David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Brand proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The threat to the living standards and employment security of working Australians posed by the Government’s extreme industrial relations changes.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a government that thinks the entitlements of our young workers are worth 2c. It is a government that wants you to trade away your holidays, rest breaks and penalty rates for 2c. This is a government that wants companies slashing hard won rights and conditions and tossing workers 2c in return. What an absolute disgrace. Our young workers deserve better than 2c and they deserve better than this government’s extreme industrial relations laws.

In question time today, the member for Perth, the member for Port Adelaide and I asked questions about an agreement, an AWA, that has been placed upon the website of a substantial firm in this country. Spotlight is not a small business around the corner. Spotlight is not an enterprise that is distant from metropolitan centres in a location where there is no scrutiny as to their activities. Spotlight is not a company that operates in circumstances where there is a lack of fluidity in the labour market because there are very few job opportunities available. Spotlight operates in the heart of this nation. It operates with 100 stores. It operates with 6,000 employees.

When people have concerns about the security of their workplace, and when they have concerns about the stability of their ability to access penalty rates, holiday pay and fair treatment when it comes to issues of dismissals from jobs, they think about threats to that ability as lying at the heart of fly-by-night operations—rogue employers. They do not think about threats to that in heartland employment.

AWAs like this will affect the heartland workplace of the Australian nation—the sorts of workplaces in which the heads of families work, the sorts of workplaces in which people anticipate an opportunity for a substantial career over time and promotion, the sorts of workplaces in which people anticipate a dignified relationship with each other, with their supervisors and with their employers. In other words, they will affect heartland middle Australia.

What we can clearly see going on in heartland middle Australia now is a direct threat to the livelihood, to the happiness and to the economic security of ordinary Australian families. What we can see in this AWA is a direct threat to young employees starting out in the workplace, for many of whom this may be their first experience of employment. Their first experience of employment will be of deepest possible unfairness—the elimination of all incentives and the elimination of a desirable outcome if they choose to put in that little bit extra. Of course, what the current workforce can anticipate from this is a very direct threat to those employees who now come under awards or have other collective agreements with their employers. They know whom they are now competing with and what is coming at them.

Let me go through the details of this AWA offered by Spotlight to a new employee in New South Wales. It offers 2c an hour above the current award rate, but with no penalty rates, no overtime payments, no rest breaks, no break between shifts, no cap on the number of days worked in a row, no rostered days off, no annual leave loading, no incentive based payments or bonuses and no public holidays. All penalties and loadings will be sold off for the princely sum of 2c an hour. Employees on contracts will be expected to work late at night and all day Saturday to earn $91 less than their fellow workers still on the award. Saturday work will be paid at the ordinary rate, not at time and a quarter, as under the award. Sunday work will be paid at the ordinary rate, not at time and a half, as under the award.

Under the terms of that contract, these conditions cannot be raised and dealt with for a period of five years. This is not just a five-year contract; this is a coercive, harsh five-year sentence—five years locked in harsh, punishing work conditions with no prospect of a wage rise unless the company offers one. The door is now wide open for these reduced conditions to be imposed on 6,000 workers across the country. It is written in black and white in the company brochure. The brochure says:

With the new Workchoices legislation well underway, Stage one for Spotlight is as well.

... all new staff will be employed on Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs).

We have it there in black and white what the company intends for its workers. This is stage 1. Stage 2 will be when they work through the opportunities provided to them—and they are many in this government’s industrial relations legislation—to manipulate the provisions in the legislation that are there for employers to manipulate so that they can start to move all their employees onto what is now being offered to all their new workers.

The thing about this is that it is completely legal. We have taken a very careful look at this, and there is no element of the government’s legislation which has been traduced by Spotlight, not a single jot. Absolutely every protection that the government has incorporated in its legislation has been recognised and adopted by Spotlight scrupulously. Every element of protection that exists with regard to an employee’s right to approach their employer has been scrupulously protected by Spotlight.

