Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

They still do not understand it. The member for North Sydney told Four Corners that the coalition ministers were unaware that some employees were worse off under Work Choices. It is quite unbelievable for that to be out there on the public record. I know many people opposite—and obviously it is not a full House over there at the moment—but in my one year of dealings with those opposite I know there to be some fundamentally decent people there. There must surely have been someone in the cabinet who spoke up or someone in the party room who spoke up and said, ‘This is a little bit extreme, isn’t it?’ I would hope so. I am not asking anyone to break caucus solidarity over there, but surely someone spoke up? There must be somebody on that side of the House with a heart bigger than their mouth who was able to say that this was a bad law. I am not going to ask for a show of hands, but I can think of some people who might have spoken up and said it was going a little bit too far. I know there are people on the opposition frontbench, those filled with the strut and bluster, who will never own up to being wrong. You have seen it in their speeches. They are the Work Choices warriors who are doing all that they can to use weasel words to avoid saying that this was a bridge too far, that this was wrong, that this was extreme or even just saying that simple little word that resonates so much in this chamber this year: sorry.

If it had said on every election poster in 2004 that they were going to change the industrial relations landscape then, fair cop, there could have been some legitimacy. But nobody was told. I was in the 2004 election. I remember that night very well, unfortunately; there are no second prizes in politics. I remember that night very well and there was no mention of industrial relations changes.

It has been great in the last couple of weeks to watch The Howard Years. It is like watching a slow-motion car crash with skid marks that stretch back for 11½ years, and I am looking forward to Monday night when we finally have the collision. Picking back over it, picking out particular points, you can see where they went wrong, But picking back over the skid marks of the 11½ years leading up to 24 November 2007 has been fantastic—horrible, but fantastic. As those opposite know—as anybody in politics knows—the Australian people always get it right.

I am sick of hearing from those opposite that they were voted out because of a union campaign. That is avoiding responsibility. The idea that they were voted out because of a union campaign is putting the cart before the horse. They need to remember the union campaign occurred because of the duplicity on the part of those opposite in running an election on one issue and then jumping in and changing the industrial relations landscape. The Australian union movement and those who care about fairness and rights in the workplace were not able to sit by and let the Liberal Party erode the rights of workers.

Let us look at what Work Choices did. It stripped the right to bargain collectively, pushing people onto AWAs. We have heard so many horrible stories in this debate about that. It threatened award wages, smashed unfair dismissal rights and left unions out in the cold. As a former union organiser in the white-collar sector in non-government schools, I can assure those opposite that unions contribute to effective workplaces. So often they are able to step in and bring some common sense—sometimes to an employer but often to an employee. That is why a good unionised workplace is normally a very effective workplace.

It is true that if you look carefully you can find the odd worker who was better off under Work Choices, but it was only those whose skills were in high demand and who had the leverage to negotiate better pay and conditions. Obviously there were others, the more vulnerable, who were forced to trade away pay and conditions, all to prop up their employers’ bottom lines. It shows that when you mess with fairness you really will be judged quickly by the Australian people.

I have spoken about this to a couple of people in my electorate—one being Susan Wilmott, a public servant and an ASU member. She said:

As an ASU union delegate in 2007 I dealt with more cases of union members feeling insecure and feeling threatened. People just felt more vulnerable.

And I felt I was inherently less effective as a union delegate because of the down grading of importance placed on the services that we offer.

The biggest reason I got involved in the Your Rights at Work Campaign was I just felt very angry that all the conditions that we enjoyed—and that unions had so worked for decades to secure—were taken away by Howard.

I was scared to think that maybe my children wouldn’t enjoy the same working conditions that I do. And that they wouldn’t have the same opportunities to combine work and family as I have …

Dean Holland from the Builders Labourers Federation said:

I got involved in Your Rights at Work because of the unfair laws that Howard put in place. Those laws restricted many of our rights and conditions.

I was only too happy to help out in stalls, collect petition signatures, distribute merchandise and spread the word. We had a great reception at the Rocklea markets especially leading up to the election.

Karen Sheperd, a community health registered nurse, said:

The main reason I became involved in the ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign was because I was concerned that the impact of the WorkChoices legislation on the future generations of Australians particularly my children. Isaac in 2006 was finishing grade 12 at St Thomas More College.

At first I didn’t realise the laws would have an impact on the nursing workforce, however it soon became apparent to me that my nursing colleagues in the private and aged care sectors were suffering and that these laws would in turn diminish the standards of patient care as qualified nurses were being replaced with unlicensed workers.

Those are just three examples. They are ordinary people like you and me, but they refused to stand by and let the Howard government mess with fairness in the workplace. Not necessarily these people in particular but people who were barely moved to vote in 2004 were out there in 2007 in orange shirts for a great campaign. I do thank John Howard, I guess, for politicising and motivating a great section of our community, for surely what was one of the greatest community campaigns in the history of Australia. What motivated them? They wanted to see fairness and justice returned to Australian workplaces. It was great for the union movement that all of these people were brought together. I had a Your Rights at Work breakfast the other day thanking them again, one year on, for the great work that they did.

There never should be any doubt that the role of unions in our society is crucial, especially in Australia. They secure reasonable pay and fair working conditions. They ensure our workplaces and work practices are safe. That is why I think it is appropriate that I finish by again asking someone, somewhere, from those opposite to say that word ‘sorry’. An apology is good for the soul. It is good for the recipient; it makes the recipient feel good. I am hoping that someone finds the time to come to me and say that simple word ‘sorry’ and I will pass it on to the Your Rights at Work group in my electorate.

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