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

It is a pleasure to be speaking first today on this vague attempt by the government to respond to recommendations of the Fair Work review. Members of the House will recall that the government was mugged by reality when it stacked its panel for the Fair Work review, after promising it would have such a review, and then those individuals discovered the reality of the flaws and failures in the system and made some quite sensible recommendations. The Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013 is supposed to implement the second stage of those recommendations. In fact, it barely touches on them, and it also brings in some other matters that had nothing to do with the Fair Work review recommendations, in relation to workplace bullying. I know the minister will accuse the opposition of going soft on such matters as workplace bullying; of course, that is definitely not the coalition's position, and I will make remarks about that perhaps later today or when further amendments are brought to the House.

We are deeply disappointed that the government have sidelined the bulk of the remaining Fair Work review recommendations. They have used this piece of legislation to grant additional rights to union bosses, with no explanation, and, as I said, respond to a separate report on workplace bullying done by a committee of this parliament. Arguably, matters relating to workplace bullying do not belong in the Fair Work Commission, an organisation straining at the seams with the amount of work that it has been given by the government. The government have allocated, I think, $21 million to assist, but we are just getting one seriously overloaded bureaucracy happening here.

The priorities in the Fair Work Amendment Bill are overwhelmingly not those identified by the review panel. The government got 53 recommendations from its own stacked review panel, and it has not seen fit to advance any of those in this legislation. The first bill contained the non-contentious amendments, making it look as if there was action happening when in fact nothing was really going on. In fact, this bill is quite dishonest. It has now been confirmed that many of the provisions—which were announced with much fanfare—actually do not have any impact at all: for example, arguably those relating to penalty rates. We also noted that the provisions in this bill relating to unpaid no safe job leave reintroduce elements of the Workplace Relations Act, an act hated by the Labor government and torn up in disgust. But they were quite sensible measures. They were designed to protect pregnant workers, and it was confirmed by the trade unions that they had not been picked up and put in the Fair Work legislation.

It is an uncommon and unfortunate theme that we are not getting from the government regulation impact statements when major changes such as this are being made. At the Senate inquiry into this bill, the departmental officers could not provide any real reason why there was no regulation impact statement. In fact, every time departmental officers are asked why there has not been a regulation impact statement on major pieces of legislation that are rushed through, poorly drafted after no consultation with industry or stakeholders, the hapless department officials sit there saying: 'We don't really know. It was considered that there were no grounds for regulation impact statements.' This is coming from the top down, from ministerial offices saying to the department that there is no need for a regulation impact statement. My question to the House is: why not? Why not get it right? What are you afraid of? Why not consult with the people who are affected most?

Given that this bill will affect every employer and employee in Australia, we do believe that we should have had that regulation impact statement. It should have been prepared to objectively assess the costs and benefits of the changes. It should not have proceeded without it. As I said, such a lack of clarity and a rushed bill. We are seeing that all over the place. Knock it up in a hurry, introduce it, tick the boxes, keep the unions happy, perhaps if it is not quite right—and we expect to see this later today or tomorrow—move amendments to your own bill. How messy: move amendments to your own bill, because you did not get it right the first time or the unions were not happy or you did not do exactly what you were supposed to do and so on.

It is absolutely imperative that with this type of legislation we get the balance right. We are very apprehensive towards, in particular in this legislation, a dramatic expansion of the rights for union bosses. We note that the Prime Minister—who was then the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations—took great pride that her Fair Work Act, enacted in 2008, got the balance right. In fact, in her first press conference as Prime Minister, she said: 'I talked for hours with business leaders, with union leaders, with small business leaders just to make sure we got the balance right.' She repeatedly said that, including as recently as 2012 when she said:

… we built a modern and fair system that has got the balance right.

I guess that the balance is a matter of subjective judgement and I know that members of the government, none of whom are here to talk about their own bill, might argue that the balance is right. But we did hear the Prime Minister say that the status quo then got the balance right. Why then has it become necessary to dramatically increase unions' right of entry?

This bill has brought to 400 the total number of pages of amendments to the Fair Work Act since 2009, when the balance was right. I have a detailed list of the 157 new or extended union rights under the Fair Work Act. The government's desire to appease the unions by picking recommendations from the review, augmenting them, adding other issues and dressing it up as a response to an independent review is pretty awful.

Coalition senators and coalition MPs firmly believe that there are two recommendations in particular that were made by the Fair Work review that should have been in this bill, and they are not. They are key recommendations and they stood out. One was reflected from the High Court's unanimous judgement in the Barclay v Bendigo TAFE case which found that union bosses should not be an untouchable class in the workplace. That was picked up by the Fair Work panel review. But, of course, this revolves around the minister himself, who intervened, using more than $160,000 of taxpayers' money, in a court case to argue for the union bosses against the Bendigo TAFE, a taxpayer funded, educational institution. When you have a ruling from the High Court as strong and clear as that, you would think that you would pick it up and enact it in legislation in this parliament, but it has just been sidelined.

The second recommendation of the Fair Work review that should have been picked up in this particular piece of legislation reflects a promise made by Kevin Rudd when he was opposition leader that the Fair Work Act would not allow the return of 'strike first, talk later'. Arguably, another case, the JJ Richards case, makes it clear that technically the Fair Work Act does allow strike first, talk later; it is not sufficiently clear that it does not. We know the confusion, the disorganisation and the chaos that result in Australian workplaces when that particular action happens. So we would have liked to see those two recommendations that were not even touched included in this legislation.

I touched on the right of entry. We have long been concerned with the Prime Minister's broken promise that there would be no change to union right-of-entry laws, a promise made on the life of the Prime Minister's own mother, in her words. Labor's Forward with Fairness document just before the 2007 election contained this express commitment to retain the existing right of entry provisions: 'We will make sure the current rights-of-entry provisions stay,' the then spokesperson, now Prime Minister, said. 'We understand that entering on the premises of an employer needs to happen in an orderly way and we will keep the right-of-entry provisions.' So, based on these promises, it was rightly expected that the existing right-of-entry provisions would be maintained. We now know this is simply not the case. There has already been a dramatic expansion of the laws relating to union access and we have seen an onslaught of visits.

It was recently reported that the AWU made 156 site visits to BHP's Worsley Alumina site in 2012 and a further 175 in 2011, and the Pluto project experienced more than 200 union site visits in the first 90 days of the act. I wonder what time of year this was—I expect it was in the southern winter and the Western Australian summer. The vast majority of these visits are either a blatant membership fishing expedition or they are designed to intimidate.