The trouble is that at the end of the day there is basically nothing that protects an ordinary worker from this sort of treatment—no legal outs, no fall-back to the award conditions when there is silence on award matters. Those who prepared this contract for new employees of Spotlight were very careful: they made absolutely certain to rule out any provisions in the AWA that offended against any proposition that, if there was silence in the AWA, the award would operate by default.

This is the future of this nation at the hands of this government. It is true that, in a buoyant labour market—and there certainly is a buoyant labour market in my home state of Western Australia and in Queensland; they are not as buoyant elsewhere, not in New South Wales—there will be a small number of employees who sack their bosses rather than the other way around. You might find them on the odd mine site in Western Australia, where they have to beg and plead to get people to work for them. But the vast bulk of people who inhabit our cities are not mobile. These are the people who are building their houses, creating their lives, wishing to come home of an evening to see their families and wanting to make certain that there is time available for decent contact with them and the rest of the community over the weekends, and people who may have two or three kids or mortgage commitments. They are not in a position to up stakes and disappear to the north of Western Australia when they are confronted with a situation like this. They have—and this goes for 90 per cent of the workforce—always relied on fairness in the workplace. They have always relied on decent treatment via awards as an underpinning backstop. They have relied on the fact that they can contact and communicate with people who will give them help and then, when they present themselves to an independent umpire, have their claims to receive a decent return protected. That has been absolutely destroyed by this government.

There is no doubt that in the not too distant future, Spotlight will be moving on all their employees. You will not have a situation in a workplace where somebody is paid $90 less for doing the same work. These things do not survive in workplaces. That is not how the country operates. How workplaces operate invariably is movement to the lowest common denominator. That is how workplaces in the real world operate. So, if a substantial section of the workforce and the incoming workforce are being paid on a different basis from others who are there, it is only a matter of time before they are all hit. This is reality. This is the real world which is inhabited by everybody but members of this government. This is the real experience of Australians. The worker who is confronting this proposition by Spotlight is confronting is a future in which, if her income contributes to a family mortgage, she is in trouble; if her income sustains the private school fees of students, she is in trouble; if her income sustains the private health insurance premiums that the family pays, she is in trouble; and if her income sustains the current level of petrol prices we are paying in our service stations now, she is in trouble. If she were to rely on the tax cut offered her by the government to make up for a $90 a week cut in what she could have anticipated against the award, she would regard it as merely derisory. There is $10 in that tax cut against a $90 cut in her pay.

When we mention that figure of $90, understand this: we are talking about what is normally expected of a worker in Spotlight. We are not talking about a worker who is volunteering for unusual hours or working on a holiday on which they do not normally work; we are talking about the ordinary week of the average Spotlight worker. So it is $90 against the ordinary week. It is not against some cobbled-up situation on penalty rates where somebody is desperately trying to work a bit of overtime. This is a very serious situation. I said this morning that, when I first started talking about these industrial relations issues, I talked about this law as an infestation of termites. Actually, the problems are hitting the Australian workforce much faster and much more comprehensively than I expected them to. We are going to have an accounting in 18 months from now, and that accounting will bring home to the table of the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations every piece of injustice that is now being committed in the workforce around the country. He will be held accountable for it and he will be defeated. (Time expired)

Kim Wilkie (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Wilkie interjecting

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Swan has been warned! He wants to be very careful.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We hear a lot about fairness from the Leader of the Opposition. What the Leader of the Opposition will not face is that basic fairness starts with the chance of a job. This is the man who presided over double-digit unemployment in Australia, left this country with a $10 billion black hole and a $96 billion Commonwealth debt and whose economic responsibility can be summed up in those three pieces of data alone. Through his comments today he says implicitly to the people of Australia that five per cent unemployment is good enough. That is what the Leader of the Opposition is effectively saying to the people of Australia today. We do not believe that, because five per cent unemployment means that, today, there are still hundreds of thousands of our fellow Australians who do not have a job, and we believe that, as far as those Australians are concerned, basic fairness is the opportunity to get a job.

