Questions raised over One Nation's 2021 vote following WorkPac donation

One Nation received nearly $50,000 from one of Australia’s biggest labour-hire firms after the party performed an eleventh-hour reversal and supported legislation that gutted several legal challenges in which the company, WorkPac, was potentially exposed to $100 million in liabilities.

The decision to support the Morrison government’s controversial 2021 industrial relations bill came after One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts had spent months criticising the legislation, calling it a “cruel mess” that would harm casual workers.

It caused significant upheaval within One Nation, prompting Stuart Bonds, a coal industry worker and the party’s lead candidate for the upper house at the looming NSW election, to quit the party.

Simon Turner, a former Hunter Valley coal miner who had for years backed the party due to Roberts’ support, labelled it a “betrayal”.

The previously unreported contribution from WorkPac raises questions about the motivations behind One Nation’s decision to reverse its position. A One Nation source also alleged WorkPac made contributions before and after the March 2021 vote, casting doubt on the party’s disclosures.

Asked about his departure from One Nation over the vote, Bonds said it was the first time he had been made aware of WorkPac’s contribution, but did not believe the funds would have influenced the party’s vote.

“I don’t think it would’ve happened. It’s always been the party’s position: you’re welcome to make a donation, but it will never change the party’s policy,” Bonds told this masthead.

Australian Electoral Commission disclosures show Pauline Hanson’s party received $48,000 from WorkPac across four transactions during the 2021-22 financial year. It represented just under 10 per cent of the party’s disclosed receipts for that period. They are the only contributions the company has made to One Nation.

WorkPac, Australia’s largest privately owned recruitment and staffing business, also gave $57,000 to the Liberal Party across the 2020-21 and 2021-22 financial years.

A One Nation spokesman did not engage with a series of questions about WorkPac’s contributions, including whether they were connected to the party’s vote and if any meetings were held with the company before the matter came up in the Senate.

“One Nation has consistently raised concerns about casual employment practices in the black coal sector since 2019,” he said.

“All donations to One Nation are duly disclosed in accordance with the requirements of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918.”

He did not answer questions about whether Chris Taylor – Hanson’s current chief of staff who reportedly worked for WorkPac until joining the office of then prime minister Scott Morrison as general counsel and special adviser in June 2021 – lobbied One Nation directly over the legislation.

In May 2020, a landmark Federal Court ruling delivered a hefty blow to labour hire companies. It found “casual” employees who worked regular and predictable shifts with a firm advance commitment to work were entitled to paid annual, sick and carer’s leave. The Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union had argued the arrangements that existed before the ruling allowed multinational mining and labour hire companies to pay casuals lower rates than permanent workers.

The decision – in a case brought by coal mine worker Robert Rossato against WorkPac — bolstered a set of class-action lawsuits brought by coal miners seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in backpay from employers. It sparked panic among employer groups, with estimates an avalanche of claims could cost employers up to $40 billion.

It prompted the Morrison government to release a draft omnibus Industrial Relations bill which, if passed, would gut the claims.

Roberts lashed the proposed changes as a “cruel mess”, promising One Nation would stand up for casual workers affected by misclassification, and warning the government not to block entitlements for regional casual miners.

The Queensland senator had regularly appeared in videos railing against labour hire practices alongside injured worker Turner, who became the face of a class action lawsuit against BHP, the owner of the Mount Arthur coal mine in the Hunter Valley. In a 22-minute video posted to social media in July 2020 with Turner and Bonds, Roberts described a process of “exploitation, abuse and negligence” in the coal industry.

“It’s horrific, it’s unethical, immoral and unlawful, with deliberate breaches of laws,” Roberts said in the video.

Roberts’ public opposition remained staunch until at least late February 2021, two months after the legislation was introduced, labelling the system a playground for the “IR club”, what he believed was a cabal of class-action litigation lawyers, unions and big employer organisations profiting from the system’s complexity.

His position was backed by Bonds, who had almost snatched the seat of Hunter from veteran Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon at the federal election two years earlier.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry examining the bill, Bonds accused the then government of trying to “cover up for labour hire companies”.

“Workers are entitled to billions of dollars in back pay, and they should be paid accordingly,” Bonds wrote.

But on March 18, One Nation suddenly flipped, supporting the Morrison government’s insertion of a retrospective statutory definition of “casual”, based strictly on an employer’s initial offer. As a result of Roberts’ and Hanson’s votes, the bill passed 35 to 33.

Michaelia Cash – a Liberal senator who, as acting industrial relations minister, was negotiating with the crossbench during the bill’s passage – did not respond to requests for comment.

In a speech in the Senate articulating One Nation’s new position, Roberts echoed concerns that employer groups had been mounting for months. “Doing nothing is not an option,” he said.

