Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is well-known that the binding purpose of the Liberal Party, the coalition and its forebear parties has been to oppose the Labor Party and the labour movement. True to form, this bill isn't about improving the functions of unions, it isn't about helping workers and it isn't about good and proper regulation—it is about undermining industrial organisations and the Labor Party. Trade unions have been a central feature of Australia's industrial, social and political framework since Federation and they remain so today. At a time when wage growth is at record lows, workers are facing penalty rate cuts and high levels of underemployment. This government seems hell-bent on destroying the organisations that work to support those workers. This bill is about politics and not policy. The Prime Minister and his government are set on destroying unions at a time when they are needed most. Perhaps the government should be focusing more energy on the issues that matter more to Australians, like dealing with the wage increase crisis, with record low wages as a share of GDP, rising inequality, stubbornly high unemployment and high rates of underemployment, casualisation and uberfication of the workforce.

This piece of legislation even defies international law. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights considered the bill. Half of the committee membership is from the government, but it noted that the measures proposed by the bill will impact on a number of recognised human rights, including the right to freedom of association and the right to just and favourable working conditions. Members of the committee pointed out that those rights are informed by various International Labour Organization treaties to which Australia is a party. They include the right of workers to autonomous union processes without interference, organising their administration and activities without interference and formulating their own programs without interference. Various ILO treaties also protect industrial organisations from being dissolved, suspended or deregistered and protect the rights of workers to form organisations of their own choosing. Indeed, Australia has for many decades condemned other governments in other countries from doing just these sorts of things. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights noted that various measures contained in the bill would limit the ability of unions to govern their internal processes and therefore limit those rights. It queried whether the legislation pursues a legitimate objective.

Once again, through this legislation, we are seeing the incompetence of this government to properly legislate. We have seen it with the BEAR scheme, which everyone agreed was a good idea but then it fell flat when the government put forward proposals to industry without any adequate consultation at all. We saw it when it came to crowd-sourced funding for start-ups, when the government, having consulted, failed to pay any attention to what industry asked for and pushed through legislation despite being told there were problems with it, and now we come back for this session and they are bringing forward new legislation to fix up the problem they created in the first place, after they finally listened. Of course, then it comes to superannuation. The government has jumped all over the place, criticised from all quarters because of its changes and flip-flops in superannuation. Most recently, it came forward with further proposed reforms to governance—changes for which the minister was literally laughed at by the industry.

This bill has nothing to do with sound public policy and everything to do with the government's anti-union, anti-worker agenda. The government keeps talking about corporate regulation for the industrial area. But that's not what this is. This is a gross political overreach. The government claims that this legislation will align the obligations placed on unions with those already imposed on corporations. However, this assumes that unions and corporations are the same and that industrial organisations don't already face sufficient levels of regulation. Indeed, under the proposed legislation, low-paid workers who are members of a union could have the registration of their union cancelled or have their rights to take protected industrial action suspended based on the conduct of their democratically elected officials—that conduct occurring without their knowledge—which would then leave those workers unprotected. Compare that with the executives of some well-known corporations, like banks, and you'll see that the obligations the government wants to impose on unions are far greater than they ever imposed on corporations. Clearly, the government's approach is not based on need.

The government claims that the bill will put corporations and unions on even footing. However, this notion is based on the false premise that they are the same. The bill will impose an obligation on registered organisations and offices that actually exceed those that would be placed on a company and its directors. The Corporations Act contains a number of provisions that provide for the disqualification of directors, including an automatic disqualification for criminal conduct, disqualification by a court and disqualification by the regulator, ASIC, in limited circumstances. However, none of these processes allow a minister or a shareholder or another stakeholder to take action to disqualify a director.

In contrast, the regime that is proposed in schedule 1 of this bill will enable not only the Registered Organisations Commissioner but the minister or a person with sufficient standing to seek a court order to disqualify a person from being an official of a registered organisation. Indeed, if we turn to the term 'having sufficient interest' we see that it has been interpreted as an interest beyond that of any ordinary person and includes those whose rights, interests or legitimate expectations would be affected by the decision. This brings in a large group of people who apparently should have standing to bring claims for disqualification of the people running a registered organisation when a similar group would never have standing to be able to seek disqualification of a director of a corporation. The government talks about equal footing, but it is clearly going much further in this legislation. Instead, this is a blatant demonstration of how the government wants to damage the union movement and leave Australian workers unrepresented and unprotected.