How much disruption does that really cause to a workplace? I have some recent experience of this. From my other role in this place as the opposition's spokesperson for child care, I can say that we are seeing a pushing into the workplace of the union United Voice: taking over the shared space of lunchrooms—it is very difficult to find somewhere to sit down and talk in a busy childcare centre—pulling the childcare educators off the floor, insisting that they listen to the message, bullying them into signing up and so on. We have lots of real-world examples where, inappropriately, unions are barging into the workplaces where ordinary people are trying to carry out a day's work. This is not to suggest that unions should not have access to employees; there is no problem with that. This is to suggest that unions should not be able to barge into a workplace, to interrupt what is an important activity on the floor of a childcare centre, in a small business, at a mining centre, everyone downs tools and the union conversation holds sway.

If the initial broken promise about this is not bad enough, we now have before the parliament a bill that would even further expand the right of entry laws. The concerns relating to expanded provisions proposed in this bill are really two. The first concern relates to the default location. If the employer and the union official cannot agree in it being the lunchroom, then what happens? The second concern relates to the employer's liability for travel costs for union officials exercising a right of entry permit in remote locations. We do agree with the sentiment expressed by the Australian Industry Group that this measure is simply an attempt to increase union membership and will not increase productivity. I know the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations is going to say when he comes into this place, 'Oh no, that is not right, the employer does not have to pay for the relocating of the discussion to an alternative venue'—perhaps because it cannot happen on a mine site—'the union has to pay, the employer does not have to pay'. I think that will be the argument that the minister will bring in here.

We have received briefings that indicate that, while the union might initially pick up the tab, the union will then bill the employer—so ultimately the employer will pay. To avoid any doubt, I would like the minister when he sums up the debate on this bill to make it very clear that, if unions have a right of access to a group of workers in a remote part of Australia and for whatever reasons the public spaces on that work site are not available, or even if they are, it will not be the employer who has to pay for the travel costs, the fares often from the eastern states to Perth and then to the mine site—maybe because it is an urgent matter it involves a charter and thousands of dollars are ticking over—and then also has to pay for the workers to stop work, attend the meeting, travel there and back and so on. That needs to be clarified absolutely.

The plethora of safety issues associated with union access to remote sites includes the fact that infrequent travellers require escorting on all offshore platforms. There is more and more activity in offshore drilling at the moment—they need helicopters for transport, and there is huge distraction. Extra resources are required to be diverted while at the same time the occupier is exposed to significant risk and liability. As we all know, if you work in any remote mining site the amount of safety training you have to do before you even start day one of your job is quite extensive, as it should be, but if union bosses from the eastern states have to be escorted and obviously have not done that training, there are huge additional stresses placed on the employer. We would like to see provisions in the bill that make the employer responsible for travel expenses related to the right of entry. We want to see provisions that make the lunchroom the default meeting location relating to the right of entry opposed.

This bill also picks up on some family-friendly provisions. I think there is a bit of a game being played by the government in talking about provisions that sound as if they do not exist when in reality they often do. I am not going to go into each of these provisions, but there is a strong theme running through them—it runs through everything that the government does when it comes to its Fair Work regime—and that is that employers and employees cannot be trusted to talk to each other. There is an extensive provision here about roster changes. I reflect on my own rural electorate and I think of a small workshop in a town of 2,000 people. Under these provisions, if the employer wants to change the roster of the employee there is a long, complicated discussion process that has to be entered into. The government will probably say that is okay; if they agree then there is not a problem. But you do not need to enshrine all this stuff in legislation. You have to accept that generally, on the floor of most workplaces, sensible discussion ensues. After all, if the employer were to change the roster of the employee and not tell the employee, how ridiculous would that be in the first place, especially in a small business?

I highlight small businesses because the cost to small business of complying with all this stuff is enormous. Remember that even when what you are describing as a process that employers and employees have to go through seems quite reasonable, as it often does, it is not the outcome that is the issue, it is the process—it is the process that kills you because it takes an inordinate amount of time and an inordinate amount of cost and it wears people down. We do recommend that roster change provisions be reworded to provide more clarity and less complexity for the employer.

I started my remarks by talking about workplace bullying, making the point that this legislation picks up a recommendation by the House Standing Standing Committee on Education and Employment in its report on workplace bullying but it has nothing to do with the review into the Fair Work legislation. The Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers says it was her committee, so I congratulate her. It is an important subject and I know she would have given it thorough consideration.

No-one in this place does not take workplace bullying seriously. Everyone, in their first job, if they were not bullied themselves just a tiny bit, knows of someone who was. Everyone, when they think of the circumstances of constituents whom they meet on a day-to-day basis or of their adult children whom they talk to, who are often starting out in the workplace, and when they read all the stories knows that it is an issue. But we are disappointed that the government did not decide to deal with the issue in a separate bill to ensure the necessary oversight.

As I have already mentioned, the Fair Work Commission has a wide range of responsibilities, but there is a whole body of workplace health and safety legislation. There is Safe Work Australia, various state regulators and a huge number of acts that deal with workplace health and safety, including workplace bullying, and it would have been much more appropriate for any measures designed to address that issue to come under those particular pieces of legislation.

If we are going to refer to bullying in this bill, one point I do want to note is: what about the bullying that happens when union officials march on to the workplace and bully employees? I mentioned firsthand experience—I cannot say I have witnessed it, but I do get emails every day from all around Australia, from childcare centres and directors. I have talked to many in the workforce who have been directly affected and they have explained how union bosses have marched in and bullied them in the workplace. When we have finished the second reading stage of this bill and moved amendments, I foreshadow that the coalition will be moving amendments to say that the definition of 'bullying' should be extended to include bullying by union officials towards both workers and employers. It is simply inappropriate that a union official takes over the lunch room of a workplace, interrupts the activities of that workplace and then bullies what is often a group of vulnerable and low-paid workers. The stories I have heard in the childcare sector have made my skin crawl.

Not only have union sign-ups not been a precondition of the increased wages that may be being sought by those workers under a separate provision and not only has it not been a requirement that you join a union but the union bosses have said, 'Unless 60 per cent of the workers in this centre join a union, you won't get a look-in.'

The government has been forced to defend that position with some frequently answered questions on the DEEWR website. The minister cannot come out and say any of this; again, the department is having to pick up the slack and actually respond. However, there is a website and some questions and some lame excuses but, out in the real world, you have people from this union barging into the workplace and saying, 'Okay, who's going to be the first to sign up and, unless 60 per cent of your membership signs up, nobody here will be able to apply for the increased wages?' That is not right, it is completely out of order and it should be stopped. We will very vigorously prosecute the amendment that we will move, which says that not only do we accept the measures that the government proposes about workplace bullying but the definition of 'bullying' should be extended to include 'bullying by union officials towards both workers and employees'.

