Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

(1) notes with concern the recent and growing job losses in state governments around Australia, as well as the difficulties many state public sector employees face in bargaining over wages and conditions; and

(2) directs the Standing Committee on Education and Employment to inquire into and report on the conditions of employment of state public sector employees and the adequacy of protection of their rights at work as compared with other employees, including:

(a) whether:

(i) current state government industrial relation legislation provides state public sector workers with less protection and entitlements than workers to whom the Fair Work Act 2009 applies;

(ii) the removal of components of the long held principles relating to Termination, Change and Redundancy from state legislation is a breach of obligations under the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions;

(iii) the rendering unenforceable of elements of existing collective agreements relating to employment security is a breach of the obligations under the ILO conventions relating to collective bargaining;

(iv) the current state government industrial relations frameworks provide protection to workers as required under the ILO conventions;

(v) state public sector workers face particular difficulties in bargaining under state or federal legislation; and

(vi) the Fair Work Act 2009 provides the same protections to public sector workers as it does to other workers; and

(b) what legislative or regulatory options are available to the Commonwealth to ensure that all Australian workers, including those in state public sectors, have adequate and equal protection of their rights at work.

Public sector workers around this country are under attack, no more so than in Queensland where 14,000 employees are slated to lose their jobs. You can add that to the 10,000 in New South Wales and the 4,200 in Victoria, and with promises of more to come there will be somewhere near 30,000 conservative state government employees losing their jobs.

The community understands the impact of this on the frontline services that they rely on; the community understands that it means their fellow community members are losing their jobs, with all the impacts that has on their families and consequentially on the public purse. It also means that the people who are left behind in these jobs are feeling increasingly insecure and they are under greater pressure to deliver the same services but with fewer resources.

It is not just about job losses; it is also about the contravention of some fundamental basic principles of dignity and people's rights to have a say in the decisions that are made in their workplaces. We saw in Queensland, for example, the government come in over the top of agreements reached between employees and employers and say, 'We do not like some of those causes so we are going to take them away because they seem to give employees some rights to participate in decisions that are made in their workplace.' Can you imagine the outcry if the Commonwealth government or a state government decided that it was going to step in and rewrite the terms of a lease, saying, 'We don't like the way you have negotiated that so we are going to take away a few of the benefits that one side has'? Similarly, if that happened with a commercial contract there would be an outcry from the conservatives, and yet it seems okay, when it comes to employees, to come in and rewrite agreements and take away some of their basic termination, change and redundancy provisions.

In my home state of Victoria I have seen the disadvantage that state public sector workers are at when it comes to bargaining under the current system. We have had nurses being put through the charade of bargaining that was extended for several years by a government that was hoping at some point the nurses would take industrial action so the bargaining period would be terminated and they would be taken to Fair Work Australia, where they knew that they would not be able to have their claim for nurse-patient ratios arbitrated. The teachers in Victoria have now become so fed up with the government's inaction and its refusal to come to the table that they have suspended bargaining and said they are not coming back until the government comes up with a proper proposal.

Around the country, state public sector workers reeling under the impacts of conservative state governments are now saying we need to do more. They are coming to this place, the federal parliament, and saying, 'We want you to do more and to do what you can.' The Queensland Public Sector Union have been leading the charge both in their home state and here, but it is not just the union; it is also community members and workers. More than 20,000 people around the country have signed up to the together.org.au petition to urge this place to find out how it can take steps to protect public sector workers and then implement them.

That is why we are here debating this motion for an inquiry—to shine a light on what is happening in state governments around this country but also to answer the more fundamental question, the basic principle at the heart of this motion: how can we ensure that state public sector workers have the same level of protection as their federal counterparts?

Now, I do applaud the government for having taken some steps in this regard, but there is much more that could be done. For instance, as a final example, we need to ask the question: given that we as a country have signed up to various International Labour Organization conventions that give people basic rights—with regard to termination change and redundancy—to be involved in what happens in their workplace, has the Queensland government contravened that by unilaterally deciding to rewrite agreements and then proceeding to sack tens of thousands of those employees? That is just one of the questions that we would be able to get to the bottom of through this committee inquiry. This inquiry—if this motion succeeds and is passed by the House—will give us the opportunity over the coming months to allow those people who have been so devastated and affected by cuts that they never saw coming to get the gold-standard protection they deserve and that other employees in this country have.

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

Is the motion seconded?

