Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Like many people in this place, I suppose, prior to coming here I had a long association with the trade union movement in Australia. I worked for 10 years with an industry superannuation fund, and thank goodness the days when they called industry super funds ‘union funds’ are gone. Whilst I was with that fund, for almost a decade I was a paid-up and card-carrying member of the Finance Sector Union of Australia. Like many people, I have seen the bad side of unionism. I have seen some terrible things happening—people going out on strikes and eventually losing jobs and industries being shut down—but I have also seen the good side of unionism and people genuinely committed to the worker and to trying to find them a better outcome in their place of employment. I have also worked for wages. I have been on the end of a crowbar and a shovel. I have mustered cattle. I have ploughed paddocks. I have laid tiles and cleaned concrete formwork in the construction industry. I have also been self-employed. I sold welding alloys for a long time in western Queensland and some parts of Victoria. I have been self-employed selling advertising space and insurance and investment products. I have been a company director. And I have done a whole range of other jobs.

I do not think that makes me unique on this side of the House. On this side of the House we have people who have served in a wide range of occupations—in sales and as aircraft pilots, physicists, doctors, lawyers and economists. You name it; pretty well every occupation is covered by members on this side of the House. When you have a look at the other side of the House, you see that it is comprised mainly of hacks. There are 88 caucus members. Of those 88 caucus members, there are 41 former union officials, 34 former political staffers, six former union lawyers, nine former state parliamentarians and six to whom I refer as Labor royalty. You have to ask, when you see this matter of public importance and how it is being debated, what the people who have proposed this debate actually know about it. I looked at what the OECD says about Australia’s new workplace relations system. The OECD has been a strong supporter of the government’s workplace reforms for quite some time. The OECD’s Economic survey of Australia 2004 said:

To further encourage participation and favour employment, the industrial relations system also needs to be reformed so as to increase the flexibility of the labour market, reduce employment transactions costs and achieve a closer link between wages and productivity. Regulatory requirements for collective and for individual agreements should be eased so that they can replace awards.

The IMF has also been a very strong supporter of the government’s reform program. In their Staff report for the 2005 article IV consultation on Australia, prior to the introduction of these reforms, the IMF stated:

There is now an exceptional opportunity to implement further reforms to sustain and improve Australia’s strong economic performance. In particular, employment and productivity can be improved by implementing proposed reforms of labor markets and welfare policies.

Sharan Burrow, the President of the ACTU wrote to the IMF. In October last year, David Burton, the Director of the Asia and Pacific Department of the IMF, responded to her letter. He said:

... IMF staff recognized that Australia has already made substantial progress towards a more flexible labor market. As noted in the staff report, this improvement in flexibility, supported by increased competition in goods markets and other structural reforms, has been an important contributor to Australia’s excellent record of job creation and productivity growth during the past 14 years.

Having said that, you have to wonder what is driving the Australian Labor Party and why the Labor Party and their union allies have been running around for the last few months predicting the end of civilisation as a result of the Work Choices legislation. We heard that the sky was going to fall in. We heard that women and children were going to be murdered, that there would be more divorces, class warfare, lower fertility rates and no more weekend barbeques. Almost two months into the operation of Work Choices, this doomsaying from the Labor Party has been exposed for what it is—pure and utter hysteria. Criticisms of Work Choices by the Labor Party and the union movement are more about the fear of union bosses of losing their privileged status than they are about the confected outrage over rights at work that we have seen recently.

Mr Beazley has in the last week or so decided to turn his attack on Australian workplace agreements. Almost one million Australians have entered into AWAs since 1996, and Mr Beazley wants to deny them the chance to have their say on their working conditions so that he can keep sweet with unions.

See this speech in context