I note that there have been press reports which have suggested that there may be additional amendments moved by the minister to his own legislation that will expand compulsory arbitration. I would make it very clear to the minister that we in the coalition would take a very dim view of him introducing such amendments at a late stage. I do note that this bill has been sent to a House committee and to a Senate committee. The Senate committee has reported; the House committee has not yet reported. It would only be reasonable that the House committee and the Senate committee should have an opportunity to have a look at any new amendments that the minister brings in, particularly in the area of compulsory arbitration.

That would be opening up a whole new front in terms of the Fair Work legislation in this country and it would be totally unreasonable. We have not even been informed that such amendments might take place; we have just read about them. They have not seen the light of day and that is a bit unfortunate.

I want to conclude by highlighting the coalition's policy to improve the Fair Work laws. We do understand the need to protect jobs. We believe in reward for effort. We understand the need to have healthy businesses that employ more people and pay better wages. That is why we will stand up for workers and their employers in a balanced way—because we do know that fairness is a two-way street. Our improvements in the policy are based on providing common-sense solutions to practical industrial relations problems that exist under the Fair Work laws. There have been so many calls for changes to the laws from unions and employers alike.

There will always be people who think we should go further and there will always be people who say we have gone too far and we are trying to scare everyday workers. But these Fair Work laws are comparatively new. It was a sensible proposition for the government to look at them after two years; although they have not paid any attention to the review; but we know that laws can always be improved. They should be reviewed and different points of view should be considered. So I want to restate, as everyone on our side has stated many times, that pay and conditions of workers are safe under the coalition, because we support their workplaces. We do not, as the government does, support the union officials in those workplaces. We do not focus just on the core workers in the workplace who happen to be members of a union—I believe the percentage of union members in Australia is down to 13 or 15 per cent, even though the desperate drive to sign up new members in unions is happening all around us.

Labor is on track to having almost 160 special rights in place just for unions in the Fair Work laws—160 special rights for a group of workers that is 13 per cent of the total workforce in this country. Why should they have a position and a privilege that is not extended to any other worker? Our definition of fairness is not about this small subset of the total workforce; it is about everyone. It is not just about the union bosses; it is about everyone. It is about having a balanced and sound process and policy for everyone. It will fix our most pressing problems in a cautious and prudent way. It embraces common sense and balance. I thank the House.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be speaking on the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013. This bill builds on what we have already done as a government to bring fairness back into the workplace.

It does not seem that long ago that I was elected to the parliament on a wave of dissatisfaction around the coalition's policy for unfair conditions and no safety net at work. With Work Choices, so many people around this country saw a situation where the balance of their penalty rates and their rights was ripped away from their workplaces. They got take-it-or-leave-it contracts which reduced penalty rates and reduced their pay and made people a whole lot worse off. It took the election of this government to bring in the Fair Work Act, an act that restored fairness and balance to the workplace. It ensured that people had national standards and that awards were in place. One of the things that the previous government did was phase out awards so that there was no safety net whatsoever for those workers at work.

We know that most employers do the right thing, but, for so many people in so many jobs around this country, a safety net is critically important to ensure that they have a good quality of life, decent wages and compensation for their efforts. It should not be a fundamental debating point that people receive compensation when they have to work in the evenings, on midnight shifts or on weekends when other people are enjoying time with their families. So we had to rewrite the whole of the Workplace Relations Act and bring in the Fair Work Act. I am pleased that the bill before the parliament today builds on the Fair Work Act.

The first really important thing that this bill does is expand the National Employment Standards for the right to request flexible work. The previous speaker said that this is not important and asked why we even need to have this. As I go round and talk to people, they say that in the National Employment Standards the right to request flexible work, as it currently stands, has made a big impact when they approach their employer to ask for flexibility when they return from maternity leave, as just one example. They have been able to approach their employer and request flexible working arrangements when they return.

It is so important that we listen, and we have listened—I have certainly had this raised with me by many constituents—and allowed those flexible working arrangements to be expanded. For those workers who are mature-age workers, workers with a disability, employees with responsibility for the care of school-aged children, employees with caring responsibilities or employees suffering from domestic violence or caring for a member of their family or household who is suffering domestic violence, these are really important steps. For those people, the ability to request flexible work is so important.

Indeed, I have spoken in this place before about the importance of the ability for someone who is experiencing domestic violence to request flexible working arrangements. The reason I have spoken so passionately—and I know that you have also been incredibly passionate on this, Speaker—is that if a person, usually a woman, who is experiencing domestic violence cannot take leave, cannot get flexibility around their working arrangements to accommodate, perhaps, going to court or moving house, then they may find themselves no longer employed. If they are no longer employed, they lose their economic freedom and economic independence and can just end up staying in a cycle of domestic violence. So it is critically important that those family members who may have been experiencing domestic violence are able to have that flexibility. Putting it into the National Employment Standards is really sending a signal to our community and our society that this is an issue that should be able to be raised at work; it does affect work, and flexibility should surround it.

I would also say that for employees with caring responsibilities the right to request flexible work is critically important. I speak in my new role and also spoke when I was on the back bench to many carers who are balancing work and their caring responsibilities. This can come in at any time. It might be a partner. It might be a child. It might be a parent. It might be a friend. It might be a family member. To ensure that people who have these caring responsibilities can still stay economically independent, can still stay part of the workforce and can request and have an employer consider those flexible arrangements is critically important. As with mature-age workers, as with workers with disabilities, it really touches, I think, on the heart of a compassionate community but also sends a clear signal to the community that we believe that these people have obligations—they have responsibilities—and their employer should consider these responsibilities in terms of flexibility. So I think this element in the National Employment Standards is so important.

The bill also provides for an increased period of concurrent parental leave from three weeks to eight weeks and flexibility on when that can be taken. This will give new parents more time to spend together with their child when they can do so. This is really, really important. We know that having a baby is a very exciting time for a lot of parents, and to be able to spend that time together and have flexibility around that is very important. To provide for improved protections for pregnant workers through extending the right to transfer to a safe job for employees with less than 12 months service and ensuring that special maternity leave does not diminish an employee's entitlement to unpaid parental leave is also another important protection in this bill, as is expressly providing that a worker returning from parental leave can request flexible working arrangements such as part-time work.

It is surprising that in this day and age I still get complaints directly from my constituents from people who have gone on maternity leave or paternity leave and face a battle when they would like to return to work. They often express to me that there is little understanding or flexibility, and they find it all incredibly difficult. And so I think it is important that in this area we are ensuring that we make it explicitly clear that workers returning from parental leave can request flexible work arrangements, such as part-time work.

