Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Braddon for his question and know that he is deeply concerned about ensuring fairness for Australian workers. As I have outlined to the House in the past, before the last election the Labor Party took a very clear policy on workplace relations to the Australian people. I know those opposite find that hard to understand—actually telling the Australian people the truth about what you are going to do on workplace relations—but we did. And very clearly in that policy were Labor’s plans for new unfair dismissal laws where we said, if elected, we would put in place unfair dismissal arrangements, with special arrangements for small businesses—businesses with fewer than 15 employees—and general arrangements for businesses with 15 and above. Those arrangements get the balance right.

For smaller businesses with fewer than 15 employees, counting full-time employees, part-time employees and regular and systematic casuals, small business owners will have a full 12 months to look at a new worker and to assess whether or not they fit into their business—a full 12 months. Then, of course, they will have procedural assistance if, at some time, they do need to deal with an underperformance issue with that worker or a dismissal issue in the form of our fair dismissal code. Bigger businesses—15 and above—will have a full six months to see whether or not an employee fits into their business. This gets the balance right.

On the question of the number, why was the number 15 selected and why was the system of counting full-time, part-time and regular and systemic casuals used? It was to equate the system with the longstanding feature of workplace relations that small businesses with fewer than 15 employees are not obligated by the award system to pay redundancy pay—to keep the definition standard across redundancies and across unfair dismissals.

I am asked about there being any alternative proposals that strip away the rights of working Australians, and an amendment being pursued by the Liberal Party does just that. First, it changes the benchmark for these unfair dismissal arrangements for small businesses from fewer than 15 employees to 25 employees on a full-time effective equivalent—something that is contrary to Labor’s election policy, contrary to our mandate and something we will not support. More amazingly still, it changes the definition of who gets redundancy pay from the standard current definition of fewer than 15 on a head count to fewer than 15 full-time effective equivalents. What does that mean? If you were an employee of nine years service and you worked in a business with 10 full-time employees and 10 part-time employees, and each of those part-time employees worked two days a week, today under the award system you would be entitled to redundancy pay if you were made redundant, and being a worker of nine years service you would be entitled to 16 weeks redundancy pay. If the opposition’s amendment were accepted then that business would not reach the threshold of 15 full-time equivalent employees and that worker would have no redundancy entitlement at all. Today: entitled to 16 weeks pay; under the Liberal amendment: entitled to nothing. The Liberal Party is the party in government that ripped off redundancy pay. Now it is seeking to do the same in opposition.

The Leader of the Opposition has tried in this debate to hunt with the hounds and run with the foxes. He has tried to be out there in the mainstream media saying to the Australian people, ‘Work Choices is dead; nothing to do with me; I’m a reasonable man,’ whilst at the same time in his party room going: ‘Bring Work Choices on. I support it because I am as strong on Work Choices as Peter Costello.’ Well, today is the day that opportunism ran out of rope. Let every Australian worker, particularly those who work for small businesses, understand that today the Leader of the Opposition and his Liberal Party have drafted an amendment and committed themselves to supporting an amendment that rips redundancy pay off hardworking employees. Mr Speaker, if you have made a fortune at Goldman Sachs then maybe 16 weeks pay is not very much, but for average hardworking Australians it is a fortune, and they are the people the Leader of the Opposition wants to rip off.

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