Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition will not seek to oppose the passage of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008. However, we will move an amendment that we believe will strike the right balance between flexibility and fairness in workplace relations. The proposed amendment will seek to enhance the new individual employment contract that is being introduced by the government in this legislation to ensure that there is available in workplace bargaining an option for employees and employers for a long-term individual contract. I am pleased that the Rudd government acknowledges the need for individual agreements by allowing existing agreements to continue for up to five years and through the introduction of a new individual statutory agreement subject to a new no disadvantage test.

I first received a copy of this legislation last week. My consultations over the past week confirm that Labor’s new individual contract should be a long-term feature of Australia’s workplace relations system. Therefore, my amendment will seek to delete the global expiry date of 31 December 2009 and give these new Labor individual employment agreements an expiry date of five years from the date of approval. We have maintained the eligibility criteria for Labor’s individual employment agreements for employers who had offered individual contracts prior to 31 December 2007. However, we acknowledge that this could have a significant impact on new businesses or employers who wish to avail themselves of the option of an individual bargaining arrangement. The Senate has in fact referred this bill to a committee, and this is the kind of issue that the Senate inquiry should consider. Labor’s industrial relations policy has not been accompanied by any economic analysis or modelling or any impact statement, and hence the necessity for the Senate to refer this bill to a committee.

The Minister for Education and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, who is also the Minister for Social Inclusion, has spent more than a year demonising individual agreements. The minister has also demonised employers who use these agreements and has attacked the integrity of individual employers and industry sectors. After months of these relentless attacks on employers, the minister then introduces a new individual workplace agreement. The minister will argue that this agreement is only transitional but that it will be fair for workers for the next two years. Then, for some reason, after two years, it will no longer be fair. Surely this is impossible if these agreements are to be subject to Labor’s new no disadvantage test. After all, what could be fairer in the eyes of Labor than a new individual contract designed and introduced by Labor and subject to a new no disadvantage test designed and introduced by Labor?

I can assure the minister that her attacks on employers and her hypocrisy on the matter of individual agreements have not gone unnoticed in the business community. But the minister was strangely quiet in question time this week when I raised the fact that union officials have been negotiating collective agreements on behalf of their employees which trade away the same terms and conditions that individual agreements do. It seems that her outrage is directed only at employers and not at union officials who have achieved precisely the same outcomes through union negotiated collective agreements.

At no time during her attack on employers has the minister acknowledged that the annualised salaries in both individual and collective agreements more than compensate for the so-called trading away of award conditions. A feature of the individual agreements in the Western Australian mining sector, for example, has been substantial salary increases based on productivity gains as a trade-off for award conditions that either are irrelevant or seriously hamper productivity.

Of course, we all know that if the minister had her way she would remove all flexibility in workplace relations. Last year, when employers raised their concerns over her first attempt at an industrial relations policy, which had been drafted and designed by the ACTU, the minister threatened them with injury if they dared to voice their concerns publicly. This unseemly outburst was tempered when the now Prime Minister was forced to intervene and overrule the minister at that time, and she was dragged, kicking and screaming, to a more reasonable position.

Workplace flexibility is vital to maintaining our strong economy. Opportunities for individual bargaining and both union and non-union collective bargaining have been a feature of Australia’s workplace relations system for over a decade. The Keating reforms of 1993 introduced the concept of enterprise or workplace bargaining, and this received bipartisan support. These reforms allowed collective agreements to override restrictive award conditions that held back productivity. However, the unions remained central to most negotiations. The 1996 reforms of the Howard government extended the workplace bargaining system into the non-union sector and provided the choice of individual agreements known as Australian workplace agreements. Workplace bargaining has meant that wages and employment conditions are negotiated in businesses rather than being determined by third parties with little knowledge of the particular needs of that business—bodies such as industrial tribunals, unions, employer bodies or government. Workplace bargaining has avoided the strangulation of the one-size-fits-all award system imposed by a tribunal.

The circumstances of every business, of every employer and of every employee are different. Workplace agreements ensure that wages and conditions reflect the circumstances of a business and its employees which are more likely to make the business more competitive and be relevant to people’s changing needs. Workplace bargaining aimed at improving productivity has become the basis upon which improvements in wages and conditions have been achieved. Without improving productivity, increases in wages and improvements in employment conditions cannot be sustained. Improved living standards cannot be achieved.

The evidence is there for all to see. Under the Hawke-Keating Labor governments from 1983 to 1996, real wages decreased by 1.8 per cent, homeowners were hit with 17 per cent interest rates and, by 1993, almost one million Australians were unemployed. In contrast, the coalition government reforms since 1996 delivered increases in real wages of 20 per cent, while interest rates and inflation remained at historically low levels.

The OECD said in 2006 that Australia’s ‘recent macroeconomic performance continues to be impressive’ and that, ‘Living standards have steadily improved since the beginning of the 1990s and now surpass all G7 countries except the United States.’ The Australian economy has been a standout. It may come as a surprise to the minister that workplace flexibility has been critical in underpinning that economic performance. It was critical in allowing the economy to weather the economic stocks of the Asian financial crisis; it was critical in weathering the tech bubble burst and other economic challenges.

The management of our trillion-dollar economy was handed to the new government at the last election. I must say that watching the new Treasurer struggle every day does not instil in the opposition any confidence in his ability, and I am sure that it does not instil in the Australian public any confidence in his ability to manage a trillion-dollar economy. The Treasurer is clearly out of his depth, and it is terrifying to think of the consequences should a genuine economic crisis develop. The nation cannot afford to have a Treasurer who panics when confronted with detail and who is incapable of answering the simplest questions about his new responsibilities. He has yet to answer any question on his understanding of the potential impact of the government’s industrial relations reforms; hence the need for a Senate inquiry to give the Australian people the answers that the Treasurer is incapable of providing.

The opposition believe that the amendment we propose to Labor’s new individual employment contract recognises the need for there to be a range of workplace bargaining options, from collective agreements between an employer and a group of employees to agreements between an employer and individual employees, depending upon what best suits them. The significant workplace reforms of the Howard government over the past decade or more have aimed to increase the flexibility of the labour market, which has in turn generated higher productivity, higher real wages, increased labour force participation and lower unemployment. The most recent national unemployment figure of 4.1 per cent would have only been a dream under the previous Labor government. I note that it is substantially lower at 3.3 per cent in Western Australia, and that can be attributed to the strong economic growth over the past decade and to the reform of the labour market.

It is no coincidence that the period of labour market reform coincides with the growth of the economy and the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs. Labor would have you believe that the strong economy has come about through good luck. The mining boom fell into the nation’s lap like manna from heaven. Labor would have you believe that workplace reforms did not play a role. The truth is that the mining boom would have passed Australia by if we had not become a reliable supplier to world markets. If Australia had continued to be a country beset by industrial disputation, we would not have been considered a reliable trading partner for the emerging economies, including China, or for our more traditional partners, including Japan and Korea.

Last weekend, I spoke to a number of senior mining industry executives. One told of his experience in the mining sector over 20 years. In the early 1990s, he left Australia to work overseas. At that time, the sector was suffering constant industrial disputation. There were strikes over the most insignificant of issues. In fact, in his sector there had been a strike over the flavour of ice-cream at the site kiosk. In his particular resource sector at the time, South American mining companies were the preferred suppliers as they were more reliable than Australian ones. South American mining companies were more reliable than Australian mining companies in their ability to deliver on time. This executive returned to Australia about two years ago. He described the resources sector of today as a different planet from that of the early 1990s. He said he was stunned at the change of culture, the gains in productivity and the cooperation between management and staff to ensure the smooth and efficient running of this particular operation. He pointed out that Australia had overtaken South America as the preferred supplier, but that we remain in a highly competitive environment and cannot afford any hint of a return to the bad old days of industrial disruption.

In 1992, 1.6 million working days were lost to strikes. This has fallen dramatically to now be at the lowest level in more than 100 years. There are workplaces that have not experienced a strike in a decade. We are in a period of industrial harmony that is unprecedented, and it is no coincidence that we are also in a period of unprecedented economic growth. Why have we entered a period of industrial harmony, which has delivered real wage increases? It is because there is no compulsion for employers and employees to have unwanted third parties interfering in the bargaining process. If employees wish to have a third party negotiate on their behalf, that is their right and they are able to do so, but it should not be forced upon them.

Even in unionised workplaces where no employees are on individual agreements, the availability of individual agreements has had a calming effect on the behaviour of unions. The union officials know that, if their behaviour or demands become unreasonable or they push the employer too far, the employer has the option of bypassing the union and negotiating directly with their employees. Many employers have not used individual agreements and prefer to negotiate collectively with their employees, but they do not want to be at the mercy of unreasonable demands or disruptive behaviour. They must have other options available to them. While around eight per cent of the Australian workforce are currently on an individual agreement, the mere presence of individual agreements as an option for employers is enough to make unions drop their excessive claims, behave reasonably and even talk about productivity gains.

It is fair to say that one of the major reforms since 1996 has been to give Australian employers and employees the right—and I would say the basic right—to conduct their business and negotiate their workplace agreements without compulsory reference to a union. This reflects the changing nature of the Australian workforce and its changing needs and circumstances. Whereas a generation ago over half the private sector were union members—in the early sixties it was about 61 or 62 per cent—currently more than 85 per cent of private sector employees no longer choose to join trade unions. The working public is passing judgement on unions and their effectiveness in lifting the standard of living.

Rather than take us back to an era of industrial relations that has long since passed, we need to continue to embrace reform. I had hoped that Labor would admit that it recognises the need for flexible working arrangements. After all, this legislation specifically enables existing individual agreements to continue to operate for five years—not for six months or 12 months but for five years. Yet Labor would have you believe that individual agreements are unfair. If they are so unfair, why are they lasting for five years, a period that could encompass not one but two federal elections? It is to be expected that the Senate inquiry will provide the evidence base that the government has so far failed to adduce on the significant benefits to the economy from the retention of flexibility in the workplace relations system.

The balance of this bill seeks to abolish Australian workplace agreements. Given the proposed amendment to embrace Labor’s individual employment agreements, with Labor’s no disadvantage test, as five-year agreements instead of transitional two-year agreements, the opposition will not oppose the amendment.

The bill also seeks to refer to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission the task of award modernisation and simplification. This is a process that has long been coalition policy but was opposed by the Labor Party for years until just a few months before the 2007 election. We welcome Labor’s change of position on this issue.

There are currently over 4,300 federal and state awards. There are over 105,000 employee classifications. This is a complex, unwieldy system. The reduction, simplification and modernisation of Australia’s complex and unwieldy system of awards are a necessary step in improving productivity. However, given that the government proposes to abolish the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, some might be forgiven for thinking that it will add to the confusion and complexity if the Industrial Relations Commission is tasked with the award rationalisation process in its dying days—yet it will be a new body proposed by Labor that will in fact oversee the implementation of the new awards. The handling of the rationalisation and simplification of awards is an area that is best covered by the Senate inquiry.