Another incredibly important part of this Fair Work Bill goes to the heart of bullying in our community. As previously said, the changes in this bill about bullying at work are changes that have been thoroughly looked at by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment. I did chair that committee, and we were struck at the hearings about the effect that bullying has in our community. We did individual impact statements—I think one of the first times that a committee has done that—where we heard directly from people about the effect. We were flooded with submissions about the effects that bullying and harassment have on people, but I was particularly struck by how debilitated people were after experiencing it.

After listening to people's stories, what became very clear to me was that the resolution time, the transparency around resolution and the effectiveness of resolution were not always there. They were not always there, and that often exacerbated people's feelings of not being listened to, of not being responded to and not having their case dealt with. The title of the report was Workplace bullying: 'We just want it to stop'. That was because that was the resounding message from so many people. So I am very pleased that the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013 picks up on the majority of recommendations from that report. In particular, I am very pleased that it picks up on having a national definition.

One of the concerns that came out was that people often say that they have experienced workplace bullying. Often it is workplace bullying; sometimes it can be something else. Sometimes it can be an interpersonal disagreement; sometimes it can be sexual harassment; and sometimes it can be a range of different things. Without a common definition that everyone is working to it is very hard to tackle this issue effectively.

The previous speaker said that this is dealt with under work health and safety, and I must make it clear that I agree that there is a responsibility for employers and that this should continue to be dealt with under work health and safety. It was not dealing with individuals effectively; under work health and safety legislation it was often taking a long time. So some of our recommendations went to looking at helping inspectors understand workplace bullying—a psychosocial hazard and something that is a relatively new concept compared to the guard on the machine—and looking at how we can better deal with this as a work health and safety issue.

In addition to that we also made it very clear that people felt they needed to have an individual right of recourse. I am incredibly pleased that this bill picks up the ability for an individual to have a right of recourse through the Fair Work Commission. It makes it clear that bullying is not reasonable management practice, and therefore performance management conducted in a reasonable manner is not bullying.

Unfortunately, people who do not want to acknowledge that bullying happens often say, 'If you bring in a definition about bullying and you bring in laws about workplace bullying then you will stop decent and reasonable management of staff'. We are very clear in the definition, that it does not include reasonable management practice. I think that is a very important part; but what we are talking about is systematic, ongoing bullying behaviour that really does affect someone's life.

The bill makes it clear that should the Fair Work Commission be satisfied that a person has been subject to workplace bullying it could make orders that it considers appropriate to remedy or prevent such conduct from re-occurring. If the Fair Work Commission considers that a bullying complaint should be investigated by the work health and safety regulator through workplace health and safety, the commission may refer the matter to the appropriate regulator for investigation. It is important to recognise that having an individual course to resolve bullying complaints does not take away from the role of WHS regulators. But it does give individuals an opportunity to be heard, to resolve their issue and to do that quickly. It was something that came through very strongly from the many people we heard from. It is important to note that we are providing the Fair Work Commission with $21.4 million over four years to help workers who are bullied at work to get help quickly and affordably.

There is a lot of work to be done in this area. There is varying ability in different jurisdictions about how to tackle the issue, but as we heard from the parents of Brodie Panlock, who committed suicide after significant bullying, borders should not matter in getting help or seeking recourse for a victim of bullying in the workplace. They have been great campaigners and I would like to acknowledge them publicly, as I have done many times before, for their focus on prevention. Prevention was one of the recommendations we made, and that is why it fits into health and safety. We really need to lift our efforts with managers, employees and workplaces right around the country to ensure that people understand what bullying behaviour is and what impacts it can have. I would like to commend the Panlocks and the many other advocates for the work that they do in raising awareness about bullying and in preventing bullying in workplaces around Australia.

I have not been able to get to the other parts of the bill, and one of the important elements concerns penalty rates. It is necessary to enshrine penalty rates, overtime, shift work loading and public holiday pay, and these should be considered by the Fair Work Commission when it sets award rates and conditions. (Time expired)

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013 in this place because it gives me the opportunity to raise many concerns that the coalition and the working public of Australia have with this legislation. It is passing strange that with well over a hundred pieces of legislation on the Notice Paper that this should need to be urgently dealt with in the last 11 days of this dying parliament. We know why: it is to lock in the base of the Labor Party and Prime Minister Julia Gillard in particular. We know that they need to maintain the rivers of gold that come from the unions to fund the Australian Labor Party. The coalition has a strong record of supporting workers. One of the best things you can do for a worker is to give them a job and, under us, unemployment reached its lowest point in modern political history.

I would like to place on the record that the coalition is all for stamping out workplace bullying and providing more flexibility to employers. A lot of this came about because the Cole royal commission found there was a culture of lawlessness and a lack of the rule of law in industrial and building sites in this country. We established the Australian Building and Construction Commission to deal with this, and it was very effective. However, this particular legislation seeks to expand the influence and rights of union bosses in Australian workplaces, particularly through its right-of-entry provisions. This bill states that in the absence of an agreement between an employer and union officials on where meetings with employees will take place, unions will be able to host meetings in workplace lunchrooms or crib rooms. They even charge employers the cost of travelling to and from the workplace.

I am one of the people in this place who actually knows Mick Young, the famous former Labor member of parliament, one of the last real representatives of workers in this place, who said: 'You can't come here unless you've washed your hands in Solvol.' Mick had obviously washed his hands in Solvol, and I have done the same. I have worked on building and construction sites myself and I can tell you that having union bosses enter the lunch room when you want to get away from everything, when you are not a union member, is not very tantalising. It is not a great idea. You want a bit of peace, not the harassment that comes with this right-of-entry legislation.

This is just another attempt by the Gillard government to appease, as I said, the union bosses who have kept them in power and to erode previous reforms that were implemented to curb the dominance of unions in the workplace. The changes to the right-of-entry provisions outlined in the bill will mean that the default location will be the lunch room, as I said. But, with only 13 per cent of Australian employees being members of the union, the remaining 87 per cent will face constant harassment and bullying from union officials on their own work sites.

Once again, this is a broken promise from Prime Minister Gillard. Prior to the 2007 election, the Prime Minister stated on numerous occasions that there would be no changes to the right-of-entry provisions. In a press conference in August 2007, she stated:

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.

She later reaffirmed this position in questioning by journalists, claiming:

I'm happy to do whatever you would like. If you'd like me to pledge to resign, sign a contract in blood, take a polygraph, bet my house on it, give you my mother as a hostage, whatever you'd like.

