Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker Andrews. As a former Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, you must have found it quite difficult to sit in your neutral position as Mr Deputy Speaker during this debate.

I have a real problem with the way the Australian Labor Party chooses to approach workplace relations. It talks about balance, but what it is really doing is seeking to bring about situations which are entirely unbalanced and inequitable and which will indeed cost jobs. It is unquestioned that the government did obtain a mandate at the last election to amend the workplace relations regime that was introduced by the former government. That does not mean that we have to like the changes that the government has sought to make, but it does mean that we have to respect the mandate given to it by the Australian people. The result was actually very close and, if you look at how people in many electorates throughout the country voted when they returned Liberal-National members, it is pretty clear that they were not voting against the workplace relations regime of the former Howard government. Having said that, democracy really is a question of numbers and when all of the results were toted up after the election it was clear that there was about to be a change of government, and some of these fairly extreme industrial relations changes which we have seen introduced to the parliament by the Australian Labor Party are a legacy of the change of government.

The government has recited like a mantra that it does have a mandate, and we do accept that it has a mandate. But the government through changes before the House has sought to go beyond the mandate that was given to them by the Australian people. That is why the Liberal-National opposition is moving amendments to the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009. As the shadow minister has pointed out, we are seeking to target those areas of the legislation which extend trade union power, provide a disincentive for employment, and of course go beyond the policy taken to the Australian people by the government in 2007.

Let me just look at some of the things that were said by now government ministers, and also the Prime Minister, prior to the election in relation to right of entry and access to non-union member records. Prior to the election the Labor Party said that the existing laws in relation to the right of a union to enter a workplace would be maintained. This promise has been broken and the laws supported by the government give access to personal records to unions including those personal records relating to a non-union member. The Labor Party said:

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

That was a joint media release by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister on 28 August 2007, just a couple of months before the election. The Deputy Prime Minister at a press conference on the same day said:

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.

In a speech to the Master Builders Australia on 28 May 2008, after they were elected to government, she said:

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

On 7 November 2007 at a debate at the National Press Club, the Deputy Prime Minister said:

If you would like a pledge to resign, take a contract in blood, take a polygraph, give you my mother as hostage, whatever you like, we will be delivering our policy as we have outlined it.

And later she said:

… current right of entry laws will be maintained.

The reality is that the legislation currently before the House does expand union rights by allowing them—unbelievably in breach of the rights of privacy of non-union members—to view the records relating to those non-union members. I would have thought that fair-minded people, regardless of where they sit politically, would feel that in 2009 a person who was not a member of a union ought not in any circumstances, whether investigating a suspected breach of the law related to a union member or not, have access to those records. The records include: records of non-union members, salary details, pay rates, super fund contributions, warnings, medical certificates, bonuses paid, disciplinary interviews, licence and criminal background checks, garnishee orders, family support payments and so on. At the present time unions are restricted to looking at wage records for union members only and most reasonable people would consider that that is an appropriate course for the law to take. But the proposal before the chamber expands that situation to a position where the rights of non-union members are trampled over and treated as being virtually non-existent.

I do not know why in 2009 the government would come into the chamber to argue that unions should be given such a privileged and special power. What about the checks and balances? This is outrageous and the Liberal-National opposition is moving to ensure that unions can only see records relating to non-union members when an employee gives consent or where Fair Work Australia authorises them to be viewed. Let us face it: workers are voting with their feet. They are moving away from union membership because trade unions are no longer providing the services they once did, and we believe that the privacy rights of the 86 per cent of the private sector workforce who are not members of a union must be protected.

With respect to the right of entry and expanded access for discussions, Labor promised that laws surrounding the right for a union to enter a workplace would be maintained. This promise has also not been observed as the number of workplaces where a union can gain access for discussions are vastly expanded by this bill. We will be moving an amendment which will permit employees to decide if they want unions in the workplace and, if so, which union that ought to be before any entry can occur. It is unacceptable that you have union thugs marching into workplaces when the employees simply do not want them there. 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. What is wrong with asking employees, the people who this is supposed to be all about, to decide who can represent them?

Another point relates to compulsory arbitration. The government said prior to the election that compulsory arbitration would not be a feature of its new enterprise bargaining system. This is another false promise. What do they say? In a speech to the National Press Club on 30 May 2007, the Deputy Prime Minister 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 where they do not agree to the terms.

In April 2007, the government went on to say in Forward with Fairness:

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

The situation is that the bill provides for Fair Work Australia to have the capacity to arbitrate, compulsorily, differences between negotiating parties when they cannot reach agreements themselves, and these outcomes are known as workplace determinations. There is, I am advised, a conceptual difficulty between arbitration and agreement making, and if parties cannot agree on the terms which suit them they ought to be able to walk away and rely on the safety net of awards and the National Employment Standards. The Liberal-National opposition proposes to retain the current provisions relating to enterprise bargaining but ensure that compulsory arbitration in the form of workplace determinations is only available when bargaining representatives genuinely consent to such a determination being made.

I will mention a couple of other points briefly. I cannot speak at length because of the arrangements the whips apparently have to get this legislation dealt with by the parliament expeditiously, but with respect to greenfield agreements the government did not promise us the onerous, restrictive and complex greenfield legislation provisions that are in the proposed legislation, and the new provisions will make it almost impossible for new work or jobs to commence without the approval of a union. Again, Labor is the party of the unions. It is controlled by the unions and it seems to be serving the interests of the unions and not the interests of workers. We believe that our proposed amendment removes the requirement for unions to be notified. That is fair, equitable and just.

The legislation also proposes a new approach to transmission of business that replaces the accepted approach of asset transfer established and confirmed in several High Court decisions with a new concept of transfer of work, and additionally there is a necessity that, if employees are transferred with a business, the instrument underpinning their engagement is also transferred on an ongoing basis. We propose that the law ought not to be changed. In other words, we want to keep the law as it is. Unfair dismissal laws effectively cost jobs. Unfair dismissal laws are a discouragement to employers to hire new employees, and we would like to make sure that there is a situation where jobs are not lost because of Labor’s ideological devotion to the trade union movement. There is much more that I would have liked to have discussed on this legislation, but I want to indicate to the House that I support the amendments which are being moved by the opposition in this debate.

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