Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After a spray last week that would have been laughable if it were not so serious, the Secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Paul Howes, attacked the CEO of one of Australia’s largest employers, Rio Tinto. Paul Howes used his union’s recent national conference, attended by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, as an opportunity to make personal attacks on business executives. Coming to his defence today, Ged Kearney, President of the ACTU, writes in the Punch, under the headline ‘You call ‘em thugs, I call ‘em foot soldiers of democracy’, that she does not really understand what all the fuss is about. She says she is surprised that the comments have made front-page news. Ms Kearney goes on to say:

A bit of argy-bargy between union leaders, politicians and bosses is fairly standard practice in Australia. And some colourful language in the mix is nothing new.

Really? Let me remind Ms Kearney as to just what was said. Mr Howes denounced chief executive Tom Albanese as:

… sucking out the blood, sweat and tears of blue-collar workers.

He said that ‘monkeys could do a better job’ of managing Rio. Strangely, of all the industries he could have targeted, Howes chose the mining sector, where workers are paid more in wages than in any other industry—which tells you really all you need to know about this attack. It is about power. It is about membership. It is about money. It is about control. It is a fight for union domination of one of Australia’s biggest employers.

He went on to say:

I’ve got a message for Rio Tinto: you don’t own this government, you don’t own this country any more. Your workforce has the right to be represented. You cannot hide behind the law. You cannot hide behind the lawyers. You cannot hide behind your slimy, grubby mates in the coalition, because we’re coming after you. We are going to take Rio Tinto on, and we are going to make sure that they pay a liveable wage to the workers who make the wealth that these shiny arses sitting in the boardroom in London enjoy.

The Hon. Craig Emerson, Minister for Trade, was called a ‘dishonourable rat’ by Howes and AWU President Bill Ludwig for daring to suggest that the unions were undermining constructive relations between employers and employees. Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd denounced them as factional thugs. Prime Minister Julia Gillard though was far more sanguine and circumspect in her response, suggesting that everybody simply take Bex and have a good lie down. Treasurer Wayne Swan, responsible for the economic stewardship of this country, went missing in action. When he finally did respond, he could only make a very weak plea for cooperation between employers and employees. He said, ‘I don’t referee fights between unions or employers.’ For a Treasurer and a Prime Minister who claim to be economic conservatives, who want to return the budget to surplus, who want to increase productivity, it is hard to see how the return to class warfare and protracted disputes helps.

Paul Howes challenged Rio Tinto in his speech by saying, and I quote it again:

You don’t own this government.

He is right on at least that one thing. His statement reveals his view that the union is the only organisation that can claim ownership of the government and he is not about to let Prime Minister Julia Gillard forget it. As Howes himself attests in his book, it was he and his former AWU colleague the Assistant Treasurer, Bill Shorten, who put the Prime Minister in power by knifing former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd during a midnight coup. The AWU is so confident of unconditional support from the government that it has continued to revel in its controversy over the past few days. It knows that neither the Prime Minister nor the Treasurer are in a position to state definitively that what the unions are saying is wrong and is damaging to industrial relations in Australia.

But this is not an industrial dispute between employers and employees; this is a blatant provocation by the AWU to flex their muscles. The unions know that these sorts of tactics do nothing for their members or for employees more generally, but they do it anyway because it makes headlines and forces the government to adopt their agenda. And it seems that, no matter how much Labor gives to the unions, they are never satisfied. The Prime Minister, when she was the minister for workplace relations in the now-forgotten Rudd government, was responsible for redefining industrial relations in Australia. She took employment law in this country back to a pre-Hawke-and-Keating state, with enterprise bargaining usurped by union control. This is hardly surprising when you have Paul Howes describing freedom of contract as ‘the freedom to enslave’, taking a phrase from Abraham Lincoln. When you have union leaders equating employment contracts with the forced servitude that existed in certain parts of America during the 19th century, it makes negotiation all the more difficult.

