Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the Fair Work Bill 2008 and am particularly pleased to follow the new member of the House from Victoria, the member for Maribyrnong. I recollect my wife and I having dinner with the member and his wife last year in Melbourne at the Davos summit, a very pleasant occasion indeed. I know that he is an ambitious man and that he seeks to attain the highest office in this land. I certainly wish him well in that endeavour. I, however, am very disappointed by the presentation he just gave. It was a very disappointing performance from a member whose reputation in the wider community is supposedly enormous indeed, but I am pleased to speak on this bill because I think it is significant in all kinds of ways for our country’s industrial relations architecture.

Before I go to the many aspects of the bill, the government’s position on them and, of course, the federal opposition’s position on them, I note the cut by the Reserve Bank of the cash rate and its significance as a stimulant for the Australian people, particularly those around the country who have mortgages. I applaud the Reserve Bank for its decision because this will have a very significant impact on households and families who might be stretched because of the global financial crisis and its impact on their budget. I think this is the right decision and this is the economic action that we in the opposition are advocating. There should be more of this kind of action before we go into the surplus. Taking funds from the surplus should be a last resort by a government, not the first resort.

I want to place on the record the formal position of the federal opposition on the Fair Work Bill 2008. In a media release dated 25 November 2008, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Turnbull, 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 that Work Choices is dead. The Australian people have spoken.

In a democracy we must respect the wish of the people. I do not hesitate to say that I only wish that when the Howard government was in office the Labor Party had respected the mandate of the people on many occasions over 11½ years, but the wheels of democracy will continue to turn.

The first sentence of the Leader of the Opposition’s statement is very significant and instructive, and I refer to the part of it where he says, ‘as proposed in their election policy last year’. The first point I want to make is that the government’s bill totally deviates from Labor’s 2007 election promise. This bill goes way beyond what the Prime Minister and the Labor Party promised at the election. This bill is overstretch. This bill is overreach. It goes way beyond what they put to the Australian people, and I think this will come back to haunt the government in the very near future. More significant, more disappointing and more tragic is that its impact on the Australian economy will be felt in the future and everyday Australians will have to pay the price as the implications of this bill and its overreach cut deeply into the national economy.

The coalition’s position is that the Work Choices legislation as put to the parliament by the Howard government is dead. It was a regime that went too far. I expressed those views at the time but, being a second-term member of the parliament, one’s voice is sometimes not heard by those with more influence. Perhaps an observation I should make to members on both sides of the parliament is: let this be a salutary lesson to those holding the office of Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition or those holding keys to ministerial doors or shadow ministries. Whether one’s party is in government or in opposition, as the Minister for Workforce Participation at the table and the opposition spokesman as good political operators and having successfully won seats will be very aware, the role of backbenchers—and I am one in my third term—is very significant. Most ministers were backbenchers before they reached higher office, but as I said following my election victory in Ryan last November I intend to play a very significant role in the opposition proposing ideas and policy. Regardless of whether one is the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition, do not discount the ideas and the contribution of backbenchers as the passage of workplace relations legislation in the last Howard government highlighted very instructively.

I suspect this legislation before us today might be going down the same track of overreach, of overstretch, because at no time did the Deputy Prime Minister, ministers or the Prime Minister say to the Australian people before the November election day that there would be pattern bargaining. At no time did they say that employers or businesses would be compromised by unions being able to go into workplaces where there was no relationship at all between employees and the union movement. At no time was it said to the Australian people that unions, union members or union officials should have access to non-union-member records. I think it is terribly disappointing. Let us not forget that only 14 per cent, if it is that, of the private sector is unionised. This is of great anxiety to me as the child of parents who ran a small business. My parents ran a corner shop and put me through law school and put my brother and sister through medical school. My parents, through running their own enterprise and employing people, put their three children through university, made their contribution to the community and are of the view, the philosophy, that they should be allowed to get on with running their business, to do the best that they can, to be a part of the fabric of our society and to not be harassed by unions for purely political benefit.

I am very disappointed at that, because I do endorse the general thrust of what is being done here in terms of cutting away any excess that may have been in the previous Howard legislation, but for this to go way beyond the mandate of the people in November last year is terribly disappointing. I ask the question: where are the civil liberties groups now? Where are those in the community whose voices for privacy are often loud and clear on other occasions and certainly were vociferous during the Howard era? Where are those civil liberties groups now? I ask them to come forth to raise their voices when we are talking in a context of unions getting access to non-union-member records. This is terribly disappointing—I say that again. It is profoundly significant. It is a policy defect, and I suspect that, as with the effects of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act in 2007 under the prime ministership of John Howard, this bill, the Fair Work Bill, will have a price in terms of its political consequences. I remind the hardheads of the Labor Party—of whom I know many, having been here for three terms—of this. A handful of them, in conversation in the last couple of days, have flagged to me their quiet disenchantment at the overreach.

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