Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

(1) notes with concern the recent and growing job losses in state governments around Australia, as well as the difficulties many state public sector employees face in bargaining over wages and conditions; and

(2) directs the Standing Committee on Education and Employment to inquire into and report on the conditions of employment of state public sector employees and the adequacy of protection of their rights at work as compared with other employees, including:

(a) whether:

(i) current state government industrial relation legislation provides state public sector workers with less protection and entitlements than workers to whom the Fair Work Act 2009 applies;

(ii) the removal of components of the long held principles relating to Termination, Change and Redundancy from state legislation is a breach of obligations under the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions;

(iii) the rendering unenforceable of elements of existing collective agreements relating to employment security is a breach of the obligations under the ILO conventions relating to collective bargaining;

(iv) the current state government industrial relations frameworks provide protection to workers as required under the ILO conventions;

(v) state public sector workers face particular difficulties in bargaining under state or federal legislation; and

(vi) the Fair Work Act 2009 provides the same protections to public sector workers as it does to other workers; and

(b) what legislative or regulatory options are available to the Commonwealth to ensure that all Australian workers, including those in state public sectors, have adequate and equal protection of their rights at work.

Public sector workers around this country are under attack, no more so than in Queensland where 14,000 employees are slated to lose their jobs. You can add that to the 10,000 in New South Wales and the 4,200 in Victoria, and with promises of more to come there will be somewhere near 30,000 conservative state government employees losing their jobs.

The community understands the impact of this on the frontline services that they rely on; the community understands that it means their fellow community members are losing their jobs, with all the impacts that has on their families and consequentially on the public purse. It also means that the people who are left behind in these jobs are feeling increasingly insecure and they are under greater pressure to deliver the same services but with fewer resources.

It is not just about job losses; it is also about the contravention of some fundamental basic principles of dignity and people's rights to have a say in the decisions that are made in their workplaces. We saw in Queensland, for example, the government come in over the top of agreements reached between employees and employers and say, 'We do not like some of those causes so we are going to take them away because they seem to give employees some rights to participate in decisions that are made in their workplace.' Can you imagine the outcry if the Commonwealth government or a state government decided that it was going to step in and rewrite the terms of a lease, saying, 'We don't like the way you have negotiated that so we are going to take away a few of the benefits that one side has'? Similarly, if that happened with a commercial contract there would be an outcry from the conservatives, and yet it seems okay, when it comes to employees, to come in and rewrite agreements and take away some of their basic termination, change and redundancy provisions.

In my home state of Victoria I have seen the disadvantage that state public sector workers are at when it comes to bargaining under the current system. We have had nurses being put through the charade of bargaining that was extended for several years by a government that was hoping at some point the nurses would take industrial action so the bargaining period would be terminated and they would be taken to Fair Work Australia, where they knew that they would not be able to have their claim for nurse-patient ratios arbitrated. The teachers in Victoria have now become so fed up with the government's inaction and its refusal to come to the table that they have suspended bargaining and said they are not coming back until the government comes up with a proper proposal.

Around the country, state public sector workers reeling under the impacts of conservative state governments are now saying we need to do more. They are coming to this place, the federal parliament, and saying, 'We want you to do more and to do what you can.' The Queensland Public Sector Union have been leading the charge both in their home state and here, but it is not just the union; it is also community members and workers. More than 20,000 people around the country have signed up to the together.org.au petition to urge this place to find out how it can take steps to protect public sector workers and then implement them.

That is why we are here debating this motion for an inquiry—to shine a light on what is happening in state governments around this country but also to answer the more fundamental question, the basic principle at the heart of this motion: how can we ensure that state public sector workers have the same level of protection as their federal counterparts?

Now, I do applaud the government for having taken some steps in this regard, but there is much more that could be done. For instance, as a final example, we need to ask the question: given that we as a country have signed up to various International Labour Organization conventions that give people basic rights—with regard to termination change and redundancy—to be involved in what happens in their workplace, has the Queensland government contravened that by unilaterally deciding to rewrite agreements and then proceeding to sack tens of thousands of those employees? That is just one of the questions that we would be able to get to the bottom of through this committee inquiry. This inquiry—if this motion succeeds and is passed by the House—will give us the opportunity over the coming months to allow those people who have been so devastated and affected by cuts that they never saw coming to get the gold-standard protection they deserve and that other employees in this country have.

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