That is what she promised. Well, we know never to trust this Prime Minister's so-called promises. Remember the carbon tax promise: there would not be one under the government she leads. But to backflip on a promise she so readily pledged to uphold makes it obvious that it is the union heavyweights and Labor's faceless men that are running this country, not this Prime Minister and this government.

In my home state of Western Australia, we have never seen many instances of union heavyweights being arrested for trespassing on various building sites and workplaces. Notorious union thugs, including the CFMEU's former WA secretary Kevin Reynolds and the current acting CFMEU national president, Joe McDonald, have a long history of criminal behaviour associated with their union activities at work sites. Joe McDonald readily says, when he is stopped about his nefarious activities, 'But we're a militant union,' as if to say that is an excuse for misbehaving and breaking the law. Interestingly, the current workplace relations minister, Bill Shorten, went to Western Australia recently and met with the MUA, and said how attracted he was to the MUA because they were so militant. There you are: the current workplace relations minister, who is meant to see the calming of relationships between employers and employees, saying that he wants to see more militancy in the workforce. As I have said before in this place, fancy putting a union boss like Bill Shorten in charge of the ministry. It is a dog-in-the-manger approach, and that is what is happening in relation to this legislation.

Now, Joe McDonald—getting back to that great Western Australian!—and the CFMEU have racked up over $1 million in fines since 2005 from Fair Work Building & Construction in response to claims of workplace bullying. Mr McDonald has also faced criminal charges and has been arrested on numerous occasions, as well as being forced to face court and defend these charges. Last year, Fair Work Building & Construction's Leigh Jones claimed that Mr McDonald was misusing members' fees in order to settle court disputes. So not only is he abusing the workers; he is also using union people's money to pay his fines. So much for those who take money out of their own pay only to see Joe using it to get himself out of jail and to blatantly flout workplace laws. In WA alone, Mr McDonald has been banned from workplace sites for his militant behaviour, further discouraging people from joining this cause—and Mr McDonald is certainly not alone in this type of behaviour.

We know that, in 2007, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd expelled Mr McDonald from the ALP due to his thuggish behaviour and criminal convictions. Guess what? He has just rejoined the Labor Party! As soon as Kev goes, good old Joe gets back in—and he wanted to run for the Senate, I understand. What is even more frightening for employers and employees alike is that the CFMEU has since decided to appoint Mr McDonald national president, despite his great, nefarious history.

As I said earlier, Mick Young washed his hands in Solvol—a real representative of the workers. That is what the unions were based on during the great shearing strikes of the 1900s, the belief that unions were needed to protect the rights of the workers—

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Protect us from you!

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and that protecting the rights of the workers was the sole conscience and arbitrary work of the unions. If they did that, they were doing their job. But when they just become a political arm of the Labor Party and, dare I say, the Orwellian dogs out there doing the work of behalf of the Labor Party, well of course you have to question whether they have forgotten about the workers that they are meant to represent. And they have. In fact, as a result of this, people have seen—

Mr Champion interjecting—

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The honourable in the member for Wakefield will get his go in just over six minutes, so I would ask him to wait.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We know why people like the member for Wakefield are so sensitive about an issue like this. Every member of this place has to be a member of a union to be in this place. Not only that, Linda Savage in an article here claimed: 'Dumped Labor MP blames factions'. She wanted to be a member of the Labor Party in Western Australia and, because she would not join a faction, she lost her preselection. In this article, Ms Savage said that she could not see that 'joining a faction would make her a better MP and called on party powerbrokers to explain it to the public—if they could'.

The article continued:

Although [factions] are not mentioned in either the constitution or the rules of the WA branch of the ALP, nearly every State Labor MP is either a member of a faction, or has been at some time.

There is a really good local state member in my electorate called Tony Booty, a Labor member. He did not get a job—

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. What has this got to do with the context of this bill?

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has no relevance to it at all.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I will just remind the member for Canning that it is the Fair Work Amendment Bill, so it would be good to talk about that.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right, and we are talking about rights of entry and having to be a member of a union, and we are talking about the fact that the unionised workforce now is down to 13 per cent in this country because people have realised that unions are not serving the workers; they are serving the interests of their political masters. This is what is happening in this case.

As we know, it took someone like Bob Hawke, an ACTU boss, to introduce a number of regulations to limit the unions' wage demands in what he called the Accord. He understood that the unparalleled increase in employees' wages could damage our economy and hurt businesses in this country. Paul Keating then expanded this. Two leviathan Labor leaders saw the problems of allowing unbridled union power and they wanted to limit it.

Today, this Prime Minister Julia Gillard, a former union lawyer herself, representing the AWU and others, is trying to return to the dark ages of union militancy and dominance by trying to appease the interests of the very people who are keeping her in power. Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd did not pursue the interests of the unions enough, which led to his knifing and dismissal as Prime Minister by the current Prime Minister along with the faceless men and the union heavyweights such as Paul Howes of the AWU. Since then, this Prime Minister has been valiantly working to restore union power, particularly as over two-thirds of her cabinet are former union secretaries. Interesting. Two-thirds have a union background as members of parliament. We have a diverse background on this side of parliament. We have got a whole range of different career options, as opposed to, as I said, two-thirds of cabinet having been union secretaries. As eloquently put in the Australian by Ross Fitzgerald in a recent article on 11 May:

The Prime Minister has repaid that support—

in other words, the support of the unions—

by backing legislation that unfairly tips the balance of workplace relations in favour of the unions and with fiscally reckless policy announcements including the use of taxpayer funds to prop up salaries of aged-care and childcare workers on condition that they join a union.

They are using taxpayers' money to do it. It is back to the old 'no ticket no start' on building sites.

This is what this legislation is about: entrenching the power of unions in terms of right of entry and other issues in this legislation. This further cements this dominance and increases the right-of-entry provisions, not only creating an unnecessary issue relating to bullying and harassment, but also causing the loss of time and wages for both the business and the staff—the workers. Remember the workers? They are meant to care about the workers on that side of the House, but they do not; it is more about themselves and their own power base.

It has also been shown that membership of the unions significantly decreases an employee's chances of re-employment. A lot of people coming back as FIFOs from the north-west in non-unionised workforces are finding it difficult to get employed in certain areas if it is a unionised workforce. These are some of the issues facing people now. For example, in the Pilbara all that militant union behaviour that was happening in the seventies and eighties had been stopped and we saw the productivity that came out of the Pilbara, where Western Australia produces more than 50 per cent of this nation's export income, but now we have both the CFMEU and the AWU wanting to head towards demarcation disputes in the Pilbara.

