Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for your protection, Madam Deputy Speaker. The article continued:

… a greater role for the revamped industrial relations commission, an effective end to individual statutory contracts, a revival of arbitration, and a sharp weakening of direct employer and non-union employee bargaining.

Mr Kelly concludes:

The new workplace relations model introduced by Gillard is a significant step into the past … It is hard to imagine how its impact will be other than to weaken productivity and employment.

So the message from one of Australia’s most impartial and respected commentators is clear: this bill will damage our economy. It takes Australia in the wrong direction at the wrong time. It will not create jobs; rather it will reduce employment. Paul Kelly has belled the cat, something those opposite would be wise to bear in mind during this debate.

I now turn to direct election promises breached by the Deputy Prime Minister—or the ‘empress for unemployment’, as the shadow minister dubbed her yesterday. I recall the scene last year when with great indignation she claimed she was being misrepresented on a daily basis by the then government. In fact, a piece in the Australian Financial Review on 31 August 2007 written by the Deputy Prime Minister expressed her frustration at being misrepresented.

If I had a dollar for every time I have had to correct a misrepresentation of Labor’s industrial relations policy I would certainly be a millionaire.

Let us look at the Deputy Prime Minister’s statements against what is actually in the bill. The Deputy Prime Minister claimed that compulsory arbitration will not be a feature of the good faith bargaining system. In the same Financial Review article of 31 August 2007—I have it here—she wrote:

There will be no automatic right for a union to be involved in the enterprise bargaining for a collective agreement.

Yet proposed section 269 of the bill reveals this to be a lie. Good faith bargaining is and always has been a misnomer. In truth it should be called union preference bargaining. These new provisions—this new paradigm in Australian workplace relations—are a guise to get the unions back in the door of every Australian workplace. It is couched in the term ‘good faith’ to make it difficult to argue against. How could anyone be against bargaining in good faith? But the truth is that it allows third parties to force their way into bargaining where they are not even wanted or required.

Take a situation where a workplace of 100 employees has one union member. The employer decides to engage in bargaining for an agreement directly with his workforce. Ninety-nine of the workers wish to deal directly with the employer, but one member wishes the union to be involved. The employer says, ‘No, the majority want to deal directly,’ but the union official insists. In that circumstance, the Fair Work Australia Bill will require that the employer deal with the union. So much for the other 99 workers and their rights. And this is not my legal advice; it is the advice of Freehills, a very well respected Melbourne law firm. The Australian reports today that Freehills says:

… “true non-union agreements” would be possible under Labor’s system only where there were no union members, or where a union chose not to be covered by the agreement.

So the choice is with the union. Of course, what will be included in these agreements? Union bargaining fees. My prediction is this: the fee will be just slightly higher than the annual union membership fee. Guess what that will mean? Higher union membership. The revolving slush fund is complete. Unions campaign for Labor; Labor wins government and writes law for the unions. There is no clearer proof than this that our election funding laws need to be looked at.

The House may be surprised that I make this claim, given the Deputy Prime Minister promised that union bargaining fees would be banned. She was misrepresented on a daily basis last year; it was outrageous! But section 353(4) allows bargaining fees. Imagine our surprise—the ultimate dirty little deal. This is not to say that workers should not be able to have a representative, but it is simply ludicrous to allow a situation where a union is required to be consulted on every bargain throughout Australia. How is this part of a plan to create jobs and keep our economy strong? The answer, of course, is that it is not; it is a payback. As with the COAG agreement, the Deputy Prime Minister will claim that this bill will create some huge amount of jobs. She will pluck a figure from the air. There will be no evidence to back up the claim. The Deputy Prime Minister will just make assertions, as she always does, and the parrots on the side will repeat the mantra developed by the hollow men and hollow women and parroted by those opposite. The two predictions on jobs we actually have—real predictions—are from the government’s own budget papers, the MYEFO and the OECD, which suggest, in the case of OECD, 200,000 fewer jobs.

Another broken promise of the Deputy Prime Minister, the empress for unemployment, was her promise that the existing right-of-entry provisions—and this was raised in question time today—would continue. But, again, this is proved wrong, at section 478 of the bill. I refer again to the Australian Financial Review of 31 August 2007—it is a little gem, this article—the Deputy Prime Minister wrote:

Right of entry provisions as they currently stand will be maintained by a Rudd Labor government, without exception.

‘Without exception’! The bill allows the ridiculous situation of a non-union-member having their personal information looked at by a unionist on a fishing expedition. It must raise significant concerns about privacy. Yesterday’s editorial in the West Australian says it all:

Certainly, members of such workplaces will feel betrayed if details of their salaries, which are a confidential matter between them and their employers, are available to a union they have elected not to join.

But as usual the Deputy Prime Minister, the empress for unemployment, will tell this House that black is white and white is black, with a straight face, as she continues her climb up the slippery Labor leadership pole—because, of course, part of the reason this bill goes so far in rewarding the unions is that the Deputy Prime Minister, the empress for unemployment, knows that when her time comes to start destabilising, she will need their support.

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