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

I second the motion and I exercise my right to speak now. Some 14,500 public servants have been sacked in Queensland in the space of about seven months, and it is far from over. I belonged to the most efficient government ever. No-one has ever denied that the Bjelke-Petersen government was the most efficient economic performing government in Australian history. In its lifetime, it created the coal and aluminium industries, which carried this nation for some 25 years. The iron ore industry is now also carrying the nation, but those two industries carried it for 25 years and they were established by that government. I will tell you something, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Symon: it was established by huge debt. We were the most indebted government in Australian history. No one will ever have the debt that we had.

To give an example of what we did to get that debt, we borrowed $1,000 million to build a railway line from nowhere to nowhere because we believed that, if we built that railway line, the coalmines would be able to open up and export coal overseas. This was a very radical proposal because Australia in 1959 was a coal-importing country. We were not a coal-exporting country, so the idea that we should export coal was radical. We spent $1,000 million, which was about a quarter of our entire budget. Was it a good decision? That railway did not service just Les Thiess, who said, 'If you build me a railway line, I'll open a coalmine.' It did not serve just Utah, who said, 'If you build us a railway line, we'll give you a coalmine.' There were 30 major mines using that railway line. Each year, we made $850 million profit off that line and we made further profit on the port.

The Liberals have a rather crude, simplistic approach to economics. They believe economics is about cutting government spending. Would that it were that simple. If the Liberals had had control of Queensland, there would have been no coal industry and there would have been no aluminium industry, because they would not have built, as we did, a giant power station for which there were no customers in the belief that there would be if we built infrastructure. Most people in this House think of infrastructure as whirligigs and pleasure domes in the big cities. Heaven knows the Premier of Queensland is the king of all whirligigs and pleasure domes! He is the king of debt as well, because he increased the debt of the Brisbane City Council by 60 per cent and he increased their taxation by 60 per cent. We can drive through Brisbane and see all the bicycles he is responsible for. There are tens of thousands of bicycles that I have never seen anyone riding around on in my life. Is it any wonder that his party members are fleeing at the moment?

I also belonged to a government with very great pride in the fact that we never sacked any public servants. Yes, there was confrontation—a particular group of people switched the lights out in Brisbane. But except for that incident, which concerned 200 people, we never sacked anyone. On the railways, I am very proud to say because I had a railway electorate, in 1979 there were 22,000 people and in 1989 there were 21,000, even though we had instituted computerisation, which did away with 4,000 or 5,000 jobs in that period. We had the same number in 1979 that we had in 1989. But the great socialist party came in, and in seven years they took the numbers from 21,000 down to 12,000. They were not allowed up on the dais when 10,000 people marched in Brisbane. They were not allowed up on the dais because our trade union leaders are not hypocrites. They knew that they were the people who sacked half the railway workers in Queensland and broke the hearts of many people.

I conclude on this note: Anthea, a lovely lady who was one of our nurses, has no job now. I asked her, 'Can you get a job?' She said, 'No, I can't leave town because I owe money on my house.' I said, 'Can you get a job in town?' She said, 'There are no jobs for nurses in Charters Towers.' I asked, 'What will you do?' She did not have a tear in her eye and her voice did not waver. She said, 'I've got three children, Bob, and I don't know—I don't know.' (Time expired)

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think it is important that the member for Melbourne acknowledge that both state and Commonwealth Labor governments have presided over drastic cuts to the public service. I know that he, like those opposite, would like people to believe that public sector job cuts are strictly the modus operandi of coalition governments. Yet Labor's own modelling projects 4,200 full-time jobs to be shed from the federal Public Service, with further modelling showing federal Labor will cut more than 12,000 employees by the end of 2014-15. We have seen around 4,000 jobs go already under various efficiency-dividend mandates.

Mr Katter interjecting—

Even the Greens do not have immunity here. In Tasmania, the state Greens-ALP alliance is, similarly, shedding jobs, due to their grave mismanagement of the Tasmanian economy. They also appear to be a little confused as to how many jobs have actually been cut.

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

There's a fair few going in your electorate—I was up there last week.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kennedy talks about coming to my electorate; he has not bothered to come into this House to vote, on, I think, 120 occasions—perhaps that is the record you would like to take to the people of Farrer, member for Kennedy?

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I claim to have been misrepresented. The member reflected upon me for not voting in this House. We do not vote on party political issues; we call them party games.

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

There is no point of order.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, if you would ask the member for Kennedy to please desist from his interjections on my speech, I will not remind him of his voting record in this parliament.