For somebody who is young and does not have a job, to be able to get a job that contains minimum standards and conditions—a job that contains as part of the guarantee under the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard a 38-hour week and the classification wages that are set in the award classifications, which are adjusted up by the Australian Fair Pay Commission in the future, a job that contains a guarantee of four weeks annual leave, in addition to sick leave, personal leave and carers leave—

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Brendan O’Connor interjecting

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member opposite objects that two weeks can be traded off, something over which the Western Australia Labor government presides; it is the very same system in Western Australia. If it is good enough for colleagues in Western Australia in the Carpenter Labor government, then why isn’t it good enough for the rest of Australia? No, the reality is that with these guarantees we say unashamedly to the people of Australia—

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You’re proud of it.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Lilley is warned!

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We say unashamedly to the people of Australia that we think it is good if an unemployed person can get a job that gives them a normal 38-hour working week and a payment based on the safety net decision made by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission last year—and, incidentally, the Fair Pay Commission can raise that pay rate in the future. The Leader of the Opposition was quite wrong when he said there was ‘no prospect of a pay rise for five years’. When the Fair Pay Commission adjusts pay rates in the spring of this year, if those pay rates are adjusted upwards—as one would expect in the current economic environment—that will prove that that aspect of what the Leader of the Opposition said is wrong.

But let us look at the reality of this. The Leader of the Opposition was a senior minister in a Labor government that presided over a fall in real wages in Australia. In the 1980s, what were the prospects for Australians as far as their economic future was concerned? Their real wages went down under the accord implemented in conjunction with the then Labor government, of which the Leader of the Opposition was a senior cabinet member. At the end of the 1980s, this country had the most prescriptive industrial relations system it had ever had. At the end of the 1980s, how many of the one million people in this country who were out of work were saved by that prescriptive industrial relations system?

Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Hatton interjecting

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At least the former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, the predecessor of the member who is interjecting now, realised in the early 1990s that that prescriptive industrial relations system did not save one million Australians from being thrown into unemployment. In the 10 years since then, we have seen a total reversal, a total turnabout in the prospects of Australian workers and their families—something that the Leader of the Opposition, when he had his hands on this country’s gear levers of policy, was incapable of changing. Over the last decade, we have seen an increase of something like 1.7 million extra jobs for Australians. We have also seen a 16 per cent increase in real wages for Australians, compared to about a one per cent increase over the total 13 years of the previous Labor government. We have seen low interest rates—a far cry from the home mortgage rates of 17 and 18 per cent, let alone the 21 and 22 per cent interest rates that small- and medium-sized businesses in Australia were paying back in the 1980s and the early 1990s. We have seen inflation rates in the band regarded as acceptable by the Reserve Bank. Whatever piece of economic data you like to take, it will match the experiences of ordinary Australians—that is, there has been relative prosperity over the last 10 years, particularly in comparison with the regime and the economic circumstances of Australia when we were living under the previous Labor government.

The other thing about the rhetoric from the Leader of the Opposition today is that there is absolutely nothing new about it. This is what we heard back in 1996. Let me quote the Leader of the Opposition from the Hansard of 19 June 1996, almost a decade ago. He was talking about the then Workplace Relations Act, which was being attacked by the Labor Party with the same degree of overblown rhetoric we are getting today with the Work Choices legislation. He said that the Workplace Relations Act would lead to:

... the kind of low wage, low productivity industrial wasteland we see in the United States and New Zealand where jobs can be bought at bargain basement rates ...

He said that Australia would go:

... straight down the American road on ... wages justice ... that produces social dislocation more than anything else ...

He also said:

At the end of the day, guns are a symptom of that process.

