Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is interesting to hear the member for Wills speak on the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the related bill. In representing that electorate he follows another notable in the industrial relations sector in Bob Hawke. It is also of great interest when the member for Kennedy talks about regulation and the protection of Australian industry. Both parties ignore some fundamental facts. The first is that once you regulate the labour industry you must have a tariff regime, because more and more the world labour market is becoming internationalised.

I was recently in Esperance, in a section of my electorate as per the new boundaries. There on the wharf was a magnificent container crane. In the port authority office was a photograph of how it got there: on the back of a heavy lift ship. The ship pulled in and they rolled this huge container crane, built in China, onto the wharf. I believe another three were delivered in the member for Wills’s state of Victoria. The only employment achieved within Australia was to plug it in. You can fix that, as the member for Kennedy would advocate. But the member for Wills should remember that his predecessor, Bob Hawke, and the previous Prime Minister under a Labor regime both introduced substantial reductions to the tariff regime as the only weapon they were allowed to use against industrial relations excesses by the trade union movement. They knew that Australia, to survive in the world marketplace, had to become competitive and you could not leave wages out of that situation.

This measure, which leads Australia back into a regulated marketplace, will have a similar effect—either there will be fewer and fewer goods made, grown et cetera in Australia or, and I do not, of course support this, the Australian government will be obliged to start putting up the price of goods by making all those imported goods subject to very significant tariffs. Please remember that at that time of which I speak, the fact was that there was a 45 per cent tariff on motor cars manufactured overseas. And who paid that? The people buying motor cars.

I have just noted down a few of the lessons I have learned by being a member of this parliament for 29 years and an active employer for the previous 25 years in both the local government public service and my own businesses. The things that have always stuck in my mind are that there is no such thing as a free lunch, that action and reaction are always of equal force and that no legislation can force an employer to create a job. Once he has made the mistake of doing so, he can be encompassed by the sort of laws we are debating today. But make it too tough and he or she has some very interesting options, one of which is to take this government’s 50 per cent investment allowance and buy a piece of equipment that replaces two or three workers or at least obviates the need to employ them.

It always amazed me, and I mentioned it the other day, that there was a simple response to a very effective piece of political advertising paid for by the trade union movement in its own interest. This advertisement depicted a lady with two little kids being phoned by her boss, told to come to work and, presumably, to leave the kids at home. That resonated with the people, except that the employment sector failed to state the obvious in an alternative advertisement, which might have shown that woman saying, ‘Well, thank you for your phone call, but stick your a job, because, under the regime of Work Choices, I get three job offers a week.’ That was commonplace under Work Choices—that lady could have got a job the next day. Could she do so now? Is this legislation going to protect her if she is put in those impossible positions? No, because her primary responsibility to those children is to feed them. She would be under much more pressure today to go to work—an outrageous circumstance—because she would not know where the next job was going to come from. No doubt in those days she was earning much more than the dole paid.

It is all right to bring all this legislation to the parliament and to talk about a safety net, but, without a job, none of the rules apply to you. That is a matter of grave importance to me as an employer. In fact, let me plead guilty to putting an AWA in place with the voluntary agreement of my hotel staff in the 1960s. Why did I do that? Because they were totally confused by award conditions and, in the rolling shifts that applied in the hotel industry, they could never understand how their wages varied from week to week. So I got them together and suggested that we add up everything that they were entitled to and everything they received, divide it by the number of hours over which they were collectively employed and set that as a flat hourly rate. When I mentioned the figure, they said, ‘That much?’ They could not take that offer quickly enough. I then said, ‘Why don’t you set your own rosters within the demands of our customers?’ and they did so.

This is a serious point I want to make: notwithstanding the fact that some people, by taking the penalty rate hours, earned relatively less, it was the married women who wanted those working hours—they wanted to work nights and weekends on a flat hourly rate. Why? Because that was when was most convenient for them—their husbands were home to look after the kids.

Today, people seeking employment have a five-day week imposed on them, and they pay out thousands of dollars a month to childcare organisations. I can say that from the experiences within my extended family. I know of another employer in our extended family who could run his business seven days a week but does not have to; he is not a retailer. This employer has had female staff who worked well for him in the past but who voluntarily retired—of course, there is no ‘unfair dismissal’ of employers; employees can leave whenever it is to their advantage—when they left to have a family. As the kids have got a little older, these women have come back to him and asked, ‘Is there any weekend work, Michael?’ He said, ‘No, I lock the gates on Friday afternoon—double-padlocked—in case somebody gets in and tries to work, because I would be up for the penalty rates that are being lauded in this legislation.’ When the response comes that they are happy with ordinary time, he says, ‘Yeah, but I’m not going to be fined later on for having made that decision. The work is just not available.’ Yet why do these women want weekend work? Because their husbands are home from their five-day-a-week jobs, so the women can leave their husbands in charge of the children.

It is the same if you are a university student, which typically involves five days a week of learning. Imagine that you need to sustain yourself by working on weekends and that you go to an employer, who says, ‘We don’t open our restaurant’—or whatever it is—‘anymore on weekends because we can’t afford to pay treble time for your first hour’s work.’ Where do you go then? What do you do?

I said in my maiden speech, which just happened to be on industrial relations, all those years ago—in early 1981—you would think the fish did not bite on Wednesdays. If it so happens that you do not like going around all Sunday morning looking for somewhere to park your boat, you might think: ‘Well, I can get a job on Saturdays, and I’ll go fishing on Wednesdays. Maybe I’ll go to organised sport without taking a sickie.’ But the job is not there. The cost structure denies you the right of choice. Why did we always have double time on Sundays? That was the day you were supposed to go to church. But what are the religious days today? Friday for Islam, Saturday for the Seventh-day Adventist and Sunday for the typical Christian. So are we going to have double time on all those days? Why not? It is as sensible as the suggestion about people who choose to work on a weekend—and those people who do not choose to do not go. What is more, people who want work on those days cannot get it because of these silly laws.

Further to that point, there is no such thing as a free lunch. I understand that now laws are going to be introduced to stop people from writing on the bottom of the menu, ‘On weekends we charge an extra 15 per cent.’ Who pays that? The community. There is no such thing as a free lunch. You want to pay people for their first hour of work over a weekend, as has been said. I notice the minister now is in a bit of a panic about this. You would think working people did not take their kids to McDonald’s. You would think that McDonald’s, in working out their international profit, do not look at Australia and say, ‘Our pricing must reflect the extra price cost of labour during our operating period.’ It is all right. It looks good for those who get paid, but it looks awful for those who pay for the hamburger.

I can see the member for Murray. I know that. Turn it around, and do not insult me. Turn it down, please. I got elected before you, and I will speak to the entitlement I have got. Now, let me continue.

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