Friday 2nd October 2026
NSW workers will face a clear choice at the state election between a Labor Government committed to cleaning out dodgy labour hire operators and a One Nation party that has never delivered a single gain for working people, Unions NSW said today.
At last night’s Labor Day dinner, Premier Minns vowed to finalise a bill within 100 days of re-election to license labour hire providers in every industry. It means host businesses will only be able to use licensed providers, and providers will face penalties for breaking the rules.
Joint analysis from the McKell Institute and Unions NSW in August found at least 171 businesses with cancelled or refused labour hire licences elsewhere in Australia operating in NSW.
Unions NSW Secretary Thomas Costa said licensing was the kind of hard, practical reform that protects workers, which One Nation had shown no interest in.
“Pauline Hanson has spent 30 years scapegoating migrant workers rather than fighting exploitation. But Labor is going after the people who are actually dragging wages down: the shonks who rip off workers and rip off the taxpayer,” Mr Costa said.
“One Nation has never fought for a pay rise, or made a single Australian worker’s job more secure. They are charlatans and false prophets and we intend to call them out. These wreckers trade in fear because they have nothing genuine to offer workers on the issues that matter.”
Unions NSW has worked closely with labour hire workers to secure repayment for underpaid wages totalling tens of thousands of dollars. These include a Taiwanese working holiday maker underpaid $40,000 on farms in regional NSW, and a group of women from Kiribati recruited for aged care on the Mid North Coast who were moved into an abattoir under threat of visa cancellation.
“Pauline Hanson says Australian workers are lazy and too hard to sack. Has she met the people earning a few dollars an hour to pick berries, while getting royally ripped off?
“This reform will happen if Labor is returned and we will be out making the case that workers should back a government that’s done the real work of protecting their wages and job security, over the carnival stunts of One Nation.”
Media contact: Nick Lucchinelli 0422 229 032