Part of this legislation says that businesses are going to be required to foot the bill to allow union representatives to go on site, to have this right of entry, in remote places and that the businesses will have to pay the costs—the airfares, the accommodation. Some of these sites are oil rigs or drilling platforms off the coast. It has been estimated that the cost of this right of entry could be something like $30,000, borne by the employer—and we wonder why we are one of the dearest places in the world to do business. This is, as I said, just kowtowing to their union bosses.

We have made it clear that, should we be the government after 14 September, we are going to restore the powers of the ABCC, the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner. One of the great ways of reducing those powers was to defund them, but we are going to see that they are properly funded because this will take the militancy out of the Australian workplace. You can see what is going on in Melbourne at the moment with Grocon and others. This needs to be stopped. It needs a decent cop on the beat and we are going to refund and re-empower the ABCC so that they can do their work and they can stop this thuggish behaviour that the Prime Minister, through this legislation, is trying to entrench in the Australian workforce before she exits the stage on 14 September. It is not in the interests of the Australian economy. It is not in the interests of Australian workers or businesses or our reputation. This piece of legislation is not supported because of the consequences it will bring to our country. (Time expired)

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was the longest six minutes of my life, having to wait for the member for Canning to finally finish up. He talks about the shearers strike in the 1890s and the political wing of the labour movement, but it was because that strike was broken viciously, nastily, by laws that were enacted by colonial parliaments that we have a Labor Party in this country, and that is why we are better off having a Labor Party in this country. That link is a good link. It is one of the reasons why The Financial Review in its front page today—at least in their iPad version—there is a headline that says 'World's highest low-paid workers'. That is a tremendous headline. I cannot tell you how proud I was when I read that headline. I think it is a good thing that our low-paid workers are the world's highest paid. You heard in the member for Kingston's speech about the very good report she has done on bullying, which this bill refers to and I will refer to a bit later on.

Mr Briggs interjecting—

It is a wonderful thing that the member for Mayo has to listen to my speech. I always enjoy making him listen to my speeches on industrial relations because I know he has a great interest in this area, having been one of the architects of Work Choices—an unsung backroom architect. He has one of the members protecting him—I cannot remember what that member is the member for—but he is one of the unsung architects of Work Choices. They do not like talking about it anymore.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. The member for Wakefield, who did rise on a point of order on the previous speaker on relevance, has a studious interest in my background and the member for Bradfield's background. We are happy to send our bios to him, but if we can also send the talking points relating to this bill—the same that Joel Fitzgibbon referred to this morning on television—that would be terrific.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable member for Mayo will take his seat. There is no point of order. The honourable member for Wakefield will continue and talk to the bill.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed I do know about the member for Mayo's background. He has corrected me. I did once say he had never had a real job in his life but it turns out he once was a console operator in a service station up at Mildura.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, it was in Adelaide.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In Adelaide; I stand corrected. He would know just how important wages and conditions are.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you have a job.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed.

Mr Briggs interjecting—

I will get to that. We hear those opposite talking about the cost of living incessantly these days, and we will always have a rising cost of living because we have inflation as a common thing in the economy. It is low at the moment. The important thing about having good wages and conditions, things like penalty rates, things like public holiday loading, shift loadings, is that they are all an integral part of the minimum wage of those people who work unsociable hours on checkouts, in service stations, cleaning, which I did, trolley collecting—all those jobs that people generally do not want to do and are the hardest work that is done in this country. Those workers rely on penalty rates as part of their wage to be able to survive. Often it is the difference between surviving, making the family budget, and not. An integral part of dealing with the cost of living is to have fair and decent minimum wages.

As I said before, I am pleased that the Financial Review today highlighted the fact that in this country we have very high minimum wages in comparison to the rest of the world. You only have to go to America and see the appalling poverty that exists among retail workers where Walmart and other major retailers pay a pittance to their workers. We only have to look at that country to know what a big difference it makes to have a fair social safety net not just in the way your government treats you but in the way your employer treats you.

Penalty rates are there not just to pay fair wages but also to compensate people for antisocial hours. I am proud to say that my state, South Australia, despite trenchant opposition from the member for Mayo and others, has instituted penalty rates on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. It is a very important thing to do, and not without employer support, I must say. It was a result of an arrangement, a deal if you like, between Business SA and the union movement to ensure that workers on those evenings after an appropriate period get penalty rates. That is to compensate people for working at times when others would not work, when others are having important time with family and friends. So I am very proud that South Australia has done that. I think it is an important social advance. It shows what a progressive state South Australia is and it shows the care and concern that union leaders Peter Malinauskas from the shop assistants union and Dave di Troia from United Voice have for workers who are working at these antisocial times.

I know from my own time in the union movement—and I am proud of being a union member and I have got my ticket up in my window in Parliament House—just how important family and community time is. There can be no doubt that this bill is an important protection for giving workers flexibility in terms of dealing with family and community life. That is a tremendously important thing to do. I reckon a good 60 per cent of my work when I was a union official was just helping workers and sometimes managers negotiate the delicate balance between the company's interests, and often just the company's convenience, and the workers' interests. I have lost count of the amount of times I saw rosters changed that really had a big impact on people's family lives or on their sporting commitments on the weekend or on their Defence Reserve commitments or on other community commitments. Often those were very important things for society. Most of the time you had sensible arrangements where you could go to your employer and talk about such things.

That is what this bill does. It gives those people an ability to make a request—and it is just a request—for flexible work arrangements. They include mature age workers, workers with a disability, workers with responsibility for caring for children of school age, employees with other caring responsibilities and sufferers of domestic violence or carers for family members or households suffering domestic violence.

Most of the time when I dealt with managers in these situations, we found that a compromise could be reached where the company was not a hundred per cent happy but they might be 80 per cent happy and the worker walked away with a roster that helped deal with their family issue. It happened in big employers and in small employers. Often it was mainly about communication, and the important thing about this bill is it enshrines the idea that that communication should go on, that these requests can be made as part of the normal employer-employee relationship.

The other important things that this bill does in regards to families is that it gives pregnant workers an extension in the right to transfer to a safe job. That is particularly important for women in the workplace because obviously you do not want to be putting yourself at risk when you are pregnant and it ensures that special maternity leave does not diminish the employee's entitlement to unpaid parental leave. It puts in place consultation obligations for employers to consider the impact of the changes around this. Family flexibility and a commitment to protect the family—not just talk about the family but actually enshrine legislative commitment—is part of this government's raison d'etre, it is part of our DNA, it is part of what we do, not just in the course of our deliberations in the industrial movement but also in our deliberations of what a Labor government should do.

