Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

If anybody listening to the debate this morning on the motion to disallow the Workplace Relations Regulations had been out of Australia or somewhere isolated in the world for the last 10 years they would have thought that they had come back in 1996 because the rhetoric being used today once again by the Labor Party was exactly the rhetoric that we heard 10 years ago when the workplace relations legislation was introduced and passed by this parliament. I remind the House that the member for Perth, who moved this motion, and his seconder, the Leader of the Opposition, used precisely the same rhetoric in 1996 and 1997 about the Workplace Relations Act. They told us that the sky was going to fall in in 1996 and 1997. They told us then that the living standards of Australians would be driven down as a consequence of the changes made to workplace relations in Australia. They told us that all sorts of adverse impacts would result for the men and women, the families and children of Australia as a consequence of these changes.

In the last 10 years, partly because of those economic reforms and partly because of the good management of this government over that decade, we have seen just the contrary occur. We have seen the creation of almost two million jobs for Australians over the past decade. We have seen wages increase in this country by something like 16 per cent in real terms over the last 10 years. I contrast that with what happened to wages for 13 years under the previous Labor government in Australia when real wages increased by about 1.2 per cent. Indeed, part of that time during the 1980s, real wages in Australia went backwards as a result of the accord between the ACTU and the then Labor government.

Whatever piece of economic data one likes to take—or, collectively, the economic data that is published—it corresponds to the anecdotal evidence and the experiences of ordinary Australians and that is that the last decade has seen rising prosperity for the men and women of this country. Part of the reason for that is the preparedness of this government to undertake economic reform so that we can build for the future rather than, as we hear once again this morning from the member for Perth, simply looking at the past.

In a sense, this debate is a proxy for the differences between the government and the Labor Party. It is a proxy in the sense that the government is prepared to engage in continuous reform in this country so that prosperity can continue in the future, versus an opposition whose rhetoric is about ripping up and rolling back and taking us backward.

Ripping up these laws is ripping up, including the Work Choices laws, the workplace relations laws of 1996. What the opposition would like to do is undo the change that has been brought about in this country over the last decade or so and take us back to the 1980s and beyond. But the reality is—and I believe the people of Australia know this—that the preparedness of a government to undertake continuing reform has been one of the hallmarks of ensuring that this country continues to prosper.

The rhetoric, of course, has not really changed from the opposition. The phrase today is ‘rip up’. It reminds me of that other phrase which was used a few years ago by the Leader of the Opposition—‘roll back’. It is a similar sort of thing—‘We’re going to roll it all back, we’re going to rip it up, we’re going to look backwards to the past,’ rather than looking to the future and how we can ensure that the prosperity of this country continues.

The member for Perth commented about living standards. What has happened to living standards in Australia over the last 10 years? Those living standards have substantially increased for Australians. I do not think anybody in this country denies the increased living standards that ordinary Australians have experienced over the last 10 years, yet we still have this head-in-the-sand attitude from the opposition towards moving to the future. The member for Perth talked about the way of life and the capacity of the trade union movement as something which may be closer to the objectives of the Labor Party with regard to its opposition to this legislation. He talked about the minimum wage. He said that there is some unfairness about having an Australian Fair Pay Commission set the minimum wage—not only the minimum wage, I should point out, but all the classification wages in Australia in the future—as somehow suggesting that trying to give people the opportunity of a job and also maintaining a safety net is not about fairness for ordinary Australians.

Whilst a national unemployment rate of five per cent is a far cry from the double digit figures that we saw under the Labor Party when, I remind the House, the Leader of the Opposition was the minister responsible for employment in this country, the reality is that there are still some hundreds of thousands of Australians without a job. Policies that give more of our fellow men and women in Australia the opportunity to have a job are surely policies based on fairness in this sense.

We have also heard about the unfair dismissal laws but nothing about the rorting and the abuse of those laws in the past. What about the situation where an employee is caught red-handed thieving from their employer and an industrial tribunal orders reinstatement or compensation? What about the situation of an employee engaged in gross sexual harassment of another employee in the workplace, where an industrial tribunal orders reinstatement? What about the range of other abuses of the unfair dismissal laws, but we hear not a word from the opposition about those? The reality is, as I have gone around Australia over the last few weeks since the introduction of the Work Choices legislation, that small and medium sized business operators have told me how they have employed another worker or two because they no longer fear what would happen with the unfair dismissal laws. In every state of Australia I have had small and medium sized business operators come to me and volunteer information that they have employed somebody else because of the removal of the fear about what would happen under an unfair dismissal regime. But, obviously, we hear nothing about that from the opposition.

