Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a worry when you cannot recognise people. He started to talk about the new Fair Work Australia organisation, which is going to attract all the industrial commission operators, mostly trade union people, or certainly industrial relations people. Do not ever think that those who are on the workers’ side have been very different in all this—it was a living. But the fact of life is that they are going to fill the positions of this new fairly balanced wonderful facility that is going to decide or arbitrate on certain issues.

It is interesting that the 1904 legislation made a very simple statement about what the old industrial relations commission should base its decisions on. I do not have the specific quote to hand but the statement talked about the basic justice of the system. And the fact of life is that in the 1978 decision Justice Moore said:

We agree that if the industrial effects of doing so—

that is, coming to his decision—

could be ignored, no increase at all in award wages would result in a greater restraint in costs and price.

In other words, the worker would be better off. That is the history. My father earned a £6 a week, raised four kids and owned his own house and a car, and my mother never had paid work. Today, he would earn $1,500 a week and if his wife did not work he could not afford a house. That is progress, apparently. Justice Moore went on to say:

However, we don’t believe that industrial considerations—

the effect of strikes—

and their attendant cost implications can be ignored.

In other words, the umpire said, ‘We succumb to the bullies.’ That is what they said in 1978, just 30 years ago almost to the day. We are told that we are going to have this new organisation that will not take those matters to account when it should not. And people should not think that when we open the door to the trade unions getting a bite of a greenfields agreement there are not going to be demarcation disputes. When somebody wants to open up a great job-fulfilling opportunity for the workers of Australia, in more difficult times than we are currently experiencing, the poor old developer has to jump all the green and other hurdles and then, when he is ready to start, he somehow has to work his way through five or six unions wanting the revenue, because that is what they want.

If you want to get someone to go and work in the Pilbara and in many of these other places that are substantial and that I know well, you do not get them by not offering enough wages. You want to be a politician in that part of the world and try to hire people on the wages this parliament pays! They do not make themselves available. I can go back a long way to when I had a trucking business. If I said to a truckie coming in looking to run line haul, ‘I’ll pay award wages,’ he would turn on his bare foot and go out the door. He wanted trip money; he wanted to be paid to go there and back. Of course, this is now held up as Work Choices and the ‘horrible decisions’ thereafter.

I am running out of time but I want to make one other point which I made in my speech in 1981. I heard the previous speaker talk about Work Choices cutting out penalty rates. Typically, when those AWAs were put together they amalgamated all of those rates into a single hourly rate. They did not cheat on people. But what about the people who do not want to work nine to five, Monday to Friday? What about the women at home who are looking around the house and wanting some new appliances and, as I know, go to the employer and say, ‘Could you just put me on on Saturdays while hubby is at home looking after the kids so I can get a bit of extra money?’ The employer says: ‘I lock the gate on Friday night, mate. Nobody can come into my establishment over the weekend. I cannot afford to pay the penalty rates.’ And the employee says, ‘No, don’t worry about that, I just want ordinary time.’ But, of course, the employer would be breaking the law to do so. What about those people?

Another thing I said is that you would think the fish did not bite on Wednesdays. Why does recreation have to be focused on two days a week? It is silly. Why can’t professional sport be played in the middle of the week and get a crowd, other than people taking the day off, taking a sickie? So these are silly arguments. Yes, of course, if you have worked your time you should get a penalty for overtime. And of course you can hold a view, religious or otherwise—and you can take a pick of three now: Islam, Seventh Day Adventist and Christian—about three days out of seven. They are silly ideas, they should not be reincorporated and they should never ever have been the reason for this legislation. Good legislation looking after working people is right. (Time expired)

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