Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight in support of the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2014. It is a bill that delivers on key aspects of the coalition government's election policy and does not go any further. This bill sets out to deliver these amendments to the Fair Work Act. It includes greenfield agreements, right of entry and individual flexibility arrangements, and it closes the 'strike first, talk later' loophole. These were recommendations made by the 2012 Fair Work Act review.

In 2013, Labor conducted a review of the Fair Work Act but did not implement any of the recommendations from the review. The coalition's Fair Work Amendment Bill is offering employers and employees the clarity and certainty that Labor was unable to deliver. Many of the changes outlined in the bill will have a great effect on businesses and workers throughout the country and a positive effect on workers and businesses in my electorate as well.

Let us look at greenfields agreements first. This bill will improve the greenfields agreements negotiation process to ensure that unions can no longer frustrate the making of these agreements by seeking excessive wages or conditions or by refusing to agree at all. As the former government's Fair Work review noted, in somewhat understated language, these practices 'potentially threaten future investment in major projects in Australia'. It is not policy that drives the economy, it is not government control and it is not union control; it is the efforts of both employees and employers. And all they want is to get on with the job. That is what this bill is all about.

Amendments to the greenfields provisions will help unlock new investment and prevent needless delays to new projects. These amendments will send a strong message to overseas investors that Australia is open for business and that projects can get underway quickly. Along with these amendments, the bill addresses the current imbalance in union workplace access rules. Currently, some businesses face excessive workplace visits from unions—even when their employees are not union members and have not asked for the union's presence.

In 2007, the Labor Party promised on multiple occasions that there would be no changes to the union right of entry laws. In a press conference on 28 August 2007, the then deputy opposition leader, Julia Gillard, said:

We will make sure that current right of entry provisions stay. We understand that entering on the premises of an employer needs to happen in an orderly way. We will keep the right of entry provisions.

As we know, these promises were not kept and unions were given much easier access to workplaces under the Fair Work Act provisions, which were routinely exploited by some—I note 'some'—unions. Unions are now allowed to enter a much wider range of workplaces for discussion purposes, including workplaces where that union has not traditionally had members or played a significant role. In addition, Labor's amendments removed the previous ability for employers to specify an appropriate location within the workplace for unions to meet with employees and instead set the workplace lunch room as the default meeting place. This has led to disruptive 'lunch room invasions' which unions have used to target employees who did not wish to meet with them. You can imagine an employer trying to sit down with an employee on their lunch break to discuss different things. It would not be acceptable. Certainly in this case it does seem to be a bit excessive.

Furthermore, Labor's most recent amendments also introduced an obligation on employers to pay for the cost of transport of union officials to remote work sites, such as offshore resources projects. This has created an employer-funded 'union boss joy ride' scheme which has also been abused. Should this not be covered by membership fees? Thousands of hardworking Australians who are union members pay their membership fees every year. Should not union delegates' travel fees be covered by those fees? That is what those fees are for—not for companies to pay for union officials to visit remote work sites. The former government's Fair Work Act review panel highlighted the problem, noting that the Pluto LNG project—as the previous member mentioned—received more than 200 right-of-entry visits in only three months, while BHP Billiton's Worsley Alumina plant faced 676 right-of-entry visits in a single year. This, in both cases, is more than two visits a day. That is a lot of visits, isn't it?

On a more local level, I approached several business owners in my electorate when I decided to speak on this bill because I was interested to see if they, too, had been affected by excessive right-of-entry visits. Unfortunately, they had. One of these business owners said she has had to deal with union reps turning up every two weeks. I stress that she did not want her name or the name of her business mentioned out of fear that her business would be targeted even more. This business owner is losing productivity because of right-of-entry visits. Two years ago she was employing around 160 people; today she is down to 47. When I asked her what these visits were for, the only practical reason she could give was that these union reps were out to pressure her employees and herself to join a union EBA.

She drew my attention to an email that was sent out by the CEO of Brisbane-based air-con manufacturer, Siganto and Stacey, that was the basis of an article put in TheCourier-Mail last month. It said:

The 46-year-old company’s construction arm has closed, assets will be liquidated …

Sacked workers were briefed on entitlements and allowed to collect personal items yesterday morning.

In an email sent to staff on Monday night, company CEO William Siganto described his “bitter disappointment”.

“There have been difficult projects, delays and confrontation,” Mr Siganto wrote.

Confrontation from unions. Our changes to right of entry will reduce the capacity for unions to deliberately harass and disrupt businesses in this way. Furthermore, the bill before us today will improve workplace productivity and flexibility by enhancing the scope for employees to make individual flexibility arrangements that meet their genuine needs as determined by those employees.

Although IFAs were included in the Fair Work Act since its commencement, this bill addresses the shortfalls to Labor's 2007 election policy to introduce IFAs. I understand the need for employers to enter into IFAs with employees. IFAs offer flexible workplaces that ultimately deliver benefits to both the employers and the employees—benefits such as greater job satisfaction, improved productivity, improved efficiency and, ultimately, improvements in the employees' motivation to continue working. IFAs allow employers and employees to enter into specific arrangements for when work is performed. For example, it should allow for them to determine remuneration on overtime rates and penalty rates, provided the employee is not worse off. It can simplify the task of a pay clerk—for example, having one hourly rate instead of working out an overtime rate, laundry allowances and all the other allowances that are often included. There would be just one higher hourly rate.

An important aspect of IFAs is that an employer can consider non-monetary benefits to an employee, provided the employee is better off overall under the IFA, and that is set out in writing—how this arrangement will benefit them. One example may be a pay clerk who is working 20 hours a week permanent part time. They are given a certain amount of work to do each week. They may do overtime; they may decide to work a couple of extra hours to meet all the aspects. Rather than having the pay clerk work out overtime on those extra hours that they have worked, they are paid a higher hourly rate to simplify the process. As long as the employee is not disadvantaged, this seems quite reasonable.

This government's proposed amendments to IFAs has the potential to deliver a more user friendly process for employers in which they can bargain with their employees. While IFAs were introduced in 2009 by the Gillard government, not many employers have adopted them. This is because the IFAs turned out to be not as flexible as initially planned. Under Labor's Forward with Fairness policy implementation plan, released in August 2007, the IFAs flexibility pertained to: rostering; hours of work and rates of pay; provisions that certain award conditions may not apply when employees are paid above a fixed percentage, as set out in the award; an arrangement to allow the employee to start and finish work early to allow them to collect their children from school without the employer paying additional penalty rates for the early start.

This bill will ensure all current protections for employees, making IFAs remain in place. And it sets out to provide additional protections, which include: an IFA cannot be a condition of employment, only a worker can approach an employer for an IFA, an employer cannot force an employee to sign an IFA, an employee must provide a statement to the employer saying how the IFA meets their genuine needs and how they consider themselves better off overall.

This bill sets out to implement the review's recommendations. This bill responds directly to the Fair Work review panel's recommendations, whilst, at the same time, keeping the current IFA framework. Amendments to this bill will provide a more balanced workplace relations system, whilst safeguarding workers' conditions and protections. This bill implements the coalition's publicly stated election policy—nothing more and nothing less.

This bill seeks to provide a harmonious working relationship between the employee and the employer where together they can work out individual circumstances that will benefit both parties. I trust that when this bill is passed it will ensure that businesses feel confident that flexible arrangements can be made.

The government is strongly committed to these measures. They are necessary to help build a more stable, fair and prosperous future for Australian workers and businesses and the economy. That is why I support the sensible and measured reforms presented in the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2014.

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