Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I cannot think of any other time in recent memory where the importance of having a job was more paramount to the minds of Australians and their families. It is very unfortunate to observe that we live in an era where we hear and read virtually every day about company closures, layoffs and sackings. The Rudd government inherited record low unemployment when it came to office in 2007. The previous Howard government created 2.2 million jobs and, basically, every Australian who wanted a job could find one. Since the change in government, of course, we have seen unemployment start to rocket back up. Unemployment currently stands at 5.4 per cent and is forecast, perhaps optimistically, to peak at 8½ per cent in 2011, which means one million Australians will be out of work. This is a staggering figure particularly when considered against the record low levels of unemployment left for this government.

Labor seems to take absolutely no responsibility for the Australians who are losing their jobs on a daily basis since Labor came to power. They just shrug their shoulders and say that every job destroyed is just a result of the global financial situation. Yet Labor’s policy is making what is obviously a difficult situation far worse, and this bill is a perfect example of that. Yes, we have a global economic downturn and, yes, it does create serious challenges for this country, yet Labor’s reregulation of the labour market will make it harder for the private sector to create jobs and will make sure that Australians lose their jobs in increasing numbers.

We on this side of the House recognise that jobs and jobs growth are the single most important issues facing Australia at this time. Everything we do in this parliament, every arm of policy, should be aimed at Australians who want a job to have a job. Labor will come in here and they will say that jobs are their No. 1 priority—although with this government, of course, you see many competing priorities. But then we see job-destroying legislation like this which shows how hollow their slogans on jobs are. This side of the House realises that it is enterprise that creates jobs, not government. To keep people in jobs and to create jobs, enterprise must be encouraged to grow and given the confidence to employ. When enterprise suffers, jobs and workers suffer.

We have previously stated that the Fair Work Act is bad law. It gives enterprise and business reasons not to employ people, reasons not to grow and reasons not to prosper. It discourages Australia from moving forward. It forces workplaces back in time to the 1970s and blissfully ignores the challenges and realities that face Australian workplaces in this new millennium. This is an act which penalises innovation, which discourages workers and business from directly talking to each other and which gives unions and the industrial umpire a bigger say in employment relationships than those who actually matter: workers and business.

The worst thing about this legislation is that it directly destroys jobs. There is no doubt that it will, along with most of Labor’s bungled and botched policies like saddling Australians with the highest level of peacetime debt, make the challenge of economic recovery far more difficult. Therefore this bill, in its current form, will make the disastrous effect of the Fair Work Act on jobs far worse. Perhaps the best example of its job-destroying capability is the so-called modern award system. The changes as they are proposed in this bill will directly destroy tens of thousands of Australian jobs. The coalition has been and will continue to be supportive of a simpler and more modern and relevant system of awards; indeed, we proposed simplifying that system when we were in government. But we are not supportive of the rushed, botched and bungled way in which Labor seeks to achieve what is an admirable end. Both unions and business alike have described this award modernisation process as soul destroying, rushed and nightmarish. Of course it was Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Julia Gillard’s own award modernisation request that promised us that her system of new modern awards would ‘not disadvantage employees or increase costs to business’.

Clearly, it is a promise she has been unable to keep. The union movement tells us that employees will be disadvantaged and that workers will be worse off. Those representing industry say that business will face massively increased costs and they will simply have to pay more to keep existing staff in jobs. Nobody believes that this minister’s request can be implemented. Even the minister herself has now come to recognise how hollow and ill-conceived her promise to Australian workplaces has been.

The coalition tried to amend the Fair Work Bill when it was in the Senate to include the minister’s own words, when she made the award modernisation request, that it would not disadvantage employees nor increase costs to business. Astonishingly, Labor senators voted that down. These were the minister’s own words but Labor senators voted down that amendment. With that in mind, the coalition has called for this whole process of award modernisation to be suspended until the minister can find a way to honour her commitment to Australian workplaces.

Failing that, we will move amendments to this legislation that address the worst aspects of this bungled policy. This bill must surely be embarrassing for the minister as it contains provisions that specifically acknowledge that employees will be disadvantaged by the modern award system. It even goes so far as to create a way for employees who are worse off to have their problem fixed. This is a remarkable legislative recognition by the government and this minister that her grandiose modern award promise was false, misleading and nothing more than a pipedream.

But this award modernisation process is far worse. It will result in massive increases in costs to business at a time when enterprises throughout the country are already struggling to prosper and grow. Estimates vary from industry to industry, but there is an overwhelming body of evidence that shows that business will have to pay more to keep their workers. In some sectors it will be by amounts of up to 50 per cent. This will be a disaster for Australians who hold a job or who want to get a job. I want to turn to what some of the industries are saying about this policy and what it will mean for them. The Australian Retailers Association said:

With unemployment at 5.7% and rising, retailers don’t need the pressure of increased labour costs which will force many to cut jobs.

The Australian Retailers Association is saying that this policy will force their members to cut jobs. They went on to say:

Smaller retailers will not cope with the collective pressure of increased labour and compliance costs in the modern retail award and the Fair Work Bill. They will restructure their workforce, shed staff or close shop.

So this policy will make retailers restructure their workforce, sack some of their workforce or close their doors completely. The Australian Retailers Association costings indicate an increased wage bill of up to $28,500 to an average retail business, once the financial impact of the new award system hits the bottom line of retailers. They said that this would be ‘like a Mack truck driving through the shop window’.

The Pharmacy Guild of Australia holds grave concerns about what these new modern awards will mean for pharmacists. In my home state of Western Australia, in a sample of just three pharmacies that employ 31 people the proprietors said that their combined wages bill will increase by $228,000 per annum. The proprietors of these pharmacies advised that this cost impact will force them to sack workers, resulting in the loss of four full-time jobs. This will result in three pharmacies with $228,000 in extra wage bills a year, which will make them lose four jobs. If we were to take those figures and extrapolate them across Western Australia, we would see that this would mean that in Western Australia alone pharmacies would be forced to get rid of 680 jobs. If we were to look at New South Wales, where a similar exercise was carried out, we would see that the resulting job losses are expected to be almost 1,400. Just in Western Australia and New South Wales, 2,100 jobs will be lost in the pharmacy sector alone. So 61 per cent of pharmacists expect to change their staffing levels as a result of the new pharmacy modern award. That means that 61 per cent of pharmacists will employ fewer people directly as a result of this policy. The President of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia has said that pharmacies will go the way of after-hours GP surgeries.

Clubs NSW called the government’s approach to modern awards apocalyptic. The aged-care sector has indicated that costs will rise by between 10 and 20 per cent. So the aged-care sector across Australia could be facing cost increases of 10 to 20 per cent. The National Retail Association estimated that in New South Wales the cost increases will be from almost eight per cent up to almost 15 per cent. In Queensland they will be over 14 per cent. Newsagents in Queensland have contacted me. A small business employing five full-time staff said that they will face a 14 per cent increase in labour costs. That means that, out of five staff, they will be forced to sack one staff member. An independent supermarket proprietor in Western Australia wrote to me, and I think this is worthwhile quoting directly because it shows how damaging this policy will be. The letter said:

I operate a small business, which is an independent supermarket. I employ full time, part time and casual employees who currently work across a six day working week. Many of them are working mothers and students who rely on flexible hours and casual work.

As a concerned employer I do not want to reduce staff but I fear this may be one of the inevitable consequences of the introduction of this new Award.

The Australian Hotels Association in Western Australia has indicated that a combination of penalty rates and overtime loadings will result in an eight to nine per cent increase in labour costs in Western Australia’s hotels. Western Australia does not have gaming in its hotels—it is the only state that does not—and, as a result, it has less capacity to absorb this increase. What this will result in is, of course, massive job losses. The AHA estimates that some 3,000 to 4,000 jobs will be lost just in Western Australian hotels. Who will these people be? They will be young people, students and people who are already suffering because of this global downturn.

The Adelaide Advertiser yesterday quoted two of Australia’s largest employers—that is, Woolworths and Coles. They have warned that up to 5,000 jobs are on the line because of these changes. The retail sector claims that its wage bill will rise by well over $100 million a year. The Advertiser also quoted confidential modelling by retailers that shows that added wages burdens will be massive across the country. In New South Wales alone, extra overtime payments are forecast to hit $75 million.

Similarly, in the Australian yesterday, Brodies Mealmakers in Queensland—a franchise that has 14 outlets—said that they will have to close seven of those outlets if this modern award goes ahead. This is one franchisee who owns 14 outlets and because of Labor’s policy he is going to have to close seven of those outlets. He said:

We have crunched the numbers; it is going to mean an increase of over 20 per cent in wages and it just will not be viable in our stores, so it will mean a loss of jobs and longer hours. We were just shocked when we found out that this was going to be a reality. Half our stores will not be able to survive. That is a lot of jobs gone.

It is astonishing that this minister and this government do not understand that increasing costs in this way will cost jobs. How does it not compute that making it more expensive to employ people will mean that fewer Australians will be able to find work? How will burdening struggling mum and dad shop owners with 50 per cent higher labour costs encourage them to employ people or encourage them to grow? Obviously it does not and it will not; it will cost thousands of jobs and it will directly lead to small business closures.

Bearing this in mind, you could be forgiven for thinking that this bill might contain a provision that would allow struggling businesses to get help if they cannot afford this minister’s high-cost, one-size-fits-all modern award system. But sadly it does not. They have been completely overlooked. If you are a small business that is going to go bust because of these changes, the government just shrugs its shoulders and says that there is nothing we can do for you; this is our ideology and we are not budging. Close your doors, those jobs can be lost and we do not care.

So while employees who suffer under modern awards have a way to get some help and relief—and we welcome that—there has been no equivalent provision for enterprise and business. They just have to cop these increases from modern awards and in some cases copping that increase will mean shedding staff or completely closing their doors. To enterprising small business mums and dads who are struggled to build up their own businesses and who have saved and sacrificed and done the right thing by wanting to create jobs, this government just says, ‘You have just got to cop it sweet.’

I want to remind the House of what I said earlier about this minister promising that this process would not disadvantage employees. That promise has proved to be false. This minister promised that modern awards would not increase costs to business, and this promise has proved to be completely false. Indeed, when the coalition tried to hold her to that promise, when we tried to insert her own words into this act, it was the Labor Party who voted it down. This bill does not give any help to struggling small businesses who run the risk of laying off staff due to these changes. This is a bill that is antijobs, antigrowth and antirecovery.

I want to turn to the minister’s latest gyrations regarding this bill, where she was forced to reissue her award modernisation request to specifically take into account the circumstances of restaurants, catering companies and cafes. They had previously been lumped in one general hospitality award and the results of that for that particular industry would have been catastrophic. The Restaurant and Catering Industry Association commissioned some research from KPMG which estimated that in that industry alone across Australia up to 8,000 jobs could be lost. Again, like in hotels, these are jobs that are held by students, by people who can work part time and, often, by some of the most vulnerable workers in our society. So the draft award as initially proposed by the commission would have decimated this industry, just like other industries will suffer with some of these modern awards. Yet the minister specifically acknowledged her mistake in relation to restaurants, catering and cafes by asking the commission to create another award specifically for this sector.

The coalition applauds what is an uncommon outbreak of common sense from this minister, but surely this is perhaps the most obvious admission of the failure of this policy. What about other industries that are going to be decimated by modern awards? Don’t they deserve equal consideration? Why wouldn’t they be in line for some of this minister’s special attention? So if you are in aged care or horticulture apparently it is fine for costs to be massively increased in those sectors and for those jobs to be lost, yet this minister will rescue certain industries. Sadly, I think it is just based on the politics of it rather than on any sort of sensible policy approach. Why don’t other industries deserve equal consideration?

The results of award modernisation are going to be catastrophic for businesses across Australia. But these are not the only concerns that we hold about this bill and these are not the only amendments that we will be moving to try to take out the worst job-destroying aspects of this bill.

Everyone, unions and industry alike, realise that under the Fair Work Act demarcation disputes and union turf wars are going to be on the rise. It is a way that Labor can arrest the increasing irrelevance of the union movement and it gives the union movement something to do between election campaigns. Once again, this bill explicitly acknowledges this truth by creating a method to resolve disputes about union representation in workplaces, which is a solution to a problem that has actually been created by the Fair Work Act. So the Fair Work Act creates the problem and then the transitional bill has to come in and try to fix it up.

But of course Labor only wants to hand power to resolve and address these disputes directly to the union movement. It does not let business have a look in; it does not let the enterprise that creates employment get a look in. It hands power directly to the union movement to address these issues. But it is of course the businesses that suffer at the hands of these demarcation disputes, as do the workers. But the provisions in this transitional bill effectively say that when resolving a union representation dispute unions can have their say but the people who actually run the workplace, the people who actually create those jobs, are not allowed to have their say.

Labor clearly believes that the only people who should have a say about what affects workplaces are the union movement, not the employers or the people who actually create jobs. This is clearly unfair. It is clearly a lopsided approach that panders to Labor’s ideology.

In stark contrast to the government, the coalition believes that all people in the workplace—workers and employers alike—are entitled to have a say about what happens in that workplace. We tried to amend the Fair Work Bill to include more workplace democracy. Of course, that was voted down by the Labor senators in the Senate because they do not believe in workplace democracy; they believe that the unions should run workplaces and that only the unions should have a say. We will therefore move to amend this bill to ensure that fairness is a concept that extends to parties beyond the union movement.

The Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 also deals with the interaction between the national employment standards, which were established under the Fair Work Act, and existing transitional instruments. This transitional bill is deficient in the way that it deals with this. The bill as proposed deals with this interaction in a manner that is designed to punish innovation and penalise workplaces that have agreed to move away from Labor’s preferred one-size-fits-all approach. It takes a very narrow view of interaction, resulting in outcomes that will be unworkable and unwieldy, taking Australian workplaces back to the 1970s and undoing the hard efforts of workplaces to agree on arrangements that are actually suitable for them.

We propose to amend the bill to ensure that the national employment standards can universally apply, but in a manner that acknowledges detriment on a global basis. We recognise that real fairness should be considered by taking into account the entire circumstances that exist in an employment relationship, not the black-and-white, bureaucratic approach favoured by the Labor Party. I also foreshadow amendments that deal with the issue of modern awards as they relate to state based differences and to their dealings with default superannuation funds.

All of these amendments will, on any fair view of the situation, ensure that the transition to the Fair Work Act can occur in a manner that recognises the needs of both workers and enterprise. They will ensure that the new system can operate in a manner that is balanced and sensible. Most importantly, they will ensure that the worst job-destroying aspects of Labor’s new workplace laws will be somewhat neutralised, making this bad law less bad.

I turn briefly to the second bill we are debating today, which is the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009. This bill is not the subject of any opposition by the coalition in this House. It is interesting, however, to note that a few short years ago Labor state governments took the money of hardworking taxpayers in those states, and throughout the country they joined forces with the union movement to oppose the Howard government’s endeavours to create a national and consistent system of workplace relations. The Labor states were so committed to stopping this national system of workplace relations that they took this fight all way to the High Court, which ultimately ruled against unions and Labor.

Now, a very short time later, we have a federal Labor government which is setting up a national system for the states to hand over their powers to the Commonwealth, and it seems that suddenly these Labor states do not have the same objections to a national system. This is further evidence, as if we needed further evidence, that these state Labor administrations always prioritise the interests of the Labor Party over the interests of the people that they should be representing—the people of their particular state.

This bill will build upon the work of the coalition in 1996 by allowing the state of Victoria to continue its referral of power to the Commonwealth. It will allow consistency of workplace laws in that state and create certainty there for business and workers. It will also provide a model for other states in referring their powers to the Commonwealth, if they choose to do so.

The fair work transitional bill will do nothing more than destroy more jobs in this country. The coalition will move amendments that will restore the notion that workers having a job is actually the paramount thing that a workplace relations system can provide. This is what Labor always forgets—that the purpose of a workplace relations system is workers having a job. We will alleviate the worst aspects of this transitional bill, particularly those regarding this botched award modernisation process.

The government has a choice: it can pursue a bloody-minded approach, as this minister always seems to do, or it can take into account what the opposition, and also industry, is telling them about what is going to result from this botched awards modernisation approach. At a time when finding a job is becoming increasingly difficult in Australia, why would the government make it harder for you to find a job? That is what they are doing in this bill.

I urge the government to sensibly assess the amendments that we are proposing. They will take out some of the worst job-destroying aspects of this transitional bill. I urge the government to have a look at this before they throw tens of thousands more Australians on to the dole queue.

Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009, which are before the House in this cognate debate. As a representative from Victoria, I would first like to speak about the issue of state referrals of workplace relations powers. Victoria has referred most of its workplace relations powers, firstly in 1997 under the Kennett Liberal state government and later, in 2003, under the Bracks Labor state government. In effect, there has been no state workplace relations system for most workers in Victoria since 1997, although there are some exceptions to this that are certainly worthy of further comment.

In 1997, with the first referral, there were approximately 356,000 workers—that was around 21 per cent of the state’s workforce—who were stranded under the infamous schedule 1A of the Workplace Relations Act 1996. This was a result of a partial referral of Victoria’s workplace relations powers under that state’s Commonwealth Powers (Industrial Relations) Act 1996. These affected workers were effectively cut off and shut out of any form of workplace relations system. Denied access to full federal award coverage, they received only a basic five conditions, being four weeks annual leave with no loading, one week of paid sick leave, unpaid parental leave, notice of termination and a minimum rate of pay for the first 38 hours of work in a week, with no requirement at all for payment for hours worked over and above that time.

It was the Bracks Labor government that undid this appalling situation in 2003 with the passing of the Federal Awards (Uniform System) Act 2003 that referred the necessary powers to the Commonwealth that would allow for common rule orders to be applied to federal awards in Victoria and extend coverage to previously award-free employees. Since that time, of course, the industrial relations landscape has changed. We saw the Liberal Party, the party of Work Choices, ram through the last parliament legislation that denied working people the right to fairness. That the Liberal Party did this without any meaningful debate or discussion outside their own party room or hardline supporters shows their ongoing contempt for the working people of Australia. It took the election of the Rudd Labor government and the implementation of our Forward with Fairness policy to turn this around. Creating a uniform national workplace relations system was a key commitment of this policy. Unlike the Liberal and National party’s attempts, we discussed, we listened and we changed parts of the bill during the many long months of negotiations with industry, unions and other political parties, to finally see the Fair Work Act passed through parliament earlier this year. For the benefit of those opposite, this is a process called consultation.

The passing of the Fair Work Act brings with it the opportunity to deliver a balanced and modern workplace relations system for Australia. These bills provide the mechanisms for all states to refer their remaining workplace relations power to the Commonwealth through sensible and practical transition provisions. With regard to Victoria, there are provisions in the bill to accept the referral of the Victorian government’s workplace relations powers to the Commonwealth under the Fair Work Act. In particular, this referral will extend the Fair Work Act in Victoria to cover unincorporated and public sector employers and all of their employees, and will also cover outworkers. This transition will move the referral under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 as extended by the state’s Commonwealth Powers (Industrial Relations) Act 1996 to Australia’s new workplace relations system under the Fair Work Act. As I have already explained, under the Workplace Relations Act not all parts or powers were supported by Victoria’s referral at the time, making the subsequent laws very complex and inconsistent in their application and leaving many workers out in the cold without even a regular pay rise or any standard award conditions. Other states are able to refer powers under this bill in the same way as Victoria. This is a fair and balanced process that, unlike the disastrous Victorian transfer of workplace relations powers, will allow for the transfer of state systems to the uniform national system without trapping workers outside of award coverage.

The Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 repeals the current Workplace Relations Act other than schedules Nos 1 and 10, which deal with registered organisations. Importantly, this bill provides for the application of the National Employment Standards and minimum wages to all national system employees from the starting date of 1 January 2010. Working people, many who have previously been forced on to John Howard’s take-it-or-leave-it AWAs, will receive the benefit of the 10 minimum National Employment Standards if their current agreement contains inferior conditions, and will also receive minimum safety net wages.

As we saw with the introduction of Work Choices by the Liberal Party, they just do not have any consideration or care for the majority of Australians who have to work for a living. Ripping off wages and conditions is par for their course, and I am sure nothing has changed and we will hear more of that during this debate.