The bill also seeks to introduce 10 National Employment Standards to replace the five existing employment standards, to underpin Labor’s new no disadvantage test that is to apply to all agreements. We welcome the fact that it will apply to individual agreements that are being introduced by Labor. The proposed 10 standards have been released. There is to be a period of consultation before an exposure draft is published. I would note that the majority of the new standards relate to how much time one can have off work and there is no mention of the word ‘productivity’ in the substantive part of the proposed 10 standards. Given the concerns already voiced by employers about the potential for increased regulation, red tape and cost to business, this is another significant line of inquiry for the Senate.

As to other provisions in this bill: there will be a new commencement date for agreements—that is, upon approval rather than lodgement with the Workplace Authority; and there are changes to the termination conditions for collective agreements—some pre Work Choices certified agreements can be extended and varied on application to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. Yet the government is reserving its most significant industrial relations changes for some years yet, including the establishment of a truly national industrial relations system. This was coalition policy, now adopted by Labor. But we can have no confidence that this new era of federal-state cooperation, so touted by the Rudd government, will actually see the creation of a truly national industrial relations system as promised by the Prime Minister prior to the last election. We will see the state ministers digging in their heels. We have already had the unseemly spectacle of the Minister for Industrial Relations from New South Wales—

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Very unseemly.

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

it was a very unseemly spectacle—overthrowing the Rudd government’s idea of a truly national IR system. The creation of a single body called Fair Work Australia has been put off for some years, again leaving the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in limbo. It has been told it will cease to exist, that some of its members will be appointed to the new body and some will not—clearly an indication that those who behave according to the Rudd government’s agenda will be appointed and those who act independently will not. This also raises a number of logistical let alone constitutional issues, but that is legislation for another day.

The abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission is a matter of considerable concern to a great many in the building industry, but once more Labor has put that off, presumably beyond the next election date.

And there is the roll-back of the small business exemption from unfair dismissal laws. This is a matter of considerable concern to small businesses across Australia, for people who have been employed by small businesses since the introduction of the unfair dismissal exemption but particularly for the long-term unemployed. This exemption works for the benefit of long-term unemployed—those who would not otherwise get an opportunity for a job. Small business believe that, as long as they are not hampered by having to pay ‘go away’ money, they can give someone the opportunity to take on a job.

The exemption from unfair dismissal laws is all about the long-term unemployed. It is not about those with a job; the focus is on those who do not have a job. We have seen the most dramatic shift in the long-term unemployed in many, many years. Structural unemployment is very hard to shift, yet in Australia we have seen a dramatic decrease in the number of long-term unemployed because employers are giving people a go. Yet the roll-back of the small business exemption from unfair dismissal laws has been put off for another day. One could be forgiven for presuming that Labor wants to continue to reap the benefits of a decade of reforms for as long as possible before it has to pay back its debt to the unions. Why else would Labor not bring forward its laws to roll back the exemption from unfair dismissals? It would be a very simple piece of legislation. I am sure it could be drafted overnight, yet Labor has put it off to a much later date so that it can continue to reap the benefits of the long-term unemployed being given the opportunity of a job. The 4.1 per cent unemployment figure that we have seen recently has not come about by accident. It means there are more people in the workforce, and that includes long-term unemployed who are for the first time in a long time being given the chance of a job.

Given that the unions spent more money on an advertising campaign in the last federal election than both major parties combined, the unions will be demanding their pound of flesh. Today we read that the National Secretary of the CFMEU is ignoring the government’s calls for wage restraint, is ignoring the suggestion that wage claims should be based on productivity gains and is ignoring the fact that the ABCC has played an important part in cleaning up the building industry. We will see continuing disruptive union activity break out across this country. We have to ask what the government will do to prevent a wages breakout that will feed into inflation and that will lead to the kind of recession that Australia experienced in the 1990s, the last time Labor was in government.

Work Choices is no longer coalition policy. We will not oppose the passage of this bill. We will not oppose the abolition of AWAs. But we urge the government to support our proposed amendment to extend the Labor Party’s new individual contracts with the Labor Party’s own no disadvantage test. We urge the government to support this in the interests of a better, more flexible and fairer workplace that reflects the reality of workplaces and reflects the reality of the needs of employees and employers in the 21st century. It is time for Labor to admit that flexibility in the workplace is underpinning our economic reforms. I urge them to support our proposed amendment.

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

I rise to speak in favour of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008 and to speak against the proposed amendment to be moved by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. I say firstly that this is a fundamental bill. This is the beginning of the end of Work Choices and is a reflection of the people’s will. This represents the mandate that the Labor government was provided with to enact legislation to repeal Work Choices. I am very happy, indeed proud, to be at the dispatch box to speak to this particular matter.

When Labor published its workplace relations policy, Forward with Fairness, in April last year, it made a foundation promise to abolish Work Choices. This bill marks the beginning of the end for Work Choices. As well as preventing the drafting of any new AWAs, this transition bill will make other amendments to the Workplace Relations Act 1996—including allowing existing users of AWAs to make individual transitional employment agreements during the transitional period up until 31 December next year—and introduce a genuine no disadvantage test for individual transitional employment agreements and new collective agreements. It will also enable the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to modernise the awards.

The bill also repeals the requirement for employers to provide a copy of the Work Choices workplace relations fact sheet to their employees. Of course, as we know and as the Deputy Prime Minister made clear in question time, this was a pointless yet extravagant exercise that required companies to distribute government propaganda at the expense of the taxpayer. After the forest of other pamphlets and the plague of mouse boards, we will now remove the capacity for taxpayers’ money to be spent on such an outrageous waste.

A more substantial workplace relations bill will be introduced into the parliament later this year to ensure the government’s new fair, flexible and productive workplace relations systems will be fully operational by 1 January 2010. Once operational, the workplace relations system under a Rudd government will not include AWAs or any other statutory individual employment agreement. Working families have agreed with Labor’s view that they are entitled to a safety net of 10 National Employment Standards. Having listened to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, I can see she has no concern with that particular part of the government’s intention. I listened to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and in 30 minutes we had a meagre amendment proposed and nothing else. It was like I was listening to someone who wanted to rationalise Work Choices but vote for this bill—that is, put up a minor amendment, not insist on it and effectively accept the view of the government that we need to fundamentally change the law that exists. Those 10 basic employment conditions include maximum weekly hours of work, requests for flexible work arrangements—which, of course, denies the assertion made by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that there will not be flexibility—parental leave and related entitlements, annual leave, personal carer’s and compassionate leave, community service leave, long service leave, public holidays, notice of termination, redundancy pay and a fair work information statement that must be provided to employees.

This bill is a reflection of Labor policy and the will of the Australian people. As chair of Labor’s industrial relations task force and shadow parliamentary secretary for workplace relations last year, this bill is a great moment for me and indeed a great moment for this country. Over the last two years I spent much of my time travelling around and visiting 60 electorates, hearing directly the concerns of working families about how Work Choices had begun to erode their employment conditions and threaten their job security. I heard from administrative workers who were sacked after 20 years of loyal, effective and competent service for no reason and with no compensation. I met young workers in retail, tourism and hospitality who were forced to work 12-hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday with no penalty rates and no overtime. This was done legally.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Robert interjecting

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

I see the member opposite laughing at the fact that young workers were affected by Work Choices.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What wage increase did they get?

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

When he gets his opportunity, he can get up on his hind legs and tell us why he is in a party that supported Work Choices. The fact is that there was the capacity to do that legally; employers were able to do that to very vulnerable workers. Indeed, in a House of Representatives employment committee inquiry last year—and I was in attendance at this meeting—a peak employer representative said, without any shame or any concern at all, that the great thing about Work Choices was that it made lawful all previous employment breaches that were illegal in the hospitality industry.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What is his name?

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

The man said this in answer to a question, and it is in the transcript. I will find the transcript if you want me to embarrass this man. I can assure the member opposite that he said that the great thing about Work Choices is that it made legal what had been illegal in the hospitality industry. For me, that sums up Work Choices—a law that sanctions actions that were considered by earlier governments, Labor and conservative, as illegal.

Interestingly, and underlining the decency in most people, the people who spoke with me around the country in every state and territory were less worried about the loss of their own employment, their own employment security and their own employment rights and more worried about the effects that Work Choices would have on their children, their grandchildren and people they had never met. This is in stark contrast to the admission made this week by the former Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, who said that many cabinet ministers of the Howard government were not aware of the adverse effects of Work Choices. We are supposed to believe that the cabinet ministers of the former government were not aware of the adverse effects of Work Choices. This beggars belief. I know the previous government was out of touch, but for me to believe that cabinet ministers did not know the effects of Work Choices would have me conclude that they were incompetent beyond belief or insensitive to the concerns of ordinary working Australians.

Pat Farmer (Macarthur, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Youth and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Farmer interjecting

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

The member opposite should know that. The member who represents Western Sydney should know how many constituents of his were adversely affected by Work Choices. But, of course, he does not live there anymore, does he. He has gone to North Sydney. I understand where the shadow minister has moved to. I have been to his electorate. I went to his electorate for a launch of Green Corp; he did not turn up, I noticed.

Pat Farmer (Macarthur, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Youth and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Did you invite me?

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

I did indeed. The ministers of the previous government say they did not know the effects of Work Choices. That beggars belief because out there in the community people knew that workers were hurting and that more was to come. We know that, if the Howard government had been re-elected, they were going to go further. They were going to introduce ‘Work Choices Plus’. They were going to continue with it until there were no entitlements for workers left in this country. That was their plan, and the people of Australia knew that and chose not to support the re-election of the Howard government. The election result is a testimony to that fact.

While the Australian public made their position on AWAs crystal clear in November, it seems to me that those opposite are still debating their position. The public knows that there is still division in their party room. This division leaves the voters unclear as to whether the advocates or the critics of Work Choices will prevail. That is the problem for the public. They know there is division in the opposition; they just do not know whether the advocates or the critics of Work Choices will prevail.

Following the postelection declaration by the outgoing workplace relations minister that Work Choices was dead, it seems that some members of the Liberal Party have insisted on performing CPR. One of those was the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who, for 30 minutes today, managed to speak against Labor’s plan but then let us know that she was going to vote for it. She spoke against the bill for 30 minutes and foreshadowed a meagre amendment, which the opposition will not insist upon—and then they are going to vote for the legislation. So are we supposed to believe that the previous government know not what they did? I know the previous government were out of touch—I have just said that—and we know the Deputy Leader of the Opposition is still out of touch, but this proposition is very hard to believe.

