Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with considerable delight that I rise to speak in support of the Fair Work Bill 2008. The Fair Work Bill 2008, combined with the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008, which was introduced on the very first day of this parliament and which is now an act of this parliament, represents the culmination of a process that began with a commitment by the Labor Party in the lead-up to last year’s election. That commitment began with the Forward with Fairness document. That document, combined with a number of other statements, meant that there has never been a more comprehensive industrial platform put before the Australian people as was put before them in the 2007 election. Given the result that occurred on 24 November last year we can rightly claim on this side of this House to have a mandate for fulfilling the commitment that we made in the lead-up to the election. We fulfilled that mandate on the very first day of this parliament; we are fulfilling that mandate with the Fair Work Bill 2008.

That is not just a view of the Rudd government. It is, as we now know—at least, we think we know—a view of the opposition. On 25 November—last week—the Leader of the Opposition said:

The coalition accepts that the Rudd government has a mandate for workplace relations change as proposed in their election policy last year. The coalition accepts Work Choices is dead. The Australian people have spoken.

Never was a truer word said about the state of affairs when it comes to industrial relations. We have a mandate for doing what we do on this day.

There was extensive consultation leading up to the first bill, which was put before this parliament on the very first day. There was consultation with employer groups, unions and legal practitioners in the field. Since the first piece of legislation was put through this parliament, there has been further extensive consultation with employer associations, many unions and legal practitioners in the field, often through committees looking at industrial legislation. It is a difficult process to put industrial legislation through this parliament given the number of groups out there which quite legitimately feel that they ought to have a say in and influence over the way in which we regulate our workplaces in this country. It is a very significant achievement to have reached this day and to be debating this bill.

How that stands in contrast to the process which led to the Work Choices bill under the Howard government. By any measure, it was the signature piece of legislation of the final term of the Howard government. Most commentators would agree that it was the piece of legislation which meant that it was the final term of the Howard government. And yet, despite it being the signature piece of legislation for that term in government, not a word of it was breathed in the election of 2004 which gave rise to that term of government. It was a bill that was in effect rammed through this House in a month—almost in the dead of night. Despite there being 4,500 submissions, the Senate inquiry into the Work Choices bill lasted but one week. What we can absolutely say about the Work Choices legislation was that there was no mandate for it. Because of that, the Howard government is no more.

I congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister on the process which has led to this day. It is a great achievement. The difference in the process which has led to the Fair Work Bill compared to the process which led to the Work Choices bill says everything about the difference between the Howard government on the one hand and the Rudd government on the other.

This bill will restore fairness to the system. This bill will restore balance to the relationship between employers and employees. It will do that by putting in place a robust safety net. Through the national employment standards there will be 10 conditions. In addition to that, modern awards will provide another 10 conditions, including wages. Those 20 conditions will form a robust safety net. An agreements bargain on top of that will need to be better than those conditions over all and will not be able to remove the conditions set out in the National Employment Standards.

Importantly, there will be an annual wage adjustment. Also importantly, for the first time we are going to see awards adjusted every four years so that awards are kept up to date. Common-law agreements—common-law individual contracts—will be able to still be made and will be and always have been an important part of an industrial relations system. They will be made against the context of a safety net made up of the National Employment Standards and awards.

What we are putting through with the Fair Work Bill is an enterprise bargaining system. With the legislation that went through parliament at the beginning of this year, we absolutely rejected the Howard government legislated system of individual contracts called Australian workplace agreements. This is a bill which is based on collective bargaining at the enterprise level. For the first time, we will have a meaningful collective bargaining right, where if the majority of a workplace want to have collective bargaining then collective bargaining will occur. That will occur in good faith; good faith bargaining will form a part of the process which will lead to agreement, if indeed an agreement can be reached.

This is a critically important point. We have had in this country a system of collective bargaining since 1993 absent a collective bargaining right. In that, we have been the odd one out in modern developed economies around the world. In this bill, we fix that. There will be access to arbitration if the good faith bargaining provisions are flouted by any party—union, employee or employer. There will also be access to arbitration in circumstances in which there has been damage to the parties in the negotiation process.

Importantly, the bill provides for a low-paid bargaining stream, which will streamline the ability to have multi-employer agreements and, if needs be, first-contract arbitration. The bill provides for a far better right to unfair dismissal redress. The vast majority of employees will have access to that right. The bill will provide for freedom of association: freedom to be a part of a union or not to be a part of a union. Unlike the hollow provision in the Work Choices legislation, there is not just a right to be a member of a union; there is also a right to be represented by a union. That is a significant change from the Work Choices past. There will be a proper right of entry so that representatives of participants in the industrial relations system can enter workplaces and have meetings with the people who they represent.