There are also provisions in these bills that ensure an employee’s take-home pay cannot be reduced as a result of any transition to a modern award from 1 January 2010. Fair Work Australia will be able to rectify a reduction in one or more employees’ take-home pay as has resulted from the award modernisation. There is also a capacity for Fair Work Australia to make special low-paid workplace determinations in areas that have previously been covered by an expired collective agreement based transitional instrument. The bill also gives Fair Work Australia the power to make representation orders, including the preservation of historical demarcations derived from state or federal award coverage. Although many people now like to think that Work Choices is dead, it is not yet. This nasty piece of legislation introduced by the Howard government will go out the door on 1 July this year with the commencement of the major sections of the Fair Work Act and the passage of these transition bills. But have no doubt: the Liberal Party are still the party of Work Choices and, left up to them, Work Choices will be back bigger and badder than ever. I commend these bills to the House.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is pleasing to see the member for the ETU could last seven minutes on a bill he cares so much about. It was good to see the ETU back in the—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member will refer to individuals by their appropriate title.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was just not sure which seat—I think it is Deakin—he is the member for. It is pleasing to see the ETU back in the news today. We have seen Kevin Harkins, one of the former members of this place. Harry Quick campaigned so heavily against him last time because of his behaviour. He was found guilty, of course, by the Federal Magistrates Court. But that is not bad enough for the Labor Party to oppose him running for the Senate. The ETU is made up of people like Dean Mighell, the member for Deakin and Kevin Harkins, the industrial dinosaurs which make up this place. We are going to see another one enter at the next election.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Mayo might care to refer to the bill before him.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Deakin made some interesting remarks about allegedly representing working people, although he could only manage seven minutes on this bill. The usual attack on the former government is that they were about ripping off wages, attacking working people and so forth. It is on the record that the Howard government created over two million jobs and had real wages rise by nearly 25 per cent. Compare that to the previous governments’ record, the Keating and Hawke governments—the so-called friends of the workers—which had a wage freeze, in effect, due to a deal done with the ACTU in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the wage accords.

The Howard government policies of allowing workers and employers to deal with each other without requiring the handholding of unions or indeed of employer organisations meant that more people were employed and meant that wages rose quicker. We will constantly hear this attack from those on the other side, because that is what the hollowmen have written in their speeches to come into this place and talk about. But the truth of the matter is that the Howard government’s record for working Australians was outstanding.

What we are going to see with the introduction of this bill, which gives effect to the bill that we debated earlier in the year, is lower employment, lower wages and fewer opportunities for the future for Australians. And it will all be blamed on this global financial crisis; everything will be due to the impact of the global financial crisis. But truth be told, it is policies implemented by this government—including this policy—that will impact enormously on the opportunities for Australians to get work in the future so that they can pay the taxes to pay off the debt that these people are leaving us.

We are not going to stand here and put up with lectures from the member for Deakin and his cronies in the ETU—Kevin Harkins and those sorts of people—because what we did in government was good for working Australians. Let us just deal with that in the first place. Now I will calm down and get back to the purpose of these bills.

These bills give effect to the changes that we saw in this place earlier in the year. That was a strongly debated bill. Workplace relations or industrial relations, whatever you like to call it, is a matter which divides this House. It always has and probably always will. That is not necessarily a bad thing. It is good to have different perspectives on how you should manage the Australian economy. This area of Australian law will always be one that is quite contentious.

The main features of these bills are to change the institutional arrangements in relation to previous agencies, which had various names, and bring them under the Orwellian Fair Work Australia title. I want to comment on one point in particular. Those of us on this side and well-qualified industrial lawyers who know a lot more about the constitutionality of these sorts of matters than I do have very big questions about the demarcation or the line between those who seek to investigate claims of industrial abuse and those who seek to implement that law, the umpire. There is a major question as to whether these two functions can be carried out by the same organisation. The issue that we will keep an eye on is how that operates. There is a question, which was raised during the election campaign in 2007 and during that year and never satisfactorily answered, about where the demarcation is and whether it is in fact constitutional in that respect. We will be watching that.

It is a big mistake to remove the divisions in that area from the Federal Court and the Federal Magistrates Court. The Federal Magistrates Court has worked well. We understand that those on the other side are implacably opposed to the Federal Magistrates Court and that there will be another bill in this place that will give us the opportunity to debate that.

The last thing that I will say in relation to the new Fair Work Australia is that it will be a monstrous agency. It will be somewhat along the lines of the National Health Service in the UK, I suspect. I understand that its new head, Justice Giudice, will be available for estimates later this year. We look forward to that.

One of the bills talks about processes commencing on 1 July 2009; transitional rules for National Employment Standards; the status of old existing agreements; variation, termination and replacement of old agreements; award modernisation, which I will come to in more detail; enterprise awards; registered organisations, such as unions and employer organisations; and representation orders. We are proposing an amendment to the part of the bill to do with representation orders as I understand it.

The other bill that we are debating in this cognate debate is theFair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009. I said during the Fair Work Bill debate earlier this year that one of the very important aspects of the previous government’s reforms was to create a national system of workplace relations. I stand by that. It was a very important move. It is one issue on which the Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and I are of a single mind. This is a very important economic reform. It makes no sense in a modern economy to have six, seven or eight different systems of workplace relations around the country when so many small businesses operate over state borders. I am a supporter of one national system. I understand the arguments of those who say that it is always good to have a competitive environment, with one state competing against another. I do not think that holds, though, in a modern economy.

As I understand it, the coalition will move five broad amendments to the bills, which include amendments to do with union representation orders. I understand that the shadow spokesman has dealt with these in some detail, so I will not bore the House by going through them again. In our amendments, we are dealing with the operation of the National Employment Standards, take home pay orders and finally default superannuation, which is something that in government we moved time and time again to change so that Australians could choose where their superannuation went.

The issue I want to talk about in some detail today, however, is award modernisation. The award modernisation process is important for the economy and for the system if it is to operate most effectively. Awards over time have become inconsistent and, particularly with the melding of the state systems and the federal system, in some cases there are 70 awards covering similar industries. That brings with it various allowances, scope of hours and simple things like that that make it harder for small businesses to understand. Particularly the businesses that do not have human resources or industrial relations practitioners in their organisations find it difficult to understand how the awards affect them and which awards they are covered by.

This is an important process. It is a process that we in government began to undertake. The 1997 reforms had award simplification. They reduced the number of matters to 20. Largely, that process went on, but the next step is to meld the state and federal awards in a national system. That is no easy task. I have great sympathy for those undertaking that task because you have to have in the end someone who will be worse off. There is no possible way you can do this without changing the cost structures in awards or reducing someone’s entitlement along the way. It is impossible.

This is where the Deputy Prime Minister has been quite misleading. She has claimed, quite publicly, that the award modernisation process will not leave workers or businesses worse off. In her initial instruction to the commission on 18 December 2008 she said that the process must:

• be simple to understand and easy to apply, and reduce the regulatory burden on business;
• together with any legislated employment standards, provide a fair minimum safety net of enforceable terms and conditions of employment for employees;
• be economically sustainable and promote flexible modern work practices and efficient and productive performance of work …

She then talked about it not disadvantaging employees nor increasing costs for employers. That is simply not possible. We found that out in the last few weeks. It has become quite obvious.

The Deputy Prime Minister, who is very intelligent and a good operator—there is no question about that—would have known that this report sits in the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. The Award review taskforce report on award rationalisation was finalised in July 2006. It was conducted by a senior deputy president of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission Matthew O’Callaghan. The task force included employer representatives and union representatives. They set about conducting a review to advise the previous government, and the department, on how the award review task force would occur, how it could possibly be done.

There are some interesting matters raised in this report. The first which should have sent an alarm bell to the Deputy Prime Minister when she issued her first instruction that said that no employee or employer would be worse off is in section 8.4.3.2 entitled ‘Approaches to neutralising overall costs and benefits’, which states:

262. Changes to current award provisions will, by definition, occur as part of the award rationalisation process. To balance as far as possible the overall distribution of costs and benefits between employers and employees, an overall approach should be adopted. Individual award provisions should not be considered in isolation, rather the overall impact of the rationalised award provisions should be taken into account. The discussion below proposes possible approaches to the neutralisation of cost and benefits.

In other words, you cannot go through award by award and compare the conditions, because they are so varied. Probably the greatest example of that is the retail industry where you have different hours. You cannot define which provision is best or worst. It affects the overtime payments in each award and relates to the state trading hours regulations in each state. It is a confused mess. I am not saying the task is easy; however, to suggest to the Australian public that you can have an outcome where there is no cost increase for either the employer or the employee is misleading in the extreme, and she knew it because this report told her that.

The second aspect of the report which should have raised alarm bells—and I am sure she is aware of it as I am sure she has seen this review; her departmental staff have certainly seen this review—is section 3.2 entitled ‘Issues’, which states:

52. The task of rationalising awards is of itself a complex one which will require the judgement and expertise of the AIRC—

and you would expect a senior deputy president of the AIRC to suggest that. It continues:

Inappropriate groupings of awards will make this task effectively impossible or result in rationalised awards which are either too vague to perform their fundamental function or that import arrangements simply not suited to a particular segment of industry.

What did we see on Saturday? On Saturday we saw the first backflip of the award modernisation process. There was an article in the Australian entitled ‘Julia Gillard in restaurant penalties backflip’. The AIRC, on her instruction, grouped awards which were inappropriate to group together. So we saw a new instruction to the commission on Saturday, even though we obviously knew this was going to be a problem and even though on the 891 morning program in Adelaide last week with Matt and Dave the Deputy Prime Minister desperately denied that there was an issue. She claimed there was a five-year transition period which was not applied to these awards.

On the following day Matt and Dave followed up with an interview with Patrick Newenham from the horticulture industry, who said:

It’s going to hurt Matt, there’s no doubt about that, but first apropos what Nick was saying—there is no appeal. So in other words when this is handed down by the Workplace Authority … faceless people in Canberra, there’s no appeal.

He goes on with how much it is going to cost the industry. Matt and Dave then move on to Ms Sally Neville, the CEO of the Restaurant and Catering Association of SA, who said:

Yep … the increase in the casual loading from 20% to 25% so that … 5% across. In South Australia, we’ve got over 50% casual labour force …

There are young people in that industry who are at university. They do some work in restaurants and catering, in pubs and so forth. There will be at least a 15 per cent increase in labour costs in South Australia. That will destroy thousands of jobs and deny young people opportunities. She went on to say:

With all due respect to the Deputy Prime Minister, I think that she’s lying. I think she knows full well that there is an increase in cost to employers, and I think that she is ignoring that fact …

I would never suggest that the Deputy Prime Minister is lying; that would be unparliamentary. However I do suggest that the Deputy Prime Minister knew that this was an issue beforehand, because it was spelt out in this report. She knows about that report; it has been in her department since July 2006. She is a smart lady and she knew it was there.

This is badly thought through. It is rushed and we are seeing the impact on the Australian economy because of it. It is a very difficult process but an important process. It has to happen. You cannot have a situation where there are so many different awards applying across the country under a national system—we all agree on that—but the system is badly thought through.

The amendments proposed by the shadow minister are the right amendments. Amendments (1) and (2), going to the no detriment rule, seek to remove the line-by-line approach to the concept of detrimental as it relates to the interaction in the NES with the transitional instrument. The amendments will ensure that the interaction between the NES and the transitional instrument is such that it is now assessed on an overall basis when the comparison occurs, just like Mr O’Callaghan told us to do in the first place.

This situation is trying to spin something which is not possible to spin—someone will be worse off in this process, they have to be. There are so many different structures in these awards. This issue is so difficult to understand that most normal people do not understand it, and nor should they. But the Deputy Prime Minister does. Her very intelligent staff in the department understand this issue. The AIRC understands this issue. She should have known. She misled the Australian people and it is going to impact on people’s jobs and on people’s businesses. I have had complaints from restaurants in my area, raising this issue. At a time when we are in the middle of an economic downturn, this is government policy gone mad. It is badly thought through and the best thing that the Deputy Prime Minister could do is to apply the amendments suggested by the shadow minister.

The shadow minister has also proposed an amendment going to relief from increased labour costs. These amendments seek to insert a new provision that provides the equivalent employer version of the take-home pay orders outlined in the preceding part. The provision recognises and seeks to enshrine a provision with the existing award modernisation request that promises no increase to an employer.

So in the last few months we have seen those employer organisations who represent their members—and there are still a couple out there who seek to represent their members and not just seek to represent themselves and try to get some appointment in the future—outlining this very clearly to the government. The Deputy Prime Minister should sit up and listen, because this will cost jobs. We have major concerns with the Fair Work Act itself and we have outlined those. This is a provision she can stop today. She can make some changes to it which reduces the cost to Australian business and which will reduce the impact on Australian workers. I urge her to do so and not to be stubborn. This is a mistake and she can fix it.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always interesting to listen to architects and apostles of Work Choices talk about these types of issues, somehow waxing lyrical about being concerned for employees. I will tell you what was complex, Madam Deputy Speaker: it was the Work Choices standard, running to 149 pages of complexity with only five substandard minimum conditions. The previous speaker was one of the architects, an apostle. He is a one of the devotees of Work Choices.

In this debate I have heard a couple of speakers already from those opposite. They do not mention Work Choices because it is the love that bears no name and they will not mention it. It is like Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter series—you cannot bear to mention the actual name. That is the reality. They will not mention it but they are over there today being concerned about workers in restaurants and workers in the aged-care industry.

I will tell you what they should have done in the aged-care industry in relation to this particular matter. We have got the Australian Nursing Federation campaigning—correctly, because they do care—about the fact that wages in the aged-care sector are $300 a week on average lower than in the public sector. They, along with the aged-care industry, are campaigning in relation to this matter. What did those opposite do in their 12 years of tenure on this side of the House? Almost nothing for the aged-care sector except burden it with Stalinist regulation and then reduce, effectively, the profitability of the aged-care sector so that workers in the sector do not get paid the kind of wages they deserve. It is the same thing with women who are cleaners and those working in restaurants and cafes. What did they do for them? What is the reality of Work Choices? The reality of Work Choices was the fact that their wages were much lower. So do not come into this place and bleed and bleat and claim that somehow you are supporting Australian workers after you foisted Work Choices upon them.

The legislation that is before the House is important legislation because it effectively carries on from what we did when we first introduced the legislation to get rid of Work Choices. The Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Act of 2008 was passed. In a moment of reality those opposite actually supported it and it commenced on 20 March 2008. That allowed the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to commence the important national reform of award modernisation.

We have consulted widely with employers and employees alike. To give you an illustration, when it comes to our National Employment Standards—which are of course the subject of two pieces of legislation before the House today—there were 129 submissions received from a wide range of stakeholders before the standards were released in February 2008. They were developed after extensive consultation and consideration of submissions. We have listened to stakeholders in relation to this matter.

I heard the shadow minister talking about the fact that there were going to be jobs lost throughout various industries. But not a shred of evidence was produced. There was no business case and no cost-benefit analysis. Indeed, it was the same kind of rhetoric we heard when Work Choices was brought in—the vices and virtues of Work Choices, that Orwellian piece of legislation that they brought in, with the great deal of complexity that they foisted upon small business. Nothing was produced then about how important that was to industrial relations harmony, the economy and economic prosperity. It is the same thing from the shadow minister today. Again he goes on and gives an example of a couple of pharmacies—no names—and then extrapolates that and says it is going to have a massive impact not just in his own state but across the whole country. Not a shred of evidence was produced.

Then we have the alarmist rhetoric from those opposite. If they were fair dinkum about really helping workers and industries across the board, they would not have spent $121 million on Work Choices propaganda—nearly 100,000 Work Choices mousepads and 436,000 Work Choices booklets. If they were going to be really concerned about what was necessary to help Australian workers, they would not have attempted to turn the clock back to the 19th century. The shadow minister talked about the fact that we are allegedly going back to 1970s. That is simply nonsense. I wonder whether he has read both the pieces of legislation before the House today. If he had read the legislation before the House, read the explanatory memoranda and read the information that is necessary in the circumstances, he would not come into this place and say such nonsense.

The government, as the Deputy Prime Minister has said, has continued its spirit of consultation and cooperation with all relevant stakeholders. The first piece of legislation is the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009. It is the first to make the transition and consequential amendments. There are many changes to this particular legislation. The second one, which is the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009, deals with the consequential amendments to all other Commonwealth legislation, including amendments to over 70 Commonwealth acts. It is anticipated that not only Victoria but also other states will take up the necessary option of getting involved in a national process, because we think it is important that it happen. We think it is important for the sake of the country, and the dingo fences across the country have to go down. There are many areas in which we have taken steps and it has been done on a bipartisan basis in the areas of corporations law, family law and defamation law—lots of areas where bipartisan approaches have been undertaken to ensure that happens.

We have heard speeches from the spokespeople from the coalition today in this House about small business. There are about 1.9 million small businesses in this country and there are about four million people employed by them. The budget is full of help for small business. They have never talked about this and they never acknowledge that—except they claim that we are about destroying small businesses. We know that small businesses are the engine room of employment in this country. We know that because the people in our electorates work in small businesses. We know that is the case in the retail sector, in cafes, in doctors’ surgeries, in newsagents, in small business operations with tradesmen. We know that is the case, and there would not be a person on this side of the House that would not support small business. Many people have told us—and many people in particular have told me—how pleased they were that the government has taken steps in the budget to help small business.

In my electorate the Ipswich Business Enterprise Centre is up and running. We know that the small business support line will assist small businesses. We know the small business and general business tax break will assist small business because we increased it from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. We know the PAYG 2009-10 cash flow relief will help small businesses. We know that the research and development tax credit will help small businesses, as will the Export Market Development Grants Scheme. The Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute will also give small businesses a chance to turn great ideas into the commercial reality, to employ people in small business.

That is the reality. The government is supporting small businesses and we hear alarmism from those opposite. Work Choices is in their DNA, in their blood, in their tissue and in their muscle. It is in every aspect of their being. They cannot bear to say it, but they come into this House and they fight and scream and kick, opposing what we are doing, and we know it is because in their heart of hearts they still support Work Choices and that is why they make speeches like the member for Mayo and the member for Stirling have made in this House. That is because they still support it and, if they ever got back on this side of the House, they would bring back Work Choices because they believe in Orwellian kinds of industrial relations systems. That is what they would do—every time they get a chance to do it, they do it. They did it in the dead of night on the wharves in this country some years ago, they did it when they got a majority just across in the Senate and they would do it again if they get that chance. So I say to the people of Australia: do not believe the rhetoric; do not believe the alarmism and do not believe the cries and howls that somehow they are supporting small business and employees across the country, because that is simply not true.

The reality is they are striving to reduce wages. That is what they do. That is what Work Choices was all about—destroying unions and reducing wages. We on this side of the House want to support small business because we know profitable small businesses, created through our assistance and with the ingenuity and the enterprise of the people of Australia will ensure decent wages for people. It will ensure that people can put a roof over their head, feed their families, clothe their families and ensure their economic prosperity. The legislation that is before the House is not about attacking small business. It is about fulfilling our election commitments. It is about doing what we told the Australian public we would do before the last election. And those opposite continue to frustrate it and continue to perpetrate and perpetuate myths and misinformation about this sort of information.

The bills that are before the House are part of the fabric and the framework of the Rudd government’s commitment to industrial relations harmony. A simple, effective and fair industrial relations system is what we went to the last election campaigning for, about and on, and we are delivering it today. I support the legislation. It is a great shame that those opposite cannot get behind the decision that was made in November 2007 and accept the political and economic reality of this country and support this legislation.

Chris Pearce (Aston, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to take this opportunity to speak to the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009, and the related bill, just for a few minutes, as it relates to the area of superannuation and the selection of so-called default funds as a result of the award modernisation program. That is the particular area that I want to touch on this morning because, as shadow minister for financial services, superannuation and corporate law, what has resulted from this government’s policies is of great concern to me, and it is of great concern to many Australians. As the shadow minister for employment and workplace relations has foreshadowed, the coalition intends to move an amendment that would provide for the employer to be able to nominate any complying superannuation fund as the default fund.

The so-called award modernisation program and the selection of default funds is a very interesting process. It is a process that I have been very critical of because I believe that it fundamentally undermines choice and competition in the Australian superannuation industry. It is because of that fundamental undermining that I have such a degree of concern about it. There are many questions that arise from the way that the process operates at the moment. There are questions like: should competition between all funds be curtailed under any circumstance? In other words, should we restrict competition among funds? I would say to you that the answer to that question is no. I think we should allow fierce competition between funds because it is through competition that consumers can be offered better products and services and lower costs.

Another question that comes about is: is there a place for a very subjectively chosen process and also a secretly chosen monopoly within our superannuation system? This is a very important point. The way that the system works at the moment in relation to the selection of default funds for superannuation is that it is a very secretive process. There are no publicly available criteria showing how default funds are selected. There is no material made available about how the analysis has been conducted. There is no material made available about how a currently selected default fund would be deselected. As I travel throughout Australia and talk to stakeholders interested in superannuation, I often make this point: if I were on the board of trustees of a superannuation fund or if I were the CEO running a superannuation fund that was not a default selected fund, I would want to know what I had to do to make my fund qualify to be chosen as a default fund. But if I were a CEO or on the board of trustees that would be impossible because nobody would be able to tell me what I would need to do and what benchmarks I would need to reach in order for my fund to be selected as a default fund. It is a very secretive process.