I note that in yesterday’s press conference the Deputy Leader of the Opposition announced that the Liberals would not oppose the passage of this bill. Is this the same Deputy Leader of the Opposition that said she was going to defend AWAs to the death? Is this the same Deputy Leader of the Opposition that supported the deferring of the bill to a Senate committee? Was it a backflip or a somersault with a triple pike, or was she rolled in the party room and had to get up here and put a position she does not believe in? And why is that so important? I will tell the House why it is important. If the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who spoke just before me, is the person to draft the alternative plan for this country in the area of industrial relations, the people of Australia should know where she stands on this matter. No-one is clear on where the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the shadow minister for workplace relations, stands on these particular matters. All we do know is that her position changes day by day. Day by day the Deputy Leader of the Opposition changes her view. To extract an unequivocal commitment from her would be like getting one from Hamlet.

In September 2004—and this is where it all began—the then Prime Minister, John Howard, announced during the election campaign the industrial relations policy of the then government. In September 2004 we heard the supposed plans of the government that was seeking to be re-elected. On that day there was not one mention of any element of Work Choices. Prior to the 2004 election the Prime Minister announced the coalition’s IR policies with no reference to any of the pernicious provisions of Work Choices. The Liberal’s Work Choices legislation—and I have said this before in this place—was conceived in secret and rammed through the parliament and down the throats of ordinary working families. This was a shameful and disgraceful act. I have yet to hear the opposition accept responsibility for that behaviour. I am yet to hear them take any responsibility for introducing the deliberate capacity for people to be exploited by rogue employers. There was not one word of contrition from the opposition with respect to that particular matter.

This occurred, as we know, because the former government had control of both chambers. Up until then we had been saving the Liberal Party from themselves. That is effectively what we had been doing. Because the government did not have a majority in the Senate, we managed to civilise some of their IR laws. I do not agree with all the provisions of the 1996 act, but I would have to say that that act was civilised by the Senate. But after the election, which gave the coalition the majority in the upper house, we could no longer save them from themselves. Their true IR policies were reflected in the laws that were enacted through Work Choices. We could not save them from themselves.

It is important for me to comment briefly on the Deputy Leader of the Opposition’s view about pre-Work Choices AWAs, because she tries to put forward that pre-Work Choices AWAs was Liberal policy. It was not Liberal policy. The only reason that there was a no disadvantage test in the 1996 act was because the Senate insisted upon it. If it were not for Labor, the Democrats and other minor parties insisting on a no disadvantage test, there would not have been a no disadvantage test pre-Work Choices. So we were able, to some extent, to civilise what was uncivilised in terms of their industrial relations policies.

The legislation went through—it was rammed through parliament. The Senate inquiry lasted for five days. It did not leave Canberra. Members of parliament were refused the right to debate on behalf of their constituents. We had a situation where the bill—a radical piece of legislation—was rammed through the parliament. We knew then what would take place. Apparently ministers of the previous government did not know. The government then sacked the first minister, the member for Menzies, but kept the law. It sacked the minister but kept the law. It blamed the messenger. But giving the member for North Sydney the reins would not change a thing. As I said at the time, Hockey might have been the jockey, but it was still the same old horse—and what a nag it was. Effectively, that is why the opposition finds themselves across the chamber.

As Minister for Employment Participation, my key objective of course is to get people into work. We need to have a fair, effective, productive and innovative industrial relations system to make sure this country benefits. But it is important for the opposition to take stock of their position. The difficulty of all oppositions is to reconcile the fact that they lost the election. There is a process whereby people go through periods of denial. There is no doubt that the previous government denied the Australian people the chance before the 2004 election to decide whether they supported Work Choices. They denied MPs the right to debate Work Choices when it was introduced into the House. They denied a proper Senate inquiry for the most radical industrial relations laws the nation had ever seen. They denied—to themselves as well, apparently—that Work Choices was hurting working families, and today they are still in denial. We had the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and shadow minister for industrial relations effectively say nothing about the concerns the opposition have with Work Choices.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank the minister for his psychological insights and I call attention to the state of the House. (Quorum formed)

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

Obviously, the opposition do not want to have a debate about Work Choices. You have the shadow minister at the table, the member for Flinders, trying to prevent me from finishing this contribution to the debate. Work Choices will be killed off by this government. It was our commitment and it is the will of the Australian people. (Time expired)

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is somewhat ironic that the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008 is being introduced into the House at a time of record low unemployment across the nation and at a time when we have the lowest level of industrial disputes since records began to be kept over 100 years ago. Indeed, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition made it very clear that in the early 1990s more than 1½ million days were lost due to industrial disputation. In recent times it has virtually gone to nil. This bill has been brought into parliament at a time when real wages have increased by almost 20 per cent, with accompanying increases in productivity, over the preceding decade. Furthermore, the bill has been introduced at a time when Australia has eclipsed other nations—notably Brazil—with large mineral reserves. Australia is now a preferred mineral trading partner. At such a time, with economic prominence on our side, this bill is being introduced.

For the government to claim brazenly that these achievements owe nothing to the flexibility and the stability of our industrial relations system, including the use of individual agreements, is naive and, in all probability, dogmatic. To adequately reply to economic challenges, flexibility in the workplace is fundamental. A hallmark of this requisite flexibility is the concept of an individual agreement, which has been a vital element of employment agreements in this country for almost a decade. The Deputy Prime Minister said in her second reading speech that individual agreements are an unnecessary element of a modern industrial relations system. She further had the effrontery—and, dare I say, the industrial ignorance—to state, in reference to abolishing all individual agreements, that higher productivity and lower inflation would follow. Au contraire, Deputy Prime Minister! One could argue that Cuba’s dictatorial left-wing President has left the building and perhaps the Deputy Prime Minister’s outdated ideology could follow out the same door. For the Deputy Prime Minister to state that tightening labour markets, reducing industrial flexibility and almost guaranteeing unfettered union involvement in future industrial relations will increase productivity and lower inflation is simply absurd. I think the Deputy Prime Minister has got carried away with her active verbs. She should have stood up and told the truth plainly and used the words ‘lower productivity and increase inflation’. But clearly I do not live on planet Gillard—and nor, frankly, do the bulk of businesses.

Individuals must be free to enter into an agreement with an employer. The big question is: why is this right being denied by the government? Why can’t a worker organise an agreement with an employer that suits both of their circumstances—unencumbered by a third party, such as a union, or a third party instrument, such as an award? Any argument that individual agreements are somehow inherently evil just because they allow the bargaining away of entitlements for higher wages is clearly defeated, as many union collective agreements have done exactly the same thing. The question is: what is the difference between the union collective agreement and the individual agreement? The answer: union involvement. This bill is not about individual agreements; it is about the individual being involved without the strong-arm tactics of the union.

The deputy opposition leader made it very clear that Work Choices is no longer opposition policy. The government have touted in preceding weeks that they want this bill through parliament in just four weeks. This leaves little to be desired. Four weeks is not nearly enough time to conduct any sort of rigorous detailed economic modelling for a substantive change of this nature—a change that seeks to strip out the very flexibility that has led to record low unemployment and a record low level of industrial disputation. This bill seeks to reverse in excess of 10 years of modernisation of the Australian workplace. It is clear, however, how strongly the government feel about the importance of this ‘back to the future’ approach. It is astounding then that the government do not even want to endeavour to ensure that the amendment is economically sound. The government would have you believe this bill is about workers getting their fair share of rights in the negotiation processes between employees and employers, but may I suggest that this bill has potentially greater consequences. It will have the potential to put inflationary pressures upon the Australian economy in a time of increasing interest rate pressure, as the Reserve Bank exercises its monetary policy. It will allow for unfettered wage breakouts in the absence of productivity gains. It will reduce the willingness of employers to expand their employee levels, with a consequential increase to unemployment in the long run. The risk of rushing such changes to our workplace relations system is significant, and changes to the way we interact with our employers and employees frankly deserve greater respect—more so than a hastened process in the name of political expediency.

May I suggest quite strongly that if the government cared so much about working families as their rhetoric suggests, they would encourage the greatest level of scrutiny of this bill and might indeed express some gratitude towards the scrutineers. I strongly contend that a stringent Senate inquiry is the best way to apply this level of scrutiny, in fairness to the working Australians who will be impacted by the government’s rushed approach to this bill. It is fundamental and indeed sound economic sense that proper modelling and proper economic reasoning be applied to the assessment of this bill.

Labor’s transition bill seeks to allow extant individual agreements to run their course for up to five years from their signing. It will also allow a second type of individual agreement, an individual transitional employment agreement, or ITEA, to be created for new or existing employees for up to two years. These ITEAs are set to expire universally on 31 December 2009, for those organisations that already use individual agreements. ITEAs will be subject to Labor’s no disadvantage test, a test that is supported.

The move to create ITEAs has the potential to provide business with some of the flexibility that it requires to allow projects to be completed within suitable horizons, yet a maximum of two years is far too short. Frankly, anyone who has ever owned and operated a business knows this only too well. Furthermore, the creation of ITEAs is only allowed for organisations that have extant individual agreements within their employment structures. It does not cater for new organisations developing and looking for flexibility. This is a bill that looks backwards and not forwards.

The coalition is seeking to make ITEAs last for five years, simply to provide the degree of certainty for employers and employees that is needed for long-term, diverse projects. Employers cannot operate with a less than two-year level of certainty and a less than two-year horizon on their employment structures. The expansion of businesses that currently use individual agreements will be impeded by the relatively short period of certainty afforded by ITEAs while the government looks to develop its new awards structure.

I warned in my first speech of the dark spectre of union involvement cresting the horizon of Australian businesses. Already, the unions are promoting ‘rights’ in the draft National Employment Standards such as the ability to take sick leave apparently without a medical certificate and to take advantage of a whole range of other leave provisions. It is of great concern that Labor’s new National Employment Standards and some of the elements of the transition bill have the potential to increase the total cost of employment without providing for productivity gains. This equals higher inflation in any sound economic text. Increasing costs to businesses will feed into higher prices and add to inflationary pressures that will put pressure on monetary policy and hence interest rates. These changes therefore necessitate rigorous scrutiny—the scrutiny of a Senate inquiry.

Labor does not have a mandate to put the economic welfare of Australian families at risk. It fails to empathise with the struggles of employers or to understand that some businesses will not be able to cope with higher costs. Employers in Australia are not all large, faceless publicly owned corporations listed on the stock market. In many cases, they are family businesses, small retailers and service providers. They are sole proprietors who are out not to suppress workers but to follow their dream of setting up a business and building a future for their families. Fifty per cent of employees in this great country are employed by small businesses so, before this reckless government sets out on a warpath against small businesses, it should at least do them the courtesy of having a Senate inquiry.

My electorate of Fadden, together with the other two great Gold Coast seats of Moncrieff and McPherson, is the small business capital of the nation. There are over 11,000 individual agreements in Fadden. The percentage of individuals in Fadden on individual agreements is higher than the national average. This is an agreement between an employer and an employee. This is an agreement between the corner shop owner and the people who come to work that meets all of their requirements. This is an agreement for those in the highly competitive boat-building industry to allow for longer shifts but higher pay which fits in with the workers’ requirements and what they are able to do. This is about small business people who run newspaper shops, outlets and private services firms. This is about agreements with employees that meet employee circumstances in a rapidly changing 24-hour world.

