Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I say to the member for Tangney that he would have lifted his credibility had he apologised to the Australian public for each and every occasion that he and other members of the now opposition voted for these extreme, unfair industrial relations laws and for what they did to working Australians. We are here today to discuss the key or crucial productivity agenda that was taken to the last federal election, at which the Rudd Labor government got an overwhelming mandate for reform.

The Fair Work Bill 2008 delivers the government’s election promise set out in Forward with Fairness. More significantly, it gets rid of the Liberal Party’s extreme industrial relations laws, Work Choices, and replaces them with a fair workplace relations system. Notably, the bill is about bringing fairness and decency back to the workplace. It balances the needs of employers, unions and employees. As I said, It is about bringing fairness and decency back into each and every Australian workplace.

I am honoured to be among colleagues who will be making contributions today in respect of this bill, as this bill builds on the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Act, which was enacted in March this year—on the second anniversary of Work Choices, by the way. That act ended the making of AWAs and ended the regime that pitted worker against worker and mate against mate. There is nobody who went through the last election who does not know the significance of Work Choices and what it meant in all the electorates of this Commonwealth.

This bill will reintroduce a genuine no disadvantage test for agreements and commence the process of award modernisation. The significance of that is that, under Work Choices—only a couple of years back now—for the first time in our history it was made legally possible for people to be put on agreements which provided for less than the going award rates of pay. This actually occurred frequently in my electorate of Werriwa—and I know it occurred in every other electorate around the land—and it occurred because the Howard government’s industrial relations reform made it legally possible. It was not because there was an economic imperative to do it and not because there was an incapacity to pay. They did it because Work Choices gave employers the ability to freely go about reducing workers’ pay and conditions. Work Choices simply made it legally possible.

The bill before us today takes an additional step of abolishing those unfair and unjust laws. Quite frankly, we saw what the Australian population thought about those laws at the last election. This bill represents a tremendous moment in our workplace relations history, I think. After a decade of attacks from a conservative government, this is a genuine effort to put fairness and decency back into the workplace.

People suffered under the former laws. When people in Australia went to the ballot box, they got it right when they threw the government out, establishing a mandate for the Rudd Labor government. We are not talking here just about all those people who you would ordinarily think would have a stark objection to the laws—not all those trade unionists out there who campaigned against those laws and not all the ‘Your Rights at Work’ committee. Each and every member on this side of the parliament went out during the course of the last couple of years and visited railway stations, went to bus terminals and conducted street meetings, and one of the things that kept happening more and more was that people told us they were concerned not just for themselves, not just for their own conditions of employment, but for their kids and, in many respects, their grandchildren. People actually drew the distinction. Under John Howard’s industrial relations system, fairness and decency were stripped away. What people were protesting about was what they wanted for their kids and for their families—that when they go to work they will be treated with fairness and decency. They want a dignified position. This bill is not just about having something which is so one-sided; this is about having something fair and decent in the way we treat one another in the workplace. That is what this piece of legislation is seeking to do.

Madam Deputy Speaker, no doubt you are aware that throughout my time in opposition I spoke frequently on these industrial relations laws. I objected to them when they were proposed. I spoke and debated them in this House on many occasions. I voted against them on each and every occasion when modifications were made to those laws. What we saw at the last election was the Australian people speaking out about their commitment not only when it comes to how they want to be treated but also how they want the system and the workplace to treat their families. That is why such an overwhelming mandate was given to the Rudd Labor government.

At the outset I talked about my own community in Werriwa. For those in the gallery, it is in the south-west of Sydney and takes in Liverpool and parts of Campbelltown. It is very much, as some might say, a working-class electorate. Under these industrial relations laws, people in my electorate had never been worse off. I have spoken in the parliament on many occasions, highlighting examples of workers who have been treated so unfairly. I will just recap, and I did this exercise this morning. I pulled out just a few cases I spoke about over the last couple of years—people such as Reinaldo Martinez, who was sacked. He was on leave and he was sacked by a telephone call from his employer. He was just told not to come back to work. There was no reason. When the employer was quizzed about it, he said, ‘The federal industrial relations laws allow me to do it.’ That is how it was rationalised. There are also people like Reynaldo Cortez, a father of five who lives at Bow Bowing. He was offered a ‘take it or leave it’ Australian workplace agreement that cut his take-home pay by up to $200 a week and he was told that if he refused to sign the AWA, there were plenty of other people who would.

Employees at Lipa Pharmaceuticals at Minto were offered an AWA that proposed to undercut the existing industrial agreement by scrapping Saturday and Sunday hourly rates of pay, cutting the public holiday rates of pay and excluding all protected award conditions while providing the same rate of pay as their existing agreement. What is more, under what was proposed in that AWA there was no further pay rise for five years—after losing all those conditions. That facility had, from memory, something like 250 to 300 people working there. Obviously, I had some time for this company. I had spoken in many instances in the past about the good work they had done in my community, but when I pressed them on this what I discovered was that they did it not because of an economic constraint and not because of an incapacity to pay; they did this because the federal laws allowed them to do it. So why pay people more than you have to? If the laws say you can cut their wages and cut their conditions, employers will say, ‘Well, if that’s what our law-makers say, we should go ahead and do it.’ That is the responsible thing you would do for your fellow directors and your shareholders. That is what this company did.

