Sharryn Jackson (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am going to take some time—perhaps for the benefit of the member for Moncrieff and certainly for the benefit of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition—to go back in time a little bit to last year. It is apparent that you have not quite realised yet that Australia voted for a change of government last year. A key part of that was a vote to change the workplace relations laws. Funnily enough, I would have thought with the passing of the transition bill recently, which saw the end of Australian workplace agreements, that the opposition had finally conceded that, but apparently not. Indeed, the arguments outlined by the member for Moncrieff do not appear to have changed.

I want to remind people of the sequence of events. It is not as though workplace relations was a hidden issue in the federal election. Indeed, I think everyone would concede it was one of the key issues in the federal election. Yes, Labor was out there very early on in the piece promising it would abolish AWAs. In late April last year, it outlined and published in great detail its Forward with Fairness policy. That policy was complemented some months later by a policy implementation plan which set out the transitional arrangements that the Labor government would adopt for implementing its Forward with Fairness policy.

Every Labor candidate in every electorate around Australia campaigned long and hard on the issue of workplace relations. Indeed, our leadership team campaigned long and hard on the issue of workplace relations. I would argue that most Australians understood that one of the key differences between the major political parties at the last election was our industrial relations policies. Australians knew what they were voting for and they knew they were voting for substantial workplace reform.

It was not—as is the incorrect premise of the MPI—that they were voting to go backwards on anything. They were voting to go Forward with Fairness. That raises my concern generally about the premise of this MPI. It frankly outlines the nonsense that the opposition continue to peddle, despite the fact of the obvious rejection by the electorate of their workplace relations policies.

It is quite inappropriate to characterise Labor’s legislation as a roll back of workplace relations reforms. The opposition likes to make believe that for years we had these wonderful reforms promoted by the Howard government and that the policy whose name dare not be spoken, Work Choices, was the only thing that people rejected. That is simply not true. That is a complete fabrication of what was happening out there in the greater community in Australia. People were well aware that the Howard government would do anything it could to try to promote some view or justify the continuation of AWAs and the impact that those AWAs had. But everybody saw through it. Not even a last-minute fairness test introduced in the death knells of the term of the Howard government was enough for people to give it a tick—they saw through it.

I can assure you that we were not out there campaigning that we were going back to a pre-Work Choices situation. We went out there with a very clear, detailed policy, debated in electorates across Australia, that we were going Forward with Fairness. We campaigned on the kinds of changes we intended to introduce when we were in government and the Australian people voted for those changes. They voted to change the government and they voted to change the workplace relations system. This is something that, frankly, most members opposite still have not come to terms with.

The second part of the MPI that I take issue with is the question of Treasury advice. Most of the member for Moncrieff’s speech concentrated on an article that appeared on the front page of the Australian referring to Treasury advice. This was Treasury advice that, it subsequently became apparent, was dated 18 April 2007, advice that predated the actual publication of Labor’s industrial relations policy—contained in a minute which apparently predated the August detailed information about the implementation plan. I think, as the Deputy Prime Minister said, that fails the first test of common sense. It is hard to rely on some Treasury advice that is an analysis of Labor’s IR policies which did not exist at the time. One can only assume it was based on a series of assumptions that was given to them by former ministers of the Howard government. Why didn’t this apparent advice have some consideration of the then Howard government’s own fairness test worked into it or the contrast to it?

It seems to me that people need to be careful jumping backwards and forwards between two pieces of advice, one of which was referred to in an article in the Australian, which we can only assume, to be perfectly honest, was part of some sort of attempt by the previous government to make further false claims about Labor’s policies. That is something that those opposite have a track record of: making false claims about Labor’s IR policies. I guess you have to ask yourself: why do they want to misrepresent these policies; why do they want to misrepresent the truth in this way? The only thing I can assume is that the Liberal Party of Australia are still committed to Work Choices. They are still committed to the extreme ideological industrial relations policies that we saw implemented by the previous government.

Those policies did rip off the most vulnerable of Australia’s workers, despite the fact you tried to hide and failed to disclose the level and the extent to which workers were losing entitlements such as overtime penalties, shift work penalties and many other conditions of employment which were taken off some of Australia’s most vulnerable workers. I can only assume from that that you continue to be committed to those policies that endorse the ripping off of working families and the ripping off of those conditions of employment that saw the gap in men’s and women’s wages increase. I assume that you are still committed to that and, frankly, I cannot believe that the opposition can continue to defend such policies.

I cannot believe that the opposition can continue to be involved in scare tactics. The argument from the member for Moncrieff was classic Chicken Little: the sky would fall in and doom would follow the introduction of Labor’s policies. It is the same sort of rhetoric we heard before the election, when clearly the policy position that was in front of the electorate was an economically responsible one.

We have said that we want to put in place a balanced industrial relations system. We want to see a system that works for all Australians, that is fair and flexible, that is simple and productive, that will not jeopardise employment, that will not allow for industry wide strikes or pattern bargaining and that will not place inflationary pressure on the economy. We have a policy that aims to drive productivity and cooperative workplace arrangements, because we believe that the path to the future lies in responsible economic management, helping working families under financial pressure and making sure that we have the right responses for the future. And you know, our policy is not solely about industrial relations; it is part of a broad breadth of policies aimed at ensuring that we finally begin to tackle the issues that have seen our productivity go backwards in this country. We are not just concentrating on industrial relations; we are looking at investing in skills, we are looking at cutting wasteful government expenditure and we are going to deliver a budget that delivers for working families. I am sure it will be one that all Labor members will be proud of.

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