Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the amendment as moved by the member for Fenner to the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Competition Policy Review) Bill 2017 that would have the effect that, whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, condemns the government for pushing ahead with its agenda that will worsen inequality, including increasing penalties for sympathy strikes to hundreds of times the size of other unprotected industrial action penalties.

At the heart of it, the difficulty I find with this legislation—as other members have mentioned—is the extraordinary attack it makes on the right to strike and impedes the right of workers to strike and withhold their labour. Though I support the general nature of the legislation, I cannot support schedule 6, a measure which will increase the maximum penalty for breaches of secondary boycott provisions. This government's proposal, specifically schedule 6 of the bill, seeks to increase the penalty for breaching these provisions from the current value of $750,000 to:

… the greatest of:

Despite the wordy definition, in essence, this means unions will be punished for sympathy strikes—for standing in solidarity with their fellow Australians and their fellow workers. This legislation will disallow collective action by unions and employee associations across sectors and further constrain their ability to organise. If we can break that down for a moment: if a union downs tools in a sympathy strike, despite being an industrial action, they are not protected by industrial law. This government—like right wing, antiworker Liberal governments before it—is seeking to play politics with consumer and industrial law, weaken the union movement and disenfranchise workers.

I'm very glad the member for Fisher is here today. Often, he and others on the government side of the chamber like to assume that many of us on this side were union officials in a past life. I have not been. I've worked in the university sector, worked as a commercial lawyer and also ran an international think tank, but I am very proud to stand with my union officials and sisters and brothers in the union movement. They do a great deal of great work for workers across this country. I will always take the time to remind the member for Fisher of that fact.

If I could return to the bill, this government is inconsistent. This increase to the maximum penalty for a secondary boycott is out of step with similar legislation concerning unprotected industrial relations activity. In fact, comparing this proposal with the maximum penalty as stipulated in the Fair Work Act 2009, it's 800 times higher. As I previously stated, I support the crux of the bill. I support 11 of the 12 schedules to it, and that's because I believe in competition.

Labor has always been the party of competition. It was Labor who floated the dollar and deregulated the banks when the conservatives on the other side could not muster up the courage. They didn't have the mettle. Labor believes in competition, meaning strong wages, low prices and high-quality production for Australians. We believe in an innovative and fair economy with a high standard of living and a focus on jobs. In order for the economy to be competitive, vested interest and rent-seeking monopolists must be defeated and consumers must be protected and encouraged to engage with the market. Legislation that's worked toward this end promotes fairness and equity—in my opinion, two cornerstones of our Australian way of life.

Labor has always valued competition because it values fairness. It was the Labor Party that introduced the Trade Practices Act in 1974. Before this, there was nothing. There was no act of parliament whatsoever dedicated to competition matters. This Labor brainchild—the act which we now know as the Competition and Consumer Act—remains the backbone of Australian competition law. It was also Labor which in 2009 criminalised cartels. Labor supports equity in business and backs in any measures which will cut unnecessary red tape and improve the ease of business, as long as such measures are sensible and fair to the consumer. I understand that you can't have upward social mobility without a strong economy and without innovation and business. Labor has always understood this.

In Labor, we continue to stand against monopolies and cartels, as those who primarily lose out to cartels are the everyday Australian consumers and small and family businesses. We don't want local business to lose out at the hands of these cartels who seek to violate competition law and the integrity of the Australian market. Our team has consulted widely. I commend the members for Fenner and Gorton on their extensive work in this process. We have ensured this bill does not water down cartel provisions. At the same time, we have seen that the bill seeks to continue to encourage legitimate joint ventures by making sure they aren't affected unintentionally by the cartel provisions. This bill broadens exemptions so that they cover both contracts and agreements and understandings. This bill extends the joint venture exemption, including provisions for the purposes of, and reasonably necessary for, undertaking the joint venture, and also extends the exemption to the acquisition of goods and services in addition to the production of goods and services.

Our Labor team has also consulted widely as to the reasonable search defence this bill seeks to introduce. We have found, thankfully, that the measure will not allow companies and individuals under investigation to use this defence in refusing or failing to comply with a compulsory information request by the ACCC under section 155 of their act. Section 155 of the act is integral. It is the foundation of the ACCC's ability to investigate any perceived breaches of the act. At the last election Labor, which nearly won government, of course, sought to strengthen section 155 with a suite of policies. We committed to increase the penalties for anticompetitive or anticonsumer conduct and to use some of the revenues to increase the ACCC's litigation budget from $24.5 million to a maximum of twice that level. At the last election we also committed to give the ACCC a market studies function—a measure that it's been in dire need of for years—to help the body identify competition challenges before they become systemic.

Labor will always support measures that boost competition because Labor is the party of competition. It was Keating who commissioned Professor Fred Hilmer to chair a comprehensive review of competition policy. The Hilmer report set the agenda for competition policy in Australia. The Productivity Commission found that reforms implemented as a result of the report led to a significant and permanent increase in the Australian economy's productive capacity. Similarly, the Grattan Institute found that National Competition Policy was one of the 10 big reforms which led to 24 years of uninterrupted economic growth in Australia. The Rudd and Gillard governments furthered important changes to competition and consumer policy settings. In 2011 Labor introduced the Australian Consumer Law, a cooperative reform between the states, territories and Commonwealth governments that created a consistent national approach across a range of consumer issues, such as unfair contract terms, product safety and consumer rights.