That is what the Leader of the Opposition said on 19 June 1996. The member for Perth was saying similar things. He said:

The Howard model is quite simple. It is all about lower wages; it is about worse conditions; it is about a massive rise in industrial disputation; it is about the abolition of safety nets; and it is about pushing down or abolishing minimum standards.

No doubt we will hear something very similar from the member for Perth if he contributes to this debate today. The rhetoric from the opposition in relation to industrial relations has not changed one whit in almost 10 years.

But let us deal with some of the facts in relation to what the Leader of the Opposition has said. I note that, in question time, he talked about an AWA that had been offered—and we will look into that. First of all, we will check out whether what he says about it is correct, because past experience over a long period of time indicates we should not take on face value things that are said in this place by the opposition. The opposition leader kept talking about an AWA that had been offered. Presumably, on the words that he carefully and advisedly used, this was not an AWA that had been taken up. We will check that out, but let me deal with some facts about AWAs.

First of all, if you are an existing employee, you cannot be forced onto an AWA. If you are employed under some other form of industrial arrangement, such as an award or a collective agreement, you cannot be forced onto an AWA. If you are offered a job and the employer says, ‘These are the conditions,’ you can choose whether to take that job or not. As an employee, you have a choice of whether you take that job or not. Unlike the Labor Party, we will not stand by and allow 1.1 million Australians to be thrown onto the unemployment heap—the great economic record of the previous government. Existing employees cannot be forced onto AWAs. The Workplace Relations Act makes it unlawful for employers to terminate an employee for refusing to agree to an AWA. It makes it unlawful for employers to use duress in relation to AWA agreement making.

If employees have concerns about their rights and entitlements, they can contact the Office of Workplace Services. In the last few weeks, we have seen the Office of Workplace Services take action where rights and entitlements have not been met under industrial legislation. In addition, all employees in Australia have the right to appoint a bargaining agent to negotiate an AWA. They can have the union shop steward come in and negotiate their AWA for them. If they want to, they can choose someone else to come in and negotiate their AWA for them. Once that bargaining agent has been appointed, that appointment has to be respected by the employer in those circumstances. The employer cannot simply say, ‘I will not deal with the bargaining agent concerned.’ Employers must deal with that validly appointed bargaining agent. There are protections not mentioned by the Labor Party in relation to this.

But what are the policy alternatives of the Labor Party? Let us look at a few things in their policies outlining what they would do, and see how that is going to lead to job creation in Australia. For example, we have the ALP policy to impose a new payroll tax on business in Australia. They want to fund unpaid employee entitlements through a payroll tax on all employers of 0.1 per cent of the payroll. How long do you think it will stay at 0.1 per cent of the payroll? Firstly, their policy is to tax employment even beyond what it is being taxed at the present time.

Secondly, they say, ‘We want to abolish AWAs,’ despite the fact that people on AWAs earn more, on average, than people who are employed under collective agreements and earn a lot more than people who are employed under awards. For the nearly one million people who have entered into AWAs in Australia, the Australian Labor Party’s policy is to say, ‘As for those better conditions, that better salary you’ve got’—almost one million AWAs now—‘we’re going to rip them away from you.’ They are going to rip them away from what is getting close to one in 10 people employed in Australia at the present time.

Beyond that, they want to reimpose the abused unfair dismissal system in Australia. This is the system that led to the ridiculous situation where employers would sooner pay $5,000 or $10,000 or $15,000 to get rid of a problem rather than to reinstate someone.

Trish Draper (Makin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Go away money.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the member for Makin says, go away money was being paid out regularly by small and medium sized businesses in Australia rather than having to reinstate someone. And look at some of the cases where tribunals have ordered reinstatement. Somebody was caught red-handed thieving from the employer, and a tribunal ordered reinstatement. Somebody was involved in gross sexual harassment of a female colleague, and a tribunal ordered reinstatement. And there are other cases that I will not describe here in the parliament this afternoon, where tribunals have ordered reinstatement.