Mr Katter interjecting—

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

Order! It would be far better for everyone in the House that the member for Farrer be heard in silence, as is her right.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was referring to the mismanagement by Tasmanian Labor of the Tasmanian economy. Not only does it appear that the Tasmanian government is struggling with their basic maths, but the make-up of job losses is worthy of comment. Two-thirds came from essential services—health, police and education—with just three from the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

Campbell Newman has been forced to take large cuts to the public sector directly as a result of the former Labor government. Under Anna Bligh, we saw economic mismanagement of debt to the tune of around $85 billion, once we factor in Labor commitments yet to be paid for. Yet it is important to note that those who are being made redundant will receive their full entitlements in nearly every single case. Public expenditure growth in Queensland has been well above the national average. As expert in public administration Ken Wiltshire pointed out in the Australian recently, there was:

… a blowout in the amount spent on public servants across the past decade, at 8.7 per cent a year. Of that, 3.5 per cent was attributed to the number of employees and 5.2 per cent to growth of wages.

This blow-out occurred entirely under Labor. So, while it is regrettable, there have been necessary cuts.

Queensland Health has somewhere in the vicinity of 80,000 staff today; 10 years ago it had 49,000. Yet the fact that almost three-quarters of the cuts are covered off by annual, natural attrition does not really give those opposite adequate ammunition for a suitable scare campaign. They would have you believe that there will be no-one left standing in the Queensland public service. In fact, so determined was Minister Shorten to prove his point that he felt it necessary to jump on a plane to Queensland to announce his commitment to standing by and protecting Queensland public servants. In fact, what he did was make it even harder for recently retrenched Queensland public servants to get a job. I do wonder whether recently redundant Canberra public servants are questioning why the federal minister felt it appropriate to do this when he kept silent on their redundancies, because they were the result of his own federal colleagues. He has also been noticeable for his absence in all instances where state Labor governments have undertaken public sector redundancies.

On the topic of protections for public sector employees, I say this: public sector staff across the board have high levels of protection in place. Their redundancy payouts are going to be paid. They are not going to be left hanging. And they can rest assured that their entitlements will be paid in full. This motion will achieve nothing, barring tying up valuable time of the standing committee on the political whim of the member for Melbourne. Therefore, the coalition will not be supporting this motion. All this serves to do is to act as a distraction from the real issue—the abysmal economic management of various state and federal Labor governments and their own penchant for slashing public servants while appeasing their union mates.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The public servants throughout our country deliver services to the Australian people. They are the best and brightest minds in this country. And those on the other side of this House do not value them in any shape or form.

In New South Wales in recent times, we have really learnt just what the Liberal Party thinks of public servants and public services. In New South Wales, Barry O'Farrell has cut $1.7 billion out of education. The member for Farrer spoke about the fine economic credentials of the Liberal Party throughout the country. What has come to the attention of the people of New South Wales is that the O'Farrell government made a mathematical error: instead of having a budget deficit they have a billion-dollar surplus. Regardless of this fact, they are still going to slash those jobs in education. And who does that affect? That affects the children. That affects this country. That affects our economic prosperity. If we do not have an educated workforce, if we do not have public servants, if we do not have teachers to deliver that education in our public system, then what we have is a second-class country. And that is what the Liberal Party has been demonstrating, in both this federal parliament and the states of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, they believe in. We have only to look at the statement of the shadow Treasurer in which he said that a Liberal-National Party government would slash 12,000 federal Public Service jobs to know that is what the opposition stand for. That is what the Liberal-National Party stand for. They stand for cutting jobs in the Public Service.

Along with that, they are cutting services to the Australian people. They should stand condemned for what has been happening in the states throughout Australia. In New South Wales and Queensland, I have heard—I am much more familiar with New South Wales—they are not only cutting jobs but attempting to strip leave loading for public servants, penalty rates for shift workers and the allowances of workers in remote areas. This will leave many thousands of workers worse off. But those on the other side of this parliament do not care about the fact that these are people who have families and who have financial obligations that they have to meet. All they care about are cuts, cuts, cuts. Along with cuts, cuts, cuts from the Public Service, there are cuts, cuts, cuts to services for the Australian people.

In New South Wales they have not just stopped with cutting jobs in the public service; they are also cutting workers compensation entitlements. They are ripping away workers' entitlements to workers compensation. The O'Farrell government is taking away the rights of people who are injured at work to any compensation or any support whilst they are injured.