Paul Howes called for something else in the speech that he delivered to the AWU conference. He wanted to see the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. He said he believes :

... the job is not yet finished—there is more to do. There is nothing more urgent than “shutting down the evil Australian Building and Construction Commission, the ABCC”.

He goes on to say he does not want:

... the evil of the ABCC hanging, menacingly, over their heads.Every second of the day the ABCC is a threat to their basic working rights—their human rights. The ABCC can only undermine the reconstruction effort.

He says:

Now is the time for Labor to remove the last remnant of John Howard’s union busting Government instrumentalities.The ABCC must be abolished.

Shame! Of all the policies and issues facing Australia at this time, of all the political dilemmas that the government has forced upon itself, this is the issue that Howes says is the most important. The outgoing Commissioner of the ABCC, John Lloyd, warned last year that ‘any watering down of the circumstances of the ABCC would see the bad practices of the past return’. This would be damaging to the industry and the Australian economy. The union’s obsession with the ABCC is ideological and extreme. The unions are not concerned about a fair and productive construction industry. The ABCC was established after an extensive and independent inquiry conducted by the Cole commission into an industry that had exhibited very different behaviours from those of other industries, including violence, threats and corruption. Commissioner Cole said ‘at the heart of these findings is lawlessness’.

And what is the justification for the abolition of the ABCC? Is it that the problem is fixed? No. It is that the union movement does not like the scrutiny. Why would you abolish the ABCC when you consider the facts? Research undertaken by KPMG Econtech shows that the ABCC has delivered wide-ranging economic benefits since it was established, including a 10 per cent rise in industry productivity, an annual economic welfare gain of $5.5 billion a year, a drop in the CPI of 1.2 per cent, an increase in GDP of 1.5 per cent and a significant reduction in days lost through industrial action. These are not the sorts of developments that Paul Howes and his union are interested in. They do not care about the enhanced productivity, welfare gains throughout the economy or safer and more harmonious workplaces. Instead they carry on an ideological campaign against a body that has performed its role well and which, sadly, still has a role to perform. It is very hard for any person who opposes the ABCC to articulate a reason why it should be disbanded given the well-documented violence, disruptions and corrupt dealings in the industry. Howes’s latest effort is to try and argue the ABCC will slow down the reconstruction effort in Queensland after the floods and Cyclone Yasi. This, of course, is a ridiculous claim.

I want to touch on one final point before my time concludes, which is that Labor’s review into the federal election results of last year reveals a political party that is heavily reliant on the union movement in terms of both membership and financial support. For this reason, the report, conducted by former premiers Steve Bracks and Bob Carr, as well as one of Labor’s elder statesmen, John Faulkner, recommended even closer ties to the unions. Well, Julia Gillard has a real choice to make. Is she going to deliver real action in 2011? Is she going to deliver real leadership? Is she a real leader? The test is out there: she should retain the ABCC.

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

Before calling the member for Robertson I would remind the member for Higgins that she ought not to refer to the Prime Minister by her name. She should use ‘Prime Minister’ or even ‘Prime Minister Julia Gillard’.

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today on a matter that is close to my heart and important to the region I represent. I will speak on the structural change necessary to advance the interests of students, teachers, the community and employers on the Central Coast. With regard to the development of education initiatives on the Central Coast, we have reached a historic moment. I want to put on the record what I believe is a pressing need for change to the governance structure of school and vocational education in my region. At present, Central Coast schools and TAFES are part of the New South Wales Department of Education and Training’s Hunter-Central Coast region. As a teacher and lecturer with 25 years experience on the Central Coast, I would like to say emphatically that the time has come for us to have an education region of our own. There are a number of reasons for this, on which I will shortly expand, but first let me establish the context in which I make this claim.

