ADJOURNMENT

Senator SHELDON (New South Wales—Chief Government Whip in the Senate) (20:14): I rise today to mark the 25th anniversary of the collapse of Ansett Australia. Let me tell you about Dave Lupton. He worked for Ansett for 27 years.

When Ansett collapsed, Dave helped secure millions of dollars for the airline's workers, a move which drove reforms and strengthened protections for Australian workers for generations to come. Dave still vividly remembers the day of the collapse. Rumours of Ansett's collapse had circulated for years, so, when talk of trouble intensified, many workers simply didn't believe it.

Then, at 4.30 in the morning of 14 September 2001, just days after the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City, Dave received a phone call. They said: 'You better get in here. Things are about to hit the fan.' He and other Transport Workers' Union delegates rushed to Sydney Airport before security locked the terminal.

The final overnight flights were arriving as the doors closed. Outside, passengers and employees were gathering, wanting answers. Inside, nobody was explaining what was happening.

Dave recalls turning to the airport manager and saying, 'You better tell them the place has gone broke.' In the end, it was the union delegates who walked outside and delivered the news—Ansett had collapsed. Dave says it was heartbreaking because, for many workers, Ansett wasn't just a workplace; it was a community. Lifelong friendships had been built on the tarmac and in the hangars.

Now, they found themselves standing outside the gates watching their livelihoods disappear. As the morning of 14 September wore on, Dave recalls that hundreds of workers arrived seeking answers. Some families had both partners working for Ansett and suddenly faced losing two incomes overnight.

Amid the chaos, union delegates gathered employment records to ensure workers knew what they were owed. Later that day, as 15,000 livelihoods hung in the balance, workers learned that the Prime Minister, John Howard, was arriving in Sydney from the United States. Dave recalls about 800 workers gathered on the tarmac to make sure their voices were heard, and, eventually, Howard agreed to meet with a small group of delegates.

Dave was one of them. That meeting marked the beginning of one of Australia's most significant industrial campaigns. For 172 days, Ansett workers maintained a presence outside the terminal.

They even set up a caravan outside Kirribilli House to keep pressure on Howard. When it became clear that the airline was unsalvageable, it fell into administration on the 173rd day. For 10 years, unions worked alongside former Ansett employees to recover every possible dollar owed to workers.

Dave played a crucial role scrutinising asset sales, tracking entitlements and ensuring workers knew exactly where the process stood. It was a long and exhausting fight, but many workers had mortgages, young families and debts they could no longer afford, so they refused to give up. Ten years after the collapse, that determination delivered an extraordinary result.

By 2011, former Ansett employees received, on average, $0.96 in the dollar for their entitlements. More than $727 million was ultimately returned to workers. That did not happen by accident.

It happened because delegates, like Dave, refused to walk away, and it happened because organised labour kept up the pressure long after the headlines had faded. The collapse was one of the biggest corporate failures in Australia's history and exposed serious weaknesses in Australia's protections for workers when businesses fail. The power of the Ansett workers helped drive reforms to employee entitlements and protections, including improvements to the General Employee Entitlement and Redundancy Scheme, the predecessor to today's Fair Entitlements Guarantee.

Those changes were won through persistence, solidarity and collective action. They were won because working people organised and fought for what was rightfully theirs. The jobs and economic challenges may be different today, but the fundamental question remains the same: who carries the risk when things go wrong?

People like Dave Lupton gave Australia a powerful answer. Working people should not be left to carry the cost of corporate failure. That is the legacy of Dave and the thousands of Ansett workers who stood together, and it's a legacy Australia will never forget.