Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I wish to talk about two aspects that have been raised so far in this debate. The first is the outrageous and laughable claim that this government is the friend of hardworking people. This is just simply not true. The second aspect that I wish to raise in relation to this debate is that this bill is poorly conceived, badly motivated and entirely unnecessary because it was dealt with in the last government, the 43rd Parliament.

I may be a new member of this House, but I am already over members of the government claiming to be the friend of hardworking people. Their actions and previous words are simply not demonstrating that they are the friend of working people. When the Prime Minister was the workplace relations minister he displayed on regular occasions casual disregard for workers and their rights and a lack of sympathy towards working Australians. In his own words on the Howard government's IR legacy, the Prime Minister, who was the former minister for workplace relations, said:

WorkChoices was a political mistake, but it may not have been an economic one.

This comes from Tony Abbott's Battlelines, published byMelbourne University Press in 2009. He went further, saying:

Let me begin my contribution to this debate by reminding members that workplace reform was one of the greatest achievements of the Howard government.

This is from Hansard of 13 August 2009 for the House of Representatives.

Let me take this opportunity to remind the House that Work Choices and the Howard government IR legacy was not kind to working people. Basic working conditions were eroded, basic conditions were cut, and working people were left worse off. Penalty rates were gone. Employers had the opportunity to impose on new employees individual contracts that saw penalty rates ripped out of them. And let's not forget the changes to unfair dismissal where you could turn up one day, say that your child was sick and that you had to go home and, rather than leniency from your employer, you could be sacked on the spot. You could be sacked without recourse to unfair dismissal. This is the legacy of Work Choices. This is the legacy of the former Howard government. This is not the words or actions of a government that claims to be the friend of working people.

Let me go further to highlight the claims from the government so far in this debate that they are the friend of working people. Let us also remember the Prime Minister's comments on paid maternity leave:

Compulsory paid maternity leave? Over this Government's dead body…

This is from a speech that was made to the Liberal Party conference on 22 July 2002 and quoted in the ABC's 7.30 Report. Just because you say you are somebody's friend does not make it so. Let's also not forget some of the actions of this former government when it comes to low paid workers. We have seen it often repeatedly opposing the claims of unions, members and workers to increase the minimum wage. Commonwealth submissions for the three years when the Prime Minister was in charge of workplace relations would have left low paid workers up to $25 a week worse off compared to the actual outcomes of national wage decisions. Again, this is not friendly behaviour towards working people.

This bill, as I have already said, is poorly conceived, badly motivated and entirely unnecessary. It should be rejected in its entirety. This bill creates a large volume of new regulation without evidence that it is necessary. It also creates a new Commonwealth regulator where one already exists. This claims to be the government that is going to get rid of red tape, yet it is introducing more. This bill creates a large volume of new regulation that will not just be for registered union organisations to deal with but for registered employer organisations to deal with. The government is failing to acknowledge this as the casualty of this bill that is before us.

The opposition believes that this bill will ensure that registered organisations including unions will be regulated like corporations. I have a problem with the rhetoric of regulating unions in the same way as corporations are regulated. Unions and registered organisations are very different to corporations, and each of these is different to charities or clubs. In Australia we have a tradition of regulating each of these different entities differently. But it appears that the government fails to understand the difference, so I will explain it. A corporation regulation is directed towards protecting the economic interests of investors and creditors—and, to that extent, consumers. It serves a different purpose to protecting the interests of union members or members of employer organisations.

Perhaps we need to remind the House what a union is. I will not use the words of the Australian Labor Party or the ACTU or any other labour organisation. The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines a trade union as an organisation made up of employees or workers:

… the principal activities of which include the negotiation of rates of pay and conditions of employment for its members.

Union members are united by their belief in the dignity of workers and their right to fair and just treatment at work. Such actions and beliefs are not the actions and beliefs of corporations. Therefore, it is not appropriate that registered organisations—whether they be unions or employee organisations or employer organisations—be regulated in the same way as corporations. The natural rights and interests that members have in their union and their activities is different to the economic interests of shareholders in companies. Further, the extra regulation in this bill will fall not just on the responsibilities of the full-time, salaried leadership of unions but also on those of the many rank-and-file delegates and elected representatives to governing bodies.

See this speech in context