In June last year the NSW Minister for Planning, Tony Kelly, announced that the Central Coast was, for the first time, being recognised as a region under state environmental-planning legislation. By the end of June this year, thanks to federal Labor, we will have a Central Coast Local Health Network. We have our own A-League team, the Central Coast Mariners, who played such a brilliant first half last Saturday evening at Bluetongue Stadium in Gosford. Although we lost the match, the Mariners are winning the hearts of the people of the Central Coast and confirming the reality that we exist as an autonomous region. I will take this opportunity to wish the Mariners success in their attempt to reverse that result in the second leg of their tussle with Brisbane on Saturday night. If our local team can stand on the national stage at a sporting level, we can and we should stand on our own two feet when it comes to education.

Now our growing region of 300,000-plus people needs the agency and the autonomy to allocate and prioritise our education resources. The population of the Central Coast region on the night of the census in 1996 was 263,000. By 2006 that number had increased to 297,000. The results of this year’s census will confirm for us next year that we are still growing. Once it was a natural fit for us to look to Newcastle as an older and more established region with a large population to offer some support to our fledgling community. That is no longer the case. While we certainly need to work with our neighbours, we need to do so as ultimate decision makers keenly attuned to and responsible for our area.

In times of competitive grant applications and decision making about what is advanced by each region, it is no longer in our interests to be subsumed by a region that is geographically, demographically and sociologically quite different from the more recently established Central Coast. It is not in the interests of the educational participants on the Central Coast to be voiceless. We need our own voice, our own narrative and our own accountability to our own community. Without our own educational regional identity, we are at the whim of education bureaucrats in Newcastle, Sydney or Canberra. Recognition of our education region is a natural progression from recognition of our health region and our recognition as a region for planning purposes.

Engagement of our youth in schooling is a critical challenge for our area. Our retention rates are less than desirable, with the last figure I saw from the Hunter-Central Coast region resting at about 60 per cent. We know that failure to engage young people in education has long-term impacts on their life outcomes across a range of metrics including health, employment, income levels and general wellbeing. If we want to reach our goal of raising school retention rates to 90 per cent by 2020, something needs to change. Certainly we need to develop innovative and locally relevant programs, responses and community partnerships with social, health and other local agencies as well as local businesses to find ways of connecting our kids with school and with our very particular community.

I have certainly come to the view that an educational region of our own is a critical element in us advancing towards better retention and happier educational outcomes for all. So there is a lot of work to do. We can pause for a reflection here on the failure to localise programs. The remains of the Howard government’s misguided attempt to impose its extremist ideology on the Australian vocational education sector can still be seen in the main street of Gosford. The ‘For Lease’ sign still hangs in the window on the former shopfront of the Australian technical college in Mann Street. The very concept that there should be competition in the vocational sector was one of the more febrile ideas in the overheated free-market craziness of the Howard government. Naturally all those who taught there had to sign AWAs. The real agenda of the Australian technical college, as many noted at the time, was to transplant a conservative industrial relations agenda into the schooling sector. This kind of scenario might not have eventuated had there been more robust local autonomy.

In the year 2011, following many discussions with educators and parents, I have come to the opinion that it is not possible for a governance framework centred on Greater Newcastle to effectively represent our interests. Autonomy for the region is an agenda I will do my best to advance with my Labor colleagues on the Central Coast. I do not put this argument for a separate Central Coast educational region lightly. I have made a number of claims already about a rationale for advancing this idea to reality. To this argument I want to add the weight of dozens of private conversations that teachers and other school staff have had with me about their experiences under the current structure. Their stories of the marginalisation of their voice are such that I feel impelled to put their reality on the record in this place.

Teachers, parents and friends of learning on the Central Coast are experts in our area. They understand from their everyday encounters with students, parents, community members and employers the very particular needs and strengths of education in our region. We have our own community, rich in insights into the strengths and deficits of the Central Coast. What we need is our own region, to localise the national, to engage with one another and to invite those around us to share perspectives at our request rather than to deliver decisions without sufficient attention to our distinct and pressing realities.

