Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Fair Work Bill 2008. Industrial relations has long been the great divide of Australian politics—the trench line, if you will, between the two parties. And it is not a debate that this parliament is having just at the moment; it is a debate that has gone on for decades. It has happened in pubs, clubs and meeting rooms and around kitchen tables all across this country.

I rather fondly remember having this debate with my grandfather, who was a small businessman and a member of the Liberal Party. Of course, I was a unionist and a member of the Labor Party. I guess we had this debate many times, and it was based on our beliefs and our practical experience. It was really a debate about the freedom of contract versus the right for workers to express a desire for collective bargaining. I think that debate has gone on around the country for many years, off and on, to varying degrees of intensity. It has helped to divide the parties and has helped to make this debate the most partisan in Australian politics.

You only have to look at the country’s history, including the 1890s strikes, which gave birth to the Labor Party. It was opposition to the formation of Labor that ultimately forced conservatives and liberals into the one party. There was the failure of the federation referendums—I think there were two referendums that failed—until the arbitration and conciliation power was inserted into the proposed Constitution to get workers’ votes. And only then did the referendum to federate pass.

There was the defeat of the Bruce government, with Prime Minister Bruce losing his seat, after they announced plans to abolish the federal industrial relations system and the use of the arbitration and conciliation power. Later—much later—there was the formation of the HR Nicholls Society, the Mudginberri disputes, the smashing of the unions in the Pilbara, and the beginnings of a conservative assault on the award system, the union movement and the industrial umpire.

After that was Fightback. I remember reading Fightback—in particular the industrial relations part of it, written by John Howard—when I was about 22. I lived in Elizabeth Downs at the time. It convinced me to join the Australian Labor Party. I doubt very much that I would be in public life or standing in this House were it not for the extremism expressed in that document. If you like, that was my intellectual conversion to the Labor Party and the labour movement. Later on, I was a cleaner and a trolley collector, and I saw firsthand the competition amongst contractors and the way it affected wages and conditions. When I was a trolley collector in the early nineties I got $12 an hour but I did not get my penalty rates. A couple of years after I left that occupation, the companies that did that work escaped award protection, escaped the ambit of the Cleaners and Caretakers Award, through a legal loophole. It resulted in workers getting $5 or $6 an hour. It seems unbelievable but it was commonplace in Adelaide to go to shopping centres and find people working for 50 or 60 hours a week for $5 or $6 an hour. They were the vulnerable people in our society. They were people, most commonly men, who had left school very early, and often they were encouraged to commit welfare fraud to supplement their income. Working in that area and seeing how workers like that had little to bargain with provided me with a practical education and practical reasons for being in the labour movement.

The crescendo of that political barrage against the union movement—against the award system, against a safety net and against the independent umpire—was Work Choices. It was the purest expression of the idea of freedom of contract, the destruction of the safety net and the complete removal of the umpire—Stalinist laws to restrict unions and the right to collective bargaining. There is no doubt that Work Choices affected those in vulnerable positions, like trolley collectors but also many women in retail and hospitality, in the most adverse way. It cut their pay, it cut their penalty rates, it cut their overtime and it cut their conditions. It offended the basic values of the Australian people: fairness, fair pay and the idea that our interests are interrelated. When we look at our history—and I have given my own abbreviated version—we can see that Australian people have always sought to balance hard work on one hand with fairness on the other, and Work Choices failed that test.

The introduction of this bill marks a turning point in Australian politics and at least a public retreat by the Liberal Party from industrial relations extremism. I do not think that public retreat is an honest retreat. I think that Work Choices is not dead; it is just dormant in the hearts of the Liberal Party. This bill marks a new era in industrial relations—a fairer, more civilised era—and a return to Australian values: hard work balanced with fairness. The key features of this bill are a safety net to protect workers; enterprise bargaining based on good faith by employers, employees and unions; an independent umpire in Fair Work Australia; and job security subject to performance. The safety net will be expressed by the National Employment Standards—things like a maximum weekly number of hours, parental leave, annual leave, personal and carers leave and the like—and also by modern awards, which will be reviewed every four years and which will be easy and effective to use. The safety net will protect employees, fair-minded employers and, most importantly, society by protecting our most vulnerable. Most importantly to me, it means that when I look out the window of my office at Munno Para shops and see a trolley collector I will know that they are getting paid correctly and are being treated with dignity.

The other thing people will have is a right to enterprise bargaining. This bill helps to end the dog-eat-dog world of Australian workplace agreements and puts back an obligation on employers to respect collective bargaining rights where a majority of employees want that. It puts at its foundation the right to be represented by who you want—and, more often than not, working people will ask for their union; good faith bargaining and a set of meaningful obligations to require it; agreements that can deal with a wide range of issues, with the parties deciding on appropriate content, subject to some exceptions; special provisions to help low-pay bargaining; and proper dispute resolution processes, with an independent umpire or other third party. Most of all, approval of agreements will be subject to employee consent and approval and a ‘better off overall’ test.

I remember doorknocking during the campaign and coming across a worker who I knew quite well. He was a union delegate who drove a forklift for a living. When I knocked on his door he told me that he had been voting for the Howard government since 1996 but that he was not going to do it again. He said that bargaining in the Work Choices environment was like playing poker where you had all the number cards and your opponent had all the picture cards. You might win the odd hand but, overall, you were going to lose your shirt. We are changing that situation. We are putting some of the picture cards back into workers’ hands. Likewise, there will be an umpire, Fair Work Australia, whose key functions will basically be the approval of enterprise agreements, award review and variation, good faith bargaining orders, unfair dismissal protection, industrial action orders, and mediation and dispute resolution. Having an umpire is a pretty simple idea but it is one that has been subject to intellectual assault by the modern Liberal Party, by the HR Nicholls Society and by extreme workplace relation advocates—and they are all over the place. It is a simple, prevailing idea that the Australian people strongly believe in and have always strongly believed in.

Finally, there will be job protection and unfair-dismissal rights subject to performance—subject to appropriate exemptions for small business. It will be quick—within seven days—and it will be simple and streamlined, where reinstatement will be the preferred remedy and where there will be a dismissal code for small business, which will help businesses that do not have the resources or expertise of a big human resources department. This bill has all of the essential provisions to ensure a fair workplace.

I have talked a bit about history and the public retreat the Liberal Party have staged on industrial relations. I think it has been pretty tragic to watch so many Liberals get up in this House, nitpick on provisions, talk about their philosophy, as the member for Menzies did, and then say they are going to support the bill. It is the most deceptive thing I have ever seen in my life. Their stance is a betrayal of their history and their most cherished beliefs. It is certainly a betrayal of my grandfather’s beliefs. It sees the courage and the conviction of the IR extremists of HR Nicholls Society and their parliamentary advocates—John Howard and the member for Higgins chief amongst them—replaced by cowardice and deception. The Liberal Party, once committed to fighting for these things, has gone from being the party of conviction to the party of cowardice. It robs the Australian people of a proper debate. I think it has turned the Liberal Party into the gutless party of Australian politics.

This bill reflects 100 years of debate and discussion on industrial relations. It reflects the priorities and the values of the modern labour movement—fairness with flexibility, fairness combined with hard work. In closing, I would like to hark back to Chifley’s words. I remember reading Chifley’s biography when I was a trolley collector. On the quiet days you got a reasonable lunch hour. I remember this quote sticking with me. Chifley said:

I don’t care what the privileged classes say about the Labor movement. We work for humanity when we fight for better conditions.

It is with those thoughts I commend the bill to the House.

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