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

I also rise to speak in opposition to the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2014, for the second time in this term of parliament. Still the government has not done their homework on the bill before us. They have not improved their work at all. It is still a failure. It is still a poorly conceived bill that is badly motivated and entirely unnecessary, because this issue was dealt with by the 43rd parliament. Nobody is denying that if there is criminal behaviour and if it occurs in any organisation, then it should be dealt with properly by the Criminal Code Act.

That is exactly what we have seen happen, whether it be Craig Thomson or whether it be Geoff Shaw. If there is somebody who breaks the law, they will be dealt with appropriately. That is why this bill is not the right place for this. The Fair Work Act and this bill seek to impose penalties that are tougher than we have seen anywhere else in any part of our acts, including the Corporations Act.

Nobody is excusing the behaviour of one or two individuals, but, as we have said repeatedly, you cannot punish the entire institution of registered organisations for the actions of one or two individuals. If we were to adopt the government's logic, we would be punishing every MP in the Victorian parliament because of the actions of one, Jeff Shaw. But we have not seen that happen. All this bill seeks to do is to union bash—to bash up the natural foe of the conservatives, our trade union movement. Along their way, in their frantic push to bash the trade union movement, the government have caught up a few of their traditional supporters, their own organisations—the employer groups.

The burden of this extra regulation will fall not just on the full-time, salaried union officials that they seek to punish but also on the volunteers of the trade unions or registered organisations such as the Australian Industry Group. These groups have been quite vocal in their opposition to this bill, not once or twice but a number of times, whether it be to individual members of parliament or whether it be to Senate inquiries, but the government still ignores their words and their pleas. The government has wrongly claimed that these reforms will protect union members' interests and give greater democracy to union members. Again, it is just another attempt by a desperate government to distort the facts. This bill will achieve the exact opposite. It will impose tough and rigid regulations on the largely rank and file members who run our trade unions. The government seek to impose large fines on those rank and file members.

I know those opposite struggle to understand what a trade union looks like. As an example, the executive, the council, of United Voice in the state of Victoria, like in every state, is made up of rank and file members. There are only a couple of people who are paid officials. Take, for example, Marie Angrilli, who works for Spotless as a part-time school cleaner. She gives up her spare time as a volunteer to be president of United Voice in Victoria. Why should she be treated any differently from the president of a school council, who is also a volunteer, or the president of a sporting club? That is exactly the distinction this bill tries to make. The government has wrongly labelled Marie, who is a volunteer rank and file member on the union executive, as one of the union bosses and union heavies, and seeks to impose on her, as well as on all the other members who are rank and file members elected to their trade union state councils or executives, very tough penalties. The other union I wish to mention is the rail division of the RTBU. Bob Bassett is a full-time conductor for V/Line—another hardworking person who this government seek to victimise, demonise, call a union boss and vilify in the way they are trying to do in this bill. The government suggest that these people are union bosses and union heavies, but nothing could be further from the truth.

There are still two million people in Australia who are members of a trade union, making the trade union movement one of the largest community based rank and file organisations in this country. Yet this government is dead set scared of them. I can understand why. When working people are active, when they get together, when they organise around their working rights, when they stand up, when they have a voice, they become a broadbased movement that can speak directly against what this government is trying to do. It is no wonder that upon being elected one of the first things that this government did was try to tear down the union movement—because they, unlike the rest of Australia, knew about that horror budget, that shocker budget, that they were about to bring down. That budget did one thing, and that was to tear at our working people. It attacked their children, whether they be in school or trying to get a university education, and it attacked working people's parents, whether they be self-funded retirees or on a pension, or in an aged care facility, possibly victims of the government's latest cut to the dementia supplement. It is no wonder that the government has brought forward this bill to try and attack unions, to distract their members from the real battle that is going on outside of the workplace, whether it be in their homes, whether it be in their children's schools, whether it be with their parents and their pension. The government is no fan of working people. They are not the great saviours of the working people that they like to champion. Whether it be on this version of the debate or a previous version of the debate, speaker after speaker from the government side have claimed that they are the best friend of working people.

