Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

These attacks and her hypocrisy in this matter do not go unnoticed in the business community. The minister is, though, strangely silent when it is pointed out that union officials have been negotiating collective agreements that trade away the terms and conditions that individual agreements focus on. And yesterday the minister refused to answer a question about the fact that union officials, in this case a Labor senator-elect for South Australia, negotiated away terms and conditions of a union collective agreement against the wishes of the union members. The minister says nothing about that. She cannot bring herself to utter even a mild rebuke of the Labor senator-elect or union leaders who exploit their members, but she never hesitates when it comes to small business.

Last year, when employers dared raise their concerns about Labor’s industrial relations laws, she threatened them with ‘injury’ if they dared to voice their concerns publicly. I am told that the minister is not shy about making veiled statements to business operators during her meetings with them—heavy on the innuendo. And don’t forget: this is a party that thrives on payback, retribution and revenge.

The minister is antibusiness to the core. The minister, whose very DNA is antibusiness, truly believes that family-run small businesses are there purely to exploit the workers. This kind of antibusiness rhetoric belongs in another age; it does not belong in the workplaces or the parliaments of the 21st century. The minister’s demonising of employers who offered individual contracts is of great concern. The minister has effectively accused every employer who has ever sat down and negotiated terms and conditions of employment with their employees, for their mutual benefit, of ripping them off. That is what the minister has charged small business with. Their crime in the minister’s eyes has been to sit down and individually negotiate an employment contract with an employee for their mutual benefit.

The minister will no doubt use the same emotive language she has been using for months and years about how workers are being ripped off by unscrupulous employers. But the minister should be mindful that her words are resonating out in the business sector, resonating amongst small business, and continuing to drive down their confidence that the national government of this country is supportive of them. The minister is fond of repeating the claim that an exemption for small business from unfair dismissal laws is designed to make it easy for small business owners to sack good workers for no reason. She said it again in the House on 17 March:

… if you were a long-term worker, the breadwinner in your family and you had always done the right thing by your employer, it was okay if you went to work one day and were dismissed for no reason and you had no remedy.

Does the minister truly believe that small business employers in this country scour their workplaces looking for good workers who have always done the right thing and then sack them for no reason? Is that what the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations is saying about the business owners and operators in this country? It is such an outrageous claim; it reveals that the minister has no idea how businesses in this country operate. Can anyone in this place seriously envisage a small business operator scouring the workplace, finding the best employees and then sacking them for no reason?

The minister showed her true ideological colours today. Time and time again we have heard repeated attacks from the minister, and the Labor Party when they were in opposition, on the two million businesses across the country, who are simply trying to have a go and keep their heads above water—in an economy that, under Labor, in less than three months is starting to go backwards. In just three months the minister appears to have forgotten that it is the business community, in conjunction with the economic management of the coalition government, that for the last 10 years has largely been responsible for creating over 10 million jobs, the highest number of jobs in this country since World War II. Our country is currently enjoying the lowest level of unemployment and the highest number of jobs created in decades.

I appreciate that the minister has limited experience in business, but I can assure her that Australian businesses are treating their good workers with kid gloves. They want their workers to continue to support the businesses, to ensure that these businesses can continue to operate in challenging economic times. The recent unemployment rates released by the ABS show that we should be proud of the 10 years of economic and labour market reform that have enabled us to experience the lowest unemployment rates and highest participation rates in this country for 34 years—over three decades.

How long will our business community be able to continue creating jobs with the uncertainty surrounding the Labor Party’s industrial relations laws? The minister has created new legislation, and it passed through the House, but the evidence to the Senate inquiry showed that it is adding to the regulatory burden of businesses across the country. In particular, the most important new regulation introduced by the Rudd government—and certainly Labor’s first substantive piece of legislation—clearly fails the test set out under Labor’s own guidelines indicating that policy proposals that are likely to have a significant impact should be subject to detailed analysis, including compliance costs measurement to be undertaken and documented in a regulation impact statement. None of this has occurred—no economic analysis, no regulation impact statement and no economic modelling. Where is the analysis of the business compliance costs of the transition bill?

Evidence before the Senate inquiry highlighted the high level of confusion and the difficulty there would be for business, particularly small business, once Labor’s transitional workplace relations legislation was in place. Businesses raised concerns about increased costs associated with industrial action and disputes. Under the 10 or 11 years of labour market reform under the Howard government, industrial disputation fell to the lowest level in Australia’s history. The number of strikes, the level of industrial disputation, fell to the lowest level ever. But, believe me, the unions now think they are back in control. Businesses also raised concerns about the costs associated with the reinvigoration of the award system, and Senator Marshall of the Labor Party suggested last week that the Labor Party plan for award modernisation without disadvantaging workers or increasing employers’ costs was ‘contradictory and an impossible ask’. So, if a senior Labor mem-ber believes that award modernisation will disadvantage workers, and the senator in charge of this legislation in the Senate, Senator Wong, has refused on three separate occasions to give a guarantee that workers will not be worse off under Labor’s industrial relations laws, then is it any wonder that business confidence in government policies is plummeting?

Where is the analysis of the costs imposed on businesses from the abolition of AWAs and from award rationalisation? Where is the economic analysis conducted by the minister’s own department providing a guarantee that Labor’s changes will not lead to a reduction in the unemployment levels and increases in inflation? There is none—well, certainly none that the minister is prepared to share with the Australian public. The government know that their changes will have a damaging impact on the economy. They know that their recent bill will increase regulation for small business. They know that it will disadvantage workers. (Time expired)

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