Roche DeniseDENISE ROCHE (Green): I am pleased to take a call for the Greens on this bill and I want to thank the Hon David Parker like others have done for bringing it to the Committee. A piece of legislation like this is about resolving a problem and the problem has been identified really really clearly and really well throughout the bill. It has been discussed on this side of the House but completely ignored on that side of the House. The problem is that some employers use contracting arrangements to force wages down to ensure that they get services provided to them at cheaper and cheaper prices with no consideration at all for the people who are providing those services. According to 2013 statistics self-employed workers with no employees received an average of $26700 per year from their labour as contractors. Compare that with waged workers who received in the same year $36700—so about a third more. What this Government is saying by its opposition to this bill is that it believes that people who work should not receive a fair day's remuneration in whatever way they provide that work and it also believes that some people should pay the cost of their labour—so they should pay for their equipment they should pay for their tax they should pay the ACC and they may even have to pay for their own health and safety. If it is a true contractor that is not a problem but what we have seen more and more in more and more areas like home care is that fact that people are being taken on as contractors as a way for some employers—and they are employers—to avoid the employer-employee relationship. We have a hugely deregulated industrial relations system as it stands. This piece—this small piece that Mr Parker is offering with this legislation—is an attempt to try to fix a problem and it is a grave problem. There have been examples already from across this side of the House about the grave exploitation that occurs in our communities and I do not know whether members from that side of the House actually are in touch with any of their constituents who have had problems. I am a list MP and I get people talking to me about how they are being ripped off. We hear about the labour hire workers—vulnerable workers who are coming on working visas—who are actually migrants who are desperate to be employed. They are taken on as contractors by labour hire companies and exploited to the hilt and they have very little protection. They do not have the protection of a trade union and they have very little protection in legislation and this is one way of trying to address that. I agree with my Green Party colleague Julie Anne Genter that yes we were a country that used to say that everybody should have a fair go. We used to believe in a fair day's pay for a fair day's work and we could be that country again. But in order to do that we need to stem the tide of exploitation that this Government has allowed to happen with its deregulated environment for industrial relations and we have seen cut after cut after cut to the right of workers to be able to negotiate decent wages and conditions. This is not about real contractors screwing the system. That is not what it is about. This is about offering some minimum protection through paying the minimum wage to some specified people when they have a principal contract. This is not about cowboy contractors screwing their clients. That is not what this is about. We would not be supporting it if it was. This is actually about fixing a problem. That problem—thank you.