Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Hansard source

But don't take my word for it. The Minerals Council of Australia's Tania Constable calls on the Albanese government to 'rip up this bill and head back to the drawing board'. That's what she said! This is a sentiment also shared by the Business Council of Australia, Master Builders Australia and the Australian Industry Group—

Government members interjecting—

My word, they're noisy over there, Deputy Speaker! You might need to be a bit more interventionist—who knows!

It's a sentiment that business owners right across my electorate—across the north-west, the west coast and King Island in the great state of Tasmania—share. As their representative, it's a sentiment that I share also. It's not that I'm opposed to industrial relations reform, not by any means. If done right, industrial relations reforms are the correct mechanism to make our workplaces more productive and more competitive. It's all about productivity. Improved productivity and competitiveness will drive our nation forward and make us more prosperous as a nation, employing more people and allowing more people to prosper in great small and local businesses. If implemented correctly, good IR legislation benefits all Australians. I believe in it strongly. But the legislation before us today does not fall into that category. It is not IR legislation that will drive us forward; it is IR legislation that can only take us in the opposite direction, and that's backwards, downhill. Again and again, Labor demonstrate that they just don't understand how businesses work.

I've been in business for quite some time. I've had quite a few of them. In Labor, however, very rarely do we see anybody that's had anything to do with the ownership of a business ever. Labor believes in government controlling every aspect, big government and wiping out small businesses. Labor believes unions are best placed to control our workplaces, and this is misguided. It's not a sentiment I share at all. I have stood up many times in this place and defended our enterprising business sector. Again I must remind the other side that they do not create jobs. It's our enterprising business sector that creates jobs. It's our individual enterprise that maximises our economic growth and forges national prosperity.

Governments do, however, have a role to play. Their role is to create a fertile environment that will create businesses, allow businesses to prosper and give them the tools and levers they need to go about their business, employ people, return to their bottom line and produce a product which effectively grows their business, and so on and so forth it goes. No efficiency has ever occurred when a government, particularly a big-fisted government, have inserted their beady little hands into any business's business, let alone the business sector—more so.

Priorities—let's talk about how not a single business owner, jobseeker or employee for that matter has ever raised the matter of IR reform as a priority in my time. It's not something they talk about. They talk about cost of living. They talk about how difficult it is for them to register their car. They talk about getting jobs. They talk about providing for their families. They talk about infrastructure that makes their job easier. They talk about airports. They talk about getting product in and out of their workplaces. Very rarely do they talk about IR reform. It's not something they talk about in the local pub. They talk about supply chain issues. Why then is IR legislation such a priority for this government? The mind boggles, and I think the unions are prodding at this all the time.

The general consensus is that the IR proposal in front of us will not create a single job. It will not strengthen job security. It will not contribute to wage growth. What the proposed legislation will do is stifle productivity, increase red tape, increase the complexity of undertaking business and prevent businesses from taking on new employees. The workplace relations changes will add uncertainty and complexity to the employment of millions of casuals, contractors and labour hire workers.

To move forward as a strong modern economy, governments must understand that employees are demanding flexibility in their workplace. This has never been more important, as employers are facing critical workforce shortages, and this is impacting sectors of our economy, particularly in my state of Tasmania. Speaking to businesses across my electorate, they're telling me flexibility is key. Not all businesses are the same, and not all businesses fit into the sanitised categories and the model that obviously the other side feel they do. I come from the agricultural sector, where we use many subcontractors, many people, casual labour hire—all sorts of business models are utilised when it comes to employment and getting that job done.

To give you an example, if you take a normal dairy farm in my electorate, often the casual milkers, the employees that do the morning milking, work for another company. They come and milk the cows. A separate person comes in, a contractor if you like, a stockman. They take the cows from the cowshed to the paddock. Then another contractor might come in with a piece of agricultural machinery, a tractor and fertiliser spreader. They might fertilise the paddocks with great nitrogen fertiliser that comes from our state also. The point I'm making is that many people from many different places, many different sources, employed under many different models and many different award rates, all operate on the one farm, returning to the one bottom line, producing milk that feeds our nation.

The other issue that needs to be raised is the mum-and-dad businesses out there. These people, partnerships and sole traders don't have a HR department that can read 800-odd pages of IR legislation and get their heads completely around that. They're nervous about this. When they see a piece of IR legislation that is 400 or 500 pages long, then what hope have they got?

