Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would just like to say that following the last three speakers—the member for Solomon, the member for Brisbane and the member for Moreton—has been quite encouraging for me in getting up to talk about the Fair Work Bill 2008. Some of the metaphors they used—certainly the member for Moreton’s notion of a car crash and long skid marks—explained well the Howard years. But I think from my perspective it was probably more like a viral pandemic because it really was something that affected us for many, many years and because Work Choices, while it was a major reason the Howard government fell, was indicative of a whole range of other philosophies that they carried as a government.

My contribution to this debate is quite humble compared to the contributions of the others who have spoken—people who have worked very extensively in industrial relations and within the union movement, as organisers, as lawyers, as professionals who bring together our understanding of human resource management, human resource development and the ability to organise labour correctly on the ground. Why I say my contribution is humble is this. I was not one of those professionals. My background is a business background. While there was a period of public service work, essentially I am a small business man who lived and worked with unions for many years and enjoyed the benefits of having an organised workplace. To hear members on the other side of the House talk about the terrible thing that we are doing now by bringing back a system of fairness through our Fair Work Bill quite amazes me. I will give some examples of how the business sector reacted. I know many of those in the union movement would have dealt with employers on a regular and reasonable basis. They and others—in the House and in the community—knew that the Work Choices legislation was dreadful. It was dreadful for our community for a whole range of reasons.

The interesting thing is this. If it is about fairness, if it is about bringing fairness back to the workplace, the debate should be robust. The opposition have their view. I would like to explore what drives the view that Work Choices was so good. On 24 November 2007 Australia resoundingly threw out the government, largely because of what Work Choices was doing to our work and community. Those who have worked closely in the area of industrial relations know that it is all about having a system that has harmony. Industrial harmony is what we are trying to achieve. People who invest money and people who take wages for their work, who sell their skills to a company or to a business, come together and it is all about achieving harmony. We in this country have a long history of very good negotiations. We had all industrial parties working together to get resolutions. Yes, we have had periods in our history where these have reached a flashpoint. But the reality is that we had legislation that could deal with this appropriately and we could move on.

One thing that concerns me is this. They talk about Work Choices and the wonderful components of Work Choices, but I can only see from my perspective. In the debate in the House today, we have probably covered just about every aspect of this bill—inside and out. It is interesting to see that the opposition read even more into this bill than we ever considered. That extra reading into the bill is very much about their fear campaign. Work Choices was about fear. It was ill-conceived and it hurt a nation of workers. We heard stories from all the members speaking in this House, especially the last few members. The member for Solomon had some bad examples; they were good examples of bad situations. I commend him for bringing those to this House. I am sure that we have all heard of similar experiences.

I will go back to the history. The member for Moreton spoke about 1996. Yes, we remember when the Howard government came into power and changed a whole lot of arrangements. The problem is that it was driven by vindictiveness. Changes to our industrial legislation were very much about how the government thought they had been treated by the unions. They could not sit down in a reasonable and logical way and debate and change legislation, if that was the requirement. They had to tip the cart on its head and they went too far, and we all understand that. Unfortunately for the Howard government, they were marked and marred by their push. I believe it was driven by vindictiveness rather than by a sensible way of dealing with industrial relations as they saw it.

We know that with the Howard government on so many other issues there were mistruths. There were the Tampa and the children overboard, the weapons of mass destruction, the core and non-core promises. Of course, Work Choices dropped in on top. Work Choices was without a doubt the major driver of their collapse as a government. In my electorate—and I have spoken about this in the House before—there was a swing. To have a 15 per cent swing in your primaries really indicates that change is on and that there are good reasons for change. The changes were also about the parliamentary party. The Rudd leadership in opposition was about bringing opportunity for the future. It was about presenting all of those nation-building opportunities. Work Choices was a major part of why we had to come up with alternatives. It was ill-conceived and it was built on fear. Their whole argument on this legislation is about fear—fear of this legislation and fear that the unions are going to take control. To me it is unreasonable that in this day and age, in this country, we should have had a government pushing the fear line. We are a peaceful society in everything we do, but people in the workplace were fearful. And that is obviously not a good thing.

It was about manipulation. There is a need for industrial harmony for people to work together. You hear in this debate hollow statements that Work Choices is dead. I am not sure whether it is ‘dead’ in the terms we understand or whether it is an acronym. Maybe the word is actually ‘D-E-D’—that is, a ‘dead-ended debate’.

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