The other key question that arises is: should the government foster apathy in any financial context? Again I would say that the answer is no. The proponents of the default selection process say it is important to have because Australians do not bother to select their superannuation funds and therefore we should have default funds so that people have a fund to go into. But I say that that apathy in a financial context, particularly amongst younger Australians, is a critical issue. Automatically selecting default funds and taking the need for any thought process away from people is actually only encouraging apathy. I would have thought the better approach would have been to require people to actively assess various superannuation funds and to provide people with information that would put them in a position to choose the superannuation fund that they would like to go into, rather than having the automatic selected default option, which, as I said, disengages people from the process even more.

I think the default arrangement is a retrospective step. There are no criteria available whatsoever. You only have to look at how the system has ended up being so ad hoc. For example, when you look at one particular award area you will see that there is only one default fund selected. That is in the retail sector. There is one default fund selected for millions and millions of people. But when you look at the awards in other sectors of a similar size to the retail sector you see that there are six, seven or more default funds selected. So under one award there is one exclusive monopoly selected but under other awards there are multiple funds selected. You have to ask yourself the question: how can that come about? How can only one fund be selected for one award but multiple funds be selected for other awards? This is what raises the concern about the process undermining choice and competition. It raises concern about the credibility of the process, because it is not a transparent process. No-one can find out why, in the example I have just given, one fund in particular has been chosen for one award, yet multiple funds have been chosen for other awards. No-one can make the criteria available.

If we are going to have this less than satisfactory approach, surely the process could be open, surely the process could be transparent and surely people could understand how these funds have been chosen? Fundamentally, I think it is a bad process. All of this is being done through the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. I find it interesting that last December the AIRC said that they did not think that they should be involved in this process. So the Industrial Relations Commission themselves have identified a degree of inappropriateness about them selecting default superannuation funds as part of the award modernisation process.

As the shadow minister for this area has foreshadowed, the coalition intend to move an amendment that would ensure that employers would be able to nominate any complying superannuation fund as the default fund, not just those that have been selected through the secretive process but those that have been selected through a process where employers would be able to nominate an alternative default fund. I think this would be a much better outcome. This would be an outcome which would foster choice and competition. It would be an outcome that would help engage people in this decision-making process. It would be an outcome that would lessen the degree of apathy that currently exists in this area. It is an outcome that would end in a better result for all Australians because choice and competition would be fostered. After all, that, in my view, is one of the key tenets of what we should all be doing to ensure that Australians are able to save for their retirement, to save for their future and at the end of the day to be able to have a high standard of living in their retirement.

Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government is delivering a new fair and balanced workplace relations system in a very sensible and measured way. It is designed to provide certainty. The bills that have been debated today will achieve the full implementation of the government’s election promises as set out in the policy Forward With Fairness. The new system will ensure that Australia is competitive and prosperous without compromising the workplace and will also provide guaranteed minimum standards. You will find that I, like the other members on this side of the House, am delighted to be standing here to support the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009. This is the first of two bills which will make the transition and consequential provisions in relation to the new federal workplace relations system set out in Fair Work Australia Act 2009. In particular, this bill will repeal the Workplace Relations Act 1996 and rename it the Fair Work (Registered Organisation) Act 2009 to reflect the remaining content. It makes provisions to move employers, employees and organisations from the old Workplace Relations Act to the new system. It makes consequential amendments to the Commonwealth legislation necessary for them operation of the fair work bill itself.

The second Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009 will deal with the consequential amendments to all other Commonwealth legislation, which, although I have not read it, I understand involves amendments to about another 70 Commonwealth acts. These two bills before us today complement the Fair Work Act 2009 and are one of the more significant steps in abolishing the Howard government’s unfair, unjust and hugely unpopular Work Choices laws. We all know that people suffered grievously under the Howard government’s Work Choices laws. The Australian population got it right when they threw out the government based on the government’s extreme industrial relations laws.

By the way, they brought in these laws without any mandate, without going before the general population and without canvassing anything. They brought these laws in as soon as they had a majority in the Senate. These laws were foisted on the Australian public unannounced, and for the opposition to come along today and to think that this bill—rendering fairness and decency in the workplace—is an inappropriate stance on our part is just hypocrisy.

After my time in opposition I doubt if there are many in this House that would be unaware of my absolute objection to those extreme industrial relations laws. As members would recall, I opposed them at every step, I spoke in every debate in this House, I voted against them and I will continue to oppose them until these Work Choices laws are effectively replaced in the workplace by something which is now considered fair and decent.

When I heard the contribution of the shadow industrial relations spokesperson, the member for Stirling, today it took me back a little. He tried to lay the foundations to an argument that this is not the right time, given the economic situation, to produce these laws and it is not the right time in terms of its consequences on employment. Let us consider the ‘right time’ that they brought Work Choices in. As the Treasurer indicated, over that period, when it was raining gold bars, they brought in legislation that allowed employers to cut workers’ pay and conditions and for the first time in this country make it legal to pay people below the minimum award rates. And that was the right time to bring in Work Choices! If people were going to be stripped of their wages and conditions when it was raining gold bars in the midst of an economic boom period—which was all squandered, by the way—and employers were allowed to do that at that stage, and the government brought in laws to facilitate that, what would happen in times of economic constraint? For the member for Stirling to actually come here today and say that this is not the right time to do something fair and decent for working men and women and their families just indicates that the people that we face off against is, and always will be, the party of Work Choices.

The member for Stirling also actually got it wrong. It was reported in the papers yesterday that the member for Stirling was going to seek an amendment to allow for a five-year transition period to the new simplified award system. He should do his homework a little better because the member for Stirling failed to realise that there is already a five-year transition period available, as well as provisions in these bills that allow employers to seek exemptions from the minimum pay rates when they do not have the capacity to pay.

Those provisions are there. By the way, they have been replicated from years past, as you well know, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke. Where there was genuine incapacity to pay, there was a system that existed to allow for that; it was rendered obsolete in the immediate former industrial relations legislation. But these things will be tested. It is not sufficient just to put your hand up and say, ‘I don’t want to pay people.’ It is a matter of applying the appropriate test. These tests have now been introduced in this legislation so that, where there is genuine hardship, that genuine hardship can be addressed.

Not only did the Rudd government legislate for the five-year transition period; the Liberal opposition actually voted against it when this was introduced in March 2008. The opposition flagged these so-called amendments despite their failure to pass even one of their amendments to the Fair Work Act; they did not deliver one amendment to the Fair Work Act when it was in the Senate earlier this year.

In my own community, Werriwa—in the south-west of Sydney, as you are aware, Madam Deputy Speaker—under the previous government’s extreme industrial relations laws, workers had never been worse off. I know it is a bit trite, but some might classify my area as a working-class area. Recent statistics show that 98 per cent of the people in my area earn less than $100,000; therefore, the economic stimulus package had a significant impact for working families out there. That just paints a bit of a picture of the demographics of that area.

You will recall, Madam Deputy Speaker, that in the lead-up to the debates on Work Choices I raised in this parliament cases like that of Reinaldo Martinez. This fellow came to my electorate office; he had been sacked by mobile phone while travelling in his car to a family picnic, with his family in the vehicle with him. He was sacked by his employer over the telephone, and when he inquired as to why the employer said, ‘I can do it under this legislation.’ He did not want to give a reason. Mr Martinez was actually sacked over the telephone in front of his wife and kids.

Reynaldo Cortez, a father of five who came to one of my street meetings, worked for a local pharmaceutical company. He was actually on a collective agreement. Anyway, the employer brought down an AWA and wanted him to sign it and indicated to him: ‘If you don’t sign it, there’ll be plenty of other people who will.’ Here is this father of five, paying off his mortgage and living at Bow Bowing. If he had signed it, our calculations—which I presented to the then Prime Minister, Mr Howard—were that he would have been up to $200 a week worse off. When I approached one of the directors of this company, a person with a very public profile, he did not know about it and undertook to go and find out for me why they did this. With some embarrassment, he told me a couple of weeks later: ‘The legal advice that the CEO got is that we can do it. It wasn’t that we needed to do it or anything else but that we could do this.’ So these cuts were being made to working men and women. This bloke living at Bow Bowing, which is just near Minto, had a family that would very much be considered working class. The mother did not work, and there were five kids. No wonder this bloke was crying when he turned up at my street meeting!

I also pay regard to the courageous efforts of people like Warren Small and David Rojas. People around this place will remember the Esselte dispute that occurred at Minto. These people were absolutely on minimum rates, with no over-award component. They were on strike for three months. The reason why they were on strike was that they demanded the ability to negotiate with their employer; that is all they wanted. They were told by this employer: ‘With these new industrial relations laws, we don’t have to do it.’ This was not a trumped up union claim. Ninety-nine per cent of these people were migrants. They were sitting out there, down the road from where I live, day in, day out, for three months, fighting for the right to be able to negotiate. As one of them said to me—they were not very good at English, which was a second language for them—‘How do we go and negotiate with our employer? We want to go as a group.’ That is all they wanted to do. They were denied that. Julia Gillard, now the Deputy Prime Minister, went down there, as did Brendan O’Connor and others, to spend time with these people. It was very much a home-grown, localised fight. You could see and hear on any day the people who travelled in and around Campbelltown, honking horns, with school buses going by and flags flying. These people became local heroes because they stood up for what they believed in, a fair go for ordinary people.

Under John Howard’s industrial relations system, fairness and decency were stripped away at a time of so-called economic prosperity. I wonder what would have been the case if Work Choices had been in existence here and now. Consider this company that took advice that it could reduce this man’s money by $200 a week. What do you think would happen in boardrooms around the country? Would they just have a sudden burst of conscience or would they look at the raw bottom line? I tell you what, Madam Deputy Speaker: you would not have to go too far before people would start looking at what they are legally entitled to do. If they can get away with cutting wages and conditions, they will do so. I have seen firsthand in my own electorate office people coming in, real families, to whom this has happened. If it happens there, it could happen anywhere. If it happened in good times, imagine what would happen in times of economic strain such as we currently find ourselves in.

These laws bring back fairness and balance in industrial relations. It is also fair to say that it was not always just those who were at the front line or had their wages and conditions affected who were concerned. When I went out before an election, as everybody else does, to visit railway stations at six o’clock in the morning, for all these people who came back and saw me it was not about them. Ordinarily, it was either mums and dads worried about the workplace environment that their kids were about to inherit or had already been in or, more regularly, grandparents worried about the industrial relations environment that was now being bequeathed to the next generation.

If the mob on the other side think that they can sit around and play with industrial relations and work out who they have got to appeal to for their next round of political fundraising, they are playing a very dangerous game because it is the ordinary men and women out there who made decisions on this. These people made decisions not in terms of unions or collective agreements or individual contracts but on which organisation and which political party was going to stand up for fairness and decency. You only have to look at the scoreboard; it was not over there.

These bills will complement the Fair Work Act 2009 to bring in to operation the final stages of legislation to underpin fairness and decency. It will provide adjustments to the 70 other Commonwealth laws to recognise the new body and to allow for a proper transition to the new scheme.

The government’s fair and balanced workplace relations system, which is underpinned by enterprise bargaining—that is at its heart—will help drive productivity in this country. Our law is about bargaining in good faith underpinned by a fair and decent safety net of employment conditions. It is good for employers, it is good for employees and it is certainly good for the economy of this country.

In these troubled economic times, all Australians will benefit from the certainty and the fairness that are enshrined in these new workplace relations laws. Significantly, they are designed for the good economic times as well as the bad. They will return balance and fairness to the industrial relations system. We must transform our society and our economy to meet these very challenging times, and this piece of legislation does that. It encourages enterprise bargaining and it encourages employers and their employees to work jointly to meet the challenges of the future while, at the same time, underpinning and protecting those core industrial standards which are so essential and which we saw attacked under the former regime.

These bills provide a transition and consequential change to ensure a smooth, simple and fair transition to the new system while providing certainty in employment arrangements. The provisions and consequential changes provided for in these two bills are now under consideration. I commend both bills to the House and, once again, say how proud I am to be part of the party that has now stripped Work Choices from this nation’s psyche.

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

I rise to speak on the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009. I wish to touch briefly on history, since we are speaking about jobs and fair work, look at the issue of awards modernisation and finish with some amendments that the coalition will put forward.

The Rudd Labor government inherited a record low unemployment rate in this country of just four per cent. Under the coalition, 2.2 million jobs were created—to the point where anyone who wanted a job could find it and to the point where so many people were employed we had a skills challenge. There were not enough workers for the jobs around. It was an enviable record considering a union-dominated France during the last 10 years of economic miracles could never get their unemployment below 7½ per cent. Unemployment in Australia is now somewhere around 5.4 per cent, with the government’s own forecast increasing to 8.5 per cent in 2011. That will be one million Australians unemployed.

The Labor government will tell us that making jobs is their No. 1 priority. It is the new slogan. Jobs for Labor, I guess, are the new black. I look at my electorate in Fadden and I see how well they are doing. I look at Riviera, the largest boat building company in the nation. It once had 1,000 employees but is now down to just 300. The new CEO, John Anderson, over the last 12 months has done an amazing job in getting lean manufacturing, in pulling almost $10 million per annum of costs out of the business and in doing everything he can do to support jobs and ensure the company remains viable. He is truly one of the great marine CEOs in the country. I have met with him numerous times. On his behalf, I have twice spoken to Minister Kim Carr personally to get some support but got nothing—no support at all for the largest boat-building company in the nation—and yet $6.2 billion goes to the automotive industry. Heaven forbid if Holden and Ford were to hiccup. But, for the boat-building industry and especially the largest boat building industry, there is nothing.

So when Labor spruiks about its ‘new black’ of jobs, forgive me for my degree of cynicism when I look at what is happening in the electorate of Fadden and Labor’s silence on what is happening job-wise. We have said previously that the Fair Work Act is bad law. It gives enterprises and companies a raft of reasons not to grant jobs to Australians and it encourages employers not to employ Australians. It is a bit like that anathema of payroll tax. It is an act that penalises and stops innovation. It discourages workers and businesses from talking directly to each other. It almost demands that big unions and the big industrial umpires get in the way. The legislation is job destroying. Sure, it meets all the union goals of growing union membership and growing union dominance but it has little to do with jobs. There is no doubt that, with Labor’s other botched, bungled and badly thought through policies that have already seen something like $315 billion worth of debt being saddled to the Australian economy in the forward years, this legislation will make our economic recovery more difficult.

The best example of the worsening effects of Labor policy can be seen with award modernisation. On the surface the concept was good and the former Howard government championed it. The intent of reducing the current tens of thousands of awards and their categories down to a couple of hundred is laudable. Indeed, if you look at the range of awards and the range of categories within awards, I think the number is something like over 110,000 different types of awards and categories. For national companies to operate in such an environment is patently and clearly ludicrous so reducing awards to something more simple makes sense.

For example, if we take a transport company in the state of Queensland, they could be subject to 10 to 15 different awards, and each award may have six or seven categories. There could be 100 different awards and categories just in the state of Queensland alone, let alone in other states and territories across the country. Each award contains different provisions including varying allowances, penalty rates and different hours of work provisions. The complexities are large. Having run a national company before coming into parliament I can attest firsthand to how different laws, different rates and different awards across the states make business difficult. Modernising them makes sense and the award modernisation process certainly makes some sense; it is admirable.

As different states come together with their awards, the problem has started to play out. For example, a waiter in New South Wales under the New South Wales waiters’ award might get a penalty rate on a Sunday of 50 per cent extra pay. A waiter in South Australia might only get a penalty rate of 25 per cent. As the union-dominated Labor Party moves to streamline and modernise the awards they are looking at taking the top rate. So suddenly the penalty rate for waiters nationally will look to have a 50 per cent loading on a Sunday. Clearly the cost to business will be absolutely enormous. The Deputy Prime Minister has already made concessions to the restaurateurs’ and caterers’ areas to exclude them from the current hotel awards because of the punitive action that would then have.

When the member for Stirling spoke this morning he used the phrase, ‘Unions and enterprises alike have described the award modernisation process as soul-destroying, rushed and nightmarish.’ The minister’s own award modernisation request promised that no-one would be disadvantaged and that there would be no increased cost to business. That was her promise to the Australian people. The question is: how has the Deputy Prime Minister lived up to that promise? The answer is: award modernisation will bring a massive increase in costs to business. It will bring massive cost increases at a time when business cash flow is of paramount importance and when businesses are struggling to survive, to grow and to employ Australians. If the cost to business increases there is only one logical outcome—businesses will cease to invest in technology and equipment, and they will cease to expand or they will cease to employ. There are no other possible outcomes. The evidence would seem to indicate that businesses may have to pay workers amounts of up to 50 per cent extra.

Whilst the shadow minister, the member for Stirling, has indicated we will not oppose the bill, we will be seeking to move a range of amendments to the bill to remove some of the soul- and job-destroying elements of it. We believe, as the member for Stirling indicated, that all people in a workplace—and I mean all, not just those in a union and not just those the unions wish to be players; all people, workers and enterprise alike—are entitled to have a say on what happens in a workplace. People should not be bulldozed and railroaded by one sectional group, in this case a union movement. We therefore propose to amend the bill to ensure that fairness is a concept that extends to all parties other than just the union movement.

This bill also deals with the interaction between the National Employment Standards, the NES, established under the Fair Work Act and the existing transitional instruments. We propose to amend the bill to ensure that the NES can universally apply but in a manner that does acknowledge detriment on a global basis. We recognise and believe in real fairness and that should be taken into consideration. All parties should be considered and fairness should extend to all parties. We will seek to move amendments to remove the job-destroying aspects of the bill. If we are to go back to a time of full employment, if we are to move back from the precipice the current government is taking us to of one million unemployed, we need flexibility in the workplace, and there is very little in this bill that demonstrates the requisite flexibility the nation so desperately needs.

Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to be speaking in this cognate debate in support of the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009. These two bills in conjunction with the Fair Work Act are the final stages of the commitment made by the Rudd Labor government to the general community across Australia that we will finally see the end of Work Choices.

The transitional bill will, once and for all, repeal the Workplace Relations Act 1996 leaving only schedule 1 that deals with registered organisations and schedule 10 that deals with transitionally registered associations, which will then become the new renamed Fair Work Registered Organisations Act 2009. This is truly a great day. This is the day that we see the end of Work Choices and the Workplace Relations Act 1996. This bill also provides for the application of the 10 National Employment Standards and minimum wages to all national system employees from 1 January 2010 including those covered by instruments made before the commencement of the new system. It also ensures that an employee’s take-home pay is not reduced as a result of any transition to a modern award from 1 January 2010.

The bill also sets out rules in relation to the treatment of existing industrial instruments in the new system and includes arrangements to enable bargaining under the new system to commence in an orderly way. It also deals with the transfer of assets and functions and proceedings from the Workplace Relations Act institutions to Fair Work Australia and the Fair Work Ombudsman.

The Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009 also marks the next step in the creation of the national workplace relations system for the private sector, which is a key commitment of this government. The bill will amend the Fair Work Act to enable states to refer matters to the Commonwealth with a view to establishing a uniform national workplace relations system for the private sector.

These two bills, in conjunction with the Fair Work Act, will deliver where Work Choices and the Howard government failed. What this legislation will do overall is deliver a clear, easy-to-read piece of legislation that delivers significant national reform, which was a commitment of Rudd and Labor leading into the 2007 election. It provides clarity and it provides transition from the absolute mess that was left behind as a consequence of Work Choices. Where the Howard government failed and where Work Choices failed is that they made promises to deliver to the business community a simple, unregulated labour market. In fact it just created a complex labyrinth of laws that went from a single piece of legislation to two significant volumes that even the most experienced lawyer, or consultant or industrial relations expert in this field had trouble getting their head around. In its place we will get a simple-to-read piece of legislation that sets out basic conditions and entitlements at the same time as ensuring flexibility in the workplace to build on productivity.

Some of the key features of the new workplace relations system are a fair and comprehensive safety net of minimum employment conditions, a system that has at its heart bargaining in good faith at the enterprise level, protections from unfair dismissal for employees, protection for the low-paid, a balance between work and family life, and the right to be represented in the workplace.

I have to congratulate the member for Fadden for being able to stand there with a straight face and say that the opposition are about fairness, real fairness for workers. It is unbelievable that anyone on the opposition side can actually stand there and say that they are about fairness for workers. This is the party that brought us AWAs. This is the party that stripped away basic wages and conditions and fair protections of workers. We heard from the member for Werriwa an example of a constituent coming and telling him that he was sacked and the reason given by his employer was that he could. Prior to Work Choices and even under the Workplace Relations Act 1996, which was introduced by the Howard government, at the very least the employer had to give reasons for dismissal. But what became the norm under Work Choices was for employers to simply say: ‘I could. I sacked you because I could.’ That is what those laws allowed. So any proposal that the opposition are going to put up amendments because they want to create real fairness is an absolute farce and they cannot be trusted.