If you look at the Liberal Party, what do you see? You see a party that does not value workers, does not value the public sector and does not believe in delivering public services. You have a party that is all about one thing. It is all about the big end of town and, at the same time, ignoring the needs of the people of Australia and devaluing the services that are provided through the public sector. Particularly in New South Wales they stand condemned for their cuts to education— (Time expired)

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the member for Melbourne's motion regarding public sector employees in the states of Australia. Along with every member of this House, I am concerned any time an Australian loses their job, whether it is in the private or the public sector. Employment is a cornerstone of one's life. Being productive in the workplace is how we support ourselves and our children; it is how we provide shelter and security.

I also want to ensure that every Australian has appropriate protections at work. As the motion today does not explicitly state, public service employees in every state except Victoria are covered under their own industrial relations powers. In effect, the member for Melbourne's motion is an attack on the notion of competitive federalism in this country and does not acknowledge that, where appropriate, it is up to the states to regulate their own affairs without an overbearing federal government.

What today's motion does do, however, is distract Australians from what has been the main cause of so many job losses and what has been hurting general employment conditions around Australia in the private and public sectors—and that is the Labor Party and Labor governments. After decades of Labor governments in some states, and after five years of a federal Labor government, Australia and the Australian economy are reeling from their poor and reckless financial management of the economy.

In only five years of Labor running the Commonwealth, $70 billion of net assets has now turned into $150 billion of net debt. The Treasurer has run the four biggest deficits in Australia's history, and this Labor government has overseen wasteful and damaging programs, including overpriced school halls and dangerous roof insulation. This Labor government has implemented the world's only economy-wide carbon tax and has introduced an overpriced and underdelivered NBN, both of which are costing Australians billions and billions of dollars every year.

If we look at Queensland, after almost 20 years of Labor government, Campbell Newman's LNP government inherited $65 billion of debt. The Newman government was elected by Queenslanders to return the Queensland budget to a state of fiscal sanity. As a result of the previous Labor government's reckless spending, the state's fiscal and economic situation was destitute—and the new LNP government has to deal with that.

Today's private member's motion from the member for Melbourne would be laudable if it were not for the usual silence that comes from the Greens and the Labor Party when jobs are cut by their own parties. I say 'usual silence' because we know that the Greens are extremely pleased whenever a single job is lost in the mining industry. We should never forget that this is the party, under Bob Brown and now Senator Milne, that actively wants to shut down the coal industry and to do it today, no matter the cost to Australians and their jobs. More importantly, we have in Australia a Labor minister for employment who remains silent when Labor governments or unions cut workers.

Despite the silence, there have been significant attempts across our country to manage the size of the public service. In Tasmania, the Labor-Greens government plans to slash 2,300 public service workers. The South Australian government recently announced that, as a result of budget pressures and the typical template of Labor economic mismanagement, they are actually cutting 350 jobs from the public hospital system, which will see at least 114 beds lost. In total, the South Australia government plans to slash 1,400 public servants. At the federal level, Labor's own modelling projects 4,200 full-time jobs will be cut from the federal Public Service, with the very real possibility that 12,000 employees will have lost their jobs by the end of 2014-15. Have we heard anything from the federal Labor minister about these cuts? Of course not.

The debate today comes down to one basic fact: the employment conditions and the employment numbers for Australians are best when the economy is performing well. The members of this House who will manage the economy well for all Australians stand on this side of the chamber. Only the coalition has the policies and experience to reset our country's course to one that sees increasing confidence, renewed productivity growth and real improvement in the wealth of households. The next election will offer the Australian people a clear choice of three more years of Labor dysfunction and division or a new government with the experience and plans to deliver a strong and prosperous economy and a safe and secure Australia—indeed hope, reward and opportunity for all Australian workers.

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

Slashing and burning, cutting and pillaging—that is the record of the Queensland LNP government, the New South Wales LNP government and the Victorian LNP government. This side of politics, the federal Labor government, has always supported the hardworking public servants in this country. There are about 1.8 million of them who serve this country well, from the Torres Strait to Tasmania, from Palm Beach right across to Perth.

At a federal level we know that those opposite have a proposal to cut 20,000 jobs from Commonwealth public sector. Why do we know that that is a promise they will fulfil? Because of the record of those opposite—Ted Baillieu, their mate, Campbell Newman, their comrade, and of course Barry O'Farrell, their friend. Their record in both states shows that quite clearly. In Queensland, my home state, Campbell Newman has cut over 14,000 full-time public sector jobs and there are another approximately 7,000 who work on contracts as well. These are people like teachers, nurses, community workers, domestic violence counsellors, people who work in child safety and disability services. He even proposes to get rid of people who work in Eventide, a state run aged care facility. Then there are the people in the rural fire brigades, those who work in regional councils, those who work in flood recovery community work and those who work in the drug courts and the Murri courts. Even the tenancy advocacy services were proposed to be slashed and we had to step in to save them.