This is the system that the Australian Labor Party wants to put back in place, rather than taking a realistic look at these propositions. I have had small business operators come up to me in different states of Australia over the last few weeks saying, ‘I’ve taken on another one or two workers because you’ve got rid of the unfair dismissal system.’ Why did they put on another one or two workers? Because they are no longer afraid that, if they put somebody on and it does not work out, the worker will bring an unmeritorious claim against them and they will end up paying $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 and in some cases thousands of dollars more than that. Yet this remains the Australian Labor Party’s policy, repeated over and over again. What will that do for creating jobs for Australians? What will that do to create the fairness for employers and employees that we have this wild rhetoric about from the Leader of the Opposition?

On top of that, we have good faith bargaining. What does this mean? It means any business owner, including a small business without even one trade union member, will be forced by law, under the ALP’s policy, to meet and negotiate higher above-award wages and employment conditions with any union official who makes those demands. This would occur even if the workplace has no trade union members. Again, this is the Australian Labor Party’s policy for employment law in Australia in the future, if they were elected—union bargaining agent fees, compulsory contributions to union training funds and compulsory time off for union activities. I gave an example of that in question time a couple of days ago—the sorts of things which are part and parcel of the Australian Labor Party’s policy when it comes to industrial relations.

There would be no limit on the matters that could be included in awards. Labor would abolish the current limit of 20 allowable matters under awards. Unions would have automatic right of entry into workplaces where they have current members, or even prospective members. So even if there is no union member in a workplace, you will have the thugs from the union rolling in on building sites—as we had until we got the Australian Building and Construction Industry Commission in place—right around Australia. They would abolish prohibitions on secondary boycotts and sympathy strikes currently contained in the Trade Practices Act; they would get rid of the Australian Building and Construction Industry Commission.

The greatest danger to the men and women who work in Australia—the greatest danger to them and their families and their wellbeing, their standard of living and their future prosperity—is not anything that is contained in the Work Choices legislation, which will bring about better outcomes. The greatest danger to the men and women of Australia is the election, at some stage in the future, of a Labor government.

Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Normally I would start by saying we have just heard the minister give us his two bobs worth, but now we know it is his two cents worth. The Treasurer and Acting Prime Minister has left the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations to speak on the MPI after taking all the questions at question time on this issue, and there was the minister—like a rabbit in the spotlight. This morning we had a disallowance motion asking the House to knock off the regulations promulgated under the Work Choices legislation—that is Labor’s commitment; to knock off these regulations, knock off this legislation—and the minister stood up and said, ‘All is rosy for the future.’ Let us put a spotlight on the future under the government’s extreme industrial relations legislation.

What do we know about Spotlight? If you go to Spotlight’s website, you will find out:

Spotlight is Australia’s largest Fabric, Craft and Home Decorating Superstore, with the revenue exceeding $600 million ... Spotlight operates over 86 stores, occupying over 3 million square feet of retail space, and employs over 6,000 staff.

That is Spotlight. It is a major organisation. Spotlight’s internal management magazine for May 2006 has, ‘Hot Topics this Month: Work Choices’ and ‘Monthly Workplace Relations Update’. It says:

With the new Workchoices legislation well underway, Stage one for Spotlight is … all new staff will be employed on Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs).

So we know where Spotlight is coming from. But if you have a look at Spotlight’s website, you will see that Spotlight understands all too clearly what the current law of the land is. On the Spotlight website, you can get an application and apply to become an employee of Spotlight. And what does the website quite responsibly contain, because it is part of the existing law? It contains an information statement for employees about Australian workplace agreements, which expressly makes available to prospective employees of Spotlight the Australian government’s Office of the Employment Advocate’s advice to employees on AWAs—including drawing express attention to the government’s so-called minimum standards: four weeks paid annual leave, 10 days paid personal leave, up to 52 weeks unpaid parental leave and maximum ordinary hours of work limited to 38 hours per week.

