Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Would the minister explain to the House how the workplace relations reforms have strengthened the Australian economy? Is the minister aware of proposals to roll back these reforms, and what is the minister’s response?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Albanese interjecting

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

The member for Grayndler is warned!

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

I thank the member for Canning for his question. As the Treasurer was pointing out to the House, a series of world economic bodies, including the IMF, have confirmed the workplace relations reforms as being part of the strength of the Australian economy over the past decade or so. Indeed, I noted that the managing director of the IMF, while in Australia this week, said something which the government knows and which the Leader of the Opposition is trying to ignore—that is, countries cannot prosper into the 21st century with workplace laws from the seventies, eighties and nineties. But that is where the Australian Labor Party wants to take Australia: back to the Keating era reforms.

I was asked about proposals to roll back these reforms. It is interesting that, over the last few months—indeed, over the last year or so—the member for Perth has been running around the country privately intimating to business organisations—

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

Tell the truth, Kevin. Tell the truth.

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

Order! The member for Perth!

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

sort of nudge, nudge, wink, wink—that we are going to retain the system of individual contracts in Australian workplace agreements.

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

Where’s your evidence, Kevin? Where’s your evidence?

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

The member for Perth is warned!

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

He has been running around Australia telling the business groups that. And, as he, this week, quite deliberately, pointedly and repeatedly said, when the Leader of the Opposition decided to repudiate this policy—and, in effect, repudiate the member for Perth—he did not even consult the member for Perth about this; he simply made a unilateral decision which he announced before the union bosses in Sydney last weekend. So this morning, the member for Perth, having been contradicted and embarrassed—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order under, I think it is, standing order 62. The member for Mackellar is blocking the member for Menzies’ best side.

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

That is a frivolous point of order. I have warned the member for Grayndler. If he wishes to leave the chamber, he will try that again.

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

This morning we had from the member for Perth one of the most outrageous attacks that I have heard of from a member of this place on the business organisations in Australia. Having been repudiated by the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Perth was out at the doorstop this morning, taking out his anger on the business organisations in Australia. The first person he got stuck into was Michael Chaney, the head of the Business Council of Australia, whose only crime, it seems, was to write to the Leader of the Opposition and express the concern of the Business Council of Australia—the companies that employ some million Australians—about the Leader of the Opposition’s roll back, his backflip, on Australian workplace agreements.

Let us just look at this. Mr Chaney is somebody who has actually run businesses in Australia. Mr Chaney is someone who has actually created jobs for thousands of Australians and their families. That is unlike the member for Perth, whose main activity has been as a political apparatchik. So we had this extraordinary attack on the head of the Business Council of Australia by the member for Perth.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

Order! The minister will be heard! The minister has the call, and the minister will be heard.

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

Not only do we have this extraordinary attack on the Business Council of Australia; also we have an extraordinary attack on the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, an organisation that represents the employers of some four million Australian people, saying that it was only interested in pushing down for lower wages. In fact, the member for Perth said in his doorstop, about the ACCI, ‘Maybe it’s about a lazy, easy way of increasing your profit.’ This is an outrageous thing for a senior member of the opposition to be saying about a business organisation, the members of which employ some four million Australians. But the member for Perth went on and said, ‘You should go and ask the business community this question: what flexibility do you get from statutory individual contracts that you can’t get from common-law individual contracts?’

If the member for Perth and the opposition do not know the difference between common-law contracts and individual AWAs then they are deeply in trouble, because the reality is that, as has been the law in Australia for some 90 years, common-law contracts do not replace awards. In fact, the ACCI pointed this out today in a press release. They said:

Common law agreements do not deliver changes to working arrangements that are prohibited by awards or union agreements. They cannot do so because they are not allowed to alter (in any way) any of the terms of an award or a union agreement, no matter how inflexible, restrictive, inefficient, costly or inappropriate those terms might be to the situation of that employer and that employee.

So the reality, when you decode what members of the opposition are saying, is that they are saying, ‘Let’s rip away the entitlements of hundreds of thousands of Australian workers on individual Australian workplace agreements.’ The proposition from the Leader of the Opposition is to replace them with common-law contracts. In effect, he is saying to those hundreds of thousands of Australians and their families: ‘We’re going to take you back to the award conditions. We’re going to take you back to conditions that pay 100 per cent less, on average, than do individual Australian workplace agreements.’

As I said, if the opposition, the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Perth do not know the difference between common-law contracts and Australian workplace agreements then they are in deep trouble. The member for Perth ought to apologise to the business organisations in Australia for his outrageous statements this morning. If he does not do so then the Leader of the Opposition should sack him. He has already repudiated him in any case.