When we start looking at the new laws, we see the complexity around the ability for Fair Work Australia to inspect, without warrant, a particular business's office. What you've got to consider is that we live in our businesses. I live on my farm. So does that mean that the Fair Work Commission can just kick my door in and come into my house, where my business's office is, and conduct an inspection? Is that fair? This is Australia. That is not the Australia that I want to see.

I think there are these nuances. Take the truck driver, for instance, who comes and picks up the produce from the farm. That particular driver, that owner-operator, works in a completely different environment, in a completely different situation, from people clocking on at seven o'clock in the morning and knocking off at five o'clock in the afternoon in a normal environment in a big city. It doesn't work like that in the bush. These are the nuances that need to be considered when we introduce complex IR legislation like we're seeing in this bill.

As I mentioned earlier, we don't have a clock on, clock off mentality. We have a 'complete the job' mentality. We have a 'fill the order' mentality. We have a 'get the job done and then we pack up and go home' mentality. We don't have this clock on, clock off mentality.

We can talk about subcontractors and their ability to work infrequent hours and times and dates, particularly around our weather situation. I come from the great state of Tasmania, and obviously, during the winter, the weather has a big impact on workload. If I put a person on as a permanent employee and then it rains for a week, that person can't be employed in that particular role. These are all considerations. What I'm getting at is: these nuances need to be considered. And I don't believe that they have been.

In the electorate of Braddon alone, there are just over a thousand small businesses in the building and construction sector alone. Between them, they employ around 4,000 tradies. That's around nine per cent of our population in Braddon.

For the benefit of those opposite, I feel obliged to explain how the building and construction industry works. We have, in the building sector, a very complex, finely tuned, well balanced and highly efficient system of business owners, apprentices and independent contractors, and things called subbies—subcontractors. They're a necessary part of that employment sector and that industry. This is a time-proven model: having subcontractors on a job, doing very specialised jobs, at specific parts of that job, over many, many months, but only for specified portions of time. Yet those in Labor believe that that is not the way that they want to see it. They don't believe in the flexibility, independence and responsiveness of these less rigid parts of the employment model. Instead, they want them to be part of the employee role. They want them to be responsive to that rigid employee schedule. They want them to be beholden to the union movement and bound up in red tape. As far as I'm concerned, that's just an absolute stifle when it comes to a successful business.

I was at a meeting of the Master Builders Association the other night and I was told that, 'If Labor's proposed IR reforms were to get in, then,' as far as they were concerned, 'these would be the worst possible things that could happen to the building and construction industry in Tasmania.' They believed that the costs to independent contractors and subbies could find them leaving the industry and going somewhere else—ultimately, forcing them to relinquish their autonomy and become employees. It's not what they want. It's not the Australia that we've grown up in. This would mean losing the freedom to choose their working hours, their projects, their clients and their ability to negotiate their own fees and conditions. One subcontractor said that he hopes that the people responsible—and these are not my words; I am quoting from this meeting—for bringing in this new legislation will be held 100 per cent accountable when the construction industry is totally destroyed in Tasmania. That's how desperate he was. He conveyed this to me in a very clear and concise way. It is never a good time for government to put their hand into small business. It is never a good time for governments to make it harder for workers or jobseekers to find flexible employment. As I said earlier about our agricultural sector, that is exactly what this bill from this government is proposing and trying to do.

In the last couple of minutes I want to talk about the new Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, the RSRT. The government is effectively reviving the failed Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. Multiple independent reviews found that its failure had cost the lives and livelihoods of hardworking owner-drivers. This new body within the Fair Work Commission will have the same profound impact on the road transport industry. Owner-drivers will again lose their flexibility, and I talked about how valuable that flexibility is in many industries. The tribunal will remove all that and set their rates and conditions, which will hurt remote and regional operators. Australians will ultimately feel the pinch at the supermarket because we will have to pass these costs on.

Parliament should not bend to the demands of the Transport Workers Union and should reject these changes. In the hundreds of pages of legislation the government has snuck in a small provision that gives the minister the power to make regulations for 'supply chain participants'. In doing so, he or she is handing over control of our supply chains to the Fair Work Commission, and that is not on. As you can clearly see from the reasons I've stated, there is no possible good outcome from this fair work legislation.

See this speech in context