We cannot put the livelihood of these small business people at risk. This bill needs extensive investigation. The consequences of this bill need to be understood. The unintended consequences—which, may I suggest, the government has not even begun to consider—need to be thrashed out within the construct of a Senate inquiry. A reduction in workplace flexibility and a return to mandatory collective agreements will increase the rate of strike action. It will increase the risk of the type of wage and inflation break-out that drove the economy into recession in the seventies, eighties and nineties. Frankly, I find it staggering that the Labor government has rejected an offer from the opposition to schedule an additional two Senate sitting weeks in the first half of this year to expedite the Senate inquiry process. Rather than seeking to bully the Senate into rubber-stamping her legislation, the Deputy Prime Minister should respect democratic processes and ask the Prime Minister to schedule additional Senate sitting days.

I understand that a militant union movement wants its pound of flesh. I understand that a militant union movement wants a return on investment for the money it has poured into the Labor coffers. I understand that a militant union movement is agitating for what it wants for getting this government into power. But we must note that, for the majority of businesses using individual agreements, though they will be permitted to use the new ITEAs—the new individual agreements—the two-year period is too short. It needs to be five years to provide the proper economic horizon those businesses need, irrespective of militant union demands. I clearly reserve the right to fight for new organisations to have the right to enter into individual agreements, noting of course that they will abide by the 10 National Employment Standards. The bill is rushed. It needs sound economic modelling. It needs to take account of the full gamut of intended and unintended consequences. It needs to go to a Senate inquiry. A reduction in workplace flexibility and a return to mandatory collective agreements will increase the number of strikes and the type of wage and inflation break-out that drove the economy into recession over the previous three decades. Only by maintaining individual agreements with a strong five-year horizon will this be averted.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008. In following the member for Fadden, I note that, whilst he is a new member in this place, I was here for the initial debate on the Work Choices legislation and I remember the lack of economic modelling, the lack of transparency, the failure of the government to inform the electorate during the election that it was introducing this extreme industrial relations reform to the Australian public and the guillotining of the legislation through this place. I think the opposition is being extended far more courtesy on this bill than we were on the Work Choices legislation when we were in opposition.

This bill keeps our promise to the electorate to abolish the Howard government’s extreme industrial relations laws. This bill keeps our promise to establish a fair and balanced industrial relations system here in this country—one that protects the rights of Australian workers and helps to grow the economy. In November 2005 I stood in this House and condemned the previous government’s introduction of Work Choices, one for which they had no mandate. The legislation that the previous government passed through this House crossed a hundred years of a fair and balanced industrial relations system in Australia. That legislation was not given appropriate time for debate. There was no transparency about it and there was little scrutiny. As I said before, the debate was guillotined in this House and there was certainly little courtesy given through the Senate. Work Choices had absolutely nothing to do with reform. Work Choices was one party’s ideological obsession, and despite the backflip on supporting this legislation I am still not convinced that given just half a chance the Liberal Party would not do it all over again. Work Choices was not about boosting productivity or increasing employment levels. It was nothing more than the most extreme attack on working families that this country had ever seen. The laws that were introduced back in 2005 undermined the pay and conditions of hardworking Australians. Not only that but they undermined family life. The previous government was willing to sell out the Australian people based on its own self-centred ideological obsession. It sucked money out of the public purse with its taxpayer funded propaganda campaign—and we saw the mouse pads here yesterday in the House. The previous government did everything in its power to avoid public scrutiny on Work Choices and to avoid telling the truth about these laws, refusing to release statistics on AWAs and refusing to tell how it had stripped out many conditions for working families.

Haven’t things changed! A few years on and things can change. I can think of two great examples that we have seen recently that show the Liberal Party seem to have changed their support in relation to Work Choices. We saw the first example of a change in attitude within the Liberal Party on Four Corners just recently. On Four Corners this week it was compelling to see how out of touch the previous government actually were when it came to industrial relations. Let me quote a passage from Four Corners. The member for North Sydney, Joe Hockey, stated on Four Corners:

Quite frankly when I took ... the job—

of Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations—

I don’t think many ministers in Cabinet were aware that you could be worse off under Work Choices and that you could actually have certain conditions taken away without compensation. And once I started to raise those issues with colleagues and they became more informed about the impact of Work Choices we introduced the fairness test.

What is debate in parliament about? Surely, members of the government who stood in this place supporting Work Choices would have informed themselves about the impact. Surely, ministers who all voted for Work Choices would have informed themselves of its impact. Case after case after case was raised here in this parliament during question time that demonstrated the impact of Work Choices—the stripping of penalty rates and award conditions out of Australian workplace agreements for little or no compensation. You would think they would have known. The previous federal election also sent a clear message on Work Choices. That was sent on 24 November 2007 when the Australian people voted for a new approach. The message could not have been clearer. The Australian people understood that Work Choices would leave them worse off and they resoundingly voted against the government that introduced it. They voted against Work Choices and against AWAs. The government made a clear, unequivocal commitment to the Australian people late last year—a commitment to restore fairness in the workplace to families across Australia. Australia’s workplace relations laws needed a new approach. In electorates across the country, Labor Party candidates were selling our message, as I did within my own electorate of Ballarat. The Australian people were well aware that by voting for a Rudd government they were voting for a new workplace relations system. The vote is in and now in this parliament we see many, many new faces—faces that are here today because they stood for office with the party that is willing to work with the Australian people on industrial relations policy. They stood up for families that demanded their government give them a fair go within their workplaces.

The bill we are debating in the House today keeps Labor’s promise. It keeps faith with our promise during the election campaign. With the introduction of the bill, restoring fairness to the workplace relations system has begun. This bill will amend the Workplace Relations Act with the abolishment of Australian workplace agreements. This bill will amend the act to return fairness to workers whose pay and conditions were stripped by Howard’s legacy, and it will abolish the Howard government’s so-called fairness test and implement a genuine no disadvantage test for all workplace agreements. Under this proposed legislation there will be no new AWAs. The bill prevents the making of new AWAs from the date of commencement. The Rudd Labor government believes that in a strong industrial relations system there is no need for AWAs.

The Rudd Labor government believes that all Australian employees are entitled to a safety net. That safety net comprises 10 National Employment Standards. The National Employment Standards will provide simplicity, fairness and flexibility for all employees. And we will provide this without the administrative burden that has developed through Work Choices. The National Employment Standards include: maximum weekly hours of work; requests by parents for flexible working arrangements—something I am about to become a little more interested in, I guess, not that I was not before; parental leave and other entitlements; annual leave; personal and carers leave and compassionate leave; community service leave; long service leave; public holidays; notice of termination and redundancy; and fair work information statements. Our standards outline the required safety net that all employees deserve. AWAs overrode the safety net, and that is why I back this bill 100 per cent. By implementing a new modern safety net, there is no need for AWAs or any form of statutory individual employment agreements. There is no need because the expectations of employers are met fairly in a way that is flexible for employees.

But we will not forget about those people that are currently on AWAs. We acknowledge the concerns that some of them may have. The Rudd Labor government has created a special instrument for employees on AWAs, to make a smooth transition to the government’s new workplace relations system. A special instrument called an individual transitional employment agreement, or an ITEA, is proposed in this bill and will be available to employers who employed an employee on an AWA as at December 2007. Such employers may use this instrument for new employees or for existing employees who are currently subject to an Australian workplace agreement. These individual transitional employment agreements will have a nominal expiry date of no later than 31 December 2009. After this date, Labor will have introduced its National Employment Standards and a modern, simple award system. This is a reasonable transition for employers and employees to Labor’s new industrial relations system. After this date, employers will have no reason to want to access any form of individual statutory employment contract.

It is also important to learn from the mistakes of the previous government. It is important to ensure our system does not disadvantage hardworking Australians. Interestingly, the member for North Sydney also is on record as saying that once he started to raise the issue with colleagues and they became more informed of the impact of Work Choices—again, a bill that had already been debated in this House, that they had already voted on—they then introduced the fairness test. But this so-called fairness test was not fair. The fairness test was not fair because it provided no proper protection for some award conditions and zero protection for others. The fairness test will not apply in the future. The test also created a backlog of agreements piled up waiting for the checks. This bill will end the compliance problem and create a more streamlined industrial relations system. Under our new proposal, there will be a new no disadvantage test. The no disadvantage test will cover all individual and collective workplace agreements. To pass our proposed no disadvantage test, ITEAs cannot disadvantage an employee against an applicable collective agreement or, where there is no collective agreement, an applicable award and the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard. The test is a reflection of the Rudd Labor government’s commitment to working Australians across this country.

As it stands, when a workplace agreement is lodged with the Workplace Authority it is required to pass the fairness test, for below a certain level. A failed fairness test can result in a costly compensation payment for employers. This will change once the elements of this bill become law. Under our proposed transition arrangements, ITEAs for new collective agreements and for existing employees will not begin until the Workplace Authority director has seen that they actually pass the no disadvantage test.

A Rudd Labor government has also proposed in this bill to repeal the provision of Work Choices that enabled employers to unilaterally terminate a collective workplace agreement—agreements that, once past their nominal expiry date, could give employers power to return staff to a limited number of standards, standards that in some cases were un-Australian and simply unfair. This government has no choice but to repeal this section of Work Choices. By doing so, we ensure that our proposed ITEAs will meet our national employment standards and leave no room for loopholes.

Another simple yet important change which we have introduced in this legislation is the requirement for employers to provide a copy of the workplace relations fact sheet to their employees—something we were also required to do. Businesses I have spoken to have said that this was just another one of the many administrative burdens that had no real purpose for an employer or in fact an employee. Requiring employers to provide a fact sheet on workplace relations was nothing more than a last-minute attempt by the Howard government to sell their Work Choices package. It was unnecessary and it will stop.

The Australian Industrial Relations Commission will also have the responsibility of checking those pre-Work Choices certified agreements that wish to be extended. The commission will have the power to grant any application made for an extension, so long as it is satisfied that both employer and employee agree with the terms of the arrangement. The bill implements sensible transitional arrangements, phasing out of the former government’s Work Choices legislation while requiring flexibility and transparency.

During the last federal election, this government also gave a promise to the Australian people that we would create a new modern award system. This new modern award system is a must if we wish to have a fair and balanced safety net for all employees. The bill that I support today comes good on that election promise. This bill allows for modernisation of awards—modern awards that protect entitlements such as penalty rates and overtime, awards that ensure a fair safety net, awards that ensure minimum award entitlements and awards that allow flexible working arrangements.