Fair Work Australia will be a strong, independent umpire and a streamlined umpire, streamlining what are currently seven different agencies into one. The constitutional basis of the act is clarified so that now the act is entirely based on the corporations power, as opposed to previous incarnations of industrial legislation in this country which have in part at least been based on the conciliation and arbitration power. So, for those who have been practitioners in the system, there are no more logs of claims, no more funny ambits. We actually have a proper system and a streamlined system, and that in itself represents significant micro-economic reform.

This is a very important piece of legislation indeed. After the Work Choices era, it is right to describe this as great labour legislation, but it is great labour legislation because Labor legislation is fair legislation. It is industrial legislation which is consistent with the Australian ethic. It is industrial legislation which is consistent with international standards. There have over the years been a number of debates in the field of industrial relations, but the election last year, combined with this legislation and in a sense combined with the statement of the Leader of the Opposition, clarifies a number of those debates which have dogged industrial relations for most of the time since Federation—although we have to qualify that to some extent.

Having heard the pronouncements of the Leader of the Opposition, we hear different things from people on the other side. They still seem to be resistant to giving up the idea that they are the party of Work Choices, but it is clear, in the context of what the Australian people have said, that, to the extent that they hang on to those old notions, they are but a rump. They are a rump in this debate. What is clear is that we need a stable system of industrial legislation in this country. Industrial legislation in Australia has been the most amended piece of legislation in this parliament, with the exception of the tax act, since Federation, and that benefits absolutely nobody. But what we have now is the fair basis on which we ought to be able to achieve a national consensus around industrial relations.

One of those key debates has been a debate about the pre-eminence of individual bargaining versus the pre-eminence of collective bargaining. Those on the other side in relation to Work Choices stood for a proposition that individual bargaining ought to be the pre-eminent means by which we regulate our workplaces, whereas we on this side have said that, not exclusively but mainly, the basis on which we ought to regulate employment in our workplaces is through collective bargaining. There is nothing fair about a legislated scheme of individual contracts which seeks to undermine collective standards. There is nothing fair about a single employee earning $50,000 a year going one on one with their employer, a legal entity which may have revenue of $10 billion a year. There is nothing fair about that, particularly when it is their employer which has the right to hire and fire, particularly when it is their employer which has the right to pay wages and particularly when it is their employer who tells the employee what to do. Collective bargaining installs fairness into that situation.

That idea of fairness actually exists in other parts of our law. You can find it in the Trade Practices Act. Indeed, there is even a doctrine of unequal bargaining power which can be found in the common law. Not every Australian workplace agreement that was entered into was unfair, but a system of AWAs which sought to undermine collective bargaining standards was ultimately exploitative. We can say now that that debate is over. This is a country which stands for collective bargaining as being the principal means by which employers and employees regulate their terms and conditions of employment.

There is a debate between labour productivity and wage cutting—whether we seek to promote our economy through improving our labour productivity or whether we seek to do it, as the other side have sought to do it, by putting in place a system which cuts wages. That is an experiment which completely failed. What we saw with labour productivity under the Howard years was that it fell through the floor. Whereas the rate of growth in labour productivity towards the end of the 1990s was running at about four per cent, by 2005-06—immediately pre-Work Choices—it was down to 2.5 per cent and in the one year of Work Choices it went down to 0.9 per cent.

We saw a piece of legislation which absolutely cut wages and conditions. In that brief period where we had a window into what was going on with Australian workplace agreements, we saw 50 per cent of them provide for the removal of public holiday pay, we saw 65 per cent of them provide for the removal of penalty rates and we saw 70 per cent of them provide for the removal of shift work loadings. Whereas we on this side of the House envisage an economy which is based on high labour productivity generating high profits and generating the kinds of high-wage jobs that we would want to see in this economy, what we saw from those on that side of the House was a government under John Howard trying to promote cost-cutting—a cut-price economy, a low-wage economy, an economy where all you saw was the sweating out of meagre profits from the workplace. That debate too is now over. Work Choices is dead. The people have spoken.

The ultimate debate that can be seen in this legislation is a debate about whether you believe in cooperation in the workplace or conflict, and we stand for a system of industrial relations which promotes cooperation. What we saw from those on the other side was a system of workplace relations which promoted conflict. That could be seen in a whole range of other legislation and activities that were undertaken by the Howard government, compared to what we are now seeing under the Rudd government. Not only do we stand for cooperation at work, whereas they stood for conflict at work, we also stand for reconciliation with our Indigenous population, whereas the Howard government stood for a failure to recognise the past wrongs and a wilful blindness which allowed that sore to continue to divide our country. Whereas we have seen that we ought to treat those who flee to our shores with dignity, those opposite saw that we ought to treat those people with the very worst example of how mean the human spirit can be. Where we see that the way forward is to cooperate with state governments, they saw that the way forward was to roll over the top of state governments. They were in every way a government that was about dividing our country. This bill speaks to the intent of the Rudd government to commit to a unified Australia, and for that reason I commend it to the House.

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