Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Since 1 January this year, 80,000 Australians have lost their jobs. That is well over 1,200 jobs lost per day. This catastrophic figure confirms the Deputy Prime Minister as the Australian empress of unemployment—a minister who inherited the best employment outlook of any minister in the postwar period but who has started to comprehensively squander the legacy that she inherited. This is a minister who is obsessed with rewriting Australia’s employment laws, to create an industrial utopia policed by Sharan Burrow, but who displays no concern for the rising tide of unemployed under her watch.

Worse than being unconcerned about this issue, the government is taking actions that will make this issue much, much worse. The Senate is currently discussing laws that will radically change Australia’s industrial relations system. If the laws are kept in their current form, they will make the unemployment problem worse. They will throw more Australians onto the dole queue. Labor needs to listen to this side of the House. Those on the other side of the House remain the experts on industrial relations. It is mother’s milk to them. They live it, they breathe it. But we on this side of the House, in the Liberal and National parties, are the experts on employment. We are the experts on creating jobs. We understand how jobs are actually created in Australia, and that is why, in the years of the Howard government, 2.2 million jobs were created. We understand that those jobs were created by allowing the private sector the latitude to go out and do what it does best, and that is create employment. What the government does not understand is that everybody in this country cannot be employed by the public sector. It is the private sector that creates jobs, and it needs to be given the tools to do so.

I want to run through some of the changes that we would like to see within this legislation. We want those changes to do two things. Firstly, we want them to draw Labor back to the policy that they took to the people prior to the last election. It was a very detailed policy and it outlined things that they would do and things that they would not do. Secondly, we would like the changes to take out the worst job-destroying aspects of the Fair Work Bill—the things in the bill that go too far and the things that are going to make what is a very difficult employment situation in Australia much, much worse.

The first amendment that the government must accept is changes to their right of entry regime. Labor made very explicit promises before the last election that they would not change right of entry in Australia. I will go through what the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations has said, because it is very instructive. The Prime Minister and his minister for employment said, prior to the last election, in a joint press release:

Federal Labor will maintain the existing right of entry provisions … Right of entry rules remain.

Julia Gillard said on 28 August 2007:

We will make sure that current right of entry provisions stay. We understand that entering on the premises of an employer needs to happen in an orderly way. We will keep the right of entry provisions.

On 28 May, after the election, in a speech to Master Builders Australia, she said:

We promised to retain the current right of entry framework and this promise too will be kept.

Finally—and this is without a doubt my personal favourite—the minister said, on 7 October 2007, speaking specifically about her promise to keep right of entry laws in place:

If you’d like me to pledge to resign, sign a contract in blood, take a polygraph … give you my mother as a hostage, whatever you’d like.

She said would be delivering the policy as outlined. Later on she went on to reiterate that the current right of entry laws would be maintained.

Yet we find in this bill that the rights of unions, firstly, to enter a workplace for discussions and, secondly—and I think even more appallingly—to access the records of non union members are greatly expanded. The bill, as it currently stands, allows union officials to view any record, including the records of non union members, when they are investigating a suspected breach of the law in relation to one of their members. These records could include deeply personal records. They could include salary details, pay rates, super fund contributions, warnings, medical certificates, disciplinary interviews, licences, criminal background checks, garnishee orders, family support payments—anything that could possibly be recorded in someone’s employment file.

The current provisions, the provisions that the government promised they would keep, restrict union officials to looking at the records of union members only. We believe, on this side of the House, that all employees have a right to privacy; they have a right to have their private information respected and they have a right to control who views their employment records. These records do contain personal and sensitive information and I would urge the government to reconsider their ill-founded provisions in this bill that allow union officials access to such private information. There is absolutely no basis for a union official to be given such privileged and special powers. We will make sure that appropriate checks and balances remain, and we will move amendments to this bill that ensure that union officials can only see the records of a non union member when specific permission is given by that employee that their records may be viewed.

The second amendment that must be accepted is in relation to the right of entry that a union official may have to the workplace for discussions. As I said, Labor were explicit in the promise that they made about right of entry. This promise has proved to be false and empty, because the new bill massively expands the right of unions to go into workplaces. The current law, the law that was promised to be kept, restricts access to unions who were party to the industrial instrument, such as an award that covers the workplace.

The government promises that, under Labor, all workers will be free to decide whether or not to join and be represented by a union or to participate in collective activities. That is an important principle, and it is a principle—a principle of freedom of association—that is supported by this side of the House also. We believe that employees in a workplace should have the right to choose who represents them and the extent to which a union may be involved in their workplace. We believe in giving employees choice and in respecting their rights and decisions.

Our amendment to the Fair Work Bill will allow employees to democratically decide if they want a union in their workplace, and which union that would be, before entry can occur. This would apply in a workplace where there is currently no union presence or where a union other than the existing union wants to enter.