The opposition’s position on this bill remains to me unclear. The opposition has a choice not only in this chamber but in both chambers to support this bill, to support the mandate given to this government by the Australian people at the last election to abolish Work Choices. Many of us watched that somewhat excruciating press conference yesterday from the opposition spokeswoman announcing that the Liberal Party have now somehow seen the light and will support the bill in the House, if their amendments do not go through. Despite the fact that the opposition controls the Senate, the opposition spokeswoman was still unclear about what they would do in the Senate, getting bogged down in Senate procedural matters rather than making a clear, unequivocal commitment that they would let these bills pass unamended through both the House and the Senate. Working families needs these laws passed.

The Rudd Labor government stand firm on our industrial relations policy. All Australians know our position—they knew it before the election. Our position to abolish Work Choices and to eliminate Howard’s ideological legacy of AWAs has always stood firm.

This week has been another interesting week from the opposition in relation to its position on Work Choices. It is no wonder the party opposite had trouble understanding Work Choices, the legislation it introduced, because at present they seem to be having trouble finding a position on industrial relations overall. First they supported Work Choices and backed AWAs 100 per cent. Then the opposition decide that the so-called fairness test is required, because maybe—just maybe—those AWAs that they introduced did actually strip conditions from low-paid workers. They would not believe any of the cases we introduced into the House during question time but they thought: ‘We’ve got a problem here, so let’s introduce a fairness test.’ Then just last week we had the opposition in almost complete denial that they had lost the election, claiming that it had every right to seek the continuation of AWAs and that it would oppose this bill. Now the opposition as of yesterday is supporting the abolition of AWAs in the House—not sure what they will do in the Senate. It is difficult to predict what will happen next. Will the members opposite in the House support Work Choices or is it dead? Does the Liberal Party support it in the House but not in the Senate? We are going to wait and see.

The Australian people deserve to know where all members of parliament stand on such important issues. As the Prime Minister said yesterday in question time, the opposition is flip, flop, flapping when it comes to Work Choices. And, if they get back into office, I am not convinced that it will not just be some of the same old tricks again—the same old tricks because the old Howard legacy is still woven into the ideological minds of the Liberal machine.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I can tell you for certain today that the Rudd Labor government has a firm position on industrial relations for this country, and this is just the start with this bill. This bill represents the view of many Australians and it represents this government’s commitment to the Australian people that we took to the election campaign. It is the Rudd Labor government honouring our pact with the Australian people by abolishing Work Choices and unfair Australian workplace agreements. I commend the bill to the House.

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

I am very pleased to speak today on the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008. We know that, as previous speakers have outlined, this bill seeks to amend the Workplace Relations Act of 1996, make a number of changes to the framework for workplace agreements and enable the process of award modernisation to commence. I am speaking on this bill today because I have a vested interest on behalf of my electorate. Many people would not be aware that in the Canning electorate there are more than 20,000 people on registered individual agreements, AWAs—whatever you want to describe them as. It has one of the highest numbers of people on AWAs in Australia. The highest number of people registered on AWAs in this country is in the electorate of Kalgoorlie, held by my friend Mr Barry Haase. We will examine why this is more of a Western Australian phenomenon in a moment but, suffice to say, the new member for Brand, Gary Gray, has one of the highest numbers of people on AWAs as well—individual agreements that are negotiated in the workplace.

For those who think this is all about the mining industry, let me put their minds at rest. In Canning, there is one large miner and it is Alcoa. Interestingly, most of the workers at Alcoa are on union inspired agreements on behalf of the Australian Workers Union—something I will tease out further when I get my address-in-reply speech, because we know that the current member for Maribyrnong had something to do with activity around that area. I will further elaborate on that later. The fact is that many contractors around Alcoa are on individual flexible agreements. So the workers at Alcoa are not, but the contractors in and around the area are.

But the greater number of people that are on flexible agreements in the Canning electorate are not in mining; they are in areas like hospitality, construction, customer service, the tourism sector and even local government. I say to the journalists who stop us at the door in the morning on a regular basis: most of the journalists in this country are on individual agreements or AWAs. Many of them have said to me just privately, ‘Gee, I don’t want my flexible awards and conditions being disrupted by the interference on behalf of the unions by the Rudd Labor government.’

But let us talk more about the bill before the House today. This bill is designed to remove Australian workplace agreements from the industrial relations scene of this country. The government want them terminated as an industrial instrument. In her second reading speech, Minister Gillard announced that from 13 February 2008 the Australian Public Service would no longer offer AWAs. That is because she can do that. Why has the Australian Public Service been singled out? The reason is that it is heavily unionised. We know that most of the public service organisations in this country have almost 100 per cent union membership, so it is pretty easy to do it at that sort of workplace. But we also know that in this country less than 17 per cent of people in the non-public sector have decided to be a member of a union.

For my part, I used to be a union rep when I was a schoolteacher. I see the role of the union often to be quite constructive in terms of bargaining on behalf of their members when there are issues in the workplace. But when the unions decide to become political operatives, as they have done over the last few years, and inject themselves into the workplace purely for craven political reasons then they have gone beyond their brief. They are not there for the workers; they are there for themselves. Most of the union bosses, if they are not in this place, are out there as hereditary peers of the Labor Party, feathering their own nests. How many union bosses do you ever see sitting in cattle class? They are mostly up in the front of the planes while their workers are sitting towards the tail.

Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sitting next to you!

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

And sitting with the member opposite as well. Would you deny that? They are sitting with you as well. When the workers go on strike, do the union bosses go on strike? No. There is one rule for the union bosses and there is one rule for the workers. The union bosses use the workers as fodder to get themselves into a place like this. This place has become a retirement village for former union bosses. Let us go through them. We have the member for Batman; previously we had Bob Hawke, a former member for Wills; we have Simon Crean, the member for Hotham; the member for Throsby; and the member for Charlton. This is the progression of the union bosses. Eventually their retirement package is to come here. I wonder if Sharan Burrow will make her way here eventually and that will be her reward.

The reason this bill has been so passionately sought as the first item of business is that the union organisations not only put the members opposite here through their preselections but they also then decide what those members can do or say in this place. The first order of bidding in this House is because the unions having paid a very big price to get the Labor Party into office in this country. The figures vary from $30 million to $50 million. We know that, in individual electorates, unions placed so-called research officers, who were just people on the ground. For example, the former member for Petrie, Teresa Gambaro, told me that a union in her electorate had people there for months and months acting as extra officers on the ground. I wonder if the general union membership knew that that was where their union dues were going—to involvement in a political campaign at that level. She tells me that, in the last few weeks of the campaign, public servants from Queensland were given two weeks leave to go and work street corners and doorknock on behalf of the union to unseat her. And they were successful. There is no doubt about it: the unions were woken up and they gathered together in a very strong force. They worked very much in marginal seats and we saw the effect that they had—except in Western Australia, and that is where I will return to, because it is my responsibility to outline the case there.

One of the reasons Western Australia had such a good result at the last election was that so many people on AWAs were happy with their lot. A former Labor senator, John Black, in an article in the Australian newspaper pointed out the correlation between individual workplace agreements and voting intentions. One of the reasons is that people who can strike an individual agreement generally get a better deal. We heard the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and many other portfolios in this place yesterday talking about entitlements being removed from people when they took on AWAs. What she dishonestly did not say was that, when they agreed—and I emphasise the word ‘agreed’, because nobody could be made to take an AWA or an individual agreement; they chose to—to go on an individual agreement, they did so knowing that they would get a better deal. So, if they traded off some spurious things like picnic days—there was an award for picnics—for higher wages, what is the matter with that? In fact, I am aware of workplaces in Western Australia—bakeries, for example—where the casual workers were saying, ‘Could you take away some of those holiday entitlements from us, because we’re students and we actually want more money in our hands today because we want to pay the bills and be able to live a lifestyle today rather than at the end receive a lump sum.’

Ultimately people had a choice. This is what we as the former government were able to give the people of Australia: choice. The choice was theirs alone and they could choose to get themselves a better deal. But the Labor Party, even today, will dishonestly continue to tell you that things were stripped away and people were made to do things and they were worse off. At the end of the day, people received more money. One of the incongruous things about this bill, which I will return to in a moment, is the $100,000 limit.

What the Labor Party and the minister have done—and I think it is quite good, actually, even surprising—is, in place of the individual agreements that were on offer as AWAs, put in this bill the individual transitional employment agreements or ITEAs. ITEAs are for people who are currently on individual agreements and want to continue on them when they expire. People who are not now on any form of agreement as such will not be able to sign on to an ITEA. In fact, they will end up on a union inspired collective agreement.

One of the things the minister has done with the ITEAs—and, believe me, I must commend the minister on this—is that she has actually put in place what we consider to be a very good safety net or no disadvantage test. That is good for workers because, if you cannot be worse off, your only choice is to be better off if you choose to be on an individual agreement. If you choose to be better off and stay on an ITEA, that is good—there is nothing wrong with that. From that point of view, we would like to see the ITEAs. As has already been said, we will be voting for this in this House—there will be no opposition to that at all.

The minister is going to put to the House an amendment which will extend ITEAs from two years to five years. People will say, ‘Why five years?’ Because currently in a state like mine, Western Australia, there are people still able to sign on to an AWA which will run for five years. Why not have the synergy for people who would like to continue on an award that is struck today to continue for another five years? We know they are not all bad when we see companies like Telstra, the Commonwealth Bank and Australia Post continuing to offer their workers AWAs. Of course we must again explain that these people are offered AWAs as a choice. It is not mandatory; you cannot make them. It is as a choice. Why would people choose an AWA? Because they can tailor their job to a more flexible arrangement and get more money by trading off things that they do not deem necessary in their particular contract which would remain under an inflexible award.

This legislation, as I said, is something that we have agreed to. We know that the ITEAs will be tested by the Workplace Authority director and will then take effect as long as there is no lessening of conditions and we know, if people tried to offer lesser conditions, that under the legislation before us there would be penalties and remedies for noncompliance, so that way forward is good. But I now refer to the fact that, in today’s Australian, Alan Wood, the Economics Editor, has placed on record his concern about the way forward under the Labor Party in terms of workplace relations. He lists a number of motherhood statements made by the minister. They are all altruistic and very good, but in the end the fact is that the Labor Party will probably be unable to do any of this because of their exposure to and their compromising by the unions.

I have listened to a lot of first speeches by those opposite. I have been impressed by the quality of members that I have met on both sides. But there are obviously some standout members—we know the member for Charlton, Greg Combet. I listened to his first speech and I congratulated him on it afterwards. He is a very articulate and obviously well-versed person, particularly in his area of expertise, and that is workplace relations. What he did say which struck a chord with me was that, when the unions ran their scare campaign against Work Choices, within six weeks of running this very expensive campaign they had 60 per cent of the Australian people in their corner. This demonstrates that this scare campaign, like the ones the Labor Party ran previously on GST and the privatisation of Telstra—and you will notice they are not talking about rolling back any of that—really bit. At the end of the day, I will agree—and this is why we are agreeing to this—maybe the previous amendments made in 2006 were too bold in the fact that they did not provide the safety net and the fairness test that people were concerned about. It was not only the workers—it was their parents and their families—that were convinced by this advertising campaign. That is why we are going to support this way forward.

