Christian Porter blasts George Calombaris’ ‘deplorable wage theft’

The Attorney-General and IR minister didn’t hold back in his criticism of the former MasterChef judge.

George Calombaris has been widely condemned for underpaying staff. Picture: AAP

Attorney-General Christian Porter has described the $7.8 million underpayment of more than 500 workers by celebrity chef George Calombaris as “deplorable” and a “theft of wages”.

Mr Porter also reiterated his belief, first reported by The Australian on Sunday, the $200,000 “contrition payment” by Mr Calombaris as part of a deal with the Fair Work Ombudsman was “light” given the sheer quantum of the underpayments and the six-year period they

occurred.

Mr Porter, who is also the Industrial Relations Minister, was today promoting two of the government’s workplace policy bills which are soon to be debated in the Lower House.

The Ensuring Integrity Bill gives the courts greater scope to deregister unions and ban union officials and the Proper Use of Workers Benefits bill is designed to impose stricter financial

governance on registered organisations and associated entities, including worker entitlement funds.

Mr Porter cited the example of a workers’ entitlement fund, Protect, which is meant to hold money for severance payments for workers, transferring $32 million back to a union “for no reason”.

Attorney-General Christian Porter. Picture: Kym Smith

He told ABC Radio National’s Fran Kelly that the transaction represented “the theft of wages of union members because there is no regulatory system around those funds’’.

“What I don’t understand is that why is it a matter of extreme public interest, Fran, here this morning that there is theft of wages by someone such as George Calombaris in those circumstances and I think it’s deplorable; but then why is it OK for a union set up fund meant

to hold worker’s entitlement money, to transfer $32 million back to the union without any explanation,’’ he said.

“That is the theft of wages of hardworking Australians, sent back to a union with no reason, in a system where there’s no regulation.”

He said the $32 million taken out of Protect and “sent back to a union before the last election should be a matter of public concern and should be highlighted more by the media”.

Speaking on Sky News, he denied ACTU claims that the Ensuring Integrity Bill was harmful to workers, undemocratic and inconsistent with international law.

“Those descriptions are actually wrong,’’ he said.

“I mean the international legal conventions that apply to the freedom of association always say, subject to the laws of the land, and the reality is that we have rogue elements of the union movement in Australia who don’t see themselves as subject to the law of the land

and, sadly, behave accordingly.

“So the CFMEU has racked up $16 million worth of penalties in the courts for over 2000 contraventions and we as a government just think in those types of circumstances that there should be a reasonable ability of a responsible government to have laws that would allow the

Government, or the appropriate person with standing, to apply to the court and for the court to decide whether or not they should be deregistered.”

Labor industrial relations spokesman Tony Burke said the bill, if passed, would allow for employer groups to apply for unions to be deregistered.

“Some of the examples that would make you liable for deregistration are extraordinary,’’ he told the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas.

“So, for example, if the nurses’ union decided that a group of nurses who wanted to campaign on better staff ratios, and in doing so they had their campaign and it wasn’t registered lawful industrial action.

“They simply were concerned about the issues of the patients, they had unprotected industrial action. The union could be deregistered for that. The entire nurses’ union deregistered for an action like that, and that action could be brought by anyone deemed to have a sufficient

interest.”