Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, this is forcing upon Australian workers the obsession of the Prime Minister. It effectively attacks unions and goes after ordinary working Australians, because of the Prime Minister’s obsession with deregulating the market. The fact is that the government has a perverse obsession with this matter. If you look at legislation in other areas of public policy, you will find the hand of industrial relations: you will find an industrial relations dimension. When it comes to funding educational institutions in this country, you will find an industrial relations dimension forcing universities to impose Australian workplace agreements. The Australian technical colleges legislation that was debated in the chamber today also goes to forcing Australian workplace agreements upon teachers who may work in those colleges.

Every area of public policy that is introduced by this government has a particular twist, a particular dimension, that goes to adversely affecting Australian workers in this country. It is an obsession that the Australian people do not accept as a reasonable response in the area of industrial relations. There is no longer a balance in our industrial relations system—a system that since Federation has ensured fairness and a decent wage for ordinary working families.

The pursuit of these reforms has little to do with productivity. When you compare Australia with New Zealand in the 1980s, it is clear that the collective bargaining process that was undertaken and enshrined by Labor governments in Australia was more effective in productivity terms than the statutory instrument of the individual contracts that were imposed in New Zealand. In that period, Australia’s productivity outstripped that of New Zealand threefold.

This week we have had the OECD report findings in which it is quite clear that comparable countries to ours in terms of wealth can ensure that unemployment levels are low, without stripping away employment protections. The government chooses not to accept empirical evidence that has been provided by the OECD report. For example, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark have lower unemployment levels than this country but have not ripped away employment conditions or the employment protections that should be provided to employees in this country. There is no need, therefore, to rip away the basic entitlements of working people in this country in order to generate productivity when the evidence is to the contrary.

We see a government obsessed with attacking employee organisations registered under the Commonwealth act. Unfortunately, that is what a lot of this is about: an obsessive enmity towards unions in this country. You show me a country without unions or a country without democratic institutions representing employees, and I will show you a country that is very extreme either to the left or to the right. Countries without unions are not democratic. If the government believe it is okay to pursue an assault upon those organisations then they misunderstand the democratic institutions of a decent country and a decent society. The eminent economist Tim Colebatch, when referring to the OECD findings, said that our employment is well behind that of the countries to which I referred earlier.

But perhaps the biggest furphy of all that has been recently asserted by the Prime Minister and by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations is that AWAs are more productive than collective agreements. I refer not only to the earlier comparison I made between Australia and New Zealand but also to my own state, Victoria, where the Kennett government chose to enact legislation that forced individual contracts upon people. The result was that productivity went down.

Many examples show that, when a government wishes to introduce statutory instruments that force employees to negotiate individually with their employers, it does not lead to productivity growth. With the ideological blindness of the government, we have seen instead example after example of employees being maltreated by certain employers who are choosing to take away the conditions of employment. We have seen examples of that raised in this place—Spotlight, the employee working for a juice bar, a very young employee working for Bakers Delight and the treatment of employees at the Cowra Abattoir.

We have seen time and time again that the government will endorse bad behaviour by certain employers. That is not what we want in this country and that is not what good employers want in this country. Good employers want a fair system. They want to be able to compete with their competitors. Let there be no mistake about that. What they do not want to do is force their employees to go below a minimum award set of conditions. Decent employers do not choose to go after their staff. Most employers, and particularly employers in small businesses, have an intimate relationship with their staff. They know their employees well. They quite often know their families. They do not want to be placed in the position, as they have been under Work Choices, of having to consider cutting conditions of their staff because some competitor up the road chooses to do that. That is not a system that is fair. That is certainly not what would have occurred if a decent government were enacting legislation to bring about changes for the better in this country.

I return to the assertions made by the Prime Minister and the Australian Mines and Metals Association in relation to AWAs and productivity. It is not the case that those instruments have provided productivity. When it comes to an alleged nexus between AWAs and productivity, I think the only industry that the Prime Minister has chosen to refer to to date has been the mining industry. What we have seen there are a number of assertions that somehow, without having AWAs in place in that industry, we cannot have a productive industry. I think that is entirely wrong. The President of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union has made that very clear in his own opinion piece. He chooses to make a comparison between the metals mining areas and the coalmining and non-coalmining areas. Mr Maher said:

In terms of productivity growth, the performance of the mining industry as a whole over the last 10 to 15 years has been good, with average annual productivity increases of 4.7% for the years 1985 to 2003. Indeed, the main employer lobby group for the non-coal sector, the Australian Mines and Metals Association, has frequently cited these figures to justify its position in support of individual contracts as the non-coal sector has had a very high take up rate of AWAs in comparison to other industries.

However, the general mining productivity figures have been good partly because they rely on coal mining.

He went on:

This is where the facts become rather inconvenient for the AWA cheer squad. That is, when one examines the characteristics of coal mining in comparison with the other mining sectors there is one feature that stands out. The coal mining industry is full of members of my union and is largely regulated by collective agreements. The coal mining industry is characterised by an estimated 85% union membership density. In addition, almost every pit has a collective agreement negotiated between the union and the mine operators that include Business Council notables BHP-Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata.

Mr Maher is asserting, quite correctly, that if you were to draw a comparison between those mines that have collective agreements and those mines that have instituted AWAs, the former category has a greater productivity level. It is those mines that have collaborated with their staff and have encouraged enterprise agreements—collective arrangements—that have been more productive. So it is not the case, as the Prime Minister has asserted, that somehow removing AWAs from workplaces will in fact reduce productivity. There is no evidence to suggest that that will be the case in that industry.

I had the good fortune some years ago to speak to that peak employer body and they asked me about AWAs. I told them that I had seen rigid AWAs and flexible collective agreements. It is not necessarily the instrument that provides productivity; it is the intention of the parties to find ways to overcome inefficiencies for the collective good. So it is not the case that AWAs are necessarily flexible. However, in certain circumstances, they have been instruments that have, effectively, adversely affected an individual employee. In that industry there are many employees who have a rare set of skills. They travel to remote areas and they have some market power to negotiate their conditions.

An AWA under the Workplace Relations Act is a totally different creature to the AWA that is now being foisted upon the Australian workforce. The AWA that is now being instituted is effectively an agreement that does not contain a no disadvantage test. It is an agreement that does not provide any protection for employees, and we have seen those examples. I would ask the Prime Minister to reconsider the logic behind his assertion that there is a nexus between AWAs and productivity growth because, when you compare mine to mine, that is not the case in the mining industry. I am beginning to realise that, in effect, these AWAs are being forced upon Australian workers, without any proper protection.

It is not just me who makes that comment. In today’s Daily Telegraph the state Nationals’ leader, Andrew Stoner, attacked the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. He called him a particular name that is unparliamentary. I ask people to read the Daily Telegraph. The Nationals’ leader said that he thought it was outrageous that Minister Andrews had introduced an AWA that did not contain a no disadvantage test. In fact, he said he was not even aware that there was no test. The word starts with a ‘d’ and the second part is ‘head’.

No wonder the Nationals’ leader is concerned. We have seen The Nationals vote against this legislation in the Queensland parliament. Now we have seen the Nationals’ leader in New South Wales say that the minister is acting in an improper way and the reason for that is that this legislation is unfair on ordinary Australian workers. (Time expired)

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