In terms of people in my electorate and even in the member for Kalgoorlie’s electorate, it is interesting that this legislation allows flexibility for people on over $100,000. In my state—and it is probably why people are happy and wanted to see the flexible arrangements provided by the previous government continue, so that is the way they voted at the last election—there are many people on over $100,000. You do not have to be a wealthy mining executive to get that. There are truck drivers, steel fixers and sheet metal workers in the Pilbara who are on well over $100,000. So you are going to have two classes of people.

I put out a press release before the last election, and it is relevant today, saying that the electors in Canning—and, I would say, the rest of Australia—were going to be unfairly treated because those on under $100,000 could be excused for missing out on the ‘fair’ part of Labor’s Forward with Fairness policy. What happens to the aspirational worker who wants to earn more than $100,000? If he does not get there, he is then being dragooned into the inflexible award arrangement—the union inspired agreement—that has been put before him or her. This is typical of the ideology of the Labor Party: ‘We not only want to take over your workplace; we want to drive down your wages and corral you into an inflexible agreement.’

As we know, the previous government was able to increase real wages for workers by over 23 per cent in the 11½ years it was in government. The previous Hawke-Keating government bragged about driving wages down and they only increased wages by less than two per cent. On one hand, you have one side of politics wanting to see real wage and productivity increases and, on the other, you have the other side wanting to control the worker so that they get a worse deal—as long as they control them; that is the endgame here. They want to control and dragoon the workforce so that it is ‘one size fits all’. At the end of the day, the Australian people will judge this government on reducing the flexibility of the workforce.

One of the reasons why Australia is one of the model economies of the world is that we have historically low unemployment and low inflation. We hear them screaming about inflation, and the fact is that we have never had inflation above three per cent. It was the skill of the previous government in all that time that kept inflation low while still having low unemployment. Very few governments ever have low unemployment and low inflation. Generally there are peaks and troughs that go with unemployment and interest rates, because they cannot control them. This was done not only because we reformed the taxation system but also because we reformed the workforce so that it would be more flexible and more productive. As Alan Wood says in his article today, at the end of the day this will not be done with the existing award system and there will be no gain without real pain. That is where we are heading with workplace relations under Labor—a lot of pain.

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008, which is the first step in abolishing the former government’s unfair and extreme Work Choices laws. I have just heard the member for Canning speak on this bill and I must take him to task on one comment, and it is a fairly salient point when you look at the former government’s inability to understand just what Work Choices did to people. He mentioned my colleague the member for Charlton, Greg Combet, and his maiden speech. Mr Combet said that, after the ACTU’s advertising campaign, 60 per cent of the public were very much behind the campaign. The member for Canning said that that represents the power of scaremongering. It was not a scaremongering campaign. When 60 per cent of Australians switch on because of an advertising campaign, it is because the campaign links in to their real beliefs and experiences and to their understanding of the threat to their livelihoods. That is why that campaign was so successful—because out there millions of workers around Australia identified with those sorts of threats and insecurities and they did not want it to happen, not just to them but to their kids, their family members, their neighbours and their friends. So I congratulate the ACTU and my new colleague Greg Combet on the work they did.

It is absolutely undeniable that three months ago, on 24 November 2007, the Australian people voted a resounding no to Work Choices. In doing so, they voted for change and elected a Rudd Labor government—a government that takes its mandate for change and for abolishing Work Choices in particular very seriously. With this bill the government delivers on a key election commitment that was strongly endorsed at the ballot box. Labor could not have been any clearer about its commitment to getting rid of the Work Choices laws. In December 2006 the caucus elected its new leader and deputy leader of the then opposition, and they both made very clear their promise to abolish AWAs and restore fairness to the workplace relations system. In April last year Labor released its Forward with Fairness policy, which again made clear that, if elected, Labor would abolish Australian workplace agreements. Six months ago, Labor released its Forward with Fairness implementation plan, which set out the sensible transitional arrangements a Rudd Labor government would adopt for implementing our promise to abolish AWAs.

Throughout the whole of last year every member on the government benches campaigned long and hard in our respective electorates across Australia to make clear Labor’s commitment to get rid of AWAs and introduce a fairer, simpler and more balanced workplace relations system. Unlike those opposite, who never sought a mandate at any election for their extreme Work Choices laws, well before the 2007 election the Australian people were left with no doubt as to Labor’s position on Work Choices and our steadfast commitment to abolish AWAs. Getting rid of AWAs and all statutory individual employment agreements has always been central to Labor’s workplace relations policy and we could not have been any clearer with the Australian people. That the former government spent more than $60 million of taxpayers’ money campaigning against Labor on workplace relations makes clear that members opposite were acutely aware of Labor’s policy. Indeed, there was barely a day last year when the former government did not criticise us for our policy position. Day after day they sought to attack Labor for wanting to introduce a fairer, simpler and more balanced workplace relations system in this country. In such a system there is no place for AWAs or any statutory individual employment agreement, since the essence of these agreements is to override the safety net.

Labor believes that all Australian employees are entitled to a safety net of 10 national employment standards, and we believe that employees earning less than $100,000 are also entitled to an extra safety net provided by modern simple awards. Yet members opposite continue even today with the charade that AWAs are some kind of panacea for the economy—no matter that the evidence of how AWAs have unashamedly ripped off Australian working families time and time again continues to mount. All is well according to them, but just this morning the shadow minister for workplace relations came into the House and foreshadowed an amendment to this bill in the hope of extending the life of AWAs and keeping Work Choices alive just that little bit longer. It is so hard for them. Apparently death by a thousand lashes is their preferred option for working families. Such tactics are nothing more than a deliberate attempt to deny the Australian people what they voted for. Members opposite treat the Australian people with contempt. When are they going to accept that Labor has a mandate to abolish AWAs and put in place a fairer, simpler and more balanced workplace relations system? That is, of course, what this bill sets out to do: it implements our transitional arrangements and it prevents the making of new AWAs from the date of the bill’s commencement. Despite the former government doing its best to hide the facts about AWAs, Australian working families have felt their impact over the last couple of years and they have rejected them.

Eighty-nine per cent of AWAs did cut at least one protected award condition. Eighty-three per cent removed two protected award conditions. Fifty-two per cent removed more than half, six or more, protected award conditions. Sixty-eight per cent excluded annual leave loading. Sixty-three per cent excluded penalty rates. Seventy per cent excluded shift loadings. Unfortunately, there were stories in our media around Australia every day that illustrated these examples. In my own area in the Hunter, I have a quote from April of a Rutherford tow-bar fitter who was sacked for requesting light duties after incurring a work injury—one of the victims of Work Choices. I know of two cases where workers were threatened to be sacked if they asked for time off to attend the birth of their children—these were fathers, of course. Those sorts of cases are what alarmed the Australian public. Those sorts of real experiences certainly convinced the Australian public that they did not want Work Choices.

The impact of the Work Choices legislation was particularly harsh on women in the workforce. Analysis last year showed that less than 20 per cent of AWAs contained family friendly provisions, and, meanwhile, women on AWAs working a 38-hour week earned almost $90 a week less than those on collective agreements. Last October, a report from the New South Wales Office for Women compiled data from the Newcastle community legal centre and other Sydney branches and it stated that female employees were definitely more vulnerable under Work Choices. The report found an instance of a woman having her hours severely cut after revealing to her boss that she was pregnant. Another woman was pressured to sign an Australian workplace agreement that would have cut her hourly rate from $17 to $12, and instead she gave up the job. Of the 220 employment cases handled by the community legal centres, it was found that half of the women dismissed without warning were no longer protected by unfair dismissal laws. I congratulate community legal centres. I know what a great assistance they are to people not just in employment disputes but with disabilities and specific social needs as well.

As the first woman to represent the federal seat of Newcastle, I am very pleased to support the Deputy Prime Minister, the first woman to hold that position and the first woman in Australia to be Acting Prime Minister, who has introduced such an important bill, which will help working women. So, for all Australians, the sooner that no new AWAs are signed the better. Upon commencement of this bill, no new AWAs will be signed. It is with some amusement, I suppose, that we all watched the backflip performed by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition before question time yesterday. I still remain confused as to her position, having heard an interview with her this morning on ABC radio and then seeing her in the House earlier. Confusion is definitely alive and well in the ranks of the opposition.

I do welcome the fact that the opposition have finally decided not to keep Work Choices alive in its entirety for as long as they possibly could and will be supporting some of this legislation. I think some of those opposite—perhaps like the member for Paterson, who suffered swings of up to 15 per cent from working families in his electorate and barely held on to his seat—will perhaps be considering their options a little more carefully when it comes to such legislation.

In my own electorate, 40 per cent who responded to a survey were particularly concerned about Work Choices. They will be pleased today. One of them told me:

My employer changed the title of my position, added additional responsibilities and reduced my monthly pay by 10 per cent.

Another constituent said:

I have been offered a lower paying job along with 71 other staff. I am choosing to leave the company and dread facing new conditions in the workforce.

Yet another constituent said:

I had to sign a contract for employment which was 20 to 30 pages long, and I did not really understand it. It also stated the employer could let me go with 24 hours notice.

Another person, from Hamilton said:

Since this contract has been put in place, my pay has dropped significantly for sick day and holiday inclusions.

And a constituent from Lambton said:

My 18-year-old daughter was given casual work, only to find her AWA includes no penalty rates for weekends. Young people do not have the knowledge to be able to understand what they are signing.

That is exactly why the Australian public responded so well to the ACTU campaign. This is what was happening to them, their children and their family members.

Fortunately, this legislation is the first nail in the coffin of Work Choices and the Australian people will take it out on the opposition if they refuse to join us in hammering that nail. I join the Deputy Prime Minister in calling on the opposition to help us get this legislation through the House and through the Senate by Easter. The bill does introduce sensible transitional arrangements to allow employers and employees who have been using AWAs to prepare for the full implementation of our new system in January 2010. Employers using AWAs as at 1 December 2007 will be able to offer individual transitional employment agreements, ITEAs, to existing employees on AWAs and to new employees. Importantly, ITEAs may not be used to strip existing employees off their collective agreements. The bill also extends the operation of transitional arrangements such as NAPSAs until the commencement of Labor’s new workplace relations system.

The bill also abolishes the previous government’s so-called fairness test—I remember that fairness test; my goodness! All the advertising money in the world just could not sell that sham. It also establishes a true no disadvantage test for all workplace agreements. For ITEAs, the no disadvantage test is applied against an applicable collective agreement in the workplace or, if there is no such agreement, against an applicable award. Certified agreements will generally continue to operate in accordance with the current rules. They may no longer be terminated unilaterally following the nominal expiry date on 90 days notice, unless the AIRC is satisfied that the termination is not contrary to the public interest. Pre Work Choices certified agreements can be varied and extended by agreement, so parties to those agreements can avoid a double transition.

