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

This motion achieves nothing other than to take up the precious time of this chamber. The regulations make amendments to 52 Commonwealth acts and four regulations consequential to amendments to the Workplace Relations Act 1996 made by the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005. The regulations, which are the subject of this motion, largely amend the terminology and numbering of various Commonwealth acts and regulations to ensure technical consistency with the changes made by the Work Choices act. So disallowing these regulations, which the motion of the opposition does, would actually create discrepancies between the Workplace Relations Act and other federal legislation which refers to the Workplace Relations Act, and would do nothing as a consequence to assist employers and employees in Australia. Given that this would be the outcome of this motion if it were to be achieved by the opposition, it is irresponsible and it is why I say that it achieves nothing other than to take up an hour or so of the time of this chamber.

The consequential regulations subject to the disallowance motion fall into a number of categories. There are amendments to terminology and section numbers in various Commonwealth acts and regulations—for example, the substitution of references to ‘certified agreement’ with ‘collective agreement’; amendments to take account of new provisions of the Work Choices act—for example, the establishment of the Australian Fair Pay Commission; amendments consequential on particular repeals made by the Work Choices act; amendments that preserve the effect of transitional arrangements in other legislation; and other amendments consequential on new provisions introduced by Work Choices. This includes amendments to the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992, which have the effect of allowing up to 500,000 additional employees to choose a superannuation fund. So the effect of the motion by the opposition, if successful, would be to destroy these regulatory changes, which would have adverse impacts on workers in Australia.

The reason that the motion is being moved is, therefore, part of the ongoing campaign by the Labor Party and the ACTU against Work Choices, characterised by untruths, misleading claims and scare tactics. Indeed, opponents of the government’s legislation have slandered and maligned every employer, basically labelling them as ‘reactionary scrooges’ in this debate. More recently, we had the example of the Leader of the Opposition, the Labor Party and the union movement generally seeking to slander the officials of the Office of Workplace Services simply for doing their job and investigating whether or not workers had been affected or adversely impacted in the way in which the ACTU had claimed that they had. When these individual honest public servants doing their job pursuant to provisions of legislation found that what the ACTU had said was misleading and deceptive and reported that, what did they get from the opposition? They got called ‘snivelling liars’ by the Leader of the Opposition in this place yesterday simply because as good, honest, hard-working public servants they have done their jobs. But their jobs involved coming to a conclusion based on all the facts—not just some selective matters that the unions wanted to put forward—that what had been claimed was not, in fact, the case.

So we have this self-indulgent rhetoric on the part of the union movement and the Labor Party which ignores the reality of the modern workplace in Australia where employers and employees are not pitted against each other in a battle for supremacy but are simply wanting to ensure their skills are fully and fairly utilised. The old industrial relations system, which is what the Leader of the Opposition wants to roll back to, never empowered workers in this country. It empowered unions to create paper disputes with employers, dragging them into courts and tribunals and allowing unions to conduct unlawful strikes without penalties.

We have the Leader of the Opposition attacking just about every institution that there is. The Office of Workplace Services is attacked. He has attacked the new Building and Construction Commission despite the fact that the evidence from the operation of that commission has been that there has been a marked change in the culture which has been in existence in the building and construction industry in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and elsewhere around the country as a result of the changes put in place. In his own state, we had this ridiculous situation of the Perth to Mandurah Railway, with stoppage after stoppage costing millions upon millions of dollars, which has been the subject of criticism not just from us on this side of this chamber but indeed from the Labor Party government in Western Australia. The Leader of the Opposition wants to attack that as well, yet it is bringing about a very marked change, to the benefit of Australians. Simply, the one motivating factor behind the Labor Party’s hysterical campaign against Work Choices is that the Labor Party supported the old system because it gave power to the unions and the unions gave money to the Labor Party. Indeed, since 1996, the reality is that some $50 million has been provided by the unions in Australia to the Labor Party and that is who, in this case, is actually pulling the strings in terms of the rhetoric which is being used by the Labor Party.

The parliament has already given significant consideration to the Work Choices reforms and passed this important legislation, which is designed to take Australia into the 21st century, giving it a system which looks to the future and not to the past. The member for Perth says that there will be a choice at the next election. The choice is this: do Australians want an opposition forming a government which will take us back to the 1970s or 1980s in terms of industrial relations in this country, which will not meet the challenges of the future—the challenges of an ageing population, the challenges of a global economy in which Australia must operate and be part of if we are going to sustain the prosperity of this country? Do Australians want a party in government that is going to meet the challenges of the future, that is prepared to make careful reform in order to do that so that we can continue to grow our prosperity in this country or do they want one that is simply going to look back, under the orders of the union movement in this country, and take us back to the 1970s and 1980s?

It was interesting to hear the member for Perth talking about interest rates. Can I remind the House that interest rates under this government are on average five per cent below what the average was under the Labor Party when they were in government—

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