I turn now to one of the other most outrageous breaches of Labor’s commitments from prior to the last election. This is in the area of compulsory arbitration. Labor explicitly promised there would be no compulsory arbitration under their industrial relations system. This promise has proved to be completely false, but I will remind the House about what Labor said prior to the last election. Minister Gillard, on 30 May 2007, speaking to the National Press Club, said:

Under Labor’s policy, there is no automatic arbitration of collective agreements. Our policy clearly states that no one will be forced to sign up to an agreement when they did not agree to the terms.

The policy explicitly said:

Good faith bargaining does not require bargaining participants to make concessions or to sign up to an agreement where they do not agree to the terms.

Yet what we find in the bill is the ability of Fair Work Australia to compulsorily arbitrate differences between parties when they cannot reach agreement themselves. Of course, they do not call it compulsory arbitration—it is called ‘workplace determinations’, but it is exactly compulsory arbitration by any other name. If parties who are negotiating an agreement cannot agree on terms that are suitable to them both, then they can walk away and they can rely on the safety net of awards and the National Employment Standards, which is a comprehensive safety net.

If you are negotiating to agree then that should mean exactly that. It should mean that parties can search for common ground and find areas in which agreement can be reached. This bill provides that, where agreement cannot be reached, those parties can be forced to make an agreement by Fair Work Australia.

Negotiating an agreement is about trying to find areas on which you can agree. If you are going to be forced to make that agreement then that is not bargaining at all. That is compulsory arbitration. There is a very strong safety net of awards and of National Employment Standards in this country, and that would be an appropriate basis for employees to go back to if an agreement cannot be reached. We propose to strip out these provisions in the bill and to hold Labor to account for the promises that they made to the Australian people prior to the last election.

Perhaps some of the worst job-destroying aspects of this bill are things that Labor refused to mention in their policy but that then turned up in their legislation. On greenfields agreements, which are the agreements that an employer can make when they are starting out a new site—such as a new mine site, for instance—Labor did not make one mention in their policy of the onerous, restrictive and complex greenfields agreements provisions that have found their way into the bill. These new provisions make it virtually impossible for new projects to commence without the approval of union officials. Often such greenfields agreements are made in circumstances where time is critical. This bill requires that the maker of one of those agreements needs to notify all possible unions who may cover the members at any particular site. This might be 10 or 12 unions, depending on what the actual site is.

So if the union choose to negotiate with the employer, once they have been notified, they must be recognised and an agreement must be reached before a project can go ahead. Basically, what the government is saying is that, if agreement cannot be reached, any of those union officials can hold up a new project from starting. This knowledge could of course be exploited to extract conditions that would not normally be offered or bargained in more neutral circumstances.

This is a blatant free kick for unions. No business will be able to start up unless unions give the green light for them to go ahead. That means that in my home state union officials such as Joe McDonald or Kevin Reynolds will have the power over new projects starting up. Why would we give such power regarding when a business can start to these officials? The coalition propose that the existing provision that requires unions to be notified be removed. Labor never took that to the people prior to the last election, and, again, we will be holding them to account for the promises they made.

I now move to the transmission of business provisions, because they have been radically altered in the bill. Again, Labor made no mention of these in their policy platform prior to the last election. The bill proposes a totally new approach to the transmission of business with a new concept called ‘transfer of work’. There is now a requirement in the bill that if employees are transferred in a business then the instrument that underpins them is ongoing; it is in perpetuity. It cannot be changed. That means if a business has uneconomic industrial arrangements, which is not competitive, and if those arrangements have contributed to that business failing then the new owner of that business cannot change those arrangements. What they will of course do, and what they have been given an incentive to do, is sack the existing workforce. Why, in this economic climate, would we have provisions that give someone the incentive to sack the existing workforce if there is a transfer of a business? The only way that an employer could avoid taking on this instrument is to get rid of the workforce. This provision is bad for industry and it is bad for the people who are employed in industry. The existing act strikes the right balance in this regard. It states:

If employees are transferred then the existing arrangements would only be operative for the following 12 months.

Within that time the new owner could reach agreement with the employees and, after 12 months, that agreement would cease to apply. If an agreement could not be reached then those employees would revert to the safety net. These changes to the transfer of business provisions are anti jobs and they discourage a new business owner from keeping existing employees or transferring them to their new entity. The coalition propose to keep the existing law. It is a law that has worked well and it is a law that allows Australians to keep their jobs when a business is transferred.

In the short time available to me I want to refer to the unfair dismissal laws. Every Australian working in small business knows and understands that these unfair dismissal laws stop small business employing more people. The Labor Party do not understand it, and how could they because none of them have ever worked in a small business? They do not understand the pressures that small business is under.

We will change the Fair Work Bill to ensure that small business still has incentives to employ more and more Australians. Why does the minister for employment bother to keep that particular title? She has lots of other titles; she is the Deputy Prime Minister. Why bother keeping the title of minister for employment when she continues to preside over a system with catastrophic consequences for Australians who are currently in work. (Time expired)

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