The bill also establishes the process to create new, modern awards by 31 December 2009 that are simple and easy to understand and apply. Together with the National Employment Standards, the awards will form an integral part of the safety net for working Australians under the government’s new system. The Australian Fair Pay Commission will perform only the annual review of minimum wages, as any other exercise in relation to pay scales and minimum wages will interfere with the AIRC’s award modernisation process. I have great confidence in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission’s ability to harmonise and modernise our award systems. The government has already started consultation on the National Employment Standards, which will be the 10 key minimum entitlements for all Australian employees and will apply from 1 January 2010. This consultation is a refreshing change from the former government, which did not consult key stakeholder groups about Work Choices, let alone consult the Australian people at any election.

This bill also removes the obligation on employers—quite a burdensome one—to hand out the former government’s workplace relations fact sheet. This obligation was really part of the former government’s hard sell on Work Choices. They spent $122 million in taxpayer funds on advertising trying to sell Work Choices. I was pleased to see the last of those pamphlets being pulped on Monday. Sadly, those mouse pads discovered yesterday still need a home, and who knows what else we will find? Perhaps the former government could have directed their information campaign—as they called it—to their own cabinet. After all, we did discover on Four Corners on Monday night that many of them, including the former Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Joe Hockey, did not even know the detail of Work Choices. Perhaps they could have saved some money by sending a memo to cabinet rather than printing hundreds of thousands of mouse pads and pamphlets. More broadly, this government is committed to reducing the waste associated with the former administration’s advertising excesses. This includes asking the Auditor-General to approve advertising or information campaigns with a budget of more than $250,000 and to verify that they are not political and provide essential public information. It is something we will all welcome.

In speaking on this legislation and considering the hardship that employment uncertainty creates for working men and women with children, I digress and take this opportunity to draw to the attention of the House the recent job losses within the steel industry in my electorate of Newcastle. Certainly, these workers are on collective agreements. The Hunter is the region with the highest take-up of collective agreements in Australia. We have a very cooperative relationship between our employers, unions and workers. After the closure of BHP and the end of steel making in Newcastle, OneSteel was demerged from BHP and continued a significant presence in Newcastle, particularly in the manufacturing of steel and metal products. At the time, it was evident that OneSteel had been spun off with poor capital equipment and limited capital for investment. I do pay tribute to the OneSteel workers and management, particularly Geoff Plumber, who worked cooperatively to build OneSteel into the successful company it has become.

Last year when OneSteel, seeking efficiencies and ways to increase its competitiveness, merged with Smorgon Steel, the pain for Newcastle began again. Plants were rationalised and of course the first ones to go were those older plants in Newcastle, the same plants that kicked off the business growth and success that OneSteel has enjoyed in recent years. That particularly hurts. Last year, OneSteel announced the closure of the pipe and tube plant, with a loss of 240 jobs. Last week, OneSteel announced the closure of its bar mill at Mayfield, with a projected loss of a further 220 jobs. I am told the former Smorgon-Comsteel bar mill will absorb 40 of these workers. Of course, some of the older workers may see the redundancy offer as a favourable early retirement option. But 440 working families have had to face uncertainty regarding their future employment and have had to make decisions, hoping their choice will be the right one for their family’s long-term financial security. I know that OneSteel will ensure that all workers’ entitlements are paid in full, and I know that our government will ensure that Centrelink and the Job Network are ready to give maximum assistance to these workers and their families. I am also aware that in the first round of job cuts 80 per cent of those who actually left OneSteel found alternative employment. So there is a market in our manufacturing sector for skilled workers. I sincerely hope that the workers currently facing redundancies will also find satisfying and long-term employment.

The closures at OneSteel will have further implications. It seems that OneSteel will cease making a certain spring steel in a particular bar size from 2009. This product is used in spring making by manufacturers in Newcastle, Adelaide and Queensland. It is used by Bradken in iron ore wagons in the Pilbara. It is used by the mining industry and I know there is concern amongst these manufacturers that they will not be able to access this product. I am asking on the record for OneSteel to clarify whether this latest closure will mean the loss of this product. I am sure that when the merger was looked at by the previous government and its agencies there would have been some assurances that products would still be available to local manufacturers. It would be a great pity if these closures and restructures by OneSteel saw our local manufacturers forced to import raw bars from China or India. I am told there is a world shortage of this material and that there will be problems in assuring a supply of the grade and quality that is required. So I do ask OneSteel to clarify that situation for me. I also hope that in the Hunter the unions, my colleagues and I can assist the OneSteel workers into better employment options. I support the legislation before us and congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister on her sterling work in this field. Her clarity is something to marvel at and certainly her ability to put forward this legislation so quickly is something we all take great pride in.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Andrews, I am sorry you are leaving the chair at this stage because you were so much a part of the success of the former government. When we hear from the member for Newcastle about the situation she has just raised with the OneSteel employees, we know it is the fact the government has been handed a Holden Statesman, state-of-the-art, powerful economy that is going to allow those people who have lost their positions, or who have been made redundant, to go on and get a job. Their skills will be claimed and nurtured by the rest of Newcastle. That would not have been the case before the Howard government came to power.

I am reminded that, over these last 10 years, there were those who made constant criticisms of the Howard government. No government will ever go without criticism. Also, it is very easy to be against something—for 10 years, it was very easy for people to be against whatever the Howard government did—but it is very hard to be for something, to look at what could be the best for our community and to chase that down, to look at ways that we can encourage people into the workforce and grow our workforce right across the nation. I cannot forget the power of small businesses as a result of the changes to the industrial relations that we are talking about today.

These changes started in the Hawke-Keating years and went through into the Howard years. Perhaps the Australian people said at the last election, ‘You’ve taken them one step too far.’ But what we have today is the political reaction. The legislation before us today, the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008, is the political reaction to the election that we have just had and to the conversation that we had with the Australian people about Labor’s position as against the government’s position over the 12 months in the run-up to the election. But we should understand that this new Labor government has a debt of $20 million to pay to the union movement. Part of this legislation is clearly to pay that debt. Coming out of small business myself, my concern is that the response of the new government will go too far and it will begin to offend the strong economy that has been handed to it.

In an interview with Gerard Callinan—radio ABC Gippsland—former minister Peter McGauran, the member for Gippsland, was asked: ‘What was so different about your seat of Gippsland and Russell Broadbent’s seat of McMillan in this election campaign? And what was the difference in the state election?’ Peter McGauran explained that Gippsland does not take its current prosperity for granted. We are different. I know there are parts of Australia that have gone through massive change and that people have had to reskill or go into different areas, but Gippsland has been different.

On the industrial relations front, our unions know very well that their local members have supported them over a long period of time. Going right back to when I was the member for McMillan from 1996 to 1998, I remember how we were working through the regional forest agreements with the support of the union movement. There were changes in the pulp and paper industry. There were changes in the dairy industry that we had to deal with. There was the loss of white-collar jobs throughout the whole of Gippsland. There were massive changes to the power industry with its privatisation. That caused very high levels of unemployment and enormous pressure on the community.

As members of parliament—and I describe Peter McGauran; me; Gary Blackwood, the member for Narracan; and Russell Northe, the member for Morwell—we are but reflections of our community, the times that we have been through and the unions that we have worked with. Industrial relations is very, very important to us—the power industry, the pulp and paper industry and the enterprise agreements. Small businesses were very happy with the unfair dismissal provisions that the coalition government put in place; they made changes to the legislation of the previous government. The extremity of what we went through as a community meant that the whole of Gippsland was a hair-trigger for the nation. The reason the attack from Labor fell on deaf ears across Gippsland was that the unions—the people in the community—knew that their members in parliament were reflecting their concerns in this place and wherever else they needed to.

From Peter McGauran’s activity and his support for me in regard to dairy farmers most recently, I know that he is listening closely to his community. Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, after receiving a phone call from home, I can report that it has been raining in Gippsland since early this morning. You might think that that is no big deal for Gippsland. Queensland has been having enormous problems with rain, but we have been aching for rain for a long time. So, on behalf of my dairy farmers and my local community, I want to let you know that it is raining in Gippsland and that that is good news. Good news was part of our election campaign. We talked about the positives. The negative was not going to run in McMillan and Gippsland because we had taken a long time to get to this point of prosperity.

It was embarrassing to have 25 per cent of the kids in your area out of work. There was no answer for it. What were you going to say—75 per cent got a job? What about when 18 per cent of your community could not get a job? In some parts of Gippsland unemployment is still high. What we saw with the Howard government’s strong and careful economic management and in the thrust of industry and small businesses down the eastern seaboard of Australia—and no-one can disagree with this—was the creation of some 250,000 jobs. That was only in the last three years. It is about real people with real jobs. What were those jobs? My argument here is that, if Labor are going to overreact on this issue, they will do damage to those people who received those jobs—and they were not part-time jobs.

What would an employer do if they were worried about an employee coming on? They would put them on part time and if it did not work out they would cut their hours. What did they do this time? In this last three-year period, they put them on full time, 95 per cent of them worked out, the employers were happy, the employees were happy and nearly 250,000 people got jobs. This has got to the point where the unemployment figures across Gippsland that I just talked about, which were so high, have come down to less than five per cent over most parts of Gippsland. That is remarkable. It is remarkable for the nation that the unemployment rate could be down to 4.1 per cent. It must have galled the opposition during the Howard government years that there were such remarkable economic figures and such remarkable budget surpluses.

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Talk about the bill.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am talking about the bill. This is what this bill is all about: the relationship between employer and employee. It is not true, as Labor have promoted, that every employer is a rogue. That is the message that you were sending across. You sent that to big business and small business. Your shadow spokesman at the time threatened them with retribution if they did not fall into line, and had to be called to account. Who by? By the then opposition leader, Mr Rudd. He had to call the now Deputy Prime Minister of this country to account. However, I digress.

This is about the relationship between employer and employee. This argument has been going on in this place for 100 years. I do not believe that Labor in office will make the sorts of changes that you are promoting that you will make. I do not think that you will be able to pay this $20 million debt to the union movement. I do not think that they will get all they want from you, because there are people out there who know that this country will run better while we have this industrial relations program. I am quite supportive of what you have put forward, because you have individual workplace agreements. I am supportive of that. I cannot go back on what I have said before. I am a person who supports flexibility in the workplace, and I will continue to support flexibility in the workplace.