Campbell Newman and the LNP state government in Queensland have betrayed the workers. He said that public sector workers had nothing to fear from him. That is what he said in April 2011. He betrayed the people who elected him. There are TAFE cuts on the go. There is a proposal to cut the number of TAFE campuses and educational institutions from 82 to 44, and Bremer TAFE in Ipswich, in my electorate, is under the gun as well.

Campbell Newman calls what he has done 'revitalisation'. Those opposite claim that he is there to 'clean up the mess'. The member for Ryan was in his political party, on his team, in the Brisbane City Council. What is the legacy Campbell Newman left to the Brisbane City Council? It is $2.4 billion in debt. They are figures that the Brisbane City Council budget records show. That is what he left to the Brisbane City Council. He got out leaving them with a terrible legacy and now he purports to come into the Queensland parliament to allegedly fix up Labor's debt.

That is what he claims, but he has betrayed even his own members. We have seen that in the last 24 hours. We have seen the member for Condamine, Ray Hopper, come out and say it and now he has decided to desert the ship. He has decided to actually stand up for his constituents. The LNP members opposite never stand up for their constituents in this place. They never stand up to Campbell Newman on behalf of Queensland; they always stand up for Campbell Newman. You can see them, one after another. In August this year we even saw former LNP life member Clive Palmer giving the Together union, which helps represent public sector workers in Queensland, $250,000 to create the Hope Fund to provide impacted former public sector employees with counselling and vocational training. Mr Palmer has become so disillusioned with the LNP government in Queensland he resigned his membership.

We have had to step in to help public sector workers in Queensland. The Queensland Council of Unions estimates that 900 jobs have been lost in my electorate. Indeed, the unemployment rate in Ipswich went up 0.6 per cent in a month at the height of the cuts from the Campbell Newman government. That is the impact they have had. On 24 October the federal Labor government staged a government jobs and information workshop at Ipswich. The LNP member for Ipswich claimed there were only a few people in Ipswich who had lost their jobs. Well, I was there at that workshop and there were dozens and dozens of public servants in Ipswich who had lost their jobs, right across the sector. I spoke to many of them. This was part of an $850,000 federal Labor government support package for the 14,000 affected public sector workers. We have run jobs and skills expos in Brisbane and Logan.

The reality is that coalition governments do not value the public sector. They do not value the services it provides. Look at what their attitude is. We have seen those opposite come out in support of what Campbell Newman has done in Queensland. The shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey, the member for North Sydney, praised Campbell Newman's savage cuts, saying in the Age on 7 September 2012: 'All strength to his right arm. He's showing incredible courage'—sacking people. We have seen Campbell Newman— (Time expired)

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion has two distinct parts. The first part of the motion deals with concerns about job losses in state governments around Australia and raises issues surrounding bargaining for wages and conditions in the public sector. The second part of the motion seeks a referral to the Standing Committee on Education and Employment for an inquiry into conditions of employment of state public sector employees, and I oppose that referral.

I find this motion extraordinary on a number of counts. As we are all well aware, not all states have opted to refer their industrial relations arrangements to the Commonwealth, and for some states there was only a partial referral. In Queensland and in New South Wales public sector employees are not covered by the Fair Work Act because successive Labor governments did not refer powers to the Commonwealth in respect of public sector employees and local government employees. Clearly, if federal Labor were to support this motion, it would be casting a vote of no confidence in the former Labor state governments of New South Wales and Queensland.

That the member for Melbourne now thinks that intervention in this area of workplace law by the federal parliament is somehow desirable is quite clearly misconceived. It directly challenges the right of the states to determine their own employment affairs. It is appropriate that, unless there is a direct referral of powers, terms and conditions of employment for state public sector employees fall under the jurisdiction of the state industrial system. It is not for the federal parliament to inquire into the terms and conditions of employment of state public sector employees and there should be no referral to the Standing Committee on Education and Employment.

The motion also refers to the supposed difficulties that public sector employees face in bargaining over wages and conditions. I would say that is not the case. In many industry sectors, public sector awards are the pacesetters and private sector awards follow and are very in line with the public sector. The same occurs in collective bargaining negotiations: the public sector leads the way and the private sector negotiations follow. Some unions actively seek to finalise agreements with the public sector before negotiating with the private sector—

Debate interrupted.