Guess what, Mr Deputy Speaker: the AWA promulgated by Spotlight is entirely consistent with the government’s minimum standards. What is the point? The point is not its being consistent with the government’s minimum standards, which has been the government’s defence, but rather that the government has been entirely sprung by the things that are knocked off from existing employee conditions. The contrast that needs to be made is the contrast between what is available under this AWA consistent with the government’s law and what is currently available to existing employees. That is why, on more than one occasion during question time, I was at pains to make the point that the AWA from Spotlight is consistent with the government’s so-called legislated minimum standards.

I have it here: Spotlight Pty Ltd Australian Workplace Agreement. When you go through it you find that, on any reading, it is entirely consistent with the government’s legislated minimum standards. What was suggested by the government to a prospective new employee? Take that AWA and your pay rate will increase from $14.28 an hour, which is the New South Wales award basis, up to $14.30 an hour—an increase of the princely sum of 2c an hour. When you look at the government’s so-called minimum standards and the Spotlight AWA, you find that clause 8 of the AWA satisfies the hours of work provision, clause 10 satisfies the annual leave provision, clause 13 satisfies the parental leave provision, clauses 11 and 12 satisfy the personal leave and carers provisions, and the $14.30 offered is greater than the minimum wage, which is $12.75 an hour. So that is fine.

But then we discover the differences between the AWA proposed to new employees and the current standards. The base rate of pay for the current standard is $14.28 an hour; the Spotlight rate of pay is $14.30. If you work under the current award, for Saturday you get a penalty rate of time and a quarter at $17.85 per hour; under the AWA it is $14.30. If you currently work on Sunday you get a penalty rate of time and a half at $21.42 per hour; under the Spotlight AWA it is $14.30 per hour. If you work on a public holiday under current conditions you get double time and a half, or $35.70 per hour; under Spotlight’s AWA you get $14.30. Currently for overtime you get time and a half for the first two hours, which is $21.42 per hour; with Spotlight there is no overtime and you get $14.30 per hour. Currently for all other hours of overtime over the first two hours you get double time at $28.56 per hour; under the Spotlight AWA it is $14.30 per hour.

Under the award and current conditions, you get a paid 10-minute rest break; under Spotlight’s AWA you get no paid rest break. Under the award, 7 am to 6 pm Monday to Wednesday, 7 am to 9 pm Thursday to Friday, 7 am to 6 pm on Saturday and 8 am to 5 pm on Sunday are ordinary hours. Under the AWA all hours worked are ordinary hours. How many Spotlight stores do we know that are closed on a Thursday night or a Saturday? Under the current conditions annual leave loading is 17.5 per cent; under the Spotlight AWA there is no leave loading.

On roster protections, under the award there are guaranteed RDOs, no more than five days work per week or six in one week and four in the next and at least 10 hours break between shifts. Under the Spotlight AWA, which satisfies the government’s minimum standards to the great satisfaction of the Acting Prime Minister and the minister, there are no rostered days off, no restriction on the number of consecutive days worked without a break and no minimum break between shifts. And there are some things here which other people might regard as minor but which are significant: the current standards contain a first aid allowance of $1.54 per day while there is no allowance under the Spotlight AWA. There is a meal allowance under the award of $10.80 per meal but no allowance under the AWA. There is a uniform allowance of $8.80 per week under the award; no allowance under the AWA. Part-time employees must work a maximum of 30 hours per week under the award but under the Spotlight AWA can be required to work over 38 hours per week.

What does that loss of conditions add up to? To the princely sum of the minister’s 2c an hour. He is caught like a rabbit in the spotlight. He cannot even give us his two bob’s worth; he just gives us his two cents worth. If you are a full-time employee as an adult and you work on a Thursday night—and how many Spotlight stores have we seen closed on Thursday night?—and on Saturday and Sunday, guess what the difference is between what a new employee under the AWA will receive and what a current employee under the award gets: it is $91.35 less a week.