As time permits, I will also touch on a second grievance, and that is the abysmal failure by the New South Wales Liberal Party to consider the infrastructure needs of the Central Coast—in particular, New South Wales opposition leader, Barry O’Farrell, and his cowardly failure to go into next month’s New South Wales election with the kind of infrastructure policies that will make a difference to the lives of people on the Central Coast. I am very proud that today the Gillard government and the Keneally government have signed an intergovernmental agreement for the Parramatta to Epping rail link. This rail project is part of the Gillard Labor government’s plan to build a modern economy and match government services with population growth. We are putting $2.1 billion towards the construction of this project, with the New South Wales government raising $520 million to finalise planning and early construction work.

The Parramatta to Epping rail link would cut travel time between Chatswood and Parramatta by an amazing 25 minutes. Given the chance, it would open up the huge expanse of Greater Western Sydney to Central Coast commuters. It would provide a subset of commuters with the option of rail rather than Pennant Hills Road. Planning in this important project is already underway, with preconstruction activities starting this year. The acid test is now on Mr O’Farrell. If, as everyone seems to think, it is a foregone conclusion that he will be the next Premier of New South Wales, will he become the man who denies people of the Central Coast the hope of better public transport infrastructure? In this House, how will the members for Bennelong, for Berowra and for Mitchell face their constituents and explain why they will not stand up for this important piece of infrastructure? If they had the guts they would pull Mr O’Farrell into line and tell him that he has to deliver the Parramatta to Epping rail link.

The Liberal candidates on the Central Coast are in the same boat: not one nation builder among them. Actually, there is one nation builder. He is the Liberal candidate for The Entrance, who, as members would know, has an extensive history with the One Nation Party. As we have all seen over the past week, the poisonous ideas of One Nation live on in the Liberal Party. A long-term media observer of local politics told me the other day that the Liberal candidates on the Central Coast at this election are the worst bunch of misfits, failures and reprobates he has seen present themselves for election. Our residents and our businesses deserve better. They deserve better than retrograde, knee-jerk politics that will alienate and disable the people of the Central Coast who commute to Sydney on the Northern Line.

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

Before I begin, I acknowledge the statement by the member for Robertson and her absolute passion and commitment to education, one that I share deeply. I thank her for her words this evening. But education is not the issue that I am speaking about tonight. The issue I am speaking about tonight came about 114 years ago in the electorate of Petrie, when the people of Petrie, particularly the Redcliffe Peninsula, wanted improved public transport for their area. They knew that the outer northern suburbs of Brisbane needed a connection to broader south-east Queensland. They wanted a rail line, and for 114 years they lobbied for a rail line.

Many governments, particularly at a state level, have promised a rail line and led people in my electorate to believe that it would eventually be built. However, money was never put on the table. In 1978 the then Nationals Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen actually set aside a corridor from the current rail line to Petrie through to the suburb of Kippa-Ring. This corridor has been set aside ever since then. Despite this corridor being set aside, not one dollar has been committed to this important infrastructure. This electorate is some 40 kilometres outside the CBD. It is very important for these people to get access to Brisbane Airport, the Sunshine Coast and Caboolture for work opportunities and also, importantly, access to the city. People who want a sea change, and people who grew up on the Redcliffe peninsula and wanted to stay there and grow up around their parents and their schoolfriends, have limited opportunities as far as public transport is concerned. Yes, we have a bus system that takes people to Sandgate train station, but by 6 pm each night the bus has stopped running. People who work in the city have to get off the bus at an earlier station and spend another one to 1½ hours travelling the long way, the scenic route, up the Bruce Highway to the Redcliffe peninsula to get home from work.