We have seen a new tactic in this chamber in the last few days. I think it has finally dawned on the opposition that if they just keep opposing all of the bills that the government puts up it will come back to bite them at some point. We saw many examples of that last week where we had members on the other side out in their electorates doing the thumbs-up and supporting government initiatives but then opposing these proposals outright in this House. So they have moved slightly. Their new strategy is: ‘We will not oppose it. We will just put up amendments.’ But the reality is that they cannot bring themselves to let go of Work Choices. That is what it is really about.

I remember a story from during the campaign about a particular group of workers in a private hospital who were pharmacists. They had been approached by their employer to have AWAs, and those AWAs not only reduced penalties but required them to work additional hours for no extra pay. These particular workers were quite surprised. They were professionals and they were quite conservative in their voting habits and they actually said: ‘We support the Howard government. We supported these laws because we never thought they were meant to apply to us. We thought they were meant for the blue-collar workers. We thought that they were meant for manufacturers. We never thought AWAs would affect us because we are professionals.’ It just shows you that Work Choices did not discriminate at one level; it made sure that it disadvantaged every worker at every level. That is what this government is absolutely committed to stamping out.

We have heard about jobs. Again, what we have on the other side is a party who, both when in government and now in opposition, are absolutely committed to squandering opportunity. Their idea of tackling an economic crisis—they do not say those words very often; they do not want to acknowledge that there is a global economic crisis going on because that would not be convenient for their political arguments out in the community—is: ‘Let’s tighten our belt and let’s sit and wait,’ as unemployment goes up.

The Rudd Labor government is about actually supporting jobs and nation building for the future. We are about actually investing in infrastructure—public investment in infrastructure where the private sector is pulling back. This will support jobs. Their idea about supporting jobs at the workplace was about stripping away protections and stripping away wages and conditions. What most effective businesses realise is that the way to have a productive workforce and to increase productivity is actually to value your workforce—to work together with your workforce not just to keep the business afloat but to see the business grow.

There is a stark contrast between those on the other side of this chamber and the government members, who are absolutely committed to the investment that this government is making in supporting jobs locally right now and ensuring that we are building and investing in our infrastructure for the future. Those on the other side can try to slip into as many photographs as they want in local communities but the reality is that they are not committed to infrastructure. They were not committed to investing in infrastructure in the 12 years that they were in government and they continue to hold the same view that there is no benefit for a federal government to invest in infrastructure. That view will only condemn our children and our grandchildren to higher unemployment in the future. But this government is committed to seeing that investment occur in our schools.

For anyone who is cynical about this creating local jobs, Bald Hills State School, which is one of the schools in my electorate, said to me recently, ‘Yvette, this is fantastic; it is building halls and our library, and our contractor is employing subcontractors to build our new hall’—a hall they never imagined they would have. The subcontractors are tradespeople who are also parents of children at the school, so that they have parents building the hall for their children. There is no greater investment in education for our young people than investing in quality facilities within the schools so that those kids can learn.

You have before you legislation that has been developed not just for the prosperous economic times but also for the tough economic times. We heard the member for Werriwa talking about some arguments made on the other side that we should not proceed with any changes to the workplace laws because there is an economic crisis going on. But these laws have been developed to deal with all of the economic times that face us, both good and bad.

The Fair Work Act 2009, along with the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill, which are before us today, create a modern industrial relations system for the long term and for the future, leaving behind a very dark past that the Howard government brought upon our businesses and our workers. This is fair and balanced legislation. It is long overdue. It is what the Australian community asked for, insisted on and voted on in 2007. These two bills, in conjunction with the Fair Work Act, deliver on that commitment by the Rudd Labor government. I commend the bills to this House.

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak in the parliament again as the member for Ryan on the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009, and cognate bill, because I know it is of deep interest to the constituents in the western suburbs of Brisbane who I proudly represent.

In the parliament last week, I spoke on a piece of legislation. In that presentation, I referred to the importance of small, medium and large businesses in this country, because they are the ones that create wealth. They are the ones that seek to employ Australians across this country. I mentioned that I come from a small business background to the extent that my parents owned a little corner store—a very small business. They were a young couple when they started out, and they worked their backsides off to create wealth not only for their family and for their community but for others they employed.

I know this is of fundamental importance to those who support the coalition and especially to those who are in business, at the coalface—those who are at the pointy end and who create wealth. I refer to the small and medium as well as the large businesses. They are the engine of our prosperity. I say again—very clearly and very unequivocally, for the record—because the people of Ryan would want me to say so, that businesses create wealth. Businesses create prosperity. It is not the Public Service; it is not bureaucracy; it is not governments—governments should get out of the way as far as they can.

Why is all that relevant to the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill? It is very relevant, because this bill and the amendments involved constitute a substantial hurdle to creating wealth. They play a substantial part in blocking the ability of small businesses in particular—medium sized businesses as well—to employ people, to expand, to enlarge and to increase their economic activities, which, of course, employ people. How does that work? Well, clearly, if mum and dad run a small business or if a handful of people are in partnership and running a business and they have got the unions knocking on their door trying to give union members greater access, that is going to very significantly discourage the owners of those small and medium sized businesses from taking on more people. Entrepreneurs and small business owners and operators want to get on with the business of creating wealth. They do not want to be dealing with unions. They do not want to be dealing with union thugs who are, effectively, trying to take control of these businesses.

This bill repeals the Workplace Relations Act 1996 and renames it the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act. It makes transitional provisions to move employers, employees and organisations from the old act to this new system. The Fair Work Bill 2009 gives effect to state referrals of power relating to the Fair Work Bill and the proposed creation of a national workplace relations system. The bill was supposedly designed to create new provisions that make it simpler and easier for state and federal unions to operate across multiple jurisdictions. On the surface, this sounds nice but, effectively, it is to make it easier for state and federal unions to encroach further on workplaces across this country.

We all know that union membership in this country is at about 14 per cent in the private sector. This reflects, I think, the real views of Australians that the role of the unions should not be dominant in the architecture of our workplaces. I am certainly one who says that there is a role for unions in this country. They have an important place in the architecture of this country. But, equally, we have got to understand that unions should not be dominant. They should not be ruling what small business entrepreneurs have done in putting up their own capital and putting risk on the table. It is they, not union members, who should be making the ultimate decisions as to the course that their business takes.

This transitional legislation will also provide for a start to the new bargaining system, to start with a clean slate. What this means is that any negotiations that are still pending on 30 June will have to begin again. What that means, as well, is that they will be wiping away any continuing protection that would have otherwise existed. Long-running industrial campaigns will have to be restarted. We have all seen the example of Telstra. This means greater cost to the employer and, at the end of the day, greater penalties upon the consumers of Telstra services.

The bill also includes a new provision that makes it simpler and easier for federal and state unions to operate across multiple jurisdictions. This is of great concern to employers because it allows unions the potential to have a deeper and wider place in the workplaces of those businesses. Gone are the days of allowing employers and employees to establish arrangements which suit them. For me, it defies understanding that employers and employees would not be able to come to some kind of arrangement that is in the interests of those stakeholders. Why you need a third party to get involved when neither stakeholder, the employer and the employee, want a third party involved just boggles the mind. What that is saying to employees is that they are not smart enough, they are not able enough, they are not prudent enough, knowing their skills, that they will not be able to come to an agreement that is satisfactory to them and which allows the business to operate as an ongoing concern, which allows the business to continue as an economic entity which will protect that job and related jobs.

So really the ultimate consequence of this new Fair Work Act is to give unions a chair at the bargaining table, irrespective of the wishes, perhaps, of the majority of workers. That, again, is a very significant point. I know that the business owners of Ryan, the employees of Ryan, will be fully aware that that is a point that needs to be made. To allow unions a chair at a bargaining table between employees and someone who has put up their own capital, put up their own risk, and decided to employ people, is just something that cannot be understood by the constituents of Ryan. Under this legislation it will be difficult for employers to make agreements with their employees without approval by the unions that have members employed by the employer—again, as I said, regardless of the wishes of the majority of employees. That is something that I will certainly be letting the chambers of commerce know about in the Ryan electorate—the centenary chamber of commerce in particular, a very successful chamber of commerce that promotes the economic activities of its members and tries to expand opportunities for work in the centenary suburbs of my electorate.

I want to talk about the amendments that enable states to refer matters to the Commonwealth for the purposes of establishing a national workplace relations system. This bill makes transitional arrangements for Victorian employees that are currently covered by the Workplace Relations Act 1996. The schedule also makes amendments to certain other Commonwealth legislation to provide clarity and consistency with respect to the operation of that legislation in the new federal workplace relations system established by the Fair Work Act. Fair Work Australia, which will replace the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, will be able to arbitrate where there is industrial action and it considers the action is causing significant economic harm to either the employer or the employees. This means that, should employees go on strike for a prolonged period of time and no agreement can be reached, they can probably expect to get an arbitrated settlement. Removing employers’ rights to determine what they can afford to pay their workers is also a significant consequence.

To add to the uncertainty for employers, the government has left some pretty significant grey areas in the legislation which are open for interpretation. I would suggest that this is something that the unions are going to try and exploit for their influence. We all know that just in the past few days the unions have been trying to heavy the government again. I notice that in the front page article of today’s Australian, ‘Union fury at Julia Gillard’s backdown’, the union heavyweights are flexing their muscles and showing who is boss. We know that the union movement contributed enormously to the campaign coffers of the Australian Labor Party at the last election. There is of course no hiding their enormous financial wealth and their enormous financial contribution to Mr Rudd winning government. So this is payback time. The unions want to call in their favours now. They are in the position where they have enormous influence. They are ensuring that their voice is heard. They are at the table. We read that the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister are flying to Brisbane to speak at a congress there. Who knows whether they will get the warmth of a union handshake or an artificial handshake. Clearly the regard that the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have for the union movement, or the acknowledgement of their influence, is reflected in them flying to Brisbane this week to speak at a congress.

The reality is that the unions are flexing their muscles. The people of Ryan certainly know that it is completely inappropriate for them to flex their muscles in the workplaces of small and medium-sized businesses in the Ryan electorate. I am of the view, and certainly the overwhelming majority of businesses in the Ryan electorate are, that there is no need whatsoever for centralised solutions. There is no need whatsoever for unions to be overbearing and to take a dominant position in the workplaces of the small to medium-sized businesses throughout this country.

We all know that we are going to get some pretty awful numbers tomorrow that will confirm what we all know: Australia is in recession, which is a terrible situation to be in. A lot of people are losing their jobs, and the government is not governing to minimise that. Indeed, it is governing to make the economic climate more difficult. That is most regrettable, because at a time when we need a strong, prudent and thoughtful government we have a government that is spending billions of dollars willy-nilly in areas that will not produce an economic return either for individuals, businesses or for the country. Australia cannot afford to have this Labor government for one day longer than is necessary.

We have seen how the government has back flipped to the catering industry. I salute all of those who have been front and centre in trying to make sure that their voice is heard in the upper echelons in the Rudd government. I hope that sanity prevails, as jobs will be preserved if their views are taken into account. Now is not the time for shoving on to businesses in the hospitality industry and the fast-food and the pharmacy sectors costs that those businesses cannot sustain and which the economy cannot sustain.

We have seen a lot of commentary in the media, and I suspect that a lot of people are very disillusioned with the course of this government in terms of this piece of legislation and the impact that it will have on businesses. Now is not the time for government to lose control of the steering wheel; indeed, now is the absolute time for the government to be strong and steady. Yet we see that that is certainly not the case. I want to commend a recent editorial in the Weekend Australian of Saturday 30 May. It spoke about the challenge for union leaders, which is for them to try and help create more and better paying jobs for their members.

I make reference to that editorial because it notes the reforms of the Hawke and Keating years. Certainly the reforms of the Hawke years in particular deserve the applause of the parliament, because when a political party or a Prime Minister does the right thing, irrespective of their political stripes, it is incumbent upon all of us to be true to ourselves and true to the interests of Australia and to say, ‘Yes, Prime Minister X did the right thing,’ or, ‘Political party X did the right thing.’ That does not diminish one; that does not diminish one’s party; that does not diminish one’s philosophical direction or one’s central values. Indeed, I think that it elevates that political party or individual to another level of respect in the community. I am certainly one who is going to put on the record that the very tough decisions that Prime Minister Hawke made in his time and that Prime Minister Keating made with respect to superannuation were things that were very necessary. I applaud the union movement for their courage at that time in playing in the national interest. But I am not sure if that is the case now.

I know that these words are not much to the leaders of the ACTU. That may be the case, but I will utter them nevertheless. I encourage the union leaders of today to look back at the union leaders of the Hawke era in particular and have the courage to say: ‘We’re going to ensure that we’re about working together with the government and business in the interests of the country. We’re not just about expanding the membership of the union base, something that would be detrimental to this country.’ I draw the attention of the House and those in the Ryan electorate to that very insightful article of Saturday 30 May about where the unions are.

We all know that those opposite are always talking about how John Howard was someone who looked backwards. Ironically, it is none other than today’s Labor government and today’s union leaders who are taking this country back. The people who pay the price will be the future generations of Australians.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the House for the opportunity to speak on the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009, which was introduced into the House on 19 March, and also the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009, which was introduced on 27 May. I note that it would be appreciated if coalition members respected the agreements made between both sides of the chamber when we try to limit speaking times so that people can get their full opportunity to speak in this House and that as best as possible we can deal with all the work that needs to be done.

The bills that are being debated today will fully implement the government’s election promises. They will fulfil our commitment to the Australian people on one of the key platforms and planks that we were elected on in relation to workers and fair work and a whole range of reforms that needed to take place after the disastrous Work Choices legislation, the workplace relations legislation that was introduced by the former government. It is very pleasing to again have the opportunity to speak on bills in relation to workers’ rights.

I took note of a number of the comments made by the previous speaker, the member for Ryan, and other speakers as well. This is not an attack on them, but the debate still centres around old debates and old arguments. It still centres on things that are not at the core of what working Australians—ordinary people; families—are concerned about. Those opposite are still caught up in some pre-war concepts of us versus them and of old class battles, with it being the unions versus everybody else. Somehow, unions are a third entity that exists in cyberspace, perhaps. Unions are the workers; unions are the voices of the workers, just as in every other part of society, people have a representative to speak on their behalf. We as members of parliament represent our constituents. All 90,000 cannot be in here, so I am elected here to speak on their behalf, as is the member for Ryan elected to speak on behalf of his constituents. But I have to say that I am not as arrogant as the member for Ryan or some others on the other side to believe that all those whom I speak on behalf of share my view.

I actually believe that our views can differ and that you can still represent your community properly, adequately and respectfully, but do not come in here pretending and arrogantly saying that all of your constituents are of that view and that all businesses have confirmed that they somehow oppose this, have a different view to us or somehow agree with the previous speaker’s views. I just find that a ludicrous proposition. I also find it at the shallow end of the pool in terms of the contribution to debates that we get on these matters by members of the Liberal and National parties, whose only clear agenda in these debates is about how you keep tipping the balance of power in one only direction. It is never about trying to rectify power imbalances in society, communities and workplaces; it is never about trying to have a fair workplace where you can try to find some sort of equilibrium, which is very hard to do. It should be about where you could find some sort of balance for the rights of working people—those who actually create the wealth. This is another myth that is purported by the other side: it is only the people who invest in and create a business who have all the rights—because they have risk on the table, they have all the rights; because it is their capital, they have all the rights.

I am a big supporter of business—small, medium and large. I think they do a fantastic job in this economy. I am a friend of business, but I am also a friend of workers, the people who make those businesses a success, the people who toil day in and day out and do it with great courage. They toil with their labour and risk their labour and time; they risk the possibility that if something goes wrong in the business they will lose their employment and perhaps their home and investments. It is a shared risk. It is a shared investment by the people who put capital on the table with the people who toil with their labour. That is the balance, and that is what the other side should be talking about: how do we properly address in this place the requirements to balance the needs of working people and families—people who need to trade their labour for a fair day’s work and a fair day’s pay? How do we get their rights balanced with the obvious rights that employers have in terms of trying to manage their business and get on with growing their business? What really disturbs and frustrates me is the attitude of the other side, that it only goes in one direction and that the only people who should have a voice—the voice of collectivism, the voice of a union—are employer association groups, unions or whatever you want to call them. In their mind, the only collective voice that should be heard is that of some Australian business group or other organisation.

We talk about consultation in terms of delivering these bills. The greatest of efforts have been put forward in consulting with the wider community and all stakeholders—unions and the people they represent, workers, their families, employers, employees, union groups, associations, business groups. We understand that they all have a role and a stake, either through their representative voice, individually or collectively—regardless of how they arrange their own affairs. When you can at least get to that place, then you can understand who should be at the table and what you should be delivering for the national interest, business and workers—the people who actually create that wealth.

I am afraid that, as always in these debates, we hear the tired old arguments over union influence. Let me just say to the other side, the former government who were tossed out on their ear because of their assault on ordinary working Australians: I suggest that big business have a massive influence on their decisions. I suggest that big business, in fact, have the coalition’s ear and that they are at the beck and call—captive—of big business. I do not disagree that we should all listen to big business, heed their views and include them in consultation, but I equally believe that workers should be at the same table and so should their representatives through the union movement.

I also note that, in these difficult economic times, some on the other side will say: ‘Now is not the time. It’s just too difficult.’ That is what they will tell you. If you actually listen to the other side, it is never the time; there is never a good time. When the economy is running away and markets are in a bull run they say: ‘Now is not the time. We’re too busy making money and growing our business, and we need to actually relax the rules and deregulate further in order to continue to grow.’ When times are tough they say: ‘Now is not the time because we must save the business. We must do this and that. We must walk down that path.’ But they never stop for a minute to think about the shared pain and, whether it is in good times or bad times, who should bear the cost. In my view it should be an equal balance of bearing the cost, between the taxpayer, business and workers. Everybody should have an equal part of not only the risk but sharing the burden. But if you listen to the Liberal and National parties, their dyed-in-the wool, heart-of-hearts ideology is that there should only ever be one group of people who actually pays the cost, and that is workers—to be discarded, gotten rid of and sacked, or rearranged in restructuring businesses. There is one underlying factor and theory: the worker should always bear the cost. I find that abhorrent. In the contributions that we have seen from members on the other side, that is exactly what we are being told.

We are introducing a new system, a fairer system with fairer laws that are about balancing the needs of employees, their representatives, unions and employers. We want to ensure that all employees and employers have a fair stake in their own lives and workplaces. It is about fairness in terms of rights and responsibilities. It is the Australian way. This is the way that we do things here in Australia to provide the best outcomes. We want fair dismissal systems for small business, we want to make sure that workers have confidence in the systems we put in place and that there is a certainty about their employment arrangements. We want clear minimum wages. We want to make sure that we assist low-paid and vulnerable workers. Why should they be at the bottom of the heap and not have any protection? Why should they be at the beck and call, the whim, of unscrupulous employers who would just use and abuse them and then discard them when they are no longer needed or when they find can someone who will do the same work cheaper. That is not the Australian way. That is not a fair go. There need to be standards. That is the work that we ought to be doing in here, alongside the representatives of workers and unions. We need to make sure that employees and employers all have freedom of association in the workplace and that employees can bargain collectively and belong to a union without the fear that just by belonging to one they will be treated differently at work.

We know how that works in some workplaces. You are discouraged from belonging to a union. It may be against the law but people are discouraged from joining a union because of the pressure on them in their workplaces. This is not how it should be in Australia and these laws will ensure that those rights exist and enshrine them in legislation. This new government workplace relations system will provide a strong safety net, and in fact in these uncertain times it will provide certainty and will make sure that everyone understands their place and how they can be protected to best ride out the economic times that we face.

In conclusion, in fulfilling our commitments to the electorate at the last election we are getting rid of some of the most extreme workplace laws that this country has ever seen, laws that were not asked for by anybody—or perhaps by just a few extreme elements of big business. They were certainly not asked for by ordinary Australians and were clearly rejected by them at the last election. I commend the bills to the House.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker Andrews. As a former Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, you must have found it quite difficult to sit in your neutral position as Mr Deputy Speaker during this debate.

I have a real problem with the way the Australian Labor Party chooses to approach workplace relations. It talks about balance, but what it is really doing is seeking to bring about situations which are entirely unbalanced and inequitable and which will indeed cost jobs. It is unquestioned that the government did obtain a mandate at the last election to amend the workplace relations regime that was introduced by the former government. That does not mean that we have to like the changes that the government has sought to make, but it does mean that we have to respect the mandate given to it by the Australian people. The result was actually very close and, if you look at how people in many electorates throughout the country voted when they returned Liberal-National members, it is pretty clear that they were not voting against the workplace relations regime of the former Howard government. Having said that, democracy really is a question of numbers and when all of the results were toted up after the election it was clear that there was about to be a change of government, and some of these fairly extreme industrial relations changes which we have seen introduced to the parliament by the Australian Labor Party are a legacy of the change of government.

