organiser. I saw firsthand
those workers, who did not have the
support of collective bargaining and union
representation, forced into signing agreements
that guaranteed they were worse off.
Workers who raised an objection were told quite clearly that they did not have to sign
but if they refused then they could always
find another job. So, as we learnt hard and
fast in Western Australia, so-called ‘industrial
reform’ at the hands of an arrogant conservative
government can so easily become a
scalpel for unscrupulous employers to cut
through the skin of their workers without
consent, without anything to ease the pain
and without regard for what that will do to
their lives. It is interesting to note, Mr President,
that since the Gallop Labor government
repealed the flawed Western Australian
workplace agreements, Western Australia has
become the engine room of the Australian
economy, with growth and export figures the
envy of other states.
I know, as a former small business operator,
that competition is fierce out in the market
place, which means that for many businesses
to simply stay afloat they must have
an acute understanding of, ‘If you want my
business then you have to sharpen the pencil.’
So, employers do sharpen the pencil. But
growing a business does not need to be done
at the expense of its workers or their
safety—in fact, it can and should be the contrary,
because the best asset of a business is
its people. For a truckie, one way to sharpen
the pencil is to lengthen the service interval
of the truck. Alternatively, a cheaper brand of
tyres can be purchased—even though the
kilometre lifespan is reduced—retreads can
be used or monthly repayments on capital
can be stretched out. But when it is time to
retender, the truck is worn out, the driver is
burnt out and only if they are very lucky
there is still a family waiting at home after
each trip.
It is only the scale of economy that is different
between a major employer and a small
business operator. The cost of goods, services
and machinery can only be negotiated
down to a certain point. In the transport industry,
fuel companies, tyre suppliers, insurers,
auto-electricians and repairers do not
care how cheaply a trucking firm has negotiated
to deliver on a contract; they all have
their price for what they provide and as an
owner-driver you pay it.
No worker will be better off under the
Howard government’s proposed industrial
relations changes. And to say that they will
be is either a gross misunderstanding of what
is being proposed or a gross deception. We
are already seeing the winds of revolt. Earlier
today 500 truckies gave up a day’s earnings
to drive to Canberra and deliver the very
clear message to John Howard that they are
not prepared to sit back and watch the demolition
of their working rights while the government
pursues its extreme industrial relations
agenda. For that they deserve not only
our respect but also our support.
This government’s word is worthless
when it comes to looking after workers. In
1997 the Office of the Employment Advocate
was set up to scrutinise workplace
agreements and ensure that the so-called no
disadvantage clause was adhered to. What
has happened in practice has been a betrayal
of the trust Australians had put in the Prime
Minister and his government. The Office of
the Employment Advocate has let down
thousands of workers, failing to protect their
pay and conditions. In short, the Prime Minister
has become the organ grinder and the
Office of the Employment Advocate his
monkey, dancing to the tune of its political
master.
I am not prepared to see history repeated,
particularly as I have been entrusted by
Western Australians to best represent their
interests. I appeal to all members of this
place to think long and hard about the future
for Australian workers and their families.
Certainly no Labor senator will live with the
guilt of creating a fractured society where the
bottom line is given far greater value than workers and their lives. The truth is that no
senator needs to feel guilty; the choice is
yours. To borrow from Confucius: ‘To know
what is right and not to do it is the worst
cowardice.’ So, to my fellow senators: when
we leave this place, even if you are remembered
for little else, do not be remembered as
one of Howard’s cowards.
We need only look as far as any corner of
this building to be reminded that it was because
of the hard work and commitment of
around 50,000 workers that we have such a
wonderful building for our federal parliament.
So look into that corner, contemplate
how the concrete was laid, appreciate the
massive task of polishing all the floors we
walk along each day, notice the faces of the
Senate support staff, Comcar drivers, food
service workers, cleaners, security guards,
Hansard staff, gift shop team and tour
guides, to name just a few. Never forget that
we owe it to all Australian workers to use the
power of this place to protect them for as
long as we are here.
As enshrined in the party’s platform, Labor
was born out of the trade union movement
and its struggle for a secure, decent and
dignified life for working people. The partnership
between the two great wings of the
labour movement has been essential to deal
with the consequences of the industrial revolution.
And, after nine long years of a conservative
government that is out of touch, we
find ourselves poised on the verge of a new
industrial revolution that will have disastrous
consequences for Australian workers and
their families. Although many working Australians
voted Liberal for the first time at the
last election, Labor has not and will not turn
its back on them. As a Labor senator, I vow
on behalf of 1.9 million Western Australians
to take the fight up in the Senate. Thank you,
Mr President.
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