Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the debate on the Fair Work Amendment (State Referrals and Other Measures) Bill 2009 it was fascinating to listen to a member of the ETU—he is now leaving the chamber—discuss how this great reform of a national workplace relations system is seemingly being moved wholly by the Labor Party. That of course is a complete and utter joke. The national system approach to industrial relations was part of the initial announcement in relation to the changes made in 2005 to the workplace relations system by the then Prime Minister. It was a key component of the five principles announced in this place in May 2005. It was the first time that the federal government had sought to introduce a national industrial relations system. In fact, it was the Labor Party, through its states across the country, which spent millions of dollars on a High Court case opposing the national system. So it seems a little strange that the member for Deakin’s notes, which I presume were written for him, failed to pick up on the sheer facts that relate to this matter. Facts of course are not something that those on the other side like to associate with too much on debates about workplace relations. We saw during the last election campaign, particularly in the seat of Deakin, many millions of dollars spent focused on what were distortions of facts on workplace relations and we see the member who was elected, thanks to that false campaign, continue to distort facts in this place today.

The truth is that a national workplace relations system was first proposed by Peter Reith when he was Minister for Industrial Relations. He released a discussion paper, one of several discussion papers post the 1996 reforms to the initial 1996 reforms—the wide-ranging reforms that led to and were part of the untold success story that the Australian economy was for 11½ years. I think the House understands—certainly Glenn Stevens, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, understands this—that the changes made by Peter Reith and John Howard in 1996 played a large part in the success story of the Australian economy over that period. Post those reforms, Peter Reith released a discussion paper in, I think, about 1999, which referred to the advantages of a national system.

I have previously put on record in this place in another debate that I am an unapologetic supporter of a national system. There are some on my side of politics and some on the Labor side of politics who do not support a national workplace relations system. The Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change is a well-known supporter of a national system and has been for some time and I acknowledge that fact. However, there are others on that side of politics who do not support it, as there are on this side, and who believe that the states still have a role in workplace relations matters.

I think that, in a modern economy, where state borders and boundaries mean very little, particularly for medium-sized businesses wanting to grow—it is not so bad for large businesses which have IR departments or for law firms on contract which can deal with the complexities of different systems—this reform is a no-brainer. It gives those businesses the opportunity to grow without being restricted or facing red-tape barriers that are the six or seven different workplace relations systems we have operating around the country and which of course have been very conflictive at times, particularly the federal system that has, for a long time, been more complicated than many of the state systems.

Simplifying and reducing the amount of regulation in this area is a good thing and will be a good thing for Australian business going forward. That is why the Liberal Party, in 2005, introduced into this House a bill which created a national workplace relations system. We did so of course by using the corporations power under the Constitution, which was then challenged in the High Court. In the Work Choices case the High Court found that it was permissible within a section of the Constitution to do so. Of course, there has been much discussion as to whether that was a very wide reading of the power. I suspect it was and it has increased the role the federal government can take.

This next step is the right approach to go to. However, this bill is flawed and that is why the shadow minister earlier this evening so eloquently outlined our concerns with it. I do support a national system. I support the coverage of small businesses that are largely left behind. My home state of South Australia—including my seat of Mayo—is a small business state. South Australia is, and has been for a very long time, a small business driven state, more so now than ever before. The South Australian economy has changed largely on the back of reforms made in the 1990s to the economic structure in moving away from a largely manufacturing base economy to a now much more dynamic and flexible economy. We have vast amounts of various industries including a growing tourism industry—particularly in my electorate of Mayo—where small business plays a vital role. The unincorporated businesses in South Australia, I suspect, would outnumber those across most other states. Therefore, this bill will have an additional impact—presuming, of course, that the South Australian parliament passes the state referral bill. I think that is still up in the air.