The government has recited like a mantra that it does have a mandate, and we do accept that it has a mandate. But the government through changes before the House has sought to go beyond the mandate that was given to them by the Australian people. That is why the Liberal-National opposition is moving amendments to the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009. As the shadow minister has pointed out, we are seeking to target those areas of the legislation which extend trade union power, provide a disincentive for employment, and of course go beyond the policy taken to the Australian people by the government in 2007.

Let me just look at some of the things that were said by now government ministers, and also the Prime Minister, prior to the election in relation to right of entry and access to non-union member records. Prior to the election the Labor Party said that the existing laws in relation to the right of a union to enter a workplace would be maintained. This promise has been broken and the laws supported by the government give access to personal records to unions including those personal records relating to a non-union member. The Labor Party said:

Federal Labor will maintain the existing right of entry provisions … Right of entry rules remain.

That was a joint media release by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister on 28 August 2007, just a couple of months before the election. The Deputy Prime Minister at a press conference on the same day said:

We will make sure that current right of entry provisions stay. We understand that entering on the premises of an employer needs to happen in an orderly way. We will keep the right of entry provisions.

In a speech to the Master Builders Australia on 28 May 2008, after they were elected to government, she said:

We promised to retain the current right of entry framework and this promise too will be kept.

On 7 November 2007 at a debate at the National Press Club, the Deputy Prime Minister said:

If you would like a pledge to resign, take a contract in blood, take a polygraph, give you my mother as hostage, whatever you like, we will be delivering our policy as we have outlined it.

And later she said:

… current right of entry laws will be maintained.

The reality is that the legislation currently before the House does expand union rights by allowing them—unbelievably in breach of the rights of privacy of non-union members—to view the records relating to those non-union members. I would have thought that fair-minded people, regardless of where they sit politically, would feel that in 2009 a person who was not a member of a union ought not in any circumstances, whether investigating a suspected breach of the law related to a union member or not, have access to those records. The records include: records of non-union members, salary details, pay rates, super fund contributions, warnings, medical certificates, bonuses paid, disciplinary interviews, licence and criminal background checks, garnishee orders, family support payments and so on. At the present time unions are restricted to looking at wage records for union members only and most reasonable people would consider that that is an appropriate course for the law to take. But the proposal before the chamber expands that situation to a position where the rights of non-union members are trampled over and treated as being virtually non-existent.

I do not know why in 2009 the government would come into the chamber to argue that unions should be given such a privileged and special power. What about the checks and balances? This is outrageous and the Liberal-National opposition is moving to ensure that unions can only see records relating to non-union members when an employee gives consent or where Fair Work Australia authorises them to be viewed. Let us face it: workers are voting with their feet. They are moving away from union membership because trade unions are no longer providing the services they once did, and we believe that the privacy rights of the 86 per cent of the private sector workforce who are not members of a union must be protected.

With respect to the right of entry and expanded access for discussions, Labor promised that laws surrounding the right for a union to enter a workplace would be maintained. This promise has also not been observed as the number of workplaces where a union can gain access for discussions are vastly expanded by this bill. We will be moving an amendment which will permit employees to decide if they want unions in the workplace and, if so, which union that ought to be before any entry can occur. It is unacceptable that you have union thugs marching into workplaces when the employees simply do not want them there. This would apply in a workplace where there is currently no union presence or where a union other than the existing union wants to enter. What is wrong with asking employees, the people who this is supposed to be all about, to decide who can represent them?

Another point relates to compulsory arbitration. The government said prior to the election that compulsory arbitration would not be a feature of its new enterprise bargaining system. This is another false promise. What do they say? In a speech to the National Press Club on 30 May 2007, the Deputy Prime Minister said:

Under Labor’s policy there is no automatic arbitration of collective agreements. Our policy clearly states that no one will be forced to sign up to an agreement where they do not agree to the terms.

In April 2007, the government went on to say in Forward with Fairness:

Good faith bargaining does not require bargaining participants to make concessions or sign up to an agreement where they do not agree to the terms.

The situation is that the bill provides for Fair Work Australia to have the capacity to arbitrate, compulsorily, differences between negotiating parties when they cannot reach agreements themselves, and these outcomes are known as workplace determinations. There is, I am advised, a conceptual difficulty between arbitration and agreement making, and if parties cannot agree on the terms which suit them they ought to be able to walk away and rely on the safety net of awards and the National Employment Standards. The Liberal-National opposition proposes to retain the current provisions relating to enterprise bargaining but ensure that compulsory arbitration in the form of workplace determinations is only available when bargaining representatives genuinely consent to such a determination being made.

I will mention a couple of other points briefly. I cannot speak at length because of the arrangements the whips apparently have to get this legislation dealt with by the parliament expeditiously, but with respect to greenfield agreements the government did not promise us the onerous, restrictive and complex greenfield legislation provisions that are in the proposed legislation, and the new provisions will make it almost impossible for new work or jobs to commence without the approval of a union. Again, Labor is the party of the unions. It is controlled by the unions and it seems to be serving the interests of the unions and not the interests of workers. We believe that our proposed amendment removes the requirement for unions to be notified. That is fair, equitable and just.

The legislation also proposes a new approach to transmission of business that replaces the accepted approach of asset transfer established and confirmed in several High Court decisions with a new concept of transfer of work, and additionally there is a necessity that, if employees are transferred with a business, the instrument underpinning their engagement is also transferred on an ongoing basis. We propose that the law ought not to be changed. In other words, we want to keep the law as it is. Unfair dismissal laws effectively cost jobs. Unfair dismissal laws are a discouragement to employers to hire new employees, and we would like to make sure that there is a situation where jobs are not lost because of Labor’s ideological devotion to the trade union movement. There is much more that I would have liked to have discussed on this legislation, but I want to indicate to the House that I support the amendments which are being moved by the opposition in this debate.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise as a member of the Labor Party, the political arm of the trade union movement, in support of the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009. These bills are another step in the Rudd government’s campaign to restore fairness to Australian workplaces. One of the worst legacies of the Howard government is the absolute shemozzle they made of workplace relations, particularly the individual contracts which were known as Australian workplace agreements.

After forgetting to mention the idea during the 2004 poll, the coalition government—drunk on the power of their Senate majority—forced an unfair, unwanted and non-mandated workplace relations system on the Australian people. Unlike the Howard government, the Rudd Labor government is holding true to our commitment to create a fairer, more balanced system. There is nothing duplicitous about our pre-poll commitment and our post-election delivery. Kevin Rudd’s word is his bond. The legislation before the House delivers our election commitment in full. 20 March 2009 was a great day for Australian workers and fair-minded employers because it was the day the Senate buried Work Choices.

This legislation drives another nail in the coffin of Work Choices. Let us hope that those opposite do not attempt to resuscitate the lumbering beast. We certainly do not want the member for Higgins to come in. The member for Mayo is also someone who is particularly interested in re-attaching electrodes to the bolts in the neck. The member for Kalgoorlie is another one of those people. We could call him Igor and hear him say: ‘The storm is at its peak. Let’s re-attach electrodes.’ Let us hopefully never have a reawakened Work Choices beast.

The legislation before the House repeals most of the Workplace Relations Act 1996 and renames it the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009. It puts in place transitional arrangements to move from the old Workplace Relations Act to the new system established under the Fair Work Act 2009. This legislation outlines the bargaining and agreement-making rules which will be in place during the transition phase. For example, it allows employees on individual statutory agreements to enter into a conditional termination to enable them to participate in collective bargaining; it allows Fair Work Australia to recognise the prior bargaining history of the bargaining participants when making judgements under the Fair Work Act; and it ensures the application of the no disadvantage test to enterprise agreements made before modern awards and the start of the National Employment Standards on 1 January 2010. It also ensures that the National Employment Standards and award wages will apply to all national system employees from 1 January 2010 and sets up transitional arrangements to establish the Fair Work Ombudsman and Fair Work Australia. The Workplace Ombudsman and the Australian Fair Pay Commission will be abolished as at 1 July this year. The legislation also creates the specialist Fair Work Division of the Federal Court and the Federal Magistrates Court.

These amendments are further evidence that the Rudd government is serious about ensuring Australians enjoy fair and balanced rights in the workplace. We are serious about enforcing these rights either through the checks and balances we have built into the system or, if necessary, through the courts. The legislation also puts in place transitional rules regarding right of entry and enables state registered unions to participate in the federal system.

I know a lot of people who fought for almost three years to rid Australian workplaces of Work Choices. With the indulgence of the House I will mention some of those who were so passionate: Terry Wood and Kate Perry from my campaign team; Andrew Ramsay and his wife, Trish, from the CFMEU, who put in so much time and effort into the Your Rights at Work campaign; Michael Ravbar from the same union; Darcy Orr, Russell Carr and Kelly Bush from the AMIEU; Ros McLennan, my campaign director, Michael Hayworth, Michael Moy, Pat Atkinson and Brad Hayes from the Queensland Independent Education Union, which I used to work for; Jonathan Mamerial, Don Brown and Braedan Hogan from the LHMU; Amanda Freude, who did so much, Genevieve Siddle and Barbara, just to mention a couple from the Queensland Nurses Union; Peter Allen, Owen Doogan and the many delegates from the RTBU who came out on the weekend to do work for the campaign; Brendan Crotty, Robyn and Ken Boyne, to name but a few from the Queensland Teachers Union; Shannon Fentiman and Andrew Dettmer from the AMWU; so many people from the plumbers union that I cannot begin to mention them all; people from CFMEU mining; Michael Clifford from the FSU; a swag of people from the ETU; David Forde, who worked tirelessly; Simon Finn; Peter Shaw; Cameron Crowther; Alan Clark-Jones; Alison Skau; Andrew Dallas; Brett Machin; Bruce Gillman; Chris Begley; Claire Stimpson; Dallas Elvery; Daniel Doran; Denise Redfern; Gary O’Halloran; Gaye Vale; Geoff Taylor; Ian Bosley; Ian Wallis; Jo Clark-Jones; Joan McGrath; John Park; John Savill; John Wheeler; Julie-Ann Cork; Justine Clark; Karen Struthers; Larissa Knight; Len Ardill, the legend; Lyn Griffiths; Marcus Smith; Noel Morris; Norm Bullen; Rod Beisel; Rose Matters; Steve Griffiths; David Newman; Doreen Ferney; Nick and Shannon Sahlqvist; Greg McPhee; Jean Rousseaux; Jill Ashmore; Yasmine Childs; Peter Allen; and Faisal Hatia.

Those are just some of the people in my electorate who care about fairness in the workplace. Obviously, there are many more. Many are passionate about some workplace rights, such as the ABCC, where we still have some discussions to go. More importantly, as I am sure those opposite know, many employers also had concerns about unfair workplaces. The problem was that it was a race to the bottom. It did not matter how fair you were as an employer. If the employer next door in the same industry was prepared to be a bad boss, then they lowered wages and it was a race to the bottom, otherwise you were not able to compete. It did not matter how fair you were; it was how unfair the business next door was.

It is good to see that the Rudd Labor government is committed to bringing fairness back to the workplace. Unfortunately, one state has some concern about those referral powers. Perhaps some states are prepared to dance with the devil again. I am sure the House will remember that Western Australia led the rush towards unfairness in the last century—not at the start of the century at the time of the horse and buggy but at the end of the century. The member for Charlton might remember very well when Western Australia brought in the Western Australian workplace agreements—WAWAs, as they were called. On election night on 24 November 2007 ‘wah, wah’ was heard in more than 20 electorates when people spoke about employment practices in Australia—‘We don’t want unfair workplaces.’ That was a different time, from when John Howard had control of the Senate through to election night on 24 November 2007.

In these tough times around the globe it is a time for harmony and fairness, not division and fear. Some of my friends who are industrial relations lawyers agree. One mate of mine—and I do not think he votes Labor—is a lawyer. In giving advice to employers he had to do his job properly so he gave advice to employers that meant they basically almost had to be bad bosses to compete with the businesses that were taking advantage of John Howard’s workplace legislation. It would be unAustralian if we were to go down that road again. I have been listening to some of the speeches of those opposite. I can see that the seeds are there and they are happy to try to sow those seeds of division again. This would be a dangerous thing to do for Australia. It is not what we need. It is not what fair-minded employers need. It is certainly not what employees need.

I remember vividly on election day in 2007 a group of young plumbers. People talk about jackbooted union bosses, but they were not those kinds of people at all. In 2004 you would barely have been able to motivate these young fellows to get off their backsides to vote, but in 2007 they were in T-shirts handing out how-to-vote cards at the front of the booth. Why? Because they understood that what John Howard had done was unfair.

I hope those opposite do not pick another election based on workplace relations. This is not what Australia needs. If they want to do so, then bring it on. If we need to have an election, it should be on the emissions trading scheme or nation building—something that is important for the future of this country. Surely those opposite do stand for something and they will pick the right thing to go to an election on. The Irish poet Yeats said that too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. We all recognise that we do not need to battle over workplace relations in Australia all over again. It is time for fairness. I hope those opposite understand this. I commend the bills to the House.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors, Tourism and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have this opportunity to make a contribution to the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009 as part of the cognate debate. It has been instructive to gain some insight into the Australian Labor Party’s approach to industrial relations in modern Australia. It has been instructive because you can contrast the position of modern workplaces against the fossil-like approach of the Australian Labor Party, as wedded as they all are to the trade union movement, and the huge debt that this political wing of the trade union movement owes back to their political masters, Australia’s trade unions.

In this debate we have had speaker after speaker from the Australian Labor Party come into the chamber and talk about the way in which this bill gives effect to Labor’s promise to make workplaces ‘more fair’, to use their words. The member for Moreton just spoke of how this bill will ensure greater equity and greater fairness in the workplace. He ran through a long list of trade union hacks who he needed to thank, who had been out supporting his campaign, running the scare campaign that the trade union ran at the last federal election about the impact of Work Choices laws and the impact of the Howard government’s changes on workplace relations.

But what the Australian Labor Party never talk about is what the impact of its laws will be on Australian workplaces. They never speak about the impact of Labor’s re-regulation of Australia’s industrial landscape to the detriment of employers directly and, indirectly, of employees. That is the great con. That is where the Australian Labor Party really holds itself out as being among the best of the snake oil salesmen that we have seen. There has not been a speaker in this debate thus far, to the best of my knowledge, from the Australian Labor Party who spoke about the impact of this bill on employers.

This is not about just blindly defending employers. It is about recognising the complete and total relationship that exists between employers and employees. The fundamental reality is that, if you drive up business costs, if you re-regulate industrial relations and the marketplace—that is, someone who offers themselves for employment and an employer who takes the risk to employ that person—and especially if you drive up costs for Australia’s 2.4 million small businesses, which employ about 3.8 million Australians, then the logical, most common-sense, most blatant and most obvious outcome will be that small business employers, and employers more generally, will not hire new people and will actually take existing employees off their books. That is what the Labor Party does not want to acknowledge.

The cognate debate before the House today includes amendments to so-called ‘modernise’ Australia’s awards system. This is a beast of the Australian Labor Party, which they cloak in a shroud by saying that this is about modernising workplaces. How modern is it to force up business costs, the costs of labour, by 15 per cent, 20 per cent, 30 per cent, 40 per cent or 50 per cent or, in some instances under the draft modern awards that we have seen so far, by over 250 per cent? How modern is that? How fair is it on those Australians who will be cast from the employment lines onto unemployment queues and forced to go on the dole, because this government, as part of its ideological quest to so-called modernise awards, will actually drive up unemployment by driving small businesses out of business?

The reality is that this proposal by the Australian Labor Party could not come at a worse time. This massive hike in labour costs could not come at a worse time. The Australian Labor Party is forcing massive increases in employment costs onto 2.4 million Australian small businesses, and the consequence of that will be higher unemployment. I plead with the Australian Labor Party to recognise the price that you place on a so-called ‘more equitable’ workplace. Is it truly equitable to drive Australians onto the unemployment lines? Is that true equity? Is that true fairness? Is forcing up business costs by 30 per cent, 40 per cent, 50 per cent, 100 per cent or 200 per cent actually the way to achieve equity and fairness in the Australian workplace? The problem that we have on this side of the chamber is that the Labor Party has a grand cover-all excuse. As the unemployment rate goes up—as I predicted it would as a consequence of changes to unfair dismissal laws—as a consequence of this so-called modern award process, we will see at this stage, as forecast in the budget papers, one million Australians thrown onto the scrap heap of unemployment.

Labor will sit there and say, ‘Well, this is all a consequence of the global recession.’ You see, the Labor Party want Australians to believe that they are victims of unfortunate international economic tumult. The Australian Labor Party want Australians to believe that the reason they are unemployed is something that happened on Wall Street in New York, a slowdown in the Chinese economy or a slowdown in the European Union. That is the only reason that there will be a million people unemployed.

As shadow minister for small business, as I move around this country and speak to hundreds, if not thousands, of small businesses and their advocacy groups, there is one message that I get loud and clear and consistently from those small business men and women. They are scared of this legislation. They are scared of the impact of Labor’s changes and the fact that it will drive up employment costs by 10, 20 or 30 per cent up to, as I said, over 250 per cent in certain instances. They are petrified because these employers have a great relationship with the people they employ. They want to look after them. They recognise that, by providing a job to these people, they are actually helping those people that are in their employ to pay off the mortgage, to put food on the table and to look after their families. They take very seriously the nature of that relationship with their employees because, fundamentally, 99 per cent of small business employers have a great, symbiotic relationship with their staff.

That is why it is so galling when Labor members opposite come into this chamber and say this is all about countering the effects of bad employers. The Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy himself made a statement on the public record that almost beggars belief. He said the reason that we needed unfair dismissal protections was that an employer might come into the workplace in a bad mood and fire a good employee. What a completely absurd comment—to tar 2.4 million small businesses with that kind of absurd remark really is telling of the approach of the Australian Labor Party.

The reality is: yes, there might be one or two bad eggs in terms of employers and, yes, it will come as no surprise to know there might be one or two bad eggs as employees. But the vast bulk of people have a good, positive relationship in their workplace. They operate as a team. They recognise that each is dependent on the other. It is this fundamental recognition that scares employers and employees alike in Australia’s small business sector. It scares them because, as a direct consequence of the legislation before the House right now, the Australian Labor Party is going to force up business costs and drive employed Australians on to the unemployment lines.

Labor can blame it all on the global financial crisis. Labor can blame it all on the worldwide economic recession. But Australians will realise—I believe sooner rather than later—that the actual reason they have lost their job is that Labor made it uneconomic for them to be employed. That is the real reason modern awards will drive up unemployment. That is the real reason unemployment will hit 8½ per cent—conservatively. That is the real reason why the Australian Labor Party will succeed in getting one million Australians unemployed once again. And that rests around the necks of the Australian Labor Party and the minister responsible for this legislation.

The Labor Party claims to be genuinely so concerned about equity and fairness in the labour force—genuinely so concerned and of the view that their award modernisation process is not going to drive up unemployment. We saw this commitment from the Deputy Prime Minister that, frankly, is not worth the paper it was written on. She uttered that, as part of award modernisation, there was a balance to be achieved—a balance that would not force up labour costs and that would not disadvantage employees. That was the commitment that the Deputy Prime Minister provided. If that commitment were actually worth anything—and we know that it is just a glib case of the Deputy Prime Minister engaging in political spin: ‘I have got a problem with this; I will just throw out a pithy little remark like that and reassure everyone in the most general way that there is not going to be a problem’—then why won’t the Deputy Prime Minister support the amendment that is being sought by the coalition?

In this amendment, the coalition has moved to actually enshrine in legislation this pithy little comment that the Deputy Prime Minister made. We have sought, as part of the amendments that were moved by the shadow minister, Mr Keenan, to ensure that we include relief from increased labour costs under part 4. We have sought to recognise that the Labor Party and the Deputy Prime Minister actually said that there would not be an increase that would disadvantage employers and there would not be a situation arise that would disadvantage employees. So why not include that commitment in the legislation? Why not actually incorporate it so that Australians can be reassured that it is not simply some breath of hot air from the Deputy Prime Minister—some kind of spin strategy to try to provide some glib reassurance to Australians? Incorporate it in the legislation. That way we can all rest assured that there will not, in fact, be an impost on employers.