Then there were those poor workers at Esselte in Minto. This was a strike that took place and went on for three months. These were all people on absolute minimum rates of pay—no over-award component at all—and the people who could least afford to be on strike. Courageous people like Warren Small and David Rojas withstood the winter mornings going out there and harnessed so much support within my community; it was phenomenal. Do you know what they wanted? All they wanted was to be able to negotiate collectively with their employer—nothing more than that. There was no specific pay condition on the table; they wanted to be able to get their union to go there with them and negotiate with them. One bloke came forward and admitted to me that he was not literate. He said he did not feel comfortable going in by himself; he wanted to go through with a group of workers and his union. Under Work Choices, it was the employer who had the sole discretion as to whether they would negotiate collectively or not, not the employees—it had nothing to do with the employees at all. It did not matter if you had 100 per cent of workers in a collective arrangement; it was up to the employer as to whether they would negotiate collectively.

The Rudd government’s laws will bring back fairness. They will restore the pendulum where it belongs so there is balance between employees and employers driven by the desire to ensure that there is greater productivity in all Australian workplaces. Our laws have enterprise bargaining very much at their heart to drive productivity. They are about bargaining in good faith at the enterprise level, underpinning fairness and decency and having a safety net of conditions which cannot be traded away or stripped away. That is what makes these laws so critical. People have had awards in the past, and awards were always seen as being the bare minimum until the Work Choices legislation came down that gave employers the right to legally strip away award conditions. This is where we are restoring that balance.

The reasons are that, quite frankly, it is a commitment to the Australian people, it is the right thing to do, it is good for employers and it is good for the economy because having our direction very much squarely based on enterprise bargaining ensures that productivity remains front and centre when looking at industrial relations in Australian workplaces into the future. We will provide a strong safety net where workers across Australia, both in good times and in the less certain economic times that we are experiencing now, will be protected.

In complete contrast to the former Liberal government, the Rudd government has engaged in an unprecedented level of consultation in developing the Fair Work Bill, and this bill is better for it. The Fair Work Bill sets out the industrial system which replaces Work Choices and which will provide a comprehensive safety net of minimum wages and conditions that cannot be stripped away. The new employment standards, which will enshrine 10 basic rights, will double the protections offered under Work Choices. It will cover the vast majority of Australian workers under its unfair dismissal laws. It will remove the clear injustices and the feelings of insecurity of workers who found that they could be dismissed, as I indicated occurred to a constituent of mine at Werriwa, at any time and for no reason. The provisions will certainly enable and specifically address issues in respect of small business in terms of the code of conduct, the code of dismissal and protecting employees to the extent that ‘operational reasons’ will no longer be a defence for an employer wishing to make an unfair dismissal.

The bill legislates for good faith bargaining. The rules will have their emphasis on collective bargaining and do not differentiate between union and non-union agreements. Instead, an agreement will be made with the approval of the majority of workers in the workplace. That is hardly a thing that most people would have any objection to. This goes and discusses, at the workplace level, what is fair and what the requirements of every member of the workplace are and, therefore, it will recognise the majority view on any workplace, whether they are union or non-union organised.

I would like to say that, at this point, I recognise that most workplaces in my electorate already do bargain in good faith and without any intervention. However, where that does not happen, this bill also enables Fair Work Australia to make orders to ensure that compliance with good faith bargaining requirements is attended to. The bill also establishes Fair Work Australia as the new industrial tribunal which will facilitate and approve collective bargaining agreements, adjust minimum wages and deal with unfair dismissal claims and workplace disputes. It will replace six existing bodies, including the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, and will see the end of bodies created by the Howard government such as the Workplace Authority, the Workplace Ombudsman, the Fair Pay Commission and the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

There are many other significant components of this bill. However, I do not think I am going to have the luxury of time to deal with them. It is important to note that this bill will ensure that employers and employees have access to a transparent, clear and simple system of workplace relations, one that is designed to help them—not hinder them—in looking after people’s rights and responsibilities. It will give Australian employees confidence, with a simple fair dismissal system, particularly for small business, which is something that I know will be welcomed by the 11,000 small businesses registered in my electorate alone. It will protect employees who are very much dependent on minimum wage protections. Importantly, this will assist those low-paid workers, those who are vulnerable and those without any real access to collective bargaining and ensures that employees have the freedom of association at each and every workplace. This will remove the employer having the sole discretion of whether they will collectively bargain with the employees or not and will ensure that the discretion will now be in the hands of the parties and the majority of the workers in any one particular workplace. I commend the bill to the House.

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