Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—The Fair Work Amendment Bill 2012 is a wide-ranging bill, with many clauses covering many different things within industry. It must be said that the members of the coalition are not able to support the majority's recommendation that the bill be passed. And I must express our disappointment that clauses recommending family-friendly measures are mixed up in this bill with a number of clauses entrenching union power and reach into the workplace even further than it is already: in particular the right-of-entry clauses, which cause us—and the industry, it must be said—deep consternation and difficulty.

I understand there are more than 100 bills before the parliament at the moment and I do not concur with the chair's view that the committee did have sufficient time or ability to fully study the implications of this bill. There were 41 submissions and we had one half-day hearing in Melbourne, with three roundtables. Considering that was the sum total of the ability to contribute, and considering the raft of clauses in this bill will impact on every workplace in Australia, the coalition members do not believe this was sufficient. We believe there was a poor case made for change; in fact, it is quite clear this legislation flies in the face of earlier commitments made by the Prime Minister, who actually said in 2007: 'We will make sure that the current right of entry laws stay.'

I noted the chair's comments on the areas considering the anti-bullying measures. I was a part of that inquiry as well. It was a deeply moving inquiry; it was quite confronting. There were 23 recommendations made from that inquiry and, largely, the coalition members' views coincided with those of the government members in the final report. There was one recommendation, though, which we did not support and that was recommendation 23, which called for this individual right of recourse, unspecified. We did not support that because we felt that there was a too much room for exploitation for other purposes by other parties. That premise is fully explored within the report. It is unfortunate, I think, that the government has chosen to pick up on just that one recommendation when in fact there were 22 others in the report and I would have liked to have seen some moves right across the spectrum. It is done in isolation and tucked in amongst the clauses in the bill which call for greater power for unions in the workplace. I think it is unfortunate these clauses have been presented in one bill to the parliament.

There was widespread concern across industry that this raft of legislation was going to cause great difficulty for industry and at a time when we are losing jobs. Every day we open the paper and find out another business has closed its doors. We think it is inappropriate these bills should be passed at this time and we recommend that they not be.

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