I reassert that the government should get behind these amendments to ensure that this legislation actually does as the Deputy Prime Minister promised. The government should ensure that award modernisation does not drive up business costs and does not force those people that currently have jobs onto the unemployment scrap heap. That will be the true measure of this legislation—what happens to the unemployment rate and how quickly Australians get jobs again.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a real pleasure for me to stand in support of the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009. It is a great pleasure for me to be supporting these bills with the member for Charlton in the House—a member with whom I have had a long association on these issues.

The Fair Work Act was assented to on 7 April this year and it represents, against a dark recent past in this area, a bright future for industrial relations where we have fair, flexible, stable and predictable laws. The extreme experiment of statutory individual contracts, which was undertaken by the Howard government, is now at an end and these bills provide the bridge from that dark past to the bright future.

When you listen to the ranting and the table thumping of the member for Moncrieff you get something of an idea of what is still in the heads of those in the opposition. It is very clear that deep in the recesses of their hearts the opposition is the party of Work Choices. Indeed, I think the word that the member for Moncrieff used was ‘galling’. I have no doubt that it is galling for the opposition to see Work Choices being thrown on the scrapheap. But they need to understand that what ordinary working Australians want is simply a fair system of laws and that is what these provisions provide for.

There are a number of key dates which are set out in these two pieces of legislation, as well as the road map from the past to a stable industrial relations future. Under the bills, the National Employment Standards and minimum wages will now apply to all national system employees from 1 January next year irrespective of whether they are working under an instrument which has been entered into under the Work Choices regime or under the new regime. The Australian Fair Pay Commission standards will continue as transitional minimum wage instruments for the back half of this year—1 July this year until 1 January 2010. Fair Work Australia will give its first annual wage review by 30 June 2010.

Supplementing that safety net are awards and there is a process of award modernisation underway. The process of award modernisation is intended not to reduce any person’s take-home pay. Fair Work Australia will be given the power to put in place orders to ensure that no working people suffer a significant reduction in take-home pay by virtue of awards being modernised, taking into account, of course, whether there are other provisions of a modernised award which compensate for any reduction in pay in another way.

Agreements which have been entered into under the previous law or under the new law will continue or have the ability to continue until their expiry. Unmodernised award instruments will be replaced by modernised awards as those awards are modernised. Fair Work Australia will be empowered to remove any discriminatory provisions in these instruments and to resolve any ambiguity, particularly in relation to the introduction of these instruments with National Employment Standards. Individual transitional employee agreements will continue to be able to be entered into until the end of this year—31 December 2009—and current individual agreements that workers find themselves in can be conditionally terminated in order for those workers to participate in collective bargaining.

The processes for establishing protected industrial action will not carry over to 1 July this year. That is to say, any processes for protecting industrial action which are underway right now must either result in a concluded agreement by the end of this month or if that does not occur then they will need to be re-established under the new law. Agreements lodged between 1 July this year and 1 January next year will continue to be tested against the no disadvantage test and after that time they will be tested against the new provisions in the Fair Work Act.

In terms of the industrial institutions, the Workplace Ombudsman will cease to operate from 1 July this year. The Australian Fair Pay Commission will cease to operate from 31 July this year. The Workplace Authority will continue to operate through until 31 January next year for the purpose of assessing agreements which have been entered into prior to the introduction of the new law. The Australian Industrial Relations Commission and the Australian Industrial Registry will continue through until 31 December this year but Fair Work Australia will commence from 1 July this year, meaning that there will be a dual period of operation for six months. Industrial Relations Commission members will be transitioned to Fair Work Australia on the same terms and conditions that they currently hold. There will then be a specific fair work division of the Federal Court and the Federal Magistrates Court established from 1 July this year.

In terms of representation rights, deeming right of entry permits under the Workplace Relations Act will be valid under the Fair Work Act and arrangements will be put in place which will allow state registered unions to participate within the federal system with Fair Work Australia being given broad powers to provide for representative orders for those state registered unions.

The Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009 will operate to provide for a seamless and streamlined national industrial relations system, which is a very important microeconomic reform in the Australian economy. It will enable states to refer matters to the Commonwealth. It will provide for transitional arrangements for Victorian employees who are currently working under the Victorian provisions of the Workplace Relations Act. They will be placed into these provisions within the Fair Work Act. Indeed, it is anticipated that the state of Victoria will provide a new referral of power to cover the operation of the new provisions in the new act relating to those Victorian employees. All of that provides a framework for other states to engage in similar referrals of power to the Commonwealth.

As I stated at the outset, what these provisions do is provide the process by which we move from that dark recent past of extreme industrial laws to a fair, modern, moderate, sensible system of industrial relations. It provides for the end of statutory individual contracts—a discredited and failed experiment on the part of the Howard government, where they sought to make statutory individual contracts their pre-eminent industrial instrument in the workplace. That is now gone and what we have in its place is a return to enterprise based collective bargaining being the centrepiece of our industrial relations system and the basis upon which we establish the pre-eminent industrial instrument. In doing that, we will bring ourselves into line with the rest of the developed world.

This represents the establishment of a proper safety net. It represents the establishment of a much fairer bargaining system. It represents a balanced, settled, fair, flexible set of laws which will promote productivity and employment within our economy but will do all of that in a way which protects and enhances fairness for all working Australians. This is a set of laws which will in turn have a fair set of unfair dismissal provisions.

In a way, what typifies the approach of those on this side of the House when it comes to industrial relations—and contrasts with the approach of those on the opposition benches—is the consultative process which has been undertaken in reaching the Fair Work laws and these transitional bills. Under the Howard government we had the introduction of Work Choices, but before the 2004 election not a word of those reforms was ever breathed, and yet Work Choices became the signature reform of that term of government. There was no question of mandate; it was not even mentioned in the election, but the opposition woke up one day to discover that they had control of the Senate and they said, ‘Yippee! Here we go,’ and introduced, from their point of view, their lifelong dream of an ideologically extreme set of industrial laws. And they pushed them through the parliament in about a month.

By contrast, in the process of establishing the Fair Work Bill, we have had extensive consultation with employers and unions—and to that extent I would like to congratulate the employers and unions who have participated in extensive meetings which have given these laws a sense of robustness which simply did not exist with the previous laws. To that end I would also like to congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister for the role she has played in overseeing that consultative process. I would also, with your indulgence Mr Deputy Speaker, like to mention Andrea Lester, in the Deputy Prime Minister’s office, who has done an extraordinary amount of work in bringing all these laws to a conclusion.

These bills represent the bridge from the dark days of Work Choices to a new fair era of industrial relations in this country. These bills represent the final nail in the coffin of Work Choices. This is the end of that. It is the beginning of something bright, new and fair. And for that reason this is a very significant day indeed. I commend the bills to the House.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me no particular pleasure to follow the member for Corio in this debate on the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009. The member for Corio’s predecessor was somewhat more colourful and more passionate when he got up in this House to speak on issues that were of concern to him and his electorate. But I do not blame the member for Corio in doing what has to be done when you come from his background and when you get the sort of factional union support that he had to get to be fortunate enough to get preselected for the seat of Corio.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Get on with the legislation.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That angers some on the other side of the chamber but let us be open about some of these things.

This is a very important issue because there is a big gap between reality—what is happening out there, particularly in smaller communities in rural and regional Australia—and the mythology and ideology consuming the government, particularly the office of the Deputy Prime Minister. We have had the Deputy Prime Minister promise that the government’s so-called award modernisation process would not disadvantage employees or increase costs for employers. Is this some sort of magical doublespeak? This is absolute nonsense. We know that it is not true now and we know that this will not be true in the months and years ahead.

We have seen recently the minister’s concession for the hospitality sector. In effect, this was an admission that the government’s so-called modern award will disadvantage both employers and employees. Well, guess what, I have a message for the government: that is not the only sector in the Australian economy that is going to be disadvantaged. Concessions have been made for restaurants, cafes and catering companies. They have successfully argued that they should be treated differently from hotels, but what about all of the other sectors? We are now hearing from retail and fast-food outlets, from pharmacies and from businesses that exist purely because of tourism—businesses that work outside normal hours of operation. All of these sectors have relevant claims that they will be disadvantaged under the government’s award modernisation.

My electorate in north-east Victoria has ski resorts, important winery regions, the largest concentration of micro breweries and great historic places; places such as Corryong on the Upper Murray—the land of the Man from Snowy River—and Ned Kelly country in Glenrowan, Mansfield, Benalla and Wangaratta, are much visited parts of Australia. Many of our local businesses in certain towns and shires have grown and the local employment market—seasonal as it may be—has depended on developing the tourism product. People whose businesses may have become redundant due to structural reform or changes in the local economy have taken a risk and invested their money in another business, which is based in tourism. And what happens? During an economic downturn they are to be penalised even more.

I have these businesses knocking on my door asking: ‘Sophie, how are we supposed to do this? We can’t afford this. Don’t they understand? Doesn’t the Deputy Prime Minister understand that we only make our money on public holidays and on the weekends—after hours—because that is when people have time to consume a tourism product?’ Surely the Deputy Prime Minister understands this. Surely she can be flexible and the government can look at the reality of what is happening on the ground. We are not talking about the sorts of groups that the Labor Party likes to hate—the megarich, whoever they are; we are talking about your small business, sometimes your microbusiness. These are the people who take the risks, put their own capital behind a venture, employ themselves and often, if they can, employ others, and that is how local economies grow. In rural and regional Australia there is a higher proportion of people employed in small business, so this is going to affect people in rural and regional Australia significantly—some would argue more than the capital centres.

But it is not just the tourism industry. A local independent supermarket owner has contacted me with regard to the new general retail industry award. He is concerned that the new award will have a very serious effect on his business. Many of his employers are working mothers and students who rely on flexible hours and casual work. Isn’t that interesting? At a time when the government is telling students in a declining economy to work more, to work 30 hours a week, it is making it difficult for employers in the retail sector to employ them. Under this so-called modern award this employer will have to pay casual staff $39.48 per hour and $31.58 per hour to full-time staff on a Sunday. This is what he said:

As a concerned employer, I do not want to reduce staff—

which is understandable, he is a local employer; he has relationships with his staff in a small town, as opposed to a metropolitan centre. You do know more people in the town you live in and you do have greater connection to them and their families. He goes on to say:

but I fear that this may be one of the inevitable consequences of the introduction of this new award.

I certainly hope it does not have to get to that stage.

Another area that will be significantly impacted on, and they are starting to gather and organise, is the horticulture industry. Award modernisation is set to impose an enormous increase in costs to horticulture, particularly fruit growers. The award modernisation will greatly affect growers and put additional costs and stress on the business of fruit growing. Even in the relatively high rainfall area of north-east Victoria, where my electorate is situated, we too have suffered from prolonged drought. So what will this so-called award modernisation process do? Well, it is just going to add to that stress. Fruit growers are estimating an increase in costs of up to $10,000 per hectare. What does this government want? Does it want to drive small producers and horticulturalists out of the industry? Where does it expect Australians to buy their fruit from? Are we going to import everything from China? Has the government actually asked the Australian consumer where they want to source their food from? I would say that vast majority would say, ‘We want to buy Australian’. But for how much longer will we be able to afford to buy Australian grown produce when these huge cost imposts are imposed on the producer?

I do not want to be smart, I do not want to be sarcastic, because I know the Deputy Prime Minister is a reasonably intelligent woman, but let me state a few basic facts. Fruit is picked when it needs to be picked and when it needs to be packed, and that could happen on weekends for the wholesale market so it can be ready for chain stores on a Monday. You do not have a choice to employ staff during the so-called cheaper periods. Limits on hours worked by seasonal staff will seriously disadvantage them as well. Strict rules on overtime will mean that employers will have to pay workers overtime if they work more than 38 hours in one week. And guess what? Another basic fact: fruit picking is seasonal work. Fruit does not grow all year round. Even those members in this House who live in capital cities and who might be able to source a particular fruit year round will know, or should know, that that fruit does not come from one part of the world, because fruit is seasonal. So what does that mean? That means that workers earn as much as they can when they can. Employers will now restrict workers so that they do not have to pay expensive overtime rates because it is just not affordable. The same goes for the tourism industry. It is seasonal.

The minister and the government must recognise that these industries, other than hospitality, will suffer under the award modernisation process. Surely some common sense needs to be injected into this whole process, and it is not beyond the government to do so. I urge them, on behalf of the small businesses of my electorate, to please have a look at this again. Those opposite do not want to put people out of business at a time when the estimates for unemployment next year are at one million. Those opposite do not want that figure to go up higher. I certainly do not. No amount of pandering, no amount of paying back certain lobby groups and certain unions is worth an increase in unemployment. It will make the job of recovery even harder and it will mean that, if certain industries close down because it is too expensive to employ labour when they need to do so, then we could lose some of those industries forever because it is very expensive to start up certain businesses from scratch, particularly in the agricultural sector. We may possibly see whole industries close down forever. That reduces our ability as a nation to have an indigenous capacity to make our own goods, to grow our own food, and that is a serious concern, not just for me, as a member who has a rural and regional electorate, but for all Australians.

Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mrs Markus interjecting

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Urban Australia is definitely concerned, as my friend the member for Greenway has just reminded me. The coalition will be moving amendments to Labor’s legislation to save jobs in all sectors, and I urge the government to have a close look at these amendments. These amendments will help to take the edges off some of the most job-destroying parts of this law, ensuring that we go some way to preserving the jobs of working Australians.

I feel very passionate about this, coming from a small business background myself. I know how hard it is to make a buck out there, competing against big players, and I know how much harder it is to hold on to what you have once you have made a bit of money. Government seems to want to be taking it from you from all angles. I know how hard it is to try and survive during a recession. I remember, because I worked in my father’s milk bar during the last recession. I was very proud of the fact that he managed not to make money through the recession but to survive. We want to make sure that our small businesses right around Australia survive. Please do not penalise them. Do not treat them with some blanket rule that some group of union heavies has sat around a table and decided on and said to the government, ‘This is what we want you to do—there’s no compromise on that.’ This is bigger than that. It is bigger than interest groups. It is about jobs, it is about real people and it is about sustaining communities. I urge the government to rethink their approach to this legislation.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise today to speak on the bills before us, the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009. In addition to the earlier Fair Work Bill, these bills give effect to the mandate this government so clearly received in the 2007 election. That is why we are here and that is why we are discussing these bills.

Contrary to the doomsday predictions we just heard from the previous speaker on the other side, the member for Indi, concerning our fairer workplace relations system—predictions which one can read daily ad nauseam, particularly in the Australian newspaper—these bills will ensure that Australia has a modern workplace relations system with guaranteed workplace rights and guaranteed minimum standards. Amongst other provisions, these bills give employees a fair safety net of employment conditions which cannot be stripped away. It will give all workers, not just those who work for large businesses, the right to responsibly challenge an unjust dismissal.

In our plan Forward with Fairness, which Labor took to the 2007 election, we committed to a new workplace relations system which will be fully operational by 1 January 2010. The government, as other speakers have mentioned, sought input and collaboration far and wide for both the Fair Work Bill 2008 and the bills we speak on today. Indeed, the Senate inquiry into the Fair Work Bill heard from 154 organisations and individuals and heard evidence at six public hearings across the country. We have listened and we have taken that into account.

When a majority of Australians voted against Work Choices at the 2007 election, as did the good folk of Braddon, they voted against what I believe were two essential parts at the heart of the Howard-Costello obsession—an obsession, I would add, that still burns brightly for the member for Higgins. The first is that the Howard government reforms allowed a worker’s safety net to be stripped away, as simple as that. That pushed workers below safety net standards, losing them their penalty rates and overtime. No amount of late backtracking and backsliding by the former Prime Minister could remove this stain. Secondly, Work Choices allowed good workers to be sacked for no reason at all, with no remedy and no real avenue to challenge it. That was a fact. In these instances there was no choice or fairness in Howard’s so-called Work Choices.

I noticed with interest in Peter Hartcher’s latest book, To the Bitter End, that the unlikely duo of the members for Warringah and Menzies sought to dissuade Howard and the cabinet from dismantling the minimum award safety net. They were singularly unsuccessful in their efforts but, prophetically, their portents were to prove correct. Work Choices skewed the balance of power far too far in favour of employers, many of whom, I would say, were not happy with this unfair imbalance. I am very proud to be able to say that the Rudd government is swinging this balance back to the middle, where it should always have been. Hence, we do not please everyone, and that is a sign of reaching the middle—an equilibrium.

There are doomsayers populating commentary pieces—again, particularly in the Australian newspaper and also amongst spokespeople from the Minerals Council—who would have us believe that the unions have re-emerged as the key victors in the changes outlined in this legislation. I would argue that by any measure the restoration of workers’ rights has been the big winner, and the retention of flexibility but fairness for employers and employees is a direct consequence of these changes.

When we talk about Work Choices and its role in stripping workers of their right to claim their entitlements and in forcing them onto Australian workplace agreements, the changes under the Fair Work Bill will be very well received in my electorate of Braddon. I know of many north-west Tasmanians who were forced onto substandard Australian workplace agreements under Work Choices, and so to this end the Rudd government has already passed a transition act in the parliament to stop new Australian workplace agreements being made. Work Choices skewed the balance of power far too far in favour of the employer, as I mentioned a moment ago.

I would like to take a moment to talk about the National Employment Standards, which are a key element of the Fair Work Act. The new standards, which were released in June last year and which will come into effect from 1 January 2010, will apply to all employees in the federal system, regardless of industry, occupation or income. As mentioned earlier, in the spirit of consultation the Rudd government sought advice from stakeholders right across the country in developing these new standards. If we compare the new standards with the former guidelines, Work Choices, the Work Choices standards comprised 149 pages of complex and difficult to understand information. In amongst all that, there were just five minimum conditions. The new National Employment Standards feature 10 protections in just 50 pages. The 10 standards include maximum weekly hours of work, a request for flexible working arrangements, parental leave and related entitlements, annual leave, personal and carers leave and compassionate leave, community service leave, long service leave, public holidays, notice of termination, redundancy pay and a fair work information statement.

In their opposition to this legislation, the Liberals choose to nitpick around the provisions for unfair dismissal and the definition of small business. Under our reforms which will come into effect on 1 January, the threshold used to define a small business when dealing with unfair dismissal claims will change. I will make it clear how that will change. Under our system, businesses with fewer than 15 employees will fall under a special arrangement whereby those employers will get 12 months to assess their workers to see whether they fit into their business, their business model and their arrangements. If things do not work out, they do not work out. A dismissed worker cannot make an unfair dismissal claim. So there is a 12-month relationship for people to make an assessment about that arrangement. Businesses with 15 or more employees will get a full six months to determine that relationship—50 employees, 100 employees, 200 employees and above.

The Liberals say that this is unfair to the employer, that employers will not want to take on new staff for fear of a lawsuit if things do not work out, and they want to lift the number of employees in the definition of a small business to 20. I respond to this claim by simply saying that the Australian people voted for this reform. All aspects of our unfair dismissal policies were open to the public long before the 2007 election. This is our mandate and this legislation gives effect to it, unlike John Howard and the former government, which imposed Work Choices on the employers and employees of this nation.

There has also been some talk amongst doomsayers about how the new fair work bill will exacerbate the effects of the global economic crisis that our country is currently in the throes of. Some have complained that while Fair Work is a great idea when the economy is booming it is not so great when the economy is contracting. My response to that is the same response that Minister Gillard has previously given in the House and in public: Fair Work is a fair and balanced policy for both the good economic times and the bad. It is the same as the universal rights of man and basic human rights. They do not change according to the weather or from day to day. They are universal principles in every sense of the word. As I said, Fair Work was designed not just for when times are good. It is flexible and it is fair, which is what Australian workers and employers want for each and every day they go to work.

Some predict that these changes will add to unemployment. Indeed, the whole scare campaign run by those opposite, particularly in the pages of the Australian newspaper, really gives testament to what people will see, and could only see, as a negative. These laws are about balance and flexibility. They are positive. In answer to whether things are good or bad, if you have been working in a job for five or 10 years or more it is simply not fair to be suddenly sacked, out of the blue, and not be able to do anything about it. That is what people are facing before this legislation takes effect. To have your redundancy entitlements stripped away and have no compensation at all is what happened under Work Choices, and that is what we are going to stop.

This legislation sets out the transitional and consequential changes that will ensure a smooth transition to the Rudd government’s new workplace relations system. These bills will operate with the Fair Work Act to see the end to the unbalanced and unfair Work Choices laws, to the great delight of the majority of Australians, and in accord—and I reinforce this—with this government’s mandate received at the 2007 election.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking to the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009, I note that I was a very strong opponent of the industrial relations reforms of the previous government. When we had collective bargaining taken away, the wool industry was the first industry to be deregulated, and then all the other farming industries, in every single case, followed. The last industry to be deregulated was the dairy industry, and within two years of deregulation we had lost 30 per cent of our incomes. Within two years the wool industry had lost 50 per cent of their incomes. If the opposition when they were in government could not see the disastrous outcomes of an inability to collectively bargain, they deserved the fate which awaited them in November 2007, when the people of Australia passed their judgement upon them. The average person in Australia may not think all of the time, but if you assume that he is going to be dumb all of the time you will end up not being in this place.

