Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

The thesis articulated by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations has four essential points: firstly, that the government’s extreme and unfair industrial relations legislation is absolutely essential to our economic prosperity and indeed, from 27 March, is the cause of our economic prosperity; secondly, that there is not one problem in the government’s legislation, that not one problem has adversely impacted upon an Australian employee, an Australian worker or an Australian family; thirdly, that anyone who makes a legitimate point about the adverse implications of this legislation and how it has have adversely impacted upon real Australians out in their workplaces and with their families is engaging in shocking and terrible misleading; and, fourthly, that because Labor said on 28 March this year, when the legislation took effect, that the Western world as we know it would stop and the sky would fall in, there is no problem that you need to worry about. Let us deal with each of those in turn—firstly, the government’s assertion that this legislation is absolutely essential to the economy and to our economic prosperity and, indeed, that every economic circumstance we have seen since 27 March this year is a direct consequence of the legislation.

I recall the last election being based centrally on the economy and its management. Did we hear one word about these proposals in the course of that election campaign? When the Prime Minister said, ‘This election is about trust. Who do you trust to manage the economy?’ did we hear one word about these proposals? Not only did we not hear one word about these proposals in the government’s formal election policy commitment on industrial relations, but when the Prime Minister physically launched this in Brisbane in September 2004, he was asked whether he proposed to seek to abolish the no disadvantage test and he said no. Not only was there nothing about this legislation in these commitments to the Australian people, but a central piece of the government’s legislation—the abolition of the no disadvantage test—was positively disavowed by the Prime Minister in a case of deliberate misleading and deception.

Why do we have economic prosperity in Australia at this point in time? Is it because the government has passed an extreme piece of industrial relations legislation from 27 March? No. We are into our 16th year of economic growth, much of that set up by the structural reforms made by the Labor Party when last in government. In more recent years, we have had the benefit of a resources boom to China. What do international and domestic experiences tell us about the economic impact of these proposals on the Australian economy? The domestic experience in the states of Western Australia and Victoria, where proposals similar to these were introduced at the state level, showed two essential economic outcomes: a reduction in wages of those people in the workforce and a reduction in state based productivity. We have seen exactly the same outcomes in New Zealand where proposals similar to these were also introduced at the point in time when, in Australia, we introduced collective enterprise bargaining. We saw Australian productivity increase massively and at the same time in New Zealand, as a result of individual contracts, productivity and economic growth declined.

The OECD employment outlook 2006 underlines all of these points. If you want to get productivity into your economy, rely upon collective enterprise bargaining. That is where you will get the productivity improvements. All the domestic and international economic experience about these measures is: wages down, productivity down. And wages down is what the government is all about. Why is that? Central to a range of issues raised by the Leader of the Opposition, me and my colleagues yesterday and today was the abolition of the so-called no disadvantage test, taking away the conditions and entitlements that Australians have come to rely upon for their take-home pay: penalty rates, leave loading, shift allowances, rest breaks and the like. This is best shown by the list of 46 award conditions expressly excluded by the Commonwealth Bank AWA.

My second point is that the government asserts that everything that we find in these measures is good. Indeed, in question time today the minister said, ‘These measures make Australians better off.’ The Leader of the Opposition asked him a very simple question: ‘If you assert that these measures make Australians better off, give a guarantee that no individual Australian employee will be worse off as a result of these measures.’ That is a guarantee that the Prime Minister has refused to give from day one. When he was asked in 1996 about the so-called Reith proposals, he gave that guarantee. Chastened by that experience, he knew, as the tricky politician that he is, that this was not a guarantee he could give now. How does he combat that? He combats that by saying, ‘Anyone who raises a point which might suggest that someone out there in the workplace, out there in the suburbs or out there in Australian society has been adversely impacted by these measures must be engaging in a shocking and terrible misleading.’ He will blackguard anyone who raises a legitimate factual point.

We know the Prime Minister is a serial misleader of the Australian public when it comes to industrial relations and that is reflected by the absence of any of these measures in that 2004 election document. Some of us have been around long enough to know that the phrase ‘Honest John’ was always an ironic expression. That applies to no greater extent than when the Prime Minister is engaging in a conversation about industrial relations. He will do anything, say anything or mislead anyone to slide through the adverse political, social and economic consequences of his extreme and unfair measures.

The next point the government makes is that the Labor Party said that the sky would fall in on 28 March. Just put to one side the fact that we did not say that—no-one asserted that the Western world as we know it would stop on 28 March as a result of the introduction of these measures—but the Prime Minister and the minister are out there saying, ‘The sky hasn’t fallen in! The sky hasn’t fallen in!’ Labor has raised case after case in this House. Guess what? In each of those cases, the sky has fallen in for the individuals concerned. They have either been unfairly dismissed without a remedy or they have had their take-home pay components shredded by an AWA which cuts out their penalty rates, their overtime, their shift allowance, their roster arrangement, their tea break and their capacity for decent work and family balance and a decent take-home pay package. They are pushed onto an AWA which has no unfair dismissal remedy, no protection from the umpire and which shreds those take-home pay conditions and components.

Without going through the complete list, let us just look at how the sky has fallen in for some people since 27 March. The Prime Minister does not like it when we remind him of Annette Harris. The sky fell in for her when her employer tried to force her onto a 2c per hour AWA where her overtime and penalty rates were shredded. The sky fell in for the Cowra abattoir workers when they were told that they could be sacked unfairly with no remedy for so-called operational reasons. You will all recall the minister and the Prime Minister saying publicly, ‘Oh, operational reasons—there’s no change.’ Recently, the government put a submission to the Industrial Relations Commission on an operational reasons matter. The government’s own submission said that the law had changed in this area: the threshold for operational reasons was lower and that, if operational reasons were there, when it came to the dismissing of individual employees, merit did not apply. So the sky fell in for the Cowra abattoir workers. I remember the Triangle Cable case, which was one of the first cases of unfair dismissal after this legislation came into effect. I remember seeing two or three employees on ABC TV, one of them saying words to the effect of: ‘I have been here for 20 or 30 years. I have a wife, a mortgage and four kids. I don’t know what I’ll do.’ The sky had fallen in for them.

Finally, the government says, ‘Let’s rely upon the data.’ There is only one problem: when it comes to this area, the government has now deliberately hidden the data. At Senate estimates in May, the Office of the Employment Advocate made the point that, when it came to AWAs, 16 per cent of AWAs removed all those take-home pay components, the so-called protected award conditions; 100 per cent removed one; 64 per cent removed leave loadings; 63 per cent removed penalty rates; and 52 per cent removed shift loadings. What did the government do after that data, its own data, was pushed out? Come November, at Senate estimates, it refused to release that data.

Let us explode the myths. On a day when hundreds of thousands of Australians have marched in the streets to make their point—they think this legislation is unfair, they think it is extreme, they think it should be chucked out—these government myths should be thrown away and the government itself thrown away at the next election. (Time expired)

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