Tim Watts: Labor is proud of our long history of support for the union movement, and we will continue to support workers like those at Dorevitch Pathology. Last week, 500 HWU workers at Dorevitch Pathology went on strike. Those workers haven't had an enterprise agreement for 10 years. It expired a decade ago. There has been delay after delay with enterprise agreement negotiations. In fact, Dorevitch...
Read More >Tim Watts: The Australian Labor Party didn't want the farcical postal plebiscite currently being inflicted on LGBTI Australians by the Turnbull government, but if it's going to happen we'll throw ourselves behind the cause of equality and forcefully rebut arguments that relegate LGBTI Australians to the status of second-class citizens. Earlier this week the member for Menzies described LGBTI...
Read More >Tim Watts: As I was indicating yesterday, climate change is the critical issue of our generation. It is happening right here and right now, and we are seeing the real-world effects not only in Australia but around the world. Ban Ki-moon has eloquently pointed out that we're the last generation that can take steps to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Urgent revisions of the Reef 2050 plan were...
Read More >Tim Watts: As a member of parliament, I go to plenty of citizenship ceremonies. In my part of the world, they are very big affairs. Since I was elected, I have had a practice of starting each ceremony with an acknowledgement of country, paying my respects to elders past and present of the First Australians of my region of Australia, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. I tell those assembled that...
Read More >Tim Watts: I rise today to thank the many constituents from Melbourne's west who have contacted me in recent weeks about the Turnbull government's proposed trial of the mandatory drug testing of social security recipients. I want to make it clear to everyone who has contacted me that Labor opposes this immoral, misguided and politically motivated trial. Were the government to deny social security...
Read More >Tim Watts: Earlier this week we saw something extraordinary-a recognition, at the highest levels of economic policymaking, of a truth that is currently being felt in households across Australia. Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe told the Crawford Australian Leadership summit that the lack of real wage growth in the Australian economy was 'a crisis'. And he is right. Australia has now experienced...
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