As a person who worked for a significant period of my life as an employee in working-class jobs and as a person who worked as an employer for most of my life, I can see two sides of the coin. If you live in the real world, if you think that you can negotiate as an individual with your employer, you obviously have never worked in an employee situation—otherwise, you are a very stupid person; that is for certain. I am not going to go to my boss and say I want a 20 per cent raise. I know what my boss would have said to me if I had done that when I was working for Mount Isa Mines. It would not have been very pleasant at all. I would rather have died than have gone to my boss and asked for that.

As a young bloke, I made a complaint about safety. I nearly lost my job over it. They did not like stirrers, troublemakers or people who questioned the way that they were doing things. So I shut up. I was on a lot of money and no-one else was speaking up about it. I am a bit ashamed to admit this, but I shut up and accepted that we would continue to work in an extremely dangerous situation. I do not hesitate to describe it to the House; it was on the shaker. You stood on one of the two platforms that led up to the shaker. When it got frozen, one bloke stood on one side and hit it with a sledgehammer. Then he jumped off real quick. The bloke on the other side would then hit it with another sledgehammer. Eventually it started to move, but it would come at you at 60 miles an hour when it started. The platform we were standing on, of course, was very hot indeed. The thing should have been fixed so that we did not have to go through that ridiculous business of hitting it with sledgehammers and jumping off with a fraction of a second to escape injury. I use that as an example to indicate that I myself was not rocking the boat; I was on big money and I was going to stick on it. I would not have had to make the complaint if I had had a union. The union could have made the complaint. I was stupid enough to make the complaint myself and I learnt my lesson. When I had other situations I made sure it was the union that made the complaint. I know what would have happened to me if I had gone and asked for a raise. I was not one of their most outstanding employees.

That is the real world in which we live. I have used individual situations, but I also use the vast global experience of the farming communities of Australia. Every farming sector that was deregulated went down into the destruction zone. When they deregulated the sugar industry and removed protectionism—which is a dirty word in this place—other countries must have been laughing at us so much. Obama just gave $43 billion to General Motors and we come in here and say protectionism is an evil word. If you read the Australian Financial Review and the Australian, which I do not do and hope nobody else in this place does, you would have all of the economic prerogatives that led to what happened to Australia in the eighties. They lauded all of those people. Six of them got away with $5 billion in the space of two or three years. Those people were lauded in the pages of those newspapers, and we were told that these were the wonders of the free market system.

The wonders of the free market system have removed all manufacturing in Australia. Almost every single bit of manufacturing has gone. Mr Keating was the initial architect of our misery, and the last government continued his destructive work. To use the motor vehicle industry, the biggest manufacturing industry in Australia, as but one example, 72 per cent of cars in 1984 were Australian made. Two years ago, only 19 per cent were Australian made. If you think you can rely upon what comes out of Treasury, have a look at the ORANI model. They produced the ORANI model to prove there would be no intrusion. In my book, soon to be published—a history of Australia—Mrs Orani is told she should sue for divorce and ask for punitive damages because her name was used in such a laughable document. This was put out as gospel by the Productivity Commission and the Treasury of Australia, the same people who told us in 1932 that we should have tight monetary policy. Thank goodness they are not giving that advice at the present moment. They have not had a very good history.

We now have a nation that, thanks to the policies of deregulation, has no manufacturing base and has a collapsing farming base. Cattle numbers are down 20 per cent. Sheep numbers are down over 50 per cent. Manufactured dairying is down about 20 per cent. Even fresh milk is down 10 per cent—I do not understand that, but it is. In the sugar industry, our fourth-biggest industry in Australia, we have been closing four mills every six years. We only have 24 mills left, but there are countries that do not pursue these policies. They are building 40 ethanol plants every year in America and they are building 24 sugar mills every year in Brazil.

The policy outcomes are what governments and bureaucrats should be judged upon, and the policy outcomes have been absolutely disastrous for this nation. Mr Costello kept standing up in here and saying he would balance the budget. Wasn’t he a clever fellow? If you increase taxation by 300 per cent, you too can balance your budget. He came in when the budget take was $90 billion and when he went out the budget take was $260 billion. You can balance the government’s budget quite easily, but he never balanced the country’s budget. Under Mr Costello the country was the most unbalanced in Australian history.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable member for Kennedy ought to know that under standing order 64 he has to refer to honourable members not by their actual names but by their electorates or positions.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you; I should know that. I stand corrected. To come back to the legislation here, this is all about deregulation of the labour market. I have gone through the hopeless failure of deregulation in every single sector of the Australian economy—through the absolutely dismal, hopeless failure which has left a country with no manufacturing base and a collapsing agricultural base. That is what deregulation has done. If you applied that to the labour market we would be back where we were.

I am one of the few people in this place who has stood up to the unions and copped it as a result. I was one of the ministers involved with the emergency legislation in Queensland—and I do not blame Joh or absolve myself of responsibility. We moved that legislation because we had to move that legislation. The unions had gone far too far. They felt they could attribute to themselves six months annual leave, twice annually. That was the sort of situation we were getting into in Queensland. So there had to be a pull-back, but never at any stage did we contemplate deregulating the labour market. Never at any stage did it get discussed at any level by us. It was utterly unthinkable. I suppose that most of us at one time or another had been in working-class jobs and we had known what it was like to be part of the employee class and to know that you needed the protection of the union in collective bargaining. I am not holding up the unions as any great Holy Grail, far from it, but as imperfect as they are there is a mechanism there that a democracy needs.

For those of us who read history books, we should reflect upon the days before unionism, before 1915. Australia changed so fundamentally when Theodore took control of the running of Queensland and Australia. It was a different nation after that. But before that, in 1909, one in 32 of us who went down the mines—and every single one of my forebears came from mining areas—never came back up again or came up and died the dreadful death of Miner’s Phthisis, which was afflicting one in four miners at that stage. That is why we needed collective bargaining. It would be like little Robbie Katter at Mount Isa Mines back in the 1960s complaining about the shaker. No-one was going to listen to him and he would be shown the door if he started whingeing again about some safety condition.

We needed someone to represent us on a collective basis, and that was the reason why the deregulation of the labour market was so fundamentally bad and why people I had ever seen in my life were handing out how-to-vote cards. They were out there handing out how-to-vote cards and working passionately because they were intelligent, thoughtful and caring Australians and they knew this was wrong and that it had to be reversed. But it does not seem to me that anyone on the opposition side of the House has learnt their lesson. They are still out there—and this legislation is a good example—trying one way or another to nefariously return to deregulatory policies which proved so bad in every form in Australia, and so bad politically I might add as well. They have learnt no lessons at all.

I ask the opposition to please understand that the idea that you sell a commodity like wool with 20,000 people all selling their own little block separately is not a better arrangement than our getting together and selling it collectively. Have a look at the outcomes. When Anthony introduced it, the price of wool in the next two years went up 300 per cent and, when Keating took it out, the price dropped clean in half over the next two years. And that was pure coincidence, was it? Nobody can maintain there was any element—

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Tuckey interjecting

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take the interjection, because I know a hell of a lot about it. One of my best friends happened to be head of the Australian Wool Corporation at the time and he said that we had a 20 per cent reduction in our demand. China and Russia were contemplating pulling out and it had a detrimental effect upon the market. We were arguing the merits of deregulation, and wool was the first case in Australia of a massive across-the-board deregulation of an industry. It is very important to look closely at what happened. What happened there was that China and Russia said they were pulling out of the market and the market went down, but at that point of time the minimum price scheme pulled it up. It was $8.90 a kilo. It was pulled back to that level, and it was at that level when Keating held his infamous press conference and indicated clearly that the government was not going to stand behind the scheme. Everyone assumed that the government was saying the price was going to go down. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy and the price went straight through the floor at a hundred miles an hour. I rang up Doug Anthony at the time and I said, ‘We are going to find it hard if we lose this.’ He said, ‘How far do you reckon the price will go down if you don’t keep the scheme or if it goes into freefall?’ I said, ‘30 per cent.’ He said: ‘Right, that’s $2 billion a year. How much is it going to cost you to give a loan to Russia and to China to buy that wool?’ I said, ‘A lot of money, $200 or $300 million, and it will go on for three years.’ He said, ‘How much is that?’ and I said, ‘I’ll say $900 million.’ He then said, ‘How much are you going to lose if you do not stand by the scheme?’ I said, ‘The price will drop at least 30 per cent.’ As it turned out, it dropped 50 per cent. He said, ‘How much is that?’ I said: ‘It’s $2,000 million a year for three years. It’s $6,000 million we’re going to lose.’ He said, ‘Right; now that you have got your mathematics right, go back and do the right thing in there.’

Deregulation is going to save the world! It sure would be nice if some other country on earth was participating in it. Mr Bush introduced the aluminium protection arrangements and he then introduced the steel protection arrangements. They are not doing it. The Europeans have a 51 per cent subsidy on agriculture. They are not doing it. Would anybody be naïve enough to think that Japan or China are doing it? Try and sell some beef to China. Good luck, son! Every other country sticks by their industries, and they are out there to win. We stand behind them. We are going to collectively operate here and aggressively operate here. But, no, Australia says, ‘We are going to deregulate,’ and the government stands aside and lets it all go. You will be massacred, and that is what is happening to us out there.

Returning to the legislation specifically, there are some good suggestions here, but I do not feel strongly enough about what the opposition is proposing to back those suggestions. As far as the government goes, whilst I am a very, very strong supporter and applauder of the government moving back to the direction of collective bargaining and allowing people to collectively bargain and protect themselves by way of collective arrangements in the labour market in Australia, uniformity of the legislation throughout Australia does not appeal to me. What is suitable for Sydney in uniformity of the legislation is not suitable for North Queensland—we are totally and fundamentally different. I would have great difficulty in backing the bills because they are bills about uniformity; they are not bills about IR. I have supported the government at all times on IR but I do not support the government in imposing uniformity all over Australia.

It is playing football without a referee. That is really what we are talking about with the arbitration commission. In actual fact the federal government has not restored the arbitration commission. That is wrong. We are still, in my opinion, playing without a referee. The only way you can get a referee now is if somebody gets a bloody nose. The only way you can get to the arbitration commission is if either party suffers substantial loss, which is basically a strike from the workers’ point of view or a lockout from the employer’s point of view. Short of that disruption and infliction of that sort of economic pain you cannot get into the arbitration commission.

Previously we would have a fight and then we would go to conciliation. If that would not fix it up, then we would go to arbitration, but we did not have to strike. And it is very, very hard to get anyone in Australia to go on strike these days. If the opposition is fearful of that, it is fear of the unknown—that is for certain. It just does not happen much in Australia these days because people are locked into time payment arrangements and they are not going to be able to strike.

It is a very sad day when the only way we can get collective bargaining between an employee and an employer is by way of serious strike action, serious lockout action or something along those lines. We are playing football and the only way now to have a referee is if you bloody somebody’s nose. That is the only way you are going to get access to arbitration, and that is not a way to run society.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is interesting to follow the member for Kennedy in a typically wide-ranging contribution. He had a lot of interesting things to say and I am happy to associate myself with his remarks about the need to learn from the lessons of history, both in the sense of employer and employee relationships and in the way workers get exploited if they do not have unions to represent them and look after their interests in a collective way, and also the importance of learning the lessons of history in a historical sense. The previous Prime Minister managed to lose his own seat at the 2007 election because he took insufficient notice of the fate of Stanley Melbourne Bruce, a previous conservative Prime Minister, who lost his seat in the 1920s in seeking to do precisely the same thing, to prevent workers from being represented in a collective fashion.

This legislation, the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009, sets out transitional and consequential changes to ensure a smooth, simple and fair transition to the new Fair Work scheme, but it also seeks to provide for certainty. It is designed to ensure the universal application of a safety net that includes 10 National Employment Standards and minimum wages that will apply to all national system employees from 1 January next year. I believe a national system of guaranteed minimum standards is a necessary economic safety net for workers during what are uncertain economic times. At a time of heightened economic vulnerability it is now more important than ever that workers feel protected, and I think that the reintroduction of unfair dismissal provisions from 1 July is a welcome development in ensuring that adequate measures are in place to support workers. For the Liberal Party to have equivocated on supporting the reintroduction of unfair dismissal provisions demonstrates their inability to let go of Work Choices.

I want to remind the House about the need for unfair dismissal provisions by referring to an article published in the June 2008 Journal of Industrial Relations titled ‘The impact of Work Choices on women in low paid employment in Australia: a qualitative analysis’. This was a study of the experiences of 121 women across five Australian states who were affected by the changes arising from Work Choices. I point out that this was at a time of rising employment growth. In the area of job security what emerged from the study was significantly compromised ability to bargain in the workplace due to diminished job security as a result of the absence of unfair dismissal laws.

Alarmingly, the report indicated that 57 of the 121 women—over half—had been dismissed or forced to resign in circumstances that would previously have been challenged as unfair. Many of the dismissals occurred suddenly without warning or notice. Interviewees had no chance to defend themselves or to negotiate. Most were not dismissed because of poor work performance. Many were given no reason for their dismissal but could trace a link between it and factors such as notification of pregnancy, questioning of management decisions and behaviour, complaining of long hours, refusal to change hours or agree to other unreasonable demands or contact with a union. In some cases dismissals occurred as a result of intolerance to personal circumstances which previously had been constrained by the award and by the Industrial Relations Commission processes that no longer applied. For example, women were dismissed for missing work to care for a sick child who had become seriously ill or following a revelation that the worker was subject to domestic violence.

Contrary to the previous government’s spin that Work Choices would facilitate direct negotiation between an employer and an employee, the study revealed that low-paid women were vulnerable to a ‘take it or leave it’ culture and they were vulnerable to unilateral action. Most employees made it quite clear that they were not in a position to negotiate directly with their employers and would not be able to unless they had some job protection. So much for Work Choices promoting workplace negotiation and bargaining. It is a myth that a tight labour market protects low-paid workers from cuts to wages and conditions.

This legislation sets out the transitional provisions that move employers, employees and organisations from the old Workplace Relations Act to the new Fair Work system. I want to make two observations about transitional provisions. First, a national system requires uniformity of laws to enhance the economic dividend and administrative advantage that such a system seeks to achieve. That is why I think the differences between the Fair Work Act and the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act are inconsistent with a move towards a national industrial relations system. I do not believe that there is any sound justification for laws that create two standards—one for construction workers and one for everybody else.

I am aware that research by the consultancy firm Econtech has been cited as justification on economic grounds for a separate set of rules for the commercial construction industry. I want to draw to the parliament’s attention a paper co-authored by Griffith University’s Professor David Peetz, called Constructing figures: the mythology of productivity in the Australian building and construction industry, which points out fundamental flaws with the Econtech reports that have been used to support an ongoing role for the Australian Building and Construction Commission. It is this report’s conclusion that there is no economic case for legislation that specifically targets the construction industry. Professor Peetz finds that there is no economic case to continue special legislation that provides fewer rights for workers in the construction sector than are available to those elsewhere and that the old ABCC should not have separate powers that go beyond those available to other industrial and occupational safety inspectors and administrators. The authors of the report emphasise:

The construction industry is one of the most dangerous industries in the economy. It may be that there may be greater economic benefits in focusing on effective occupational health and safety regimes in the industry. It is almost certainly the case that there would be greater social and ethical benefits in doing so.

It is troubling that, since the introduction of the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act, safety in the industry has not improved, with deaths having increased from 19 in 2004-05 to 40 in 2007-08. This is a significant concern for all parties in the industry, where it is agreed that successful management of occupational health and safety is critically important.

I believe the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act was overly prescriptive in its regulation and cast such a wide net in terms of required conduct as to render almost all industrial action in the building industry unlawful. There have also been disproportionate penalties applied to construction workers for breaches of its provisions. The International Labour Organisation has recommended that the act be changed to eliminate excessive impediments, penalties or sanctions against industrial action in the building and construction industry. As a member of the ILO, Australia has voluntarily agreed, and is bound, to implement international labour standards in Australian labour law, including the application of international benchmarks protecting the right to strike from legal sanctions. The right to silence is a common-law privilege against self-incrimination, yet workers in the building and construction industry have been denied this basic right, facing a penalty of six months imprisonment for failing to cooperate with the ABCC. I think these things need to be understood by the parliament.

The second matter I want to draw to the attention of the parliament and the government is a concern raised by one of my constituents who is a member of the CEPU and has worked for Telstra for over 20 years. He says that last year the CEPU balloted its members to support taking industrial action against Telstra. He says:

90% of members who voted in the ballot supported taking industrial action in an effort to get Telstra to negotiate a collective agreement.

He goes on to say:

But as a consequence of the transitional bill, that ballot will effectively be declared null and void—because of the introduction of a new bargaining framework.

He is concerned that members stuck on AWAs and non-union agreements under Work Choices have to live with those agreements to 2012 or until replaced, regardless of a new bargaining framework. You will appreciate, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the cost of running ballots is not small. My constituent is worried that Telstra can drag wage talks out ‘with the knowledge that it will take time and cost to re-ballot CEPU members’. He observes that the CEPU has offered:

• to institute a grace period suspending industrial action,
• enter into good faith bargaining with Telstra; and
• if talks broke down, to allow the AIRC to review the behaviour of bargaining parties during negotiations and then allow employees to resume their industrial action …

I think these are significant matters. I hope that the government and the parliament take them into consideration. I strongly support the measures that the government has introduced here and I wish these bills speedy passage through the House and through the Senate.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is interesting to hear the member for Wills speak on the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the related bill. In representing that electorate he follows another notable in the industrial relations sector in Bob Hawke. It is also of great interest when the member for Kennedy talks about regulation and the protection of Australian industry. Both parties ignore some fundamental facts. The first is that once you regulate the labour industry you must have a tariff regime, because more and more the world labour market is becoming internationalised.

I was recently in Esperance, in a section of my electorate as per the new boundaries. There on the wharf was a magnificent container crane. In the port authority office was a photograph of how it got there: on the back of a heavy lift ship. The ship pulled in and they rolled this huge container crane, built in China, onto the wharf. I believe another three were delivered in the member for Wills’s state of Victoria. The only employment achieved within Australia was to plug it in. You can fix that, as the member for Kennedy would advocate. But the member for Wills should remember that his predecessor, Bob Hawke, and the previous Prime Minister under a Labor regime both introduced substantial reductions to the tariff regime as the only weapon they were allowed to use against industrial relations excesses by the trade union movement. They knew that Australia, to survive in the world marketplace, had to become competitive and you could not leave wages out of that situation.

This measure, which leads Australia back into a regulated marketplace, will have a similar effect—either there will be fewer and fewer goods made, grown et cetera in Australia or, and I do not, of course support this, the Australian government will be obliged to start putting up the price of goods by making all those imported goods subject to very significant tariffs. Please remember that at that time of which I speak, the fact was that there was a 45 per cent tariff on motor cars manufactured overseas. And who paid that? The people buying motor cars.

I have just noted down a few of the lessons I have learned by being a member of this parliament for 29 years and an active employer for the previous 25 years in both the local government public service and my own businesses. The things that have always stuck in my mind are that there is no such thing as a free lunch, that action and reaction are always of equal force and that no legislation can force an employer to create a job. Once he has made the mistake of doing so, he can be encompassed by the sort of laws we are debating today. But make it too tough and he or she has some very interesting options, one of which is to take this government’s 50 per cent investment allowance and buy a piece of equipment that replaces two or three workers or at least obviates the need to employ them.

It always amazed me, and I mentioned it the other day, that there was a simple response to a very effective piece of political advertising paid for by the trade union movement in its own interest. This advertisement depicted a lady with two little kids being phoned by her boss, told to come to work and, presumably, to leave the kids at home. That resonated with the people, except that the employment sector failed to state the obvious in an alternative advertisement, which might have shown that woman saying, ‘Well, thank you for your phone call, but stick your a job, because, under the regime of Work Choices, I get three job offers a week.’ That was commonplace under Work Choices—that lady could have got a job the next day. Could she do so now? Is this legislation going to protect her if she is put in those impossible positions? No, because her primary responsibility to those children is to feed them. She would be under much more pressure today to go to work—an outrageous circumstance—because she would not know where the next job was going to come from. No doubt in those days she was earning much more than the dole paid.

