Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

AFL in Canberra; the Special Olympics; and cerebral palsy groups. They are a major supporter of the Maori cultural festival and support various programs in schools. They have helped me out with my annual Welcoming the Babies event, which will next be held on 4 March. Anyone listening is invited along to Stage 88 at 10.30 on Sunday morning. The CFMEU will be providing their fantastic barbeque trailer to enable us to have a mobile barbeque at the event. On top of all of this, they are continuing to do the basics of protecting the rights and entitlements of local workers and, most importantly, staying on top of local health and safety matters. I have always been impressed with the ability of the CFMEU to know exactly what is the safety record at pretty much every construction site across Canberra.

We have spent too long listening to those opposite denigrate the CFMEU, its members and its officials as unrestrained thugs wanting to intimidate people and throw their weight around. But, in my experience through my personal contact with this union, the people they are attacking are some of the most dedicated, community minded people I have had the honour of working with. The approach the Liberals took to the union movement, particularly to the CFMEU, would have threatened most of those local activities and many local sporting groups. Without the support shown by the CFMEU—whether it is financial, providing administrative support or encouraging their members to participate in local activities—lots of local institutions would have struggled.

The current legislation is not a return to the old days of endless industrial disputes. The CFMEU, its members and employers all know that those days are over and there is no desire to threaten the productivity of the industry. When we speak about productivity there are two fundamentally different views in this House. Those opposite hear the word 'productivity' and they think about slashing workers' wages and cutting their conditions. The member for Bennelong wants to cut back on penalty rates. Not only would that hurt workers; there is no evidence it would raise productivity. If you look at a graph of the rate of productivity growth, you will see that it continued to fall in the period in which Work Choices was in effect. There is no evidence that the Work Choices system of industrial relations raised the rate of Australian productivity growth.

We on this side of the House believe that productivity is about investing in people and infrastructure. We believe that raising productivity is about raising the quantity and quality of education. We believe it is about having more infrastructure—building more roads, rails and ports—and investing in infrastructure such as the National Broadband Network. When it comes to industrial relations, we believe that treating employees with dignity and respect means they will work more effectively, and there is plenty of evidence to support that viewpoint in management literature. We on this side of the House know that cooperative workplaces lead to better outcomes. Pitting people against their employers and workmates is not the way to achieve good workplace outcomes and it is not the way to high productivity and high living standards in Australia. Cutting trust in the workplace is bad for workers' morale and bad for their mental health, but it is also bad for the bottom line. It is bad for Australia's long-term living standards.

So we on this side of the House support this legislation. We support a long-term agenda of raising productivity by investing in people, skills and infrastructure and not a short-term agenda of cutting conditions and wages. I commend the bill to the House.

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