Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

He's not, in fact, a constituent. I've checked that. He's just outside the boundary. He's a constituent of the member for Sydney.

Mr Keating abolished compulsory arbitration and introduced enterprise bargaining—for which he deserves full credit, and I'm happy to give it to him in this House. This system has really declined, particularly since 2010. There are now fewer employees covered by enterprise agreements, and few new enterprise agreements are being made. Over the last 10 years the number of enterprise agreements between employers and employees has been steadily declining. In fact, it has fallen by 57½ per cent, which means that the number of employees being covered by enterprise agreements has decreased from its historical peak of 43½ per cent in 2010 to just 38 per cent in 2019.

This bill aims to increase the number of Australians covered by enterprise agreements and help them capture the productivity and wage benefits that these agreements entail. The bill will reduce the level of prescription currently imposed by the Fair Work Act and provide greater flexibility as to the methods by which employees may be provided with a fair and reasonable opportunity to consider whether an enterprise agreement can be made. Enterprise agreements pay, on average, 69 per cent more per week—that's $542 on average weekly earnings—than the award wage. So this is a system that we support to help improve not only choice and flexibility for employers but ultimately wages and take-home income for employees.

The bill also addresses greenfield agreements. Members here would be aware that the construction of major projects in Australia—mining and resources projects and things like that—make a significant contribution to jobs and economic growth in Australia. But there has been a risk of agreements that expire during the construction of a major project because of the time lines around these agreements. That creates uncertainty—uncertainty for investors and uncertainty for employers, including over unexpected delays of protracted negotiations and what the overall wage or salary will be for a particular project. This bill will double the maximum nominal expiry date for greenfield agreements that are made in relation to the construction of major projects from four years up to eight years. It also requires longer-term greenfield agreements to include annual wage increases for employees over the nominal life of the agreement. This will support Australia's economic recovery by attracting investment and driving job growth. It will be good for investors, it will be good for employers and it will be good for employees.

Finally, on compliance and enforcement, here the bill makes a number of amendments designed to do three things: to help businesses comply with the law, as they always should; to enable employees to recover any underpayments faster when they do occur; and to ensure that the maximum penalties for noncompliance are proportionate and are a meaningful deterrent for employers who might engage in that. Part of this is the establishment of an employer advisory service in the Fair Work Commission, with $12.9 million provided in this legislation to help fund the establishment of that office. That employer advisory service will be able to provide employers with authoritative written advice tailored to their individual circumstances. This will provide businesses with certainty about their obligations and how to apply award and agreement provisions and should help reduce the likelihood of wage underpayments occurring in the first place.

The bill will also allow underpaid employees to get repaid faster. Businesses will be encouraged to self-identify and self-report underpayment breaches. The bill will also make it easier and faster for employees to recover unpaid wages by increasing the small claims cap from $20,000 to $50,000, and courts will be able to refer small claims matters to the Fair Work Commission for conciliation. To help respond to exploitation and to better deter noncompliance, the bill introduces a new criminal offence for dishonestly engaging in systematic wage underpayments—as it should—and increases the value and scope of civil penalties and orders that can be imposed for noncompliance. The bill provides further protection to employees by prohibiting businesses from publishing advertisements for jobs with pay rates below the minimum wage and increases the penalties for practices like sham contracting that are used by employers to avoid paying full entitlements.

Finally, the bill also provides improvements to the Fair Work Commission process to help enacting amendments that will enable the Fair Work Commission to deal with certain matters more efficiently and more expeditiously than is currently permitted under the act. The bill will give the commission appropriate powers to deal with vexatious applications more effectively, modelled on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal's powers to deal with vexatious applications. The bill will also confer greater discretion on the commission to decide to deal with an appeal on the papers when it considers a hearing to be unnecessary.

COVID-19 has challenged many aspects of Australian life, and this bill delivers on the government's commitments to put Australians and Australian jobs first on the road to economic recovery. The bill removes barriers that stifle the job growth of today and limit the job creation of tomorrow. If we want Australians to have access to the prosperous jobs they aspire to, we must remove these barriers today, and this is what this bill does.

I've been surprised that those opposite have decided to oppose not just particular elements of the government's bill but all elements of the government's bill. In May last year, we heard the opposition's industrial relations spokesperson saying, in relation to enterprise bargaining: 'Bargaining is much harder at the moment and taking much longer than it should. Policies that get bargaining moving again are going to be really important. And, you know, I don't think that anyone says every rule that's there at the moment should remain unchanged.' I agree. Bargaining is much harder at the moment and is taking much longer than it should, and this is one element that this bill seeks to address. On greenfields agreements, for instance, which those opposite have also decided to oppose, in May 2019, the member for Maribyrnong, then the opposition leader, said:

We want to look at the ability for companies to negotiate with unions for extended greenfields agreements, project life, you can go to the global investors who will back it

Again, this bill does exactly that; it addresses greenfields agreements.

I know those opposite have said over the last several weeks that they're on your side or they're on someone's side. They're taking a slogan from Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the United Kingdom. I read it today in The Australian, and I was a bit shocked to read it. This was taken from Jeremy Corbyn's campaign, and I was reminded that that was actually his phrase. It begs the question: if you're on someone's side, you're always against someone else. This government, through this legislation, is seeking to govern for all Australians and support all Australians to get back to work and recover from COVID.

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