It is all right to bring all this legislation to the parliament and to talk about a safety net, but, without a job, none of the rules apply to you. That is a matter of grave importance to me as an employer. In fact, let me plead guilty to putting an AWA in place with the voluntary agreement of my hotel staff in the 1960s. Why did I do that? Because they were totally confused by award conditions and, in the rolling shifts that applied in the hotel industry, they could never understand how their wages varied from week to week. So I got them together and suggested that we add up everything that they were entitled to and everything they received, divide it by the number of hours over which they were collectively employed and set that as a flat hourly rate. When I mentioned the figure, they said, ‘That much?’ They could not take that offer quickly enough. I then said, ‘Why don’t you set your own rosters within the demands of our customers?’ and they did so.

This is a serious point I want to make: notwithstanding the fact that some people, by taking the penalty rate hours, earned relatively less, it was the married women who wanted those working hours—they wanted to work nights and weekends on a flat hourly rate. Why? Because that was when was most convenient for them—their husbands were home to look after the kids.

Today, people seeking employment have a five-day week imposed on them, and they pay out thousands of dollars a month to childcare organisations. I can say that from the experiences within my extended family. I know of another employer in our extended family who could run his business seven days a week but does not have to; he is not a retailer. This employer has had female staff who worked well for him in the past but who voluntarily retired—of course, there is no ‘unfair dismissal’ of employers; employees can leave whenever it is to their advantage—when they left to have a family. As the kids have got a little older, these women have come back to him and asked, ‘Is there any weekend work, Michael?’ He said, ‘No, I lock the gates on Friday afternoon—double-padlocked—in case somebody gets in and tries to work, because I would be up for the penalty rates that are being lauded in this legislation.’ When the response comes that they are happy with ordinary time, he says, ‘Yeah, but I’m not going to be fined later on for having made that decision. The work is just not available.’ Yet why do these women want weekend work? Because their husbands are home from their five-day-a-week jobs, so the women can leave their husbands in charge of the children.

It is the same if you are a university student, which typically involves five days a week of learning. Imagine that you need to sustain yourself by working on weekends and that you go to an employer, who says, ‘We don’t open our restaurant’—or whatever it is—‘anymore on weekends because we can’t afford to pay treble time for your first hour’s work.’ Where do you go then? What do you do?

I said in my maiden speech, which just happened to be on industrial relations, all those years ago—in early 1981—you would think the fish did not bite on Wednesdays. If it so happens that you do not like going around all Sunday morning looking for somewhere to park your boat, you might think: ‘Well, I can get a job on Saturdays, and I’ll go fishing on Wednesdays. Maybe I’ll go to organised sport without taking a sickie.’ But the job is not there. The cost structure denies you the right of choice. Why did we always have double time on Sundays? That was the day you were supposed to go to church. But what are the religious days today? Friday for Islam, Saturday for the Seventh-day Adventist and Sunday for the typical Christian. So are we going to have double time on all those days? Why not? It is as sensible as the suggestion about people who choose to work on a weekend—and those people who do not choose to do not go. What is more, people who want work on those days cannot get it because of these silly laws.

Further to that point, there is no such thing as a free lunch. I understand that now laws are going to be introduced to stop people from writing on the bottom of the menu, ‘On weekends we charge an extra 15 per cent.’ Who pays that? The community. There is no such thing as a free lunch. You want to pay people for their first hour of work over a weekend, as has been said. I notice the minister now is in a bit of a panic about this. You would think working people did not take their kids to McDonald’s. You would think that McDonald’s, in working out their international profit, do not look at Australia and say, ‘Our pricing must reflect the extra price cost of labour during our operating period.’ It is all right. It looks good for those who get paid, but it looks awful for those who pay for the hamburger.

I can see the member for Murray. I know that. Turn it around, and do not insult me. Turn it down, please. I got elected before you, and I will speak to the entitlement I have got. Now, let me continue.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable member for O’Connor should direct his remarks through the chair.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I will. But I am not going to be bossed around by people in this place who only turned up the other day. The facts of life are that there are a number of circumstances that I think need to be drawn to the attention of people out there who need to know these things, because they were suckered into an argument that their kids would be better off under this Labor government. But their kids cannot get jobs. We have a mass of young people out in country areas, where work is intensely seasonal, who, by exploiting this process and working 12 hours a day during those seasonal peaks, were able to accumulate $19,000 over a 12-month period, which made them eligible for the youth allowance, going onwards to university and maybe bringing those skills back to their own communities as science teachers or something like that. Those people have just, by another foul stroke of this parliament, been told they are no longer eligible for that assistance unless they work 30 hours a week. It sounds simple. There are not 30 hours a week for every week of the year available in their areas—too bad. You just say to them: ‘You can’t go to university. Your parents, whatever their income, can’t afford to run two households. You stay home and take some other form of employment.’

These are the sorts of things that I take exception to because they are silly. I am not talking about overtime—in other words, the person that works for five days and then is asked to work additional time. I am quite happy with that penalty being applied. What is more, let me hope that it might engage the employment of a second person. But, if you have worked your five days and the boss wants someone on Saturday, it is cheaper for him to pay you overtime than some of the silly penalty rates that will be applicable under these arrangements.

The member for Braddon went for this old chestnut of employers getting up in the morning and deciding, to use his words, to sack good workers. Good workers are recognised by good employers as the basic asset of their business. They do not get up in the morning and sack them any more than a typical worker looking across the staff he employs would ring up a woman with two children and tell her to come to work. I expect that his wife would have something to say about that if he tried. Yes, somewhere out there in the real world someone believes a woman with such low standards would do that. There are not very many—no more than there are people who justify this.

Let me say what the outcome of the new arrangements is going to be. It is going to be the 11-month work contract. To protect themselves from the abuses of unfair dismissal, employers are going to say: ‘Here’s your contract. Yes, it’s all according to Julia Gillard’s award, the minister’s award, for 11 months. At the end of 11 months, you have agreed that you complete your work with me.’ All that worker then has to do, of course, is take the obvious payments for holiday pay and everything else, go away for a month and, presumably—wink, wink, nod, nod—come back after that month’s ‘holiday’ and reapply for the job. I do not know if there is anything in the legislation that says you cannot do that. The minute you say, ‘Well, that’s it. They get 11 months work and someone else starts on the beginning of the 12th month,’  then that job is terminated. Nobody would suggest that unfair dismissal was not grossly exploited and egged on by trade union bureaucrats who should have known better.

I will give an example of people dismissing employees for the most proper reasons. They dismissed two staff after 12 months employment in an exercise that just was not working. There was nothing wrong with the people; it was just that nobody was buying the service. They paid them double their entitlement. The employees left with that money and both applied for unfair dismissal at $10,000 each. When the employer rang his employment agency and said, ‘I’m going to take these people to the High Court,’ the bloke said, ‘How much do they want?’ He said, ‘$10,000.’ The agent said: ‘Pay them. You’ll win your case, but it’ll cost you more than $10,000 each.’ That is the system. That is the exploitation that occurs.

People deliberately apply for jobs for which they are not qualified so that they can get sacked. A manager of a hotel in Alice Springs did not bank any takings on behalf of the owners, who were overseas on a holiday, and when they came back he refused to say what had happened to the money. When he was sacked, he immediately sued them for unfair dismissal and got $40,000. Why? Because the police had failed by that stage to prove that he had stolen it. If that is your idea of fairness, I hope the next speaker gets up and tells us so.

There is no need for this. Furthermore, you cannot legislate to make a job. I predict therefore that these sorts of reactions to this particular situation will not deliver outcomes. What is more, there are government initiatives in place whereby it is simpler for an employer to buy new equipment than to hire new people.

There will be massive amounts of LNG equipment being moved into Australia on heavy lift ships—whole buildings, Meccano sets. Why? Because the CFMEU is going to get control of those workplaces again. But, if they do what I recollect them doing during the early days of the Pilbara, they will disrupt exports. They so disrupted exports last time that the Japanese went and started iron ore mines in Brazil. They are going to now buy 400,000-tonne ships. Why? To overcome their freight disadvantage. You will only have to blink up there and the phones will start ringing in Brazil. Tell me how many jobs that will create.

All this silliness, all this industrial relations law, defies these simple laws: there is no such thing as a free lunch, action and reaction are equal and, more particularly, you cannot force an employer to create a new job. I leave it to history to judge this particular move. It defies common sense and it defies the needs of Australians. Now they want trading seven days a week. Why? Because a lot of them work five days, and other people have to be employed to supply them. Do you think that Woolworths and Coles do not set their prices on that account? Of course they do. And who pays it? The very working families which this government was elected to protect.

James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009. I speak in support of these bills. The member for O’Connor just spoke about various issues to do with job losses. I have run a small business for 14 years and I always run them on the principles of equity, fairness and giving workers a good day’s pay for a good day’s work. My business grew 700 per cent in nine years. That was to do with the ability of managers to manage and to cost out the wages bill accordingly against the goods and services that they provide to the people in their community. It comes down to good management, good business practice and costing things out accordingly. All things can be managed.

The Australian government has finally delivered—thank God—the death of Work Choices with the passage of the Fair Work Act 2009. This is what Australians voted for at the 2007 election and it has been delivered by the Rudd Labor government. Indeed, we can truly claim that we have the mandate of the people to put that gross legislation to death. That is what we were elected on: a mandate to get rid of Work Choices. And we have delivered on our promise to the people. Work Choices was an insidious piece of legislation that stripped away workers’ rights and conditions. The previous government went too far and the Australian people made that decision at the ballot box. We are getting the balance right on industrial relations, fulfilling our election promises and serving the interests of the Australian community. This government, the Rudd Labor government, has a vision and a goal for a better and fairer industrial relations system. We will deliver that.

State and territory governments, as well as unions, have been extensively consulted on all aspects of the Fair Work legislation. We on this side of the House understand that all stakeholder groups require consultation on very important laws that will govern the working lives of millions of employees and employers right around the nation. We take making decisions about industrial relations very seriously, unlike those on the other side, who decided that Liberal Party and National Party ideology on this issue must apply to all, period. There was no discussion and no compromise. But we involve all the stakeholders, because we understand that we all have to work together to build our economy. We are the party that believes in exhaustive consultation, not just on these issues but on the issues such as climate change and the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. We have demonstrated that in the way in which we govern.

The Labor Party is the party of jobs. We are about building jobs and ensuring that workers are looked after and protected. We all have common interests. We all want work, safety, productivity, a financial reward and work/life balance, which is so important for families in this nation. We have struck the right balance. We have set up the Fair Work Act. We continue to strive to deliver the best laws for workers because that is the Australian way and that is the Labor way.

The Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009 has been considered by the Committee on Industrial Legislation, which is made up of representatives of unions and employers, and amends the Fair Work Act to enable states to refer matters to the Commonwealth with a view to establishing a uniform national workplace relations system for employers and employees in the private sector. The provisions in the bills relating to the referral of Victoria’s industrial relations powers are the outcome of extensive consultation with the Victorian government. Again, I stress the exhaustive consultation that has gone on between workers, unions, businesses and peak interest groups. This government is well on the way to achieving its goal of a uniform national workplace relations system for the private sector. This legislation also provides scope for referring states to choose the extent to which the act would cover the public sector workforces.

I want to refer to members who have spoken previously in this debate. The member for Moncrieff ranted and raved about how he understands small business, but how many small businesses has he set up from the grassroots? I have spent 14 years in small business. I have set up two businesses from scratch. I have grown those businesses and looked after workers along the way. I ask the member for Moncrieff: how many businesses have you set up? How many people have you employed? How did you treat them, if you did employ them? I am not currently aware of him owning any small business. I ask him to give that information to me in time.

The member for O’Connor, who also spoke previously, is a Work Choices Muppet—or should I say ‘puppet’. He mouthed on about various religions and their days of worship. It does not matter about your religious belief; what matters is a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. Whenever people work they deserve health, safety and decent pay for a decent day’s work.

I come to this place having owned businesses for 14 years and having grown small businesses from the ground up. I have always looked after my workers. I have always treated them with dignity and respect. As a business owner I stood rock solid against Work Choices. It was unfair in the workplace. As a previous small business owner I stood against it. I felt the Work Choices laws that were in place were absolutely terrible. Profit is not everything; it is quality of life, quality in the workplace, health and safety, and community. Those on the other side do not consider the community; they only consider the self—the state of one. I endorse what we have put forward here today. I totally support these bills.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too wish to speak on the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill 2009. This is very important legislation indeed. It is all about our future in terms of who can afford to employ someone even when there is demand for their product. Who will take a second look at the newcomer to the workplace—the unskilled and untrained person, the disabled person or the young mother wanting flexibility in the workplace?

Conditions are so tough in this country that we are going to see even more unemployment than we currently have. The coalition created 2.2 million jobs. When we left government there was work for all. We, in fact, had some of the highest rates of workforce participation ever and we were proud of the fact that some very long-term unemployed found work and found new meaning in life. After all, who you are and what you are in Australia is very much identified with work if you are of working age. Unemployment is currently at 5.4 per cent, and it is going to get worse. It could peak at well over nine per cent in 2011. That will be over one million Australians without work, and that will be a tragedy.

This legislation is of critical importance. I want to focus my remarks on the horticulture industry. Others have spoken about the retail industry, other industries that require flexibility, microbusinesses with just one or two employees and the hospitality and tourism industries that have significant numbers of part-timers and casual workers. Horticulture seems to be completely beyond the mindset of the Labor government. They seem to be completely out of touch with the reality in rural Australia when it comes to making proper and adequate moves. I will describe what has happened.

In January 2009 the Australian Industrial Relations Commission released the exposure draft of the federal horticultural award 2010. This was part of Labor’s so-called modernisation of the award system. The exposure draft allowed for piecework to continue in basically the way it had done over the last 25 years. Generally the fruit industry was accepting of the proposed new horticultural award. Piecework is pivotal to the harvesting, pruning, thinning and packing work needed in the horticultural industry. Piecework has been the method of employment for most for decades, and it has had the full support of the Australian Workers Union.

On 3 April 2009, a few months later, the AIRC released the horticultural award 2010 and the industry was shocked to find that clause 15 of the award had been totally redrafted and no longer reflected the previous exposure award or any previous awards that they had seen. The redrafted clause sees the piecework loading increase from 12½ per cent to 15 per cent and has imposed a floor to piecework rates based on a minimum hourly rate, and hence has undermined the whole concept of piecework altogether.

The minimum hourly rate will have an enormous impact on the horticulture sector, the growers of our fruit and vegetables. This sector relies heavily, as I have said, on a casual workforce and it requires flexibility, weekend work and after-dark work. It must be noted that the intent of piecework is not to financially disadvantage employees. In fact, good pickers can earn well in excess of the minimum hourly casual rates. The advantage of piecework for a significant portion of the casual workforce—including the grey nomads, as they are called, or newcomers or inexperienced workers and the physically disabled individual who wishes to work in the workforce but must do so at their own rate, perhaps just initially—is that they can choose to work at their own pace. These workers in the future may not be employed due to their inability to meet minimum piecework requirements based on the required minimum casual wage. That is not fair to those workers. It does not achieve anything but to remove numbers of people from the workforce who enjoy hard physical labour and who, using the skills and capacities they have, make a contribution to their own lives and their independence, and to the nation.

Furthermore, piecework in its intent has continued to be recognised under the federal pastoral award 2010. The best example is that of shearers shearing sheep, whereby the shearer is paid piecework for the number shorn per day. The same concept should therefore be okay and should be applicable to the horticultural sector. Apparently piecework is not a total anathema to the Labor government.

So we have this extraordinary situation. The federal horticultural award 2010 also imposes further costs on growers by the changes to penalty rates and overtime restrictions. Many horticultural sectors are required to harvest during particular times of the year, often on successive days on a daily basis, day after day, seven, eight, nine, 10 days straight, due to the highly perishable nature of their products. Tomatoes do not wait, strawberries do not wait, harvest-ready summer fruits cannot wait, the weather might change, there might be rain, there might be frost and hail, and you have to pick when the fruit needs to be picked. You harvest when harvest is required, not when a penalty rate dictates or when some labour commission decides that there is a time when you work and a time when you cannot. In some industry sectors in horticulture you have to harvest on Sundays to meet domestic and overseas orders. In fact, if you want fresh fruit and vegetables in your supermarkets during the week, someone has to pick and pack that product on a Sunday.

Under this new award there is to be a 200 per cent loading on Sunday work. It is double time but with a minimum of four hours payment no matter how few hours you work. If you work two hours, sorry, you must be paid for four hours and at double rates. Can you imagine the impact this is going to have on the costs to the grower?

There is also the absurdly restricting Monday to Friday, 6 am to 6 pm span of hours for packing house employees. Penalty rates of 150 to 200 per cent must be paid to employees if they work outside that span of hours even if it is part of their 38-hour ordinary week. You have to pack on a weekend to meet Monday food markets, as I have said, and you work Saturdays, Sundays and in the evenings. It is not a city-centric industry where you can down tools and turn off the lights at 4.30 or 5 pm. It is different in fruit and vegetable growing.

Australian food producers cannot pass on their prices. If the costs of labour go up they cannot say to Coles and Woolworths, ‘We are going to charge you more now for the superb product we are landing on the steps of your warehouses,’ because the duopoly in Australia, as we all know, simply does not work that way. It says, ‘We will import or we will go to more generics, and you can go to the back of the queue as one of our suppliers.’

The fruit and vegetable industry is made up of small, medium and larger enterprises operating within a range of business models and markets. The environment in which these enterprises operate is highly commercial and extremely competitive. These businesses compete when they export, often against highly subsidised product, but also world-best produced product, and we have been successful and competitive. We cannot compete if the labour costs are pushed up, as is proposed in these awards.

Labour is the most critical factor in ensuring the smooth running of the field preparation, planting, maintenance, harvesting, pruning and packing. Despite advances in technology, the horticultural industry continues to be heavily reliant on manual work and such a workforce is associated with considerable costs and risks. It is one of those ironies where, as you try to produce even more consumption-ready fruit and vegetables where you want the higher price for the higher quality product, you go back to even more manual picking, sorting and packing. So it is not a case of these growers simply reaching for a machine. It is human labour and human capital that makes our fruit and vegetable markets as good and as fine in quality as they are.

From a commercial aspect there is a concentration of the domestic fresh food market within the two major retailers with serious concerns being raised about the duopoly’s increasing market power. The clear trend of these retailers is to use their market power to push costs, risks and responsibilities back down the supply chain to the grower. The grower’s profit margins continue to decrease while the profit margins of the major retailers remain at record highs.

Now we have this labour proposal from the Rudd Labor government that the costs of labour are also to spiral out of control and to be totally unrealistic in the way that labour is organised during the week and on weekends. This is not just about growers going broke and moving out of the industry. This is about our very food security for this nation. If our fruit and vegetable growers cannot make ends meet, then I must admit there are plenty of alternatives. You can buy frozen peas from China—they are not very edible but you can. You can buy fresh fruit product from a lot of our neighbouring countries and you can certainly find frozen product from all around the world in our supermarkets today.

But I argue—and I think I am joined by most Australians—that we would prefer it if this nation maintained its own food self-sufficiency. It is important for strategic, health, environmental and quality of life issues for us to maintain a capacity to grow our own food. Under these new award casual rates and conditions for horticulture we are seeing casual rates increase from two to 25 per cent. Given the vast majority of employees in the horticultural industry are casual employees, this will result in significant increases in costs for employers which cannot be passed on, which means the end of food growing and marketing for a lot of our Australian horticulturalists. That is extraordinarily bad, and I do not for a minute support what is being proposed nor do horticulture industries in Australia.

To give an example, a Queensland strawberry grower employs 700 people during peak harvest periods. Increases in the casual rates described under these new awards will alone result in an increased wage bill of $92,568 during a three-month period. The changes in classification structures will significantly increase costs. In Western Australia, for example, the change in classifications will result in an increase in casual weekly wages of between $27.36 and $148.58. We just have to wonder what was going on when this particular award was changed without proper consultation, without any detailed understanding of horticulture in Australia—or perhaps a ‘no care’ response to it. The removal of a true piece rate and its replacement with a base hourly rate supplemented by an incentive payment will devastate employment of various groups who have utilised piece rates in the past. These include grey nomads, backpackers and people who are physically challenged. I have to say the significant regulatory burdens associated with recording hourly rates of employees who were previously pieceworkers is also more red tape than most of our growers, our horticulturalists, can bear. Employers are simply not equipped to undertake this additional regulatory task.

I want to go back to the beginning and say that the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill and the Fair Work (State Referral and Consequential and Other Amendments) Bill are not about helping this country survive into the future with its own food-producing capacity; nor are they about helping employers survive the downturns which we are now experiencing as the Rudd Labor government lurches through inappropriate responses to a global meltdown. We have a serious problem of unemployment in this country. Sadly, the horticultural industry is going to be severely disadvantaged with these rates and conditions now imposed and I ask this government to rethink what it is currently proposing.

Debate (on motion by Ms McKew) adjourned.