The white-collar crime of cartel conduct, where businesses come together to fix prices and rip off consumers, was just a civil offence before Labor's intervention in 2009. This was inconsistent with international best practice. It meant that the appropriate disincentives were not in place to deter such crimes. Under Labor, cartel conduct was criminalised. It brought Australia into line internationally and meant that offenders could now face imprisonment if caught fixing prices with their competitors.

The Labor team has long understood that effective competition policy is at the heart of a productive, innovative and well-functioning economy. At the same time, it is fair. Competition policy is integral in a fair society. It protects the interests of consumers over rent seekers and monopolists. On this, our record could not be stronger. We understand that well-functioning, strong economies are a means to an end. For Labor, the development of competition policy will always be seen through this prism. For Labor, competition remains a vessel not just delivering lower prices to Australian consumers and families but spreading equality of opportunity throughout the community. We believe that, in certain circumstances, there is a need for government intervention where markets fail. We believe in creating and maintaining consumer protections to ensure markets work for all Australian consumers. Lower barriers to entry lead to more competition and therefore greater participation. In light of this we oppose any measures that will hinder genuine economic competition in Australia, such as the government's dangerous effects test legislation.

However, Labor welcome the government's announcement to align Australian consumer law penalties with the rest of the act, but we urge it to adopt Labor's other policies which are in line with international best practice. Sympathy strikes or secondary boycotts, proposed to be outlawed in schedule 6 of this bill, are permissible under international law. As per convention 87 of the International Labour Organization, such strikes are permitted providing the original strike is lawful. Thus, the prohibition of secondary boycotts in Australian law is not permissible. Therefore, this increase in maximum penalties is inconsistent with Labor's push for higher penalties for anticompetitive or anticonsumer conduct, in line with international best practice. Australia is already internationally out of step with best practice, and any increase would push us even further away from that goal.

Competition policy should never be used as an excuse for blind, ideological and prejudiced cuts and privatisations; yet this government is blinded in its dogmatic anti-union agenda. This is the same rabble that dropped $46 million on a political witch-hunt into the unions in the last parliament in the form of a royal commission—but, then, they don't really care about how much money they drop on a ridiculous thing like a $122 million survey. This measure is just another brick in the wall of the Liberal Party's rich history of abusing the powers of government in order to attack the union movement and their ability to organise. When labour is involved—and when I say 'labour' I mean people's right to work—sometimes all they have in the end is the right to withdraw that labour and they should be able to do that.

Someone needs to tell the Prime Minister that these attacks on unions have been done before. The Fraser government tried to remove secondary boycotts from the accountability of industrial relations law in the 1970s. The Hawke government then sought to repeal the measures in the belief that secondary boycott provisions were best mediated through industrial courts and tribunals, not through the competition regulator—but the Senate blocked this. Though the Keating government managed to get some secondary boycott measures through the Industrial Relations Act in 1988, Howard then removed them, of course, from the scope of industrial relations in the 1990s. As evidence, this measure, this schedule 6, is pure dogma. It is a symbolic, ideological rehashing of the same argument that has been spewed out in this chamber for over 40 years. It, like so many Liberal Party nonsenses, is a wedge, a delaying tactic, designed to mask the fact that they have no agenda and that, since limping into government last year, they've achieved barely anything.

The union movement has built up over years of fighting for workers' rights many of the institutions we take for granted today—the fight for the eight-hour working day; rest breaks; award rates; penalty rates, which this government won't protect; superannuation; equal pay for women; workers compensation; annual leave; sick leave; long service leave; maternity leave; hopefully soon domestic violence leave; redundancy pay; and unfair dismissal protections. They are just some of the battles our union representatives have fought for for us and for workers across the country.

I'd personally like to note in this House the work of the progressive Labor union branches in Western Australia and their tireless secretaries: Tim Dawson of the Transport Workers Union; Peter O'Keefe of the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees' Association—or, as the Prime Minister likes to call them, 'shoppos', though we call them the 'shoppies'; Mike Zoetbrood of the AWU; Christy Cain from the Maritime Union of Australia; Mick Buchan from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union; and Philip Woodcock of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union. They always act in the interests of their members, in the interests of the workers and in the interests of Western Australia, and they will continue to do so. I also acknowledge the tireless work of the union officials of United Voice in Western Australia.

Despite all the hard work of unions, the Liberal Party continues to attack the union movement. The national income of employees is going to 50-year lows. The IMF found that one of the significant reasons that workers are getting less overall out of the economic pie is a drop in union membership. In fact, union membership is low. It is at around 15 per cent. It's at its lowest level in 110 years. Inequality is increasing, with earnings over the past generation rising three times as fast for the top 10th of income earners than for those at the bottom. The IMF has stated that declining union membership is responsible for 19 per cent of the fall in workers' income. The government do not want the workers united. They do not want to see your unions strong. They're happy to corroborate with the bosses while your unions are kept in silos and treated like criminals for showing solidarity with their colleagues.

The government is content with cutting penalty rates for up to 700,000 for people in the retail, hospitality, fast-food and pharmacy sectors. Ten thousand workers in my electorate have had their penalty rates cut, and the government is more than happy to push ahead with its budget for millionaires and multinationals, including a $65 billion tax cut for banks and multinationals. They don't have the political courage to allow a free vote and legislate on marriage equality, but they have plenty of time for union bashing and tax concessions for the wealthiest. I ask you: who exactly in this place is playing class warfare?

See this speech in context