Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The federal government has been standing over the workforces that receive government contracts. When one considers that, it is a bit of a surprise that after seven years of AWAs only about 500,000 people out of a total workforce of more than 10 million are covered by them. But there is a difference, which I suspect is going to produce circumstances now where these figures may well start to change. Previously, under the amendments forced on the government when it last put in place its industrial relations legislation, a proposition was put in place for a no disadvantage test. There was a definite limitation on the capacity of an AWA to massively undermine conditions that workers in their previous place of work had enjoyed. Now it has all changed. In the legislation put in place by the government at the end of last year and now coming into operation, out went the no disadvantage test and in came the Spotlight AWA. Out went the no disadvantage test and, with it, out went penalty rates for overtime, out went penalty rates for holiday work, out went breaks, out went shift allowances—out went a whole range of conditions which could be effectively traded away for virtually nothing. That is what happens when you remove the no-disadvantage test.

The Prime Minister comes in here with absurd statistics on how much better off people are on AWAs. He knows darned well that when you take out the managers, when you take out the supervisors and when you take out groups of miners previously on common law agreements or common law individual contracts and now put on AWAs you get a very different picture indeed. Why do you think Freehills has been going around with these briefing notes? Freehills has been saying to employers whom they are briefing that if you take a look at last year’s wage rises, the last year we have statistics for, the average AWA based employee got 2.5 per cent, effectively the same as the inflation rate, and agreements generally produced a four per cent increase in income—union collective agreements 4.3 per cent and non-union collective agreements 3.5 per cent. What point do you think Freehills was making to the employers? Do you think Freehills was going to those employers on behalf of the government and saying to them, ‘Look, we think this is a terribly unjust situation, so could you chaps please gird your loins, get yourselves together and make sure that this performance of 2.5 per cent is improved to at least four per cent next year?’ No. What Freehills is doing, what the government’s advocates are doing, is saying to employers, ‘Look at this little ripper product we have got for you—the capacity for you to slash away at all those benefits that have been built up by your workforce over the years. And here is the positive feature, here is the proof positive.’

It is not about productivity. Freehills were not producing a set of statistics on the productivity outcomes of people who work on AWAs, collective agreements or whatever. It was simply the pay. What they were saying, as this government is saying to employers now, is: ‘Get out there and do your worst. Do your worst first with the people who are entering the workforce. Do your worst second with the people who are changing jobs. Do your worst third with the people whom you can now unfairly dismiss, sack and reemploy. Do your worst with the women who come to you and seek flexible hours so they can deal with their families. Do your worst to the blokes when you have managed to put in place a sufficient percentage of your workforce which is massively underpaid in comparison to your more long-term employees.’ That is what is going on here.

God help us with these laws if we ever enter into a period of some form of economic downturn. Because when we enter into a period of economic downturn, you will see this law in full pomp—you will see this law raging through the industrial relations conditions of ordinary Australians. And don’t think that ordinary Australians do not understand this. They understand this absolutely, despite the fact that the government has structured the law to conceal as much as possible from public scrutiny the impact of their AWAs. It is an offence, if an AWA is actually signed, for either party to reveal the content of it, so we can only see the statistics in their rawest sense; we cannot actually see the statistics involving an individual, unless it is an AWA that is not signed as opposed to an AWA that is signed—though, in the case of Spotlight, I must say they had the brazenness to put their AWA on their website, so I suppose that we can have a good look at the Spotlight AWA. But, generally speaking, the real stories of injustice in this community, we cannot see.

But we can see enough of the victims of this government’s legislation to this point—people like Arthur Ledwidge, a 46-year-old Melbourne field technician, sacked along with 70 other workmates and told he could buy a company van and become a contractor doing the same work but earning $180 less a week; people like Emily Connor, a 23-year-old Canberra child-care worker, sacked after five years’ employment, not even allowed to say goodbye to the kids she cared for or their parents—no warning, no reason; and people like Leonie Wong, a 17-year-old worker in an ice-cream shop, sacked because she rejected an AWA that signed away annual leave, overtime, weekend penalties and superannuation. Then we had Karen Palmer here today, sacked after 14 years with a company. The Prime Minister had the brazenness to say to Karen Palmer—so kind, Prime Minister: ‘Go and take a court case against the company that dismissed you, for which we’ll give you four grand’—for a case that will start at 50 grand and probably end at 150 grand. Big-hearted old Uncle Arthur on that one! One thing she needs of course is a statement from her employer that he has sacked her because she carried an injury. Do you think she got a statement like that from them? Yeah, go and tell it to the marines; call on them—sure the employer would do that for her!

There is no saving these industrial laws, which is why we say we will rip them up. What we now see is a new AWA in a new format, the format with the no disadvantage test ripped away. And we now have the practical examples, the Spotlight examples and the other examples that I have been referring to. We now know what an AWA—not a terribly popular mechanism for employing people hitherto—can do now that that no disadvantage test has been ripped away from it. That is why we are taking you on on that, and you are going to be defeated on it. (Time expired)

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