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

Their furrowed brows light up as they see the front door swing on its hinges, but it is just another blast of hot wind blowing through Marble Bar. Second after second, minute after minute, their hope turns to sadness, and the Prime Minister shuffles back to the trestle table and starts stacking the plastic cups, the workplace relations minister puts the gladwrap on the cheese and cabana and Hendy packs away the microphone and wheels the karaoke machine back into the storeroom—forlorn, sad men all on their own, but confident in the knowledge that they are there in company with everybody who agrees with them on their workplace relations legislation.

The simple fact of the matter is that the minister can, as he likes, and as he does along with his Prime Minister in this place, speak about their legislation from the point of view of their political propaganda and the argument they want to make. They can get up in this place and rant and rave. They may be confident that the bitter experiences that many Australians are having are not necessarily felt by those who are sitting in observation of them around this chamber and around some parts of this town. They may be confident about that, but the simple fact is, Mr Minister and Mr Deputy Speaker, that there are now thousands of Australians who understand exactly what those AWAs mean. They understand exactly that there is no truth in the sort of defence mounted here by the Prime Minister and the minister.

For example, the other day they got up to talk about the Commonwealth Bank AWA and said, ‘These workers have a choice. They can choose between their collective agreement and their AWA.’ The propaganda point, for those who are ignorant, is of course the assumption that the choice is between apples and apples—that is, dealing with the same issues. In fact the choice is of an agreement now five years out of date—which in the normal course of events, when we had a fair industrial relations system, would be open for renegotiation now—that is, to stick with the position you had in 2002 or to choose what is now being presented in this AWA, which rips away every one of your hard-fought benefits which makes family life doable.

This is the experience of Australians who know and understand that this government is not telling them the truth. The reason they know and understand is not that they make a detailed study of this issue, not that they go to the government’s website and make a sound judgement after they have balanced that with what might be said on the ACTU website; it is that they live it and experience it. It is their day-to-day lives that are affected. It is they who have to handle the consequences of the loss of penalty rates. It is they who have to make the economic calculations in relation to their ability to pay their mortgages. It is they, as they see their kids go out and pick up their first job and find themselves confronted with extraordinary hours in relation to their AWAs, who have to wonder whether their 16- or 17-year-old girl is going to get home safely, because she has no alternative other than to take up that job if she wants to get a start in life. They have to worry about the safety of their children. They have to worry about the financial viability of their families.

They can hear all the blah that the Prime Minister wants to deliver and all the blah his minister wants to deliver about this or that really being better, but they know and understand exactly why these clever people opposite can never give a straight answer to the question asked on this side of the House: can you guarantee that these AWAs do not make people worse off? Day in, day out—no guarantee. There is plenty of mockery, plenty of flicking around of newspaper articles and plenty of blowhardery, but no guarantee. It does not matter what insults are delivered to people on this side of the House, we will deal with them during the course of the next election campaign. It is turning their back on Middle Australian families, something that the Australian people never expected from this Prime Minister, which has surprised and hurt so many and is causing so many of them to regret the vote they gave the Prime Minister.

This booklet is the Howard government policy on industrial relations from the 2004 election. It is not a short policy. It goes on at some considerable length—in fact it is something like 19 pages, which in the course of getting across a particular point of view to the Australian public is as comprehensive as you are ever likely to get. In this policy there is not a word that indicates what the government intended to do about penalty rates, and there is not a word about the removal of the no disadvantage clause from the AWAs that existed then. There is not a word about the hours arrangements which have been made possible in relation to the laws that this government has put in place. There is not a word in this document about the point at which unfair dismissals and the removal of rights associated with them cut in.

There is not a word in that document about weakening the powers in the hands of the industrial umpire in relation to the IRC. There is not a word in that document that says that, in that multiplicity of industrial agreements, the provisions relating to safety training for workers happen to have some degree of connection with union based safety training arrangements—which, in fact, happen to be most of the safety training arrangements in this country. There is not a word about the fact that, if they were incorporated within an agreement, a fine would result for both the union and the employer. There is nothing of that in that document. The Australian people were profoundly misled on something that was going to have a massive effect on their position.

The Prime Minister said that he would govern for all Australians and not simply for his mates. The Prime Minister misled the Australian people profoundly on that, and they are beginning to understand that. Not only were there 50,000 to 60,000 people at the MCG today but that rally was broadcast to hundreds of thousands of Australian families, all fighting for Australian values at work—many of them in that sacred piece of territory, the ‘G’, and many of them in other places. Some were long-term Liberal voters. Indeed we heard from one or two long-term Liberal voters who explained what had happened to them with their AWAs. They were there fighting for Australian values, in particular that fundamental Australian value of a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.

Australians were doing it in 300 sites. They were doing it in Busselton to Broome, Wollongong to Wagga Wagga, Toowoomba to Townsville, Queenstown to George Town and Bordertown to Roxby Downs—in every state, every territory, every city and almost every big town and regional centre in Australia. Working families are waking up to what these laws will do to their lives. They are asking the Prime Minister to think about their families instead of his ideology. But he will not; he is not interested. The power has gone to his head. This Prime Minister believes he can get away with anything. He believes that he can do what he likes with the Australian people.

We saw another example of that in question time today. It is extraordinary: the government now doles out taxpayers’ money, not Liberal Party money, through Liberal Party candidates at election time. In other countries this is called money politics. In other countries this is called policy corruption and requires examination by an appropriate audit process. Where it occurs in the South Pacific, it is the subject of ministerial and prime ministerial interventions and arguments. When you go to a number of South Pacific countries, what do you say to them? You say this to them: you must not hand out all the aid money that we give to you as the personal plaything of individual members of parliament because that is corrupt. We say to Papua New Guineans and others that it has to be dispensed by a dispassionate process. Good heavens! Exactly the behaviour that is protested against by our ministers when they visit the region around us is in fact routinely practised in this place now by an arrogant, out-of-touch Howard government.

We on this side of the House have never said that the sky would fall in with the government’s Work Choices legislation. We have never said that mass unemployment or sackings would result from it. We have always talked about a slow burn, a dismantling of people’s conditions piece by piece over time, and that is precisely what is happening now. That is the record of the material that we bring into this chamber and ask questions about, one AWA after another.

There has never been a greater contrast than exists now between the policies of our two political parties, with an absolute divide on industrial relations but in so many other areas as well—our nation-building program for broadband, their idea about selling off Telstra; our stake in Medibank Private, their bungled sell-off; our plan to train Australians, their importation of foreigners; our investment in infrastructure, their plans for public servants’ super; our kick-start for innovation, their growing foreign debt; our childcare centres at local schools, their childcare shambles; our reforms of Aussie health, their blame-shifting and neglect; our cutting-edge fuel industries, their dependence on foreign oil; our plans for renewables and clean coal, their plans for nuclear reactors and nuclear waste; our plan to protect Australians from climate change, their plan to hope it goes away; our practical measures on terrorism, their war in Iraq; our collective bargaining, their AWAs. (Time expired)

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