As there is no public holiday loading under the AWA, guess what the difference is: if you include a value in lieu of working on a public holiday, the difference for a full-time employee whose roster includes a public holiday is $53.96 for that day. New South Wales has 10 or 11 public holidays each year, which makes 500 bucks a year. Thanks very much, Two Cents Minister.

Where was the focus of questions in question time today to the Acting Prime Minister and Treasurer? He said, firstly, ‘We don’t believe any of the assertions that you make.’ The documentation is there for all to see. He said, secondly, ‘These are terrific agreements made between employer and employee to their mutual benefit and they satisfy the government’s minimum standards.’ Yes, the Spotlight AWA satisfies the government’s minimum standards, but let us see what is cut away from the current conditions and entitlements. These reflect the questions put to the Acting Prime Minister today. Under the AWA there is no provision for any penalty rates and no provision for any overtime. The AWA expressly excludes in a one-paragraph clause any award condition or entitlement in respect of rest breaks, incentive based payments and bonuses, annual leave loading, public holidays, loadings for working overtime or shift work, and penalty rates, including for work on public holidays. So, at the stroke of a pen, all those have been sold down the river for the princely sum of 2c an hour.

Further, under the AWA, Saturday work is paid at the ordinary rate of pay, not time and a quarter as currently is the case under the award. Sunday work is paid at the ordinary rate of pay, not time and a half as under the award. There is no public holiday pay rate or loading. There are no paid rest breaks between shifts, there is no guarantee of a break between shifts, there is no cap on the number of consecutive days worked and there are no rostered days off.

Let us put a spotlight onto the future: under Howard’s extreme industrial relations legislation, endorsed today by the Acting Prime Minister and the two cents minister, all of that has been sold down the river at the stroke of a pen for the princely sum of 2c an hour. That will return to haunt all those members opposite at the next election. When we are elected we will tear up your legislation, we will tear up your regulations and we will tear up your bad hearts.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The federal parliament has been debating industrial relations since the Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904, and one of the things that always characterises these debates is that the level of rhetoric from the Australian Labor Party is always completely out of whack with the legislation that we are discussing. While to a casual observer it might seem very difficult to explain this disconnect between the realities of the legislation and the Labor Party rhetoric, it is very simply explained by understanding the old rule that the Australian Labor Party is the parliamentary wing of the trade union movement. What school kids learn in Australian history is that the Australian Labor Party is the parliamentary wing of the trade union movement.

We have heard this before. The previous speaker, the member for Perth, the ‘Nostradamus kid’ of the Australian Labor Party, in October 1995 said:

The Howard model is quite simple. It is all about lower wages ...

Wrong.

... it is about worse conditions ...

Wrong.

... it is about a massive rise in industrial disputation ...

Wrong.

... it is about the abolition of safety nets ...

Wrong.

... and it is about pushing down or abolishing minimum standards.

Wrong. Let us take each of those claims, because we have now had the benefit of 10½ years since he made them. What have we seen? Firstly, real wages have risen by 16.8 per cent over the last 10 years. They have risen during the period that we have had the Workplace Relations Act 1996. We have seen conditions improved. We have seen unemployment fall from 8.2 per cent in March 1996 to five per cent now, the lowest level in almost 30 years. At the same time we have seen more than 100,000 Australians come off the numbers of the long-term unemployed. We have seen the creation of 1.7 million jobs—800,000 part-time jobs and 900,000 full-time jobs.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the House.

The bells having been rung—

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! A quorum not being present, the chair will be vacated for 10 minutes and the sitting will be resumed after that time.

The House having been counted and a quorum being present—

The honourable member’s time has expired.

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. I apologise, because my understanding of the standing orders is not clear, but I understand that, for the re-formation of the House, there can only be one ringing of the bells, not two. I was wondering if you could clarify the position.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For the information of the Chief Opposition Whip, I think an honest mistake was made, in that the bells were stopped when there was still more time to go.