The effect of the amendments in schedule 2 is that the federal court can cancel the registration of an organisation when certain grounds are established. Those grounds have been greatly expanded. In addition, the regime for cancellation of registration is far more expansive because it allows for—instead of looking at what the Corporations Act does, which was provide standing to a specific limited group, being shareholders, liquidators, creditors and ASIC, to seek that a company be liquidated, each having a very clear connection to the ownership, administration or regulation of a company, for unions it's proposed that merely a person with sufficient interest will have standing to bring an action. For a union this could include another registered organisation or an employer group. It could be an employer themselves. It could be an employer party to an enterprise agreement being negotiated with that registered organisation. Or it could be the minister. It may even be a state government. The amendments regarding cancellation of registration, interestingly, were not recommended by the Heydon royal commission. There is no policy explanation as to why they are appropriate or any evidence as to why they are good policy.

The bill also significantly expands the existing regime for the administration of what are called dysfunctional organisations. The government claims that this provision of the legislation was modelled on similar provisions in the Corporations Act. Again, if you look closely, you will find that is not the case. They are far more intrusive. Under the Corporations Act, neither ASIC, the minister nor shareholders generally have standing to initiate proceedings to place a company into voluntary administration; only a board of directors can do that. In contrast, the regime proposed by schedule 3 of the bill will enable not only the organisation itself but also the commissioner, the minister, a member of the organisation or any other person having what is called a 'sufficient interest' to seek a court order to place the organisation into administration. It would appear to allow members of a party that are affected by the actions being taken by the organisation to apply for orders to disqualify an official, to seek to have the body deregistered or to have an administrator appointed to it, which are completely antithetical to the proper negotiation and administration of the rights between workers and employers. It gives an ancillary mode of attack to attack the organisation that is there to protect the interests of those workers.

Then we have the public interest test for amalgamations. The Heydon report made no recommendation to amend the legislation in relation to the amalgamation of organisations. Corporations may merge if it is agreed by their members. The current provisions of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act provide a simple procedural process for amalgamations to give effect to the wishes of the respective organisation's members as conducted through a democratic ballot by the Australian Electoral Commission. This is in fact more onerous and has a higher level of integrity than those merger ballots undertaken in the case of shareholdings for a company. This is appropriate, and it should remain so.

Unions may wish to amalgamate for a number of reasons, including to reduce overheads, increase efficiencies and better serve the interests of the workers that they represent as their members. However, the provisions of this bill relating to amalgamations are blatantly aimed at the proposed amalgamation between the CFMEU, the MUA and the TCFUA by imposing this new public interest test, which has apparently come out of nowhere. There is no reason for it, there is no policy justification for it, and it is quite clearly aimed at a particular potential merger of unions. Why legislate for a particular group of unions at all? The Prime Minister wants to deny those union members the right to determine their own representation, to determine their own structure and to determine how they come together, because the concept of solidarity and workers coming together to protect their own interests seems to be an anathema to those on the other side.

The bill requires the full bench of the Fair Work Commission to determine whether a proposed amalgamation of two or more unions is in the public interest before approving the amalgamation. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights noted that the proposed public interest test engages and limits the right to freedoms of association and particularly the right to form associations of one's own choosing—something you would think that a Liberal Party would be all about. The current amalgamation regime is consistent with the emphasis in international law on the self-determination of industrial organisations, and that is reflected in the current legislation.

The amendments in schedule 4 are an outrageous interference with the internal affairs of industrial organisations. It would be amazing if we were to propose that similar steps be taken in corporate Australia. Indeed, the only place in which we can see anything getting close to this in corporate Australia is when we look at the reviews conducted by FIRB: they are only reviews and they are for the very essential purpose of protecting the national interest in foreign transactions—something that is miles away from what we are talking about here.

The government's intention through this bill is clear. It is an attack on the union movement. It is an attack on working Australians. It is an attempt to reduce their bargaining power. It is the government trying to protect the vested interests of its mates and not thinking about what is in the national interest. In fact, what we need is the opposite. This legislation is the next in a long line of legislative attacks from the early 20th century through to the creation of the ABCC, WorkChoices and beyond. The government says that this is a pro-worker regime, that it is there to protect the rights of workers. We all know that it is not. The bill goes far beyond the recommendations of the Heydon royal commission and beyond anything that the government had previously announced as election policy. It has absolutely no mandate to pursue this path. For that reason, and for all the other reasons, this bill cannot be supported. It is quite clear from this legislation that only Labor really stands for ensuring that we have well-functioning and effective union representation for ordinary Australian workers. Again, it is clear that only the Labor Party will stand up for Australian workers.

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