Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2014. As federal parliamentary representatives we have a duty to ensure that what we do in this place will help build a stronger, more prosperous Australia. This bill will do that by delivering on another one of the government's election commitments—that is, to improve industrial relations by balancing the rights of employers to run their business without unnecessary workplace interruptions with the rights of employees to have proper representation within their workplace. There are a number of important elements to this bill but in the time available I will confine my focus to the following three elements, namely: fairer workplace access; individual flexibility arrangements; and the removal of the 'strike first and talk later' approach.

There is currently an imbalance in the workplace access rules. The Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government changed the law to give union officials unilateral access to workplaces. This had a direct and immediate impact on many business owners and employees who just wanted to get on with their job and operate efficiently and effectively without unnecessary and uninvited visits from union officials. As it currently stands, right of entry for discussion purposes can occur when a relevant union wants to enter a site and hold discussions. They do not need to have any actual union members at that particular workplace, nor does their presence need to be sought by employees, for them to access that workplace and those employees.

It should not really come as a great surprise, then, that as a result of these changes to the law there were many abuses, with excessive and unwarranted workplace visits resulting from unions wanting to flex their muscle or cause disruption to a particular workplace. Many workplaces were held hostage to turf wars between unions looking for union members. There are many examples of such abuses, as I have outlined before. One such example included more than 200 visits to the Pluto LNG project under this provision of the law. What is worse is that all of these 200 visits occurred in under a three-month period. BHP is another example, targeted at their Worsley Alumina plant with 676 right-of-entry visits in a 12-month period. What we saw under these provisions of the law were lunchtime invasions by union officials dictating that they would hold these discussions in places where employees were having lunch. The employees in many of these workplaces could not escape such discussions, even if they wanted to, because these were the only places where these discussions could be held and where their lunch could be had in peace and quiet. What we had were any private sector employees—87 per cent of whom are not union members—being subject to these union campaigns. The bill before the House proposes to address these issues by restricting access for discussion purposes to unions covered by an enterprise agreement, or to occasions when a union official has been invited by one of the members or an employee they are entitled to represent.

There are protections in place for employees who might wish to remain anonymous. They can make an application to a union for a union member to come on site. That union can then make an application to the Fair Work Commission to enable the visit and an invitation certificate will be granted. This invitation certificate will only be granted where the commission is satisfied that it is not simply a fishing expedition by the union but in fact the result of a bona fide invitation.

Under this bill the Fair Work Commission would be able to suspend, revoke or impose conditions on an entry permit should they feel that excessive right-of-entry visits have taken place. This includes the combined visits of all unions, not just of one specific union. This will be welcomed both by employers and employees right around the nation.

Measures in this bill also include protections pertaining to individual flexibility arrangements. It is important that individuals be able to make arrangements with their employer that suit those individuals but also suit the employer. The measures within this bill will prevent an employer from forcing an employee to sign an individual flexibility arrangement. They will ensure that the employee remains better off than they would have been, with an employee statement confirming that their individual flexibility arrangement will meet their genuine needs and they will be better off than they would have been under the applicable modern award or enterprise agreement. This way we will see individual arrangements being accommodated with safeguards in place.

There are also changes to greenfield agreements in this bill that will ensure that enterprise agreements for new projects can be negotiated efficiently. Union officials, under the legislation that stands today, were preventing the start of projects through unnecessary delays, often hijacking greenfield agreements with ambit claims. This ultimately threatens investment and also jobs. The good faith bargaining rules will be extended under this bill to the negotiation of greenfield amendments, meaning that employers and unions will be required to meet with each other to consider and respond to proposals in a timely manner. To ensure that agreements are met in a timely manner this bill will establish a new optional three-month negotiation time frame which will apply where appropriate notice is provided by an employer to the relevant union or unions. Should an agreement not be reached within this time frame, the employer can take a proposed agreement to the Fair Work Commission for approval. This will deliver a lot more certainty to employers and also, ultimately, to employees, who will benefit from new employment opportunities.

The final aspect that I would like to highlight in the bill is changes to the strike-first, talk-later arrangements that existed under the previous legislation. The Labor Party, prior to the 2007 election, recognised that these loopholes under the Fair Work Act were a serious problem, resulting in escalating industrial activity and strikes. The Labor leader even acknowledged, prior to the 2007 election, in his National Press Club address:

Industrial disputes are serious. They hurt workers, they hurt businesses, they can hurt families and communities, and they certainly hurt the economy

They—

meaning employees—

will not be able to strike unless there's been genuine good faith bargaining.

We stand in this chamber and we agree with that statement. The only problem was that the previous government did not enact those changes. They talked a big game, but they were not prepared to follow through.

We will, however, follow through, and this bill does just that. We will amend the Fair Work Act so that protected industrial action can only be taken if bargaining for a proposed agreement has commenced. This will mean that industrial action is not the first step in the bargaining process but will occur only when good-faith bargaining has been exhausted. This will restore balance to our Fair Work Act and ensure that bargaining does take place on a good-faith basis and is in fact the first thing that both unions and employers do, rather than create simply more and more strikes.

There are many other important measures in this bill. I do not have time to address each of them individually; however, the measures that I have outlined work towards ensuring that certainty and clarity are once again restored to workplaces around the country and that our industrial relations laws work in favour of both employees and employers. I commend the bill to the House.

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