So I am a supporter of this national approach to workplace relations. However, we have two major objections to this bill. I note that the member for Deakin, and others on the government side, in their contributions have noted the employer organisation, AiG, as evidence for their case. I understand that AiG is actually opposing the passage of these bills, for the very same reason that we do. The first of our two large concerns is that this bill and the agreement that sits alongside it is flawed in that it will require two-thirds of the states to agree to changes being made by the federal system, or, they can pull out over a three-month period while the federal government continues to pick up the tab. In other words, they are holding any future changes to a federal system to ransom for political reasons.

We have seen in the past that the Labor Party takes great delight in using fear campaigns in discussions on workplace relations. In their view that is a perfectly reasonable method of campaigning. We have a great concern—as AiG does—that that provision should be changed. That is one of our objections to this bill. We think that there should be an ability for states to pull out of the system completely, rather than this three-tiered approach. I am interested in what Mr Steve Smith, the National Workplace Relations Director of AiG, had to say before the Senate committee. I am appreciative again of the efforts of Workplace Express to report this. The report said:

In his oral evidence to the inquiry Smith went further, saying AiG was so concerned about the whole package—the legislation, the bilateral and multi intergovernmental agreements—that it did not support its passage. The most problematic element was the provision in the IGA allowing a two-thirds majority of the states to frustrate or block amendments to the Fair Work Act.

In other words, AiG is making the very same criticism that the shadow minister and this side of parliament—the Liberal Party—is making to this bill. We support this bill but we do not support the flawed approach to it. It seeks to hold future governments to ransom. I suspect it is a clever political tactic that the Deputy Prime Minister has dreamt up but it is actually bad policy.

The second aspect on which we have major concerns relates to the operation of the larger Fair Work Act. How the unfair dismissal system operates, good faith bargaining and award modernisation are by far the most public of the issues that have been ventilated in recent times. We have seen concerns from small businesses about award modernisation. I was at a local restaurant a couple of Friday nights ago and the owner of that well-known establishment in Stirling—a very successful local small business employing many local people; you would probably nearly call it a medium-size business as it has been so successful—was very upset by the changes that have been made by this government and the potential changes coming through with the award modernisation project. This has been a complete and utter stuff-up. From industry to industry there has been no doubt about that. I think the Deputy Prime Minister has had to intervene in the process eight times now.

Clearly there is a very troubling trend in relation to the award modernisation project. A lot of small businesses will face a massive increase in costs, particularly in South Australia which has come from a lower base award arrangement. Those small businesses will be picked up and taken to levels which ultimately will cost jobs. So while those on the other side like to talk about protecting employees and workers, and they used to say working families—we do not hear that phrase so much any more—they will be the very people who are impacted on. You will see higher unemployment and fewer opportunities for young people especially in those industries such as restaurants, bars and clubs and so forth where they just will not get a chance in the future because of the increased costs that these small and medium businesses will face. This will be the real impact of the Fair Work changes that the Labor Party have made. They ran very hard in the last election and they spent many millions of dollars. Their paymaster spent more millions than most people could comprehend getting them elected on this issue. This was one of the issues that was fought out in the last election campaign—there is no denying that fact.

However, the test for the Labor Party and for their laws will be: what will be the impact of their laws in the future? What will be the impact on unemployment? What will be the impact on strikes? What will be the impact on inflation and interest rates? We have heard the Reserve Bank governor recently before the House economics committee say that if you put more stoppages into the supply chain, particularly in the resource sector in Western Australia, you will increase pressure on inflation and interest rates, and I think there is a real chance that that is starting to occur.

I will talk briefly in a moment about some of those disputes in some of those big industries across the country, the big employers, because of the tools that have been given now to third parties to intervene in disputes, which they have not had for many years, if ever, in the Australian workplace relations system. I refer there to, in particular, the new provisions in relation to good faith bargaining, which are really a step in the dark for our country. We have never before had a provision where a group of employees—a small group, potentially, out of a workplace—can force an employer to bargain, can actually force an employer to change how they manage their business. And that is the system that we now have. If a small majority of employees decide that they wish to bargain, they can force an employer to do so. They can force an employer to change the way they operate their business. That will have in the future, I suspect, real implications for particularly small and medium sized businesses, which have traditionally had problems dealing with workplace relations. Because of the very nature of the system, it will always be complicated. That is why there are those very highly paid and successful partners in many law firms around the country who focus on this issue for their career, because it is a very technical issue and always will be.

