Thursday, 6 February 2025

Ministers statements: employment

Jacinta ALLAN (Bendigo East – Premier) (14:45): Victorian workers need governments that have got their back, governments who protect their pay and improve their conditions and governments who create laws to help workers stay safe and earn a secure wage. Most critically, workers know that they need a pipeline of work – projects that support jobs and that build the roads, the schools and the hospitals that Victorians need to live good lives. On this side of the house, in this government, Victorian workers have exactly that.

It may be projects like the Ison Road and Werribee Main Road projects, projects that will support 1600 jobs for communities in Melbourne’s west, with jobs for plumbers, builders, concreters and engineers but also those apprentices who continue to get a start on their career on these projects. It is not just apprentices – we are building hospitals for those nurses who work so incredibly hard. But let us remember the retail workers as well, and I used to be one in a former life, a retail worker behind the register in our supermarkets. We will stick up for them in this house. We certainly will stick up for them when those big, greedy multinational companies want to take away their penalty rates – we absolutely will.

Not everyone in this house wants to back workers; not everyone does. There are those who want to get rid of every worker on our Big Build program. They will put the dirt back in the tunnel.

Members interjecting.

Jacinta ALLAN: I did not say who – guilty as charged.

Bridget Vallence: On a point of order, Speaker, the Premier’s comments are absolutely baseless, and casting personal reflections is disorderly.

The SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

Jacinta ALLAN: I was going to say this anyway but it is relevant to the point of order: there are some who wanted to scrap the Metro Tunnel, the West Gate Tunnel and level crossings. If you want evidence of an anti-worker approach, I give you those examples right there. On this side of the house, Labor backs workers with jobs – secure, good jobs – to support them and their families.