Considering the improvements to the Gateway Motorway and the fact that it now takes 15 minutes to get from the Redcliffe peninsula to the airport, which is a fantastic achievement and a wonderful improvement to our infrastructure, the fact that people still cannot get public transport to work is a real shame for all levels of government. My predecessor spoke many times in this parliament about the need for this rail line, and I support that view. The disappointing fact is that calls were always made for the state government to fund it and there was never a commitment at a federal level for rail infrastructure. I am very proud of the fact that, when Labor came to government in 2007, we stood up and said we were about national infrastructure. But that also includes domestic rail across the country because it improves our local economies, it improves the opportunity for employment, it improves local businesses and it brings people to the area.

It was a great honour for me on 26 July 2010 to stand beside the Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon. Julia Gillard; the Premier of Queensland, the Hon. Anna Bligh; and the Mayor of the Moreton Bay Regional Council, Allan Sutherland, to announce the Moreton Bay rail link, a 12.6 kilometre rail line from Petrie to Kippa-Ring that will deliver six stations—at Kallangur, Murrumba Downs, Mango Hill, Kinsellas Road, Rothwell and Kippa-Ring. These are much-needed stations. The line will run along not only communities and suburbs but also schools and businesses. It will create great economic opportunities for our local area. In 2009 I personally put in a submission to Infrastructure Australia for this rail line, but it was an isolated submission and it did not have the background material that is needed to support this sort of infrastructure. But in 2010 the Moreton Bay Regional Council and the Queensland government for the first time ever put money on the table and developed a business plan. It was the first time this had ever been done.

This business plan allowed for a detailed application to go to Infrastructure Australia, which saw us go on the list of the top five priorities for projects across this country. It was this priority list that led the Gillard Labor government to say, ‘This is an important project for the outer northern suburbs of Brisbane.’ I thank the Hon. Julia Gillard and particularly the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, the Hon. Anthony Albanese, for committing to this project and understanding the importance of infrastructure in our local community.

As we have talked about for 114 years on the Redcliffe Peninsula, this will not just take people off the peninsula into other areas. It will not just take people into the city. We have growing areas like Murrumba Downs in the electorate of Dickson, in which two of the stations will be. The starting point, the station of Petrie, is also in the electorate of Dickson. It will bring people from the electorate of Dickson into the electorate of Petrie. There are more families moving into Murrumba Downs. They are working and they are shopping in North Lakes. Importantly, their kids are going to schools in North Lakes—Bounty Boulevard, Lakes College, North Lakes State College and St Benedict’s. They are going to Mueller College, Southern Cross Catholic College, Grace Lutheran College, Hercules Road State School and many of the other great state schools that we have on the Redcliffe Peninsula. So it will bring people into our local area and that will help local businesses. It will help with sales of real estate. It will help with the property values of the local area. This is a fantastic initiative.

I would like to end with this. This dream has become a reality. Not only did we announce this in July 2010 as part of an election commitment, but we have started work. In 2016 we will see six stations up and operational in the electorate of Petrie. But we do not have to wait six years to see the work happening. The survey work has started. Consultation across my electorate is happening. There are Saturday forums. The Department of Transport and Main Roads have been fantastic in getting out there and holding public transport consultations with households in our libraries and in our shopping centres. Knowing that many people have commitments on Saturdays—they work, their children play sport—we asked for evening consultations, so they have gone into the shopping centres on Thursday nights and they are holding more consultations. The department came just last week with me to the Mango Hill Progress Association and talked about the new stations at Mango Hill and Kinsellas Road.

This is important consultation. It needs to happen. We understand there are environmental issues. We know we have Moreton Bay and Hays Inlet—a Ramsar site which runs along the corridor. This is extremely important. But our local environmental groups put forward a proposal to hold a full-day workshop to put together a joint submission, a consistent submission from the relevant interest groups across the area. The department has supported that and is helping to fund that workshop. That is happening in a couple of weeks time. We are bringing everyone on board. We are interested in the environmental issues. We are interested in concerned households but, importantly, this is necessary for my community. We have waited 114 years. We are not going to wait any longer. Work has started. Construction will start in 2012, and in 2016 I look forward to standing up here as the federal member for Petrie and saying how proud I am that these six stations are now up and operational.