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

Apparently, he is advocating for Work Choices to be brought back at the next election. But we will let the opposition go out and argue that—that is, if they have the guts to honestly argue it, because they never did.

I turn to the amendments that the opposition has moved. These amendments range from the unnecessary to the unworkable. For example, opposition amendment (6) has the same effect as government amendment (103), to ensure representation orders are available to deal with threatened, impending or improbable disputes. Consequently, the opposition amendment is unnecessary. Amendments (1) and (2), which apply a global test to the National Employment Standards for transitional instruments, would deprive almost all employees of the safety net and would be unworkable and uncertain. It would be inconsistent with the government’s commitment to ensuring that the National Employment Standards are operational from 1 January 2010. I know the Liberal Party never saw a safety net it did not want to see ripped away, and this is more of the same. Opposition amendment (3), the employer cost orders proposed by the opposition, is unnecessary. The award modernisation request already requires the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to consider transitional arrangements, and the government has made a submission urging the commission to take account of increased or decreased labour costs in each industry or occupation.

Opposition amendment (5) would take away the Australian Industrial Relations Commission’s ability to tailor transitional arrangements for particular industries or sectors, entrenching state based inconsistencies in terms and conditions for another five years and then providing that they must automatically cease. This big bang approach would be a recipe for chaos and would take away the ability of the commission to set out orderly transitional arrangements in awards themselves.

I will make some further comments on each of the amendments. I understand, from the issues raised by the shadow minister for workplace relations, that he is justifying some or all of these amendments because of his criticisms of the award modernisation process. I say to the shadow minister and to his Liberal Party: award modernisation is a reform that has been sought by employers for decades. The approach of the Liberal Party in government was to create statutory individual employment agreements, to rip the safety net away, and then they delighted in the evidence that showed that working Australians were having basic entitlements ripped off them. That was something that they applauded each and every step of the way. But, in ensuring that the award safety net could be stripped away, they shirked the big job of modernising awards. They found themselves, as a government and as a Liberal Party, incapable of doing it. Too slow, too silly, too unfocused—I do not know what the explanation was, but they could not get it done.

Employers around the country have called for this reform for years. Take just one quote from ACCI, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. They said:

Workplace relations policy is too important for horse and buggy era approaches to persist.

In its desperate days in opposition, the Liberal Party might be attracted to the reintroduction of the horse and buggy, but no-one else is. We are getting on with the job of making sure that thousands and thousands of awards are modernised and streamlined. That is what employers want, and we are working with them cooperatively to address their concerns as those concerns are raised.

I note that, in government, the now opposition pretended that they believed in this reform. I take just one quote from the member for Menzies, the then minister. (Extension of time granted) He promised he would simplify the existing 4,000 state and federal awards and the 44,000 wage classifications contained within them. However, he never got the job done. Given the absolute incompetence of the Liberal Party when faced with this reform task, I think it hardly falls to them to make criticisms of the government that actually is doing something that they were incapable of doing. I certainly say that the Labor Party is not going to be lectured by the Liberal Party on the question of the award safety net when they made it clear from their time in government they do not believe in such a safety net. If they believed in such a safety net, they never would have introduced WorkChoices.

I come to the specifics of opposition amendments (1) and (2). This is the replacement of the line-by-line approach to the implementation of the NES with a global approach. This is a recipe for ripping employees off. I know that is what the Liberal Party believes in, but we do not. We will ensure that Australians get the benefit of the national employment standards precisely as we promised them. We took it to the election, we campaigned on it and we got public endorsement for it.

Opposition amendment (3)—the employer cost orders—is obviously there to seek to generate fear in the business community about what is happening with award modernisation. But the truth is that the government already has transitional arrangements in place. The commission is already seized of the task of dealing with the phasing in of new, simple, modern awards. That process is working and underway at the commission at the moment.

Opposition amendment (4) relates to default superannuation funds. All Australian employees will continue to be entitled to choose their own superannuation fund when modern awards commence on 1 January 2010. But I do not see why the Liberal Party sets its face against the proposition that default funds for those employees who do not make such an election should be highly performing funds. That is what that proposition is all about.

Opposition amendment relating to the five-year phasing is a doozy. This is a recipe for complete chaos. Instead of having transitional arrangements over a five-year period, which the commission is working on now, the Liberal Party says, ‘Let’s keep all state based differences and then just have them go out of the system overnight.’ No-one who knows anything about workplace relations would think that that is an adequate system. They certainly would not get endorsement for it. That amendment is obviously being opposed by us. We believe in an orderly transition and that is what this bill provides.

Opposition amendments (6) to (9) are unnecessary. This matter is dealt with in government amendments, and that ought to be transparent to the opposition. We are dealing with the question of representation orders being able to be made in circumstances where there is a threatened, impending or probable dispute. That is already in the government amendments, so it is quite unnecessary.

I say in concluding my remarks on these amendments that I understand that the shadow minister does his best in difficult circumstances—where his party stands for tearing awards away and for industrial relations extremism—but none of these amendments, as moved, would improve this bill. Many of them would impose a significant burden on working people, allowing the National Employment Standards we have promised them to be ripped away from them. Many of them would cause complete chaos for employers. I note that the shadow minister says that he cares about red tape for employers. If that is true then I presume at some point he will issue an apology to the business community of this country for the red tape that was caused by Work Choices and for the more than 100,00-deep pile of agreements that got left unprocessed at the Workplace Authority, with businesses uncertain and in chaos because of the actions of the former government. The amendments are unworkable, unnecessary, to the detriment of employees and employers and ought to be rejected by this House.

See this speech in context