Stuart Henry (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware of proposals to allow uninvited third parties to amend employment contracts? How would any such proposal impact on employment conditions?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As it happens, I am—courtesy of the West Australian. There is an article in the West Australian that reveals something the Leader of the Opposition would not reveal at the weekend—that Labor’s policy on AWAs will allow unions to demand a review of an Australian workplace agreement even if the employee does not want this to occur. The West Australian, in an article authored by Kim Macdonald and Chris Johnson, had this to say:

Under the policy, confirmed by Mr Beazley’s office, unions would be allowed to call on the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to subject all existing individual agreements to change to fit a new set of yet-to-be-announced minimum standards, even if neither party in the agreement want to change.

This is the latest assault by the Labor Party on, potentially, up to one million working conditions of Australians. What the Labor Party are going to do—and the big signs show it—is tear up the working conditions of one million Australians. They are going to put a dagger to the throat of the great resource industries of Western Australia.

It is no surprise that this story appeared in the West Australianand it is no surprise because the people of Western Australia know the enormous contribution that the mining industry is making not only to the wealth of that state but also to the wealth of the entire nation. So bit by bit, answer by answer, article by article, we are having dragged out of the Leader of the Opposition the extent to which he has capitulated to the union movement on this issue.

This is the latest example. The article confirms it, because David Robinson of the union movement in Western Australia made it very clear that what is going to be involved here is that, if you had a workplace agreement, there could be an approach made to the Industrial Relations Commission to have the workplace agreement reopened, and superimposed on that workplace agreement would be a new set of minimum standards—yet to be announced, of course; that will presumably come in some other answer to a question—notwithstanding the fact that neither the employer nor the employee want that agreement reopened.

The collective bargaining proposals of the Leader of the Opposition are a wish fulfilment of Mr Greg Combet’s desire to see the union movement once again running the affairs of this country. Mr Combet famously said in Adelaide: ‘There used to be a time when the unions ran Australia. It wouldn’t be a bad idea if we returned to those days.’

There is a place for the union movement in this country, but it is not a place that involves its compulsory insertion in every employment contract irrespective of whether that union movement is wanted or not. Under the laws that have been put into place by this government, if people want a union to bargain on their behalf, they can do so. If people want to belong to a union, they can do so. If they do not want to belong to a union, then their rights to refuse to belong to a union are to be protected. But it will never be part of the industrial relations policy of this government to allow unwanted union intervention upsetting an arrangement concluded between an employer and an employee to the mutual benefit and advancement of those two parties.