Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I say to the member for Gorton that real small businesses in my electorate—not the four or five that you came up with—are telling me, ‘This is good. In fact, we are going to increase our employment.’ How unfair is it when we have actually legislated minimum conditions and standards? We have legislated a maximum of 38 ordinary hours of work per week, four weeks paid annual leave, 10 days paid personal and carers leave and 52 weeks of unpaid parental leave. These things are protected. Of course, other conditions can be negotiated if that is what they decide they want to do.

The other thing that is counter to these being unfair and extreme IR conditions is that we have also made sure that the Fair Pay Commission is able to make determinations on wages in a non-adversarial setting. The previous setting, in which you had to have ambit claims from all sides, always led to a halfway situation being created. We now have a Fair Pay Commissioner who is genuinely going out there and consulting with the public, not simply with members of the union movement or employers associations. He is actually seeking genuine input from anyone out there in the Australian public who wants to make a submission. That is a fair situation to have and one which did not exist under the previous industrial relations wage-fixing situation.

The Leader of the Opposition has from time to time referred to the model used by our cousins across the Tasman—the New Zealand model—and how New Zealand had to reregulate the extreme deregulations that took place in their system. I had a chance to have a look at that. I thought, ‘I had better go and look at what is happening over there rather than take the Leader of the Opposition’s word.’ A couple of weeks ago I met members of the New Zealand Labour Party, I met with members of the National Party, I met with unionists and I met with employer associations. Lo and behold, this reregulated environment that the Australian Labor Party keeps referring to is in fact still more deregulated than the Australian system—far more deregulated. There is no disadvantage test in the New Zealand system. We have minimum conditions protected by law.

In New Zealand 87 per cent of the private sector is on individual agreements—we are not talking about collective agreement; these are individual agreements. They have no central wage-fixing system. Guess who sets the minimum wages in New Zealand? It is the executive. The minister of the Crown in New Zealand sets them. They are not set by some central fair pay commission or third party; they are set by the government. Is this the reregulated environment that we are supposed to be aiming for? Their system is still far more deregulated than ours is. So do not come in here and say that our conditions and what we are proposing are in some way extreme. The only thing that is extreme is your language. The only thing that has been fabricated is your advertisements on the TV.

This so-called reregulated system in New Zealand is still far more deregulated than the Australian system. What we are proposing through our laws is real choice for people. They can take a new agreement or they can keep their current conditions—and of course it is great if they do that because it means that they are discussing the issue with their workforce. Let us have a look at some of the ACTU ads. The ACTU leader says that it is a disgrace that we have actually investigated these individuals. But those individuals were dragged into the spotlight by the ACTU movement itself. It got these people, put them in front of a camera and fabricated a story. Why shouldn’t their cases be investigated? The ACTU used these individuals, who perhaps were not fully aware of what they were doing, for political purposes. And we know that in each case the situation has been fabricated.

Let us look at the Optus case. In this situation apparently 70 field technicians were sacked and encouraged to work as contractors. The redundant workers could end up doing the same work but earning $180 less per week. What do the findings reveal? Optus was not attempting to re-engage its staff as contractors. There was the continuation of a program to outsource these customer field services and that outsourcing had already occurred three times in the past two years. There was nothing new there. They were continuing what they had been doing in the past under the old system. Redeployment was to be attempted and staff redeployed would stay on the same pay and conditions. Those not redeployed were made redundant and were to be provided with outplacement assistance. As much as we may decry redundancy, it does occur from time to time. It is a shame when it happens. It seems that the only time that redundancy is a bad word is when it is offered by an employer and when it is alleged to be part of the Work Choices legislation. But when a union movement is involved in redundancies, it is okay.

The Weekend Australian on 5 August reported the case of Dianne Rich, who appealed to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to prevent the end of her employment at the Electrical Trades Union. The ETU claimed that Ms Rich had been made redundant. When Cowra Abattoirs—a case exposed by the Office of Workplace Services—made people redundant it was ‘outrageous’. Yet when the union does it, it is a ‘genuine redundancy’. We see the absolute hypocrisy of those on the other side—hypocrisy in order to advance their fabricated stories. In the Cowra situation it was alleged that Robert Kirkman, the abattoir worker with 34 years of experience, and others were sacked on the basis of operational reasons. It was investigated by the Office of Workplace Services and it was found that there was no reasonable basis upon which to prosecute Cowra for alleged breaches of the Workplace Relations Act because the reason for the threatened dismissal of employees was the financial viability of the company. If you close down the business, everyone is out of a job. Of course if you restructure at least some jobs will continue and those employees can continue to go home to their families with a pay packet, rather than having the entire workforce find themselves out on the street.

The second ACTU ad made claims about WorkPac. A driver, Jennifer Gillian, was allegedly sacked by text message, without explanation or warning. It was claimed that she had previously inquired about her occupational health and safety standards in the workplace and that she feared this may have been a factor in her sacking. This was investigated by the Office of Workplace Services—and we will investigate every single case that the ACTU come up with because we know that there are fabrications behind just about everything that they say. Jennifer Gillian was a casual employee of WorkPac. Kerbside services required fewer drivers from WorkPac. Three workers, including Mrs Gillian, had their casual assignments ended. She was advised twice by telephone and then received a further message on the Monday. There is no evidence that her assignment ended because of safety issues that were raised—none whatsoever. There is example after example, but I will not take up the entire debate by going through them. Those on the other side know that this is the case and that is why the ACTU movement, in their embarrassment, are now saying, ‘We’re not going to be using real people or real situations in these advertisements, because we have to fabricate situations and the Office of Workplace Services will expose us. We’ll now use actors. We’ll get the actors in and will do a dummy script for them to go through.’

As I mentioned before, in the New Zealand system 87 per cent of the private sector is on individual agreements. By the way, I said to the Labor Party in New Zealand, ‘You have been in government all these years. Is there any chance that you’re actually going to wind back some of these things?’ The answer was no. They had no plans at all to do that. They are going to keep that system going. Yet what do we have here? We have the Leader of the Opposition, who made a policy on the run on AWAs. He made a policy on the run. It was a knee-jerk reaction. The member for Perth and everyone else in the opposition then had to support him. He realised the error that he made, but of course he is not going to back down now. Now they are trying to couch it in language such as ‘common-law agreements’. AWAs have been taken up— (Time expired)

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