The member for Perth was getting to the core of his real objection to the Work Choices legislation when he said that it was an attack on the trade union movement in Australia. After all, it is the trade union movement in Australia that not only funds but controls the Australian Labor Party. What is it? Since 1996 $50 million has been donated by unions in Australia to the Australian Labor Party. Look at the backgrounds of the members who sit opposite, and overwhelmingly they are from the union movement. Overwhelmingly they represent that single occupation in life in Australia—that is, officials of trade unions.

But the reality is that trade unions continue to operate under this legislation. The right of entry of trade union officials is protected under this legislation. The right of trade unions to represent workers is protected under this legislation. The reality is that collective agreements, since 27 March when Work Choices came into operation, have continued to be negotiated by trade unions in Australia and are being lodged and renewed under this system. In addition to that, trade union officials can act as bargaining agents where people are seeking to enter into an individual contract. Again, the role of the trade unions is protected in this legislation. The right to take protected industrial action, which can be motivated by a union, is not only protected under legislation but has actually been used by trade unions under this legislation.

This overblown rhetoric that somehow Work Choices is destroying the role of trade unions in Australia and the place that they have had in this country for a century is simply nonsense. It does not stack up when you look at the facts. This is the problem with the argument the opposition continues to mount against this legislation. The problem essentially is that it does not stack up when the facts are taken into account. If you just want overblown rhetoric about ripping up legislation and ripping up regulations, that is fine. But, in the end, rhetoric is not going to do anything for the advancement of the economy in this country. The member for Perth talked about its complexity. As my friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, who is at the table, pointed out, the complexity we have in Australia is a situation where there are something like 4,000 separate awards operating. Somebody calculated that there is an industrial award for every 27 employees in this country. That is the complexity which has built up over time in this country.

We are saying that we should have one single national system of industrial relations. We cannot achieve that overnight because of constraints in the Constitution. But what we have been able to do, by using the corporations power in the Constitution, is effectively bring 80 to 85 per cent of employees in this country into a single industrial relations system. If the other states beyond Victoria, which handed over its powers some years ago, were to follow the course of Victoria then we would finally achieve one national system of industrial relations in this country. The Labor Party is defending an industrial relations system that was established in the early part of the last century—when Australia operated as separate colonial economies largely removed from one another—an industrial relations system established over a century ago to address the industrial problems of the 1890s in Australia. That is the attitude of the Labor Party: there is a sentimental attachment to the conditions and the economy of this country at the time of Federation rather than a preparedness to look forward to the way in which we grow our economy into the future.

As I said before, this debate is a proxy for the different attitudes of the parties in Australia as to our economic performance. Do we want to grow this economy into the future by continuing to take significant economic reforms that will best place us to grow into the future or do we simply say we are going to rip things up, roll them back and take Australia back to the 1970s and the 1980s? That is essentially what this debate is about, when we go beyond the subject matter we are looking at today—namely, the industrial relations regulations. That is the argument being advanced by the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Perth in the comments they have made today, will make today and no doubt will make into the future. The criticisms basically go to the fear of the union bosses that their privileged place in the sun will be removed. They are concerned with that rather than with what is good for Australian families and Australian workers.

We have seen a major economic increase. Our current prosperity is even the subject of comment in overseas newspapers. In recent weeks an English newspaper reported that Australia is:

... rolling into its 16th year of uninterrupted growth ...

and that it manages to combine:

... the vigour of American capitalism with the humanity of European welfare, yet suffering the drawbacks of neither. And it manages this while keeping a consistent budget surplus.

That is what this is about. It is about how we continue to grow Australia into the future at a time when we face significant challenges. One challenge is the demographic change this country is moving through—that is, the ageing of the population and the fact that, as a consequence of that, a massive reduction in the growth of the workforce in this country is starting to occur. The Productivity Commission said in a report a year or so ago that we have to ensure we grow our productivity and increase the number of people participating in the workforce in Australia if we want to sustain the economic growth that we have enjoyed in this country in the past. That is the reality behind this. We know, for example, that greater flexibility in the workplace correlates with higher productivity. Those industries, those businesses and those sectors of the economy that have embraced the flexibility of the workplace relations legislation tend to have the highest productivity of businesses in Australia. Consequently, they pay the best wages and provide the best conditions to the employees. Conversely, those locked into the rigidities of the old award system tend to have little or no productivity and there is a corresponding outcome for the workers in that area.

This essentially is about whether we go forward or backwards. This government is committed to going forward, to making careful, significant reforms such as these so that the conditions that Australian workers have today are more likely to continue into the future and the prosperity that this country is enjoying today is more likely to continue into the future. The alternative is the backward-looking rhetoric that we have heard from the member for Perth and no doubt are about to hear from the Leader of the Opposition. The motion should be defeated.

See this speech in context