It was an incredibly valuable intervention for WorkPac, which was directly exposed to more than $100 million in class actions brought by labour-hire coal miners.

By codifying a new statutory definition of “casual”, the government neutralised WorkPac and other mining labour-hire operators’ multimillion-dollar exposure to backpay entitlements the companies faced in pending class actions.

Onlookers were stunned by the about-face. Turner, who said he was introduced to Roberts in about 2019 via Bonds, said he was in regular contact with the One Nation senator in the lead-up to the vote, and even stayed with him in Canberra.

“I was constantly down in Canberra meeting with [One Nation],” he said. Roberts and others also met him near Newcastle Airport.

“Malcolm Roberts was against it 100 per cent the whole time,” he said. “He was never going to vote for it, it was wrong. Then the day of the vote ... they just flipped.”

Turner said he was not warned the party had shifted positions, and went “ape shit” when he found out.

“I had a massive f---ing blue with him and never spoke to them for ages after that. That was why Stuart Bonds blew up as well, because as far as he knew they were voting f---ing against it,” he said.

The One Nation spokesman said: “When we consider legislation, we do so on its merits. These reforms addressed significant legal uncertainties that exposed tens of thousands of small businesses to an estimated $39 billion in double-dipping liability.

“The bill passed with a majority in the Australian Senate, and the position in the bill was ultimately supported in a unanimous decision of the High Court of Australia”.

The High Court ruled on the Rossato matter in August 2021, effectively shutting down the pathway for long-term casuals to claim they were part-time or full-time workers. Labour-law experts said the ruling signalled a change in the way courts have been told to think about employment rights, focusing the substance of a worker’s contract over the reality of how they end up working – as legislated in the Morrison government’s bill.

Bonds used a One Nation fundraiser on March 26, eight days after the vote, where the party’s then NSW leader Mark Latham was the keynote speaker, to express his disappointment and attack the rise of labour-hire firms employing casuals as having “brought absolute misery and divided the workforce”.

“I’ve seen the pain, suffering, misery, heartache, depression, suicides, uncertainty, divorces, people missing their wives’ birthdays, children’s birthdays, spending Christmas in the mine, Easter in the mine, for years and years on end,” he told the fundraiser.

“I am disappointed with the party’s position. It’s really cut me to the core. I think it has a lot to do with my personal distaste for this because of my father.”

Bonds’ father nearly died in a mining accident while employed as a casual decades ago, fracturing his ribs and skull, requiring him to undergo facial reconstructive surgery.

When Latham arrived to find a Newcastle Herald journalist sitting at the fundraiser head table – an invitation this masthead has confirmed was offered by Bonds’ camp – he says he suspected an ambush. A story covering Bonds’ criticism of the party ran off the paper’s front page the next day.

The coal mining industry worker eventually left One Nation, and publicly backed the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party at a byelection in the seat of Upper Hunter later that year. He subsequently ran as an independent in the seat of Hunter at the 2022 federal election, before returning to One Nation in early 2025.

Despite being pushed out of One Nation, Bonds says he would have acted differently if he had his time again, saying the party later explained to him there was a broader economic impact at play, which he was missing by focusing solely on the impacts to casual mining workers.

“You don’t get your own way all the time; you’re not always right, and the party isn’t always right. If it had happened again now, I would’ve handled it differently,” he said.

A One Nation source, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations, said they were told by staff members of party HQ that the WorkPac contributions were made before and after the Senate vote.

The dates of the contributions are not disclosed because the party classified them as “other receipts”, rather than donations.

A spokesman for the Australian Electoral Commission said the classification applied to any contribution not marked as a gift or donation. General examples of those contributions included membership subscriptions to political parties, payments of election funding, payments between state branches of political parties, and payments between parties and their associated entities.

It is unclear why WorkPac’s contributions to One Nation were classified in this way.

WorkPac did not respond to requests for comment.

“Importantly, while the form requires that parties declare the figure for ‘other receipts’ that reach the disclosure threshold, it doesn’t require that they provide any further information about what those other receipts pertain to,” the AEC spokesman said, noting that would change under new transparency reforms commencing in January.

Nearly a year after voting with the Coalition, Roberts introduced a new bill into the Senate. It required labour-hire workers covered by certain modern awards to receive at least the same pay as other employees for the same work.

“Mr President, do you remember when employers actually employed people – gave them holidays and sick pay and treated workers like assets to be nurtured and developed instead of liabilities to be limited?” Roberts said in his second reading speech.

During debate over the bill, Trade Minister Don Farrell quipped: “Maybe if Senator Roberts hadn’t supported the former government as often and consistently and regularly as he did, Australian workers might actually be in a slightly better position.”

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