Bullying is the last thing I want to talk about. Obviously I want to pay tribute to the work done by the member for Kingston in the chairing of the House of Representatives committee inquiry into bullying and its report, Workplace bullying: We just want it to stop. I think she very carefully and methodically in that report outlined the public case for legislative change to deal with this issue. There will always be those in this parliament who are all care and no responsibility, who say, 'Yes, this is a terrible thing, we all think bullying is terrible but there is really no legislative way of fixing it.' The difficulty with that is that it really sends a big message to bullies that they can get away with it.

This bill sends the opposite message. It says that, if you are a bully, you will not get away with it. Bullying actually occurs in a variety of ways. Often it is employers on employees or a manager against an employee. Sometimes it can be groups of employees against other groups of employees and I have seen a number of instances in my time as a union official where that occurred. It becomes an issue for management as well because they want a happy and harmonious workplace and, tragically, sometimes you have groups of employees or individuals who are bullied at work by their co-workers. It is a scourge on the productive workplace and it is a scourge on people's working lives, and we want to make sure that it stops.

This bill basically allows an application by a worker affected by bullying to the Fair Work Commission to deal with a bullying complaint and it requires the Fair Work Commission to deal with that application in respect of bullying as a matter of priority. Having an independent umpire to go to is particularly important. There are many state jurisdictions which also have work health and safety regulators dealing with this, but, until this bill, there have been a number of occasions where quite serious bullying has fallen through the cracks of legislation. It is not a health and safety issue. It might not be an issue of discrimination in the sense of those matters on which there is anti-discrimination legislation. So people end up basically either enduring bullying or quitting. Their options are either to endure it or to exit.

This bill will make sure that the Fair Work Commission has an ability to examine the issue and has an ability to intervene. It will not impinge on reasonable management practices, including performance management which is conducted in a reasonable manner. That is an important thing. It is not an unreasonable thing for employers to be able to address matters of performance, but it should not tip over into bullying. This bill provides the sensible balance that you need to address this issue.

There are a few other issues in this bill which are issues of contention. It cleans up right of entry. There has been some feedback from employers and the like. I think they are all sensible changes. Right of entry is a matter of responsibility between both employers and unions, and neither should abuse the process. A union should not abuse the process. They should not force an employer to endure their company too often. But, likewise, an employer should provide reasonable access to their employees in order for them to exercise their right to become union members. It seems to me that that is basically a test between unions and management as a test of their maturity.

This is a great bill. It protects wages and conditions. It protects people from bullying. It protects families and the community from work impinging on important parts of our lives. I commend it to the House.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013. The true purpose of this bill is to deliver to the Labor Party's paymasters in the union movement the measures which they are demanding as the price for their continued support of this hopeless government. Amendments dealt with in the bill include introducing what are supposed to be new family-friendly arrangements, amending the modern awards objective to introduce specific reference to penalty rates, and amendments which the government is expected to make to reintroduce compulsory arbitration.

In the time available to me today, I would like to make three points about this bill. Firstly, it is about serving the interests of the union bosses and the union movement and putting the national interest last. Secondly, it is poor policy and poor process, rushed through and with little attempt to systematically address key recommendations of the Fair Work review. Thirdly, it will do serious economic damage, while the benefits it purportedly delivers are illusory.

Let me turn to the first proposition, that this bill is about serving the interests of the union bosses and the union movement. We know that this is a government which has assiduously served the interests of the union bosses, even though the proportion of the Australian workforce who are members of a union is at an all-time low, with only 12 per cent of private sector workers being union members. We know that this is a government which has consistently put the interests of union bosses ahead of the Australian people. We know that this is a government made up of ex-union officials, ex-union lawyers and ex-union employees, including the Prime Minister, who is a former trade union lawyer; the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, who is a former National Secretary of the Australian Workers' Union; the Minister for Social Inclusion, who is a former state secretary of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union; the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, who is a former official of the Australian Workers' Union and the son of Bill Ludwig, the long-term AWU big boss; the Minister for Climate Change—

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I just wonder what the life experiences and the CVs of the front bench of the government have to do with the bill.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order. I call the member for Bradfield in continuation.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Minister for Science and Research is a former secretary of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association. The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship is a former assistant national secretary of the Australian Services Union. The Minister for Finance and Deregulation formerly worked for the CFMEU as an industrial officer and was a legal officer with the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union. The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy was at one point a superannuation officer with the Transport Workers' Union. The minister for sustainability was an organiser for the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association.

It is beyond doubt that this is a government which is redolent of protecting the interests of the union movement. But in this bill the Rudd-Gillard government has abandoned even the most threadbare pretence of governing in the national interest. This bill has one purpose only—to deliver to the Labor Party's paymasters in the union movement the measures they are demanding as the price for their continued support of this hopeless government. The compelling evidence for that claim includes the stark contrast between the position the Prime Minister took when she had portfolio responsibility in this area in 2010, and the position which Minister Shorten is widely expected to take when he introduces amendments to this bill to reinstate compulsory arbitration.

We know that the peak Victorian union bodies responded when the minister withdrew compulsory arbitration provisions from an earlier draft by threatening to withhold all but lukewarm support for Labor at the forthcoming federal election, with Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary, Brian Boyd, reported as saying that the unions were reserving their judgement on the level of support they would give to Labor in federal marginal seats in Victoria. He had this to say:

It is in the balance. A worthwhile package has to come out the other end of the parliamentary process.

And there is a stark contrast between the position that the minister is widely expected to take in reintroducing these compulsory arbitration provisions with the advice given by the Prime Minister, when she was then minister for workplace relations, to the ACTU in a letter in which she said that to reintroduce such provisions involved significant risks, including the risk of constitutional challenge. The return to compulsory arbitration would be a dreadful idea and a return to the bad old days of lower productivity and fewer jobs.

Let me give it another example of how the provisions in this bill respond to the agenda of the union bosses. I am referring to the measure which would enshrine penalty rates in modern awards, proposed section 134(1)(da). This was not a measure which was suggested by the Fair Work Review panel, so where did it come from? It came from Mr Dave Oliver, the Secretary of the ACTU, in a speech he gave on 6 February 2013, when he said:

… we'll be asking the government to enshrine penalty rates for weekends in legislation, and protect it forever.

It seems the union bosses are supremely confident that this government will sit, beg and roll over when they whistle, so much so that the ACTU boss is not even bothering to conceal the extent to which he is directing this government.