As to the good faith bargaining provisions I think we have seen a significant development today. Again, Workplace Express has reported a decision by Senior Deputy President Matthew O’Callaghan today, relating to a dispute in South Australia where Cadillac Printing has been forced to commence bargaining with its 34 production employees at its facilities in Plympton. The commission, or whatever it is today—Fair Work Australia—was presented with a petition signed by 23 employees indicating their support for the union to represent them in negotiating an enterprise agreement. So this has been accepted: 23 out of 34 have decided that they want to bargain, and the employer is now required to bargain with them. The other 11, of course, are also forced to bargain—or forced to be covered by the terms and conditions of that agreement. The 23 cannot be the only ones covered by the agreement that they want to negotiate; the other 11 are covered as well. So their choice is out the window, even if they are perfectly happy with the arrangements; the other 23 have told them that they have to be covered, and now the employer has to bargain with them. I am not sure how that is freedom and choice in Australian workplaces. It has now been given to a small minority, potentially, to force others to be covered by the system or the agreement they want to be covered by, even if the employer does not want to.

This is the very real concern that we have, particularly on behalf of small and medium businesses. Large businesses will always be able to deal with this. Even if they might not like the laws particularly, they will always be able to find ways to get around or use provisions in the act, and it has been forever thus. However, it has always been the case—and this was always our reasoning with small and medium businesses on unfair dismissals, and remains our reasoning on unfair dismissals today—that small and medium businesses do not have the resources to fully understand or always be across how they are meant to deal with complex legal entitlements or legalistic acts of parliament, whereas larger businesses can employ very well-paid lawyers to do so.

So these are the very real concerns that I am getting in my electorate from small businesses. Many small businesses are concerned by the operation of this new act. I know the government is spending a large amount of money with friendly organisations like COSBOA in trying to explain the new provisions and how they will work. But the truth is that what they have done is change the whole power structure within the workplace relations system in Australia, to the end that unions or third parties can now use their law to force business owners to do something they do not want to do, and I think that is very concerning. I think we will find that that will be a very concerning and economically negative impact of the changes that this government has made.

They will scream—as the member for Deakin and other members have done, as did my friend the member for Dobell, who I think has more problems with some of these third-party interventions than we have—that we are all Work Choices obsessed and want to go back, and it will be bigger and bolder and broader, or whatever the member for Deakin’s phrase was. But what we have said on this is that we recognise that, in the last parliament, there were aspects of the changes that were made that went too far, particularly in relation to the no-disadvantage test. However, this government has gone far too far the other way. They have introduced new concepts into the workplace relations system which will impact negatively on Australian workers because it will reduce their opportunities to get jobs. It will reduce their opportunities to get the real wage increases that we have seen in the last 12 years under the previous government’s changes. It will impact enormously on the economic performance of our country, particularly in relation to interest rates and inflation. They will be seen in the future to be wrongheaded changes and decisions, and it will be seen that we should not have taken the country down that path. That is why we are concerned about having provisions in a bill which will allow any future government’s hands to be tied. It does not make sense. It has never been the case that you could force a future government to accept a policy of the previous government. There should always be the ability for both sides of politics to make changes to legislation, and for state governments, if they desire, to take back their industrial relations system, as the Constitution allowed for in its framing—that unincorporated or small businesses in particular would be covered by state government laws.

So, as to these changes, the overall merit of a national system I think is worthwhile. I support very much a national approach to workplace relations; it will reduce the cost of doing business in Australia, which I think means we will have more opportunities for our young people to get work in quality jobs and to earn more, and it will increase the productive capacity of our economy. I think that removing the regulatory barriers to that is a good thing. However, some of the provisions in this bill, particularly the political provisions in this bill, are the wrong way to go, and that is why we seek to make reasonable changes to this bill, and we hope the government sees the merit in making those changes.

See this speech in context