As I have mentioned, it is not only trade unions that are opposed to this bill but also a number of employer organisations. I note the submission of the Australian Industry Group to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee. When I was first elected I never thought I would be standing up in the parliament saying that I agreed with the Australian Industry Group on the matter of workplace relations. But here I am in this House doing that. It just shows how far to the right the government has gone when employer groups are saying that their proposal concerning part of the Fair Work Act is too radical and too draconian. Just as our union delegates come from the rank and file, the Australian Industry Group also have rank and file not delegates but councillors that run their incorporated organisations in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland—in fact, 85 people from their rank and file membership based organisations.

Like many of our union delegates who work on state councils and state executives running their unions, these officers for the Australian Industry Group are volunteers. They give up their time without payment for their role. This bill seeks to make their job harder by imposing new regulations on volunteers who make sure their organisation is run properly. Yet, all it will do will is increase the amount of time, regulation and red tape for these volunteer based organisations. This means these organisations, like our trade union movement, would have less time to spend on their businesses, less time to spend on policy, and potentially some of them would have to give up their role as volunteers in a registered organisation.

This is what the government seeks to do with this bill. It is an example of how poorly-conceived and rushed the government is in their desperate attempt to union bash and distract the community from their real agenda, which is to attack working people in every aspect of their lives. I quote from the Australian Industry Group's submission to the Senate inquiry on this bill. They state:

Unlawful conduct within one organisation must not be used as an excuse to impose unfair laws or an excessive compliance burden upon all registered organisations.

I also note that they cite the ILO's Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948. When you have the Australian Industry Group in a submission to an inquiry talking about protection of the freedom of association, you know the government is on the wrong path. They, like their workers, seek to organise—seek to have a collective voice. From time to time, bosses and workers do disagree, but nobody should deny their right to organise. Yet this government seeks to do that; it seeks to tear at that basic convention—that of freedom of association.

As I have said, this bill is poorly-conceived, badly-motivated and entirely unnecessary. It should be rejected in its entirety. It creates a large volume of new regulation without evidence that it is necessary. The work was already done in the former parliament. This bill also creates a new Commonwealth regulator, where one already exists. This is from a government that claims that it wants to get rid of red tape—yet, it is introducing more. This bill creates a large volume of new regulation that will not just increase the burden for registered trade unions, but it will also increase the burden on employer organisations. As I have said, it should be rejected in its entirety.

The problem with this debate is that, once again, it is centred around the rhetoric of union bashing. Why on earth does the government continue with its union bashing? Why does it seek to perpetuate this myth? Perhaps it is for their own purposes—they need an enemy. So let's create one from working people. Let's remind ourselves who unions are: they are men and women in a workplace who get together; they organise to have a say about their workplace rights. And they are very good at it; they have had a lot of influence. In some sectors they have organised well—they have good working conditions. Yet this government, we know, in other bills seeks to tear those down. We also know that in a number of new industries unions are still doing the hard work of ensuring that their members have good workplace conditions. The cleaners here in Parliament House and the cleaners who work for the government are some of the latest victims of this government's budget shocker. In their determination to cut costs, they have cut the wages of their own cleaners. I would like to cite a comment from an editorial in the Herald Sun, challenging the psychology of the government's IR minister: what sort of psyche does a man have if he cuts the wages by up to $5 an hour of the person who cleans his toilet? To me that statement says it all: if you cut the wages of your own cleaners—the people who clean your toilets—you are not a friend of hard-working people. It does not matter how many times you say in front of the mirror that you are the worker's friend, it is simply not true.

The government's actions when they were previously in government demonstrate that they are not the fans or supporters of working people. When the Prime Minister was the workplace relations minister, he showed very little regard for working people. He said that the Howard government's legacy would be WorkChoices; he said it was one of their proudest achievements. It is simply not true. WorkChoices, as we know, is not 'dead, buried and cremated', as the Prime Minister has continued to say. In fact, it could not be further from the truth. We have seen through their attempt to try to amend the IFA and their other bill on the Fair Work Act that they are seeking to bring it back. That is why they have to demonise the very organisations that stand up against them. Let us not forget what the government did when they changed unfair dismissal, when they went after penalty rates, when they attacked people's retirement income and when they made sure that working people would have less access to their union representatives. Let's be clear about this bill: it seeks to demonise unions and hard-working union officials. (Time expired)

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