Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the member for Grey for the position he just articulated very strongly on the Fair Work Amendment (Better Work/Life Balance) Bill 2012. The coalition does not support the approach offered by the member for Melbourne in his private member's bill.

Like the member for Grey, I agree that most members of this House would like to see Australian workplaces more flexible so that work and family arrangements can be better accommodated in the interests of both the employers and employees of this country. Work and family time is difficult to manage at the best of times and, with increased travel times to and from work as people move further into suburbia than before because of the high cost of housing and so forth, it is difficult in our modern world for many families to manage those important times for being together.

We disagree with a heavy, top-down approach from government, which is the Labor and Greens way. We see in this proposal and in the words offered by the member for Hindmarsh, as the Labor spokesperson in the debate on this bill, that the usual approach of Labor and the Greens is that there needs to be government intervention to get an outcome that is fair—so-called—for workers in this country. We argue that that is the wrong approach. The best people to understand the needs of a workplace are those involved in that workplace. With an appropriate safety net there, people should be left to their own means. They should be trusted to look after their own relationships and requirements better than any government can do.

At the heart of this proposal, there are three presumptions that need to be debunked. The first is that the government can regulate relationships in a workplace better than the people involved, that somehow from this place the government, through a tribunal or the old industrial relations club, can work out relationships in a small business operating near Mount Barker in my electorate better than the people can themselves. That is at the heart of what the member for Melbourne is trying to do here by having an additional bureaucracy and a heavy-handed approach by the government to force employers to take on arrangements that in some circumstances would make their businesses unviable. That is the truth of this. Unless it can suit both the employer and the employee, you have an umpire's ruling that makes it more difficult for an employer to manage their business.

The second wrong presumption at the heart of this is that somehow employers are always trying to find a way to take advantage of their workers, that they are not looking after the best interests of their workers and that only the government can somehow protect workers from all these bad employers out there, who, by the way, take the employees on and in many cases use their own capital. Small businesses in the member for Moreton's seat would, I am sure, like to know what he thinks about the fact that they have put their money and their houses up as protection for their business and the effort they put in to build their businesses. The member for Moreton would agree with President Obama that they did not build their businesses but the government did.

The third presumption is that business owners, employers, do not also have families. They also need time for their families. They put their heart and soul into it—

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