Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

He does not give a fig about those people. He does not give a fig about their civil rights. They bring up the bogeyman—some bogeyman trade union official. We saw that in the ads in 2006 and 2007. Didn't work then. Won't work now. All this will do is restrict people's right to join a union because they will never, ever get to see the union. The union will never be allowed to be present on the work site. So you will have the freedom to join, but the union will not be able to do much for you. That is the aim of those opposite, and they get so upset when we say it in the parliament. There are all these cries of outrage from across the room.

It is the same thing with greenfields agreements. It sounds eminently fair. After three months, if the employer and the unions have not reached an agreement on a greenfields site, the employer can then apply to the commission to make an agreement with themselves. It sounds sort of fair: 'We don't want to stop development in this country,' so three months sounds fair enough. But I have dealt with situations where existing workforces have simply been moving from one suburb to the next, from one site to the next, and that has been the mechanism to invoke this greenfields clause in order to completely rewrite, or threaten to rewrite, the conditions of an existing workforce. That is what ends up happening. If you are in the building trade, mining or any of those sorts of industries where things start up and close down and start up and close down, then these provisions for greenfields agreements will be utilised to destroy longstanding conditions. Make no mistake: conditions that have been built up in this country over 100 years of progress, decency and bargaining will be stripped away overnight.

It is the same with individual flexibility agreements. The whole set of arrangements in this bill needs to be looked at very carefully, because those opposite are seeking to use a mechanism in the Fair Work Act to completely change its aim by the introduction of non-monetary benefits in exchange for your working conditions. We all know what that leads to in retail. I remember in the old days, when there used to be more DVD and video shops, you used to get two free DVDs at the end of the week. It will be the same here: say goodbye to your penalty rates. Those are the sorts of arrangements that get made—a bag of tomatoes or something in exchange for your penalty rates. They are the sorts of silly arrangements that get made when you do not have adequate protections. That is what this bill seeks to do. Individual flexibility agreements will become individual contracts.

That is the aim of those opposite. They should be fair dinkum, just once in their lives. For once in their lives, they should be fair dinkum with the Australian people. This has become the Liberal way, you see, since Fightback! They got such a scare when they were honest with people about what they believed in that they now obscure their aim. And anyone who opposes them is an infant, apparently. That is the new rhetoric: 'You've got to be an adult.' This is the ridiculous, bizarre spin that they come out with.

What else do we find in this bill? We find that, stashed away, there is a little sting in the tail for those on workers compensation, because the bill seeks to remove employees' ability to take annual leave while they are on workers compensation or awaiting the outcome of a workers compensation case. Now, that will put some people at a great deal of disadvantage. They will not be able to take their annual leave while they are waiting for their injury claims to be heard. Effectively, this will leave some people without income.

What else do we find in the bill? We find changes to annual leave loadings and shift loadings. Shift workers all over the country, people who regularly work late at night or on Sundays, get their shift loading when they go on annual leave because it is part of their normal income. But hidden away in this bill is this: if it is not in your award, if it is not expressly provided for in your agreement, out it goes. That is the first little slice of the onion towards removing those sorts of conditions—removing annual leave loading, which the coalition have been trying to get rid of since the seventies, and removing the right of shift workers to loadings when they are on annual leave which are part of their normal income. The reason those provisions were put in place was that often shift workers would work 50 weeks of the year, working nights and getting a shift loading of an extra 30 per cent, and when they went on holiday their income would actually drop. That is why those provisions were put in place—because of that blatant unfairness.

This is just the first wave of industrial relations changes. We know that, in the lead-up to the next election, if those opposite get away with this budget, if they are feeling confident, up the GST will go—if they can convince the premiers; it seems some of them are getting cold feet—either by broadening the base or lifting the rates, or both. Then we will see the inevitable industrial relations debate. They are before the Fair Work Commission today, trying to reduce people's penalty rates on the weekend, and the penalty they want on weekends is zero. It is not 50 per cent. It is not a reasonable rate. It is zero. It is a flat rate. That is what those opposite seek.

Those opposite should save us from their mendacity, from them breaking their commitments to the Australian people. This is a bit of an opportunity for those opposite, like the member for Bass, to just for once be clear, give a bit of straight talk and go to the ballot box with what you actually believe—rather than being this wolf in sheep's clothing, which is what they seek to do every time. It will save us from bills and budgets of broken commitments.

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