There has never been a time when you could not join a union in this country and could not have the union go in to bat for you. I will give you an example. I will go back a bit and I will talk about the relationship between the unions and me, because it is important. When we were doing those regional forests agreements, the CFMEU rang me and said, ‘We are not at that roundtable that you are about to have with the Prime Minister.’ I rang Graeme Morris, who at the time was the PM’s offsider. I said, ‘Graeme, the CFMEU want to be at the table.’ He said, ‘I’ll have to talk to the boss’—John Howard—‘about that.’ He did. The member for O’Connor sat next to the Prime Minister at that roundtable. I knew that my unions in my area were represented at that table. That is how we work.

I say to the members in the House that our relationship and what we did—and when I say ‘we’ I am talking about Gary Blackwood, the Russell North representatives, Peter McGauran and I—were totally in support of workers and unions in our area. We have never moved from that. And, by the way, they did not forget it at the last election, either. They did not forget who had been their supporter and who had looked after them and represented them in this place. That is why they voted the way they did in McMillan: because they had a representative, they knew that they had a representative and they supported that representative.

There were people who felt that they needed collective bargaining support. There is no doubt about that. They had their say. Obviously, 40 per cent of people were concerned about Work Choices. Whether Work Choices was the catalyst for discontent with the government or time was up, nobody knows. But what we do know is that the people of Australia have spoken, and I for one respect what they have said. I believe that the shadow minister, the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, has very clearly stated her case and been very clear about where we stand as a party and what we are prepared to put forward to this parliament. But you must remember that there are consequences. If you get this wrong, there will be consequences. Governments cannot afford to get things like this wrong, because they affect the lives of individual people.

A lot of people have gained employment in this country under the excellent economic management of the Howard government. We have had very low unemployment and reasonable interest rates—especially compared to what I have been used to in the past, when interest rates were 22 per cent for small businesses and 18 per cent for households and you had something like 20 per cent of people unemployed. I remember those things. I do not expect everybody in the House to remember those things. I do. I see interest rates at eight per cent, and that is what I was paying 35 years ago when we moved into our house.

These things are important for the daily lives of people. As I said the other day, these laws are important because they affect those at the bottom level of employment—such as those people along the eastern seaboard who got jobs under the Howard government. I believe that the Howard government will be seen by history as having a proud record of economic management and that the Treasurer of the day, Peter Costello, will be seen to have managed this economy very well. Who were the beneficiaries of that? Not the old union movement, with their ‘We’ll keep the jobs for our boys, thank you very much, and lock in the jobs for them.’ Instead, the jobs filtered down to those who were less skilled, unskilled and unable to get a job. If we have one responsibility as parliamentarians in this place it is to have regard to those people who are least able.

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You abandoned them.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is one thing that we did not do. We did not abandon them. We got a whole lot of those people into work. What could happen here if the elastic band that has been pulled by the Labor Party on industrial relations is let go and springs back too far is that the least able to get employment will be first affected, not those who have already locked in a job in the union movement.

A reasonable amendment will be put before this House, which could be easily accommodated by the Labor government except for the political charge against them by the union movement. If that charge were not there—if they were prepared to consider a reasonable amendment put forward—then we could go on progressively. Whilst the arrangements in this bill being discussed today are important, the real hit will come later, when the government proposes greater reform. This is the response to the election campaign. The greater response to the changing of awards, which will come later on in the parliamentary term, is the one that the Australian nation will have to watch more carefully. If the government are going to try to pull us back even further than where we have been in the past, those who are least able will pay the highest price. These are important issues for the nation; otherwise, we would not be addressing them. They are not, and never have been, the only issues.

This morning I was thinking through these issues and I came to think about my own family and our employment of people over a long period of time. I know that there are those who have worked with us who speak very well of my dad and mum and our family as employers. I know that most of the people who employ people in this country, especially in small business, cherish their workers. Are there a few rotten apples in life? Yes. And that will continue to be the case. Yes, we do need workplace arrangements that allow people to be protected. I think that with what we have come to put in place here, if there is a safety net, people will feel more comfortable. But let us not do anything in the legislation on industrial relations laid down by this House to offend the economy as a whole.

When the economic modelling for the changes proposed in Labor’s legislation comes out, we need to be on guard to make sure that this is not just an ideological push because we want one thing and they want another. This should be about what will benefit the nation as a whole and benefit our young people into the future. Yes, it was clear to me that there were some people, grandparents particularly, who worried about whether their children would be able to join a union and be protected. Yes, they can now and they have been able to in the past. As I said, we will be supporting this legislation, but I commend the proposed amendment to the House.

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have listened to the contribution from my friend the member for McMillan and I must say that I was quite confused about the essence of his speech. He asserted, as have other members on his side of the chamber, that somehow the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008, speedily brought into this House by the Deputy Prime Minister, is somehow a debt to the union movement. The member for McMillan should understand that this is a debt to the Australian people. The Australian people spoke very loudly and clearly at the last election, and there can be no doubt in anybody’s mind that the Your Rights at Work campaign touched the real-life experiences of so many people across the length and breadth of Australia that even the so-called ‘Howard’s battlers’ deserted the government in droves. It is their rightful expectation that among the first issues to be debated in the 42nd Parliament will be a transition bill to get rid of the most extreme, unbalanced and regressive industrial relations policies ever inflicted on the Australian people.

Central to that agenda, of course, was the law of the individual contract so much supported by the former Prime Minister and the former Treasurer. They wanted the individual contract to be the centrepiece of their new industrial relations regime. By so doing, they overturned the hundred years of history of a fair conciliation and arbitration system that was the envy of many countries in the world, a system that had an effective award base that provided a safety net of industrial conditions for all Australian working people. So let us forget about this nonsense that somehow this bill is a debt to the union movement. I think the Australian community spoke very loudly and clearly, and today we see in the debate on this bill our commitment to the Australian people to get rid of individual statutory arrangements and to bring into being a fair, flexible and balanced industrial relations system.

I heard the contribution from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition this morning and I thought it revealed a rather naive and selective interpretation of the legacy of the Howard government’s approach to industrial relations. Her comments in the debate this morning were as confusing as her party’s flip-flopping about the issue of AWAs over the last few days. I am very relieved, as would be the Australian people, that wiser heads appear to have prevailed in the party room yesterday—at least until this point in time—and that now they are saying Work Choices is dead and, along with it, the AWAs, those insidious instruments that were used to undermine the conditions of so many working people across our nation.

For the record and, in particular, for the benefit of new opposition members, I want to say a little about the history of the former Prime Minister’s attitude to the issue of industrial relations in this nation. Anyone who knows anything about that history knows that the former Prime Minister was very much on the public record as having a very well defined position about what he wanted to achieve over his many decades of involvement in public life and in this parliament. Certainly John Howard never did anything other than publicly disclose that his long-term agenda—an agenda he pursued for all the time that he was in parliament—was to overturn our unique system of conciliation and arbitration and the protection that working people in this nation had, from the early days of the Harvester judgement to the creation of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, under a system which understood that everybody needed to have the underpinning of fair and decent industrial entitlements and standards.

The Four Corners show the other night was really revealing about many issues. I nearly choked when I heard Joe Hockey, a former industrial relations minister, say this on TV:

Quite frankly when I took over the job I don’t think many ministers in Cabinet were aware that you could be worse off under WorkChoices and that you could actually have certain conditions taken away without compensation. And once I started to raise those issues with colleagues and they became more informed of the impact of WorkChoices we introduced the fairness test.

The interviewer said to Mr Hockey, a former industrial relations minister:

You’re saying to me that Cabinet colleagues were unaware that you could be worse off?

JOE HOCKEY: Some were, yeah, yep.

LIZ JACKSON (To Joe Hockey): Care to name them?

JOE HOCKEY: No, not really! (Laughs) Not really!

Then Andrew Robb, also a senior minister in the Howard government, said:

I think it was the most powerful symbol of the fact that we had stopped listening and that we’d run our race and that we’d been there so long, that we were no longer alert to the views of the Howard battlers, the people who’d put us there in the first place.

It is hard to believe that this level of ignorance prevailed around the cabinet table. If it did, I contend that it was a gross dereliction of duty and responsibility to the millions of hardworking Australians and their families for cabinet ministers to say on the public record that they had no idea that certain conditions could be taken away without compensation. If there was that ignorance, it does not absolve cabinet members of their complicity in the most extreme industrial relations legislation ever visited on the Australian people.

I wonder whether their ears were closed when, in the very early days of the Work Choices regime, a brave shop steward called Mrs Harris, who worked for Spotlight, came forward. Mrs Harris said on the public record, ‘I was a former supporter of the Howard government, but I can’t support a government that takes away long-established entitlements from decent working people.’ Do you remember the Spotlight AWA? What the Spotlight AWA did to the workers in that enterprise was very common. We found that that Spotlight agreement had no penalty rates for Saturday or Sunday work and no penalty rates for public holidays. If a worker on the Spotlight AWA worked on a public holiday, they got $14.30 an hour in compensation, compared to their award rate of $35.70. Their only compensation was a day off in lieu at ordinary rates. In that agreement, and so common among all those agreements in the early days of the Work Choices regime, there were no overtime payments, no paid rest breaks, no annual leave loadings and no meal, uniform or first aid allowances.

People like the former minister for industrial relations go on the public record and say that they sat around the cabinet table but had no idea of these terrible things that were happening to ordinary working people. You knew, because the Office of the Employment Advocate actually did a survey of the first 250 AWAs. What did that show? Nearly one in five of them excluded all award conditions and replaced them with the barest of the five minimum legislated standards. We know from that survey that two-thirds of them scrapped leave loadings and penalty rates. We know that more than half removed shift allowances and around one-third modified overtime loadings and rest breaks. Yet the former industrial relations minister can get up and say on the public record in a TV interview that they did not realise that all of these terrible things were happening. Their ears must have been closed, because everybody on the opposition benches who was talking to their community and listening to their constituents knew the tragedy that was occurring out there of people being unfairly treated in the workplace and having their long-standing entitlements ripped away without any proper compensation.

For the new members of the opposition, let me just remind you that John Howard was on the public record all of his life in politics as saying that one of his long-term dreams was to overturn a system that had worked so well in this country, a system that provided a balanced and fair industrial relations framework and, as I said earlier, a system that was the envy of many countries around the world. In 1996, when John Howard was first elected, he wanted to visit on the Australian community a very similar industrial relations outcome to the one he achieved under Work Choices. But, much to the satisfaction of the Australian community and working families, the Senate in those days put a brake on the most extreme parts of the proposals. When the Howard government introduced its first IR bill in 1996, it sought even back then to abolish the no disadvantage test that Labor had put into place to ensure that enterprise bargaining was built on a framework of decent and fair minimum standards.

I think it would be appropriate for the Deputy Leader of the Opposition to familiarise herself with the history of the no disadvantage test and to understand that that test only survived because the Senate at that time rejected the extreme conditions that John Howard wanted to first introduce back in 1996. The majority of the Senate committee that looked at John Howard’s first industrial relations bill back in 1996 said:

The protection of conditions underpinning agreements is one of the most important provisions available …

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member for Throsby will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.