I think it is a cornerstone of our electoral system that you raise electoral funds for elections but that doesn’t mean that therefore the implication can be made that the recipients are incapable of transacting their interests and their duties towards people any differently.
I’m interested in better wages for workers, better safety, job security, and, profitable companies, because I understand that if you get co-operation in the workplace, everyone wins.
To the best of my knowledge, when I became national secretary and, indeed, Victorian secretary, the – my predecessors in the union had detected wrong activities, activities which aren’t in the best traditions of the AWU or, indeed, trade unionism.
I’ve spent my whole working life standing up for workers. Didn’t matter if it was the two trapped miners at Beaconsfield or professional netballers or indeed factory workers or construction workers.
I believe that when people can go to work and be happy, satisfied, engaged, where the employer is getting employees who feel their interests are aligned with the employer, you get productivity. This is the future of Australian workplaces.
What I’ve done as a union leader and what literally thousands of other union representatives do, is make sure that we have co-operation in the workplace. What I get is that where employees are well treated, employers do well.
Trusting people to pursue their own futures invariably provides better outcomes. Money goes where it is needed, rather than being absorbed by administration costs.
Labor is at its best when we are the party of ideas and action – ideas that empower the powerless and actions that build a better Australia for the long term.
Labor should not be about creating monuments on hills or statues in parks. Labors monuments and statues are when a young person can find a job, when a person with disability can get access to the ordinary life that others take for granted.
Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library 'imagick.so' (tried: /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20200930/imagick.so (/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20200930/imagick.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory), /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20200930/imagick.so.so (/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20200930/imagick.so.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)) in Unknown on line 0