Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I take you back to November 1972. I was in my second year in high school at the time. Gough Whitlam, in full campaign mode, gave a speech at Blacktown in Sydney. He said: 'The strength of the multinational corporations in the Australian economy requires strong unions.' Two months later, Whitlam was elected Australia's 21st Prime Minister. While he proclaimed strong unions as the foundation of strong business, history tells us what happened next. Whitlam had committed his Labor government to facilitate the amalgamation of Australian trade unions. He empowered them. And disaster followed. Strike action became widespread, including sympathy strikes by those unrelated to a particular dispute.

They say those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. Fifty years later, and the Albanese government is on the edge of repeating history and descending Australia back to those dark days. The Albanese government wants to hand all workplaces to the unions, including small and family businesses. They are feeding the beast. These proposed workplace changes represent the most radical shake-up of Australia's industrial relations system in decades.

At a time of growing inflation, businesses struggling with staff shortages and rapidly increasing power costs, Labor and their union masters will make a bad situation worse. Industry-wide bargaining will dramatically increase the number of strikes across the economy—just like the 1970s. While on both sides of the chamber we want higher wages in Australia, there is no evidence that these reforms put forward by the Albanese government will deliver higher wages. In fact, based on all comments from the heads of business groups, there's no such confidence.

Labor's legislation will lead to more widespread disruption and productivity losses. Businesses across Australia, small, medium and large, are united in their opposition to the changes and, in particular, to multi-employer bargaining. These changes put forward by the Albanese government will: (a) lead to more strikes and job losses; (b) allow unions into small businesses which have never had to deal with them before; (c) hold up wage rises because of increased complexity and delays; (d) undermine competition so Australians have fewer choices but face higher costs; (e) force up higher prices and increase the cost of living; and (f) unfairly target small businesses because these changes will be complicated and expensive, and they don't have human relations departments that can wade through complex changes.

When I was elected member for Mallee in 2019, the electorate had 19,997 small and medium businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic placed huge challenges on these businesses. Some could not survive. These reforms place even more pressure on the ones that remain. Employers and employees alike have a right to be very concerned about this blatant union agenda. The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Tony Burke, talks about increasing wages. There is no evidence this will occur through multi-employer bargaining. In The Conversation, Labour-market expert Mark Wooden compared 14 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nations—or OECD nations—using multi-employer bargaining with 12 OECD nations where company level bargaining dominated for a decade from 2011-2021. He found that the latter delivered annual real-wage growth at 2.3 per cent, compared to 0.6 per cent for multi-employer bargaining. In short, the company model was four times more superior to the multi-employer model in terms of wage growth. Wooden has publicly questioned the utility of the new bargaining stream promoted by the unions and Labor.

Where the bill finishes defies prediction. Burke insists the bill is essential and urgent. Australian Industry Group Chief Executive Innes Willox said at the start of the week that the bill remained fatally flawed. Business Council of Australia's chief, Jennifer Westacott, said that, even with Burke's concessions on the bill, ' we run the risk that critical industries like mining, energy or our ports could be swept up' in disruption. At a precise time of economic vulnerability, Labor is compounding that vulnerability. It is pouring fuel on an open fire. Labor's line that it wants to ensure that wages get moving is the cover story for its misplaced audacity and flawed policy. Does that warrant selling Australia's soul to the greed of unions? The Albanese government is willing to risk burning down the Australian economy with this industry-wide bargaining, and after that the unions will rule over the ashes.

Taking the construction industry as an example, the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission—the ABCC—is a serious concern. It is Labor kowtowing to Australia's most militant union—the CFMMEU. The ABCC is—or, should I say 'was'—the last line of defence between a vibrant building sector and the chaos and delays caused by a union-run Labor government. We can now expect jobs will be lost, building costs will skyrocket, and large and small businesses will fold, with Labor rolling out the red carpet for the CFMEU to rule with an iron fist.

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