Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That so much of standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent Members moving further amendments to the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No. 2) Bill 2023, which are relevant to, or consequent on, the Senate amendments to the bill agreed to by the House prior to the interruption at 1.30 pm today.

For the benefit of members of the House, what we saw just before question time was the Leader of the House shutting down debate, exercising the guillotine to push through a set of measures passed in great haste in the Senate last Thursday. He did that, of course, because the government is jumping to the tune of the union paymasters. That's what this is all about; it's the government responding to the agenda of the people who control their preselections and fund their campaigns. Only eight per cent of Australian employees in the private sector are members of unions. But this government is not interested in the evidence, not interested in the data. This agenda that it has been pursuing is all about giving effect to the interests of the union bosses, regardless of the impact on jobs, on productivity, on employment and indeed on the future prosperity of our nation.

It is clear—and this is the reason that standing and sessional orders need to be suspended—that there were members both within the coalition and amongst the crossbench who had amendments that they wished to bring forward. It was very important, and it remains very important, that the House is collectively able to turn its mind to these amendments, because the stakes here are extremely high. Extraordinarily, the amendments passed by the Senate last Thursday have had the result of making a really bad bill even worse—and it takes a special kind of genius to achieve that, but that is what this government has done. As a consequence of the procedural steps taken by the Leader of the House, the opportunity was denied, both to the opposition and to the crossbench, to move amendments that we wished to make.

Let me explain to the House what those amendments were. One of those, for example—amendment (11), moved in my name—deals with the issue of the de-merger of unions. This is important, because some of the unions that have come together have come to regret it. Unions that have found themselves suddenly forced to interact with and be organisationally aligned with the CFMMEU have decided that actually this is a pretty unattractive prospect, to be working with a bunch of union officials and delegates who regard having criminal charges as a badge of honour. There are others within the union, other elements of that merged union, who want to demerger.

These were amendments that the coalition put into law when we were in government. We brought forward changes that gave greater flexibility to constituent parts, such as branches and divisions, of amalgamated registered unions by providing them with an opportunity to withdraw from an amalgamation if that would better serve them and their members, and the Labor Party supported it. Indeed, the current Leader of the House had this to say:

The problem with the provisions as they currently exist is that they only provide a window of between two and five years after an amalgamation in which a vote of that kind can take place.

In other words, he wanted it to be even more wide-ranging than what we moved and passed, with the support of Labor at that time, but they've now done a complete backflip. Now they are opposed to unions being permitted to de-merge. Why is that? One can only surmise that it is because union officials, union presidents, those who control the cash, those who control the preselections in unions like the AWU, the AMWU, the CFMMEU, the CEPU, the ASU, the CPSU, the TWU and the UWU are opposed to the changes. So, guess what? There is a sudden reversal in position. This kind of cynicism runs throughout this bill.

One of the other amendments that we were seeking leave to move—and I remind the House that in a breach of all ordinary procedures, in a breach of all the normal courtesies that exist between a government and an opposition when detailed legislation is being considered—the minister, the Leader of the House, refused to grant leave for these amendments to be considered. One of the other amendments we would have introduced would have removed the provision in the bill that passed the Senate and that will now be the law, unless we succeed in overturning it now, which completely changes the definition of 'employment'.

This is all about a direct attack on people who want to work for themselves: for tradies, for subcontractors, for those who decide they want to be their own boss—and that is something the unions hate. The unions hate the idea that there are people who want to run their own show, who want to have a go, to take a risk, rather than being forced into the straitjacket of being treated as employees. Of course, many millions of people are employees and that is absolutely fine, absolutely noble. For those who want to be employees, that is absolutely a proper and legitimate way to work. I say that to respond to the inevitable strawman from the Labor member and—surprise, surprise—former union official on the other side of the table. We have no objection at all to employee status but what we do object to is when, substantively, the status of an individual or group of individuals is not employee status. What we object to and what so many fair-minded Australians—people who want to have a go, who are aspirational, who want to be better for themselves and their family and for our nation—object to is being forced into being treated as employees because it's something that the union bosses want for them. We say that is wrong. We say that is profoundly wrong. We say that is a consequence of the amendments that were rushed through in a disgraceful and undemocratic process just last week. We call for those to be changed, and that is one of the amendments that I have put before the House this afternoon.

And then, of course, we have the issue of the right to disconnect. On any view, these are very complex issues but what is clear, quite rightly, is that there are already protections available for employees. What is problematic about this legislation is it fails to recognise the balance between employees and employers. Today, many employees are able to leave their physical place of work to work from home, to go and pick up the kids from school, to go and have an urgent medical appointment or to take an elderly parent to an urgent medical appointment. All of that flexibility is possible because people know that, if there is an urgent need, they can be contacted.

As a result of a grubby deal done at the last minute between Labor and the Greens means that these rigid legal provisions have now been introduced and passed into law. There has been no time for affected stakeholders to have the opportunity to comment on these changes, to analyse their impact, because it was all done in 24 hours. It is an absolutely disgraceful way to proceed and it is no surprise that many in the business sector have expressed their alarm about what this means when there might be something that needs to be dealt with urgently, for example, because it is imperative to the interests of a customer. There is no reference to 'customer' in the legislation proposed by the Greens and supported by Labor. Because as far as the Greens and Labor are concerned, the customer is somebody who doesn't exist. They are just not interested. The risks to our economy, the risks to our national security are absolutely profound.

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