This is a bill which demonstrates poor policy and poor process, and there has been little attempt to systematically address the key recommendations of the Fair Work review. Once again, we see the tawdry spectacle of this government granting itself an exemption from the general requirement for a regulatory impact statement, which is a sure indication of poor process and of something to hide, particularly in a bill which will affect every employer and every employee in Australia. No doubt the rushed nature of the process in this bill explains the concerns raised in many submissions to the Senate committee. Indeed, a great majority of those submissions offered suggested amendments with a view to giving greater clarity. This is an indictment of the loose, careless and imprecise provisions of this bill.

This government has failed to do the detailed work of consultation to ensure that the bill's provisions are drafted with sufficient clarity. Sadly, this is an all-too-familiar story with the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. I think we can be confident that when he was a student at Melbourne's exclusive Xavier College his nickname was not 'Details' Shorten. Let me give as one example the provision in the bill, proposed section 145A, which would require employers to consult regarding roster changes. I quote Mr Barklamb, of the Australian Mining and Metals Association, who appeared before the Senate committee:

… no roster change would be too small to trigger the new consultation requirements, which may act as a veto on implementing essential changes if misused.

Once again, no case has been made to depart from the existing approach.

The vast bulk of this bill does not deal with recommendations arising from the Fair Work review.

At the same time, the bill conspicuously fails to deal with two matters which it should have taken up. The first is the High Court's unanimous judgement in Barclay v Bendigo TAFE, which found that union bosses should not be an untouchable class in the workplace—a recommendation that was also made by the review panel. The judgement in that case followed the present minister intervening in the High Court on the side of the union boss, Mr Barclay, arguing that it was the intention of the Fair Work Act that union bosses were untouchable even if they did the wrong thing. It is clear from the judgement of Mr Justice Heydon that the minister's intervention was extremely ill-judged. The judgement says:

… the Minister's stance before and during the oral hearing was not that of an intervener, but that of a partisan.

A second area that the bill should address is that before the 2007 election then opposition leader Kevin Rudd pledged that the Fair Work Act would not allow the return of 'strike first talk later'; yet the recent decision of the Federal Court in the JJ Richards case tells a different story. As the case demonstrates, the Fair Work Act as presently drafted gives unions the power to obtain protected action ballots in circumstances where most reasonable people would argue that it should not be allowed. If Labor were fair dinkum in living up to its promise on this point, it would have included amendments to the act in this bill in response to the JJ Richards case, which tells us that as presently drafted the legislation does not live up to the promise made by the then opposition leader in 2007.

The third point I want to come to is that the provisions of this bill will do serious economic damage while the benefits they purportedly deliver are illusory. I have referred already to the provisions of this bill which impose a requirement that every modern award should contain penalty rates for weekend work. On this side of the parliament we do not believe that the parliament should be in the business of legislating the details of each and every modern award, particularly taking account of the flexibility that may be required in particular sectors. This provision would have a serious impact on many industries where weekend work is commonplace and expected, such as real estate. I would like to quote from a letter I received from one real estate agent in my electorate, who said:

… weekends and evenings are important for my real estate agency to do business as they are the most practical and effective time to conduct open for inspections, to conduct property management inspections, to show properties to potential purchasers and/or tenants, for sales staff to attend listing appointments/appraisals, to conduct auctions, for phone canvassing, for cold calling and for tenants to pay their rent to the agency etc.

If penalty rates for weekend (or evening) work became part of the Award, my real estate agency would suffer financially due to the increased costs associated with the penalty rates. This could lead to a reduction in the number of employees that our agency currently employs and changes to the staff rostering on weekends which may decrease the hours some staff work … Unfortunately this will no doubt affect the rate of employment in the … area.

This is an excellent example of the kind of economic damage this ill-considered measure could cause.

We have heard a fair bit from speakers for the government about the benefits this bill purports to deliver by improving the position for victims of workplace bullying. The government has used a fairly obvious parliamentary tactic here, by responding to a quite separate report on workplace bullying, which was not a matter extensively considered in the government's own recent Fair Work review. They have done that, and included these provisions in this bill in an attempt to disguise the extent to which this bill hands over a tray full of goodies to the union bosses.

On the question of workplace bullying, let there be no doubt: the coalition takes workplace bullying very seriously, and we support proposals to strengthen the system to stamp out such conduct. However, we are concerned that the changes proposed by this bill would allow a worker who alleges that he or she has been bullied to lodge a claim with the Fair Work Commission without having first sought any preliminary help or advice. This would have significant consequences for employers and would also materially the increase the workload of the Fair Work Commission.

We have therefore suggested two key changes, which we believe need to be made to these provisions. The first would require that workers must first have sought preliminary advice or assistance from a regulator before lodging a claim, and the second—very importantly—would expand the provision to include the conduct of union officials. Union officials should not be above the law, and if they engage in workplace bullying they ought to be subject to any provisions of the law which deal with such conduct. That should be a principle which is so obvious that it is not even necessary to articulate it. But unfortunately, given the government we presently have, it is necessary to make that principle an explicit one.

The bill before the House today is in substance an effort on the part of this government to deliver to its paymasters in the union movement a whole series of measures which have been on their wish list for a long time. It is about serving the interests of the union bosses in the union movement, it is poor policy and poor process and it will do serious economic damage. The Australian people have a right to expect that their government will act in the national interest and would deal with matters involving workplace relations as they deal with matters in any other area: having consideration to the interests of all Australians, and not to the interests of a narrow cabal of union bosses—notwithstanding the fact that it is those union bosses who have put most Labor parliamentarians into this place.

Regrettably, as this bill demonstrates, we have a government that is failing to live up to that standard. There can be no doubt in the light of this bill that we have in Australia today a government of the unions, by the unions and for the unions.

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

I rise with pride to speak in support of the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013, which is an amendment to the Fair Work Act to put in place changes in four key areas. Mr Deputy Speaker, I briefly want to take you through each of those and then talk a bit about the bill and the act more generally.

The first area in which this bill seeks to amend the Fair Work Act is in relation to providing for better family-friendly arrangements in a number of ways. Firstly, by expanding the group of workers who will be eligible to make requests for flexible working arrangements under the National Employment Standards. That group of workers will be expanded to mature age workers, for example, workers with a disability and employees with the responsibility for the care of children of school age, and the list goes on. This is an important extension of the right to request flexible work under the National Employment Standards.

The other family-friendly arrangements within this amendment bill provide additional protections for pregnant workers through extending the right to transfer to a safe job for employees with less than 12 months service—so, extending the right which exists for others to those who have worked for less than 12 months—as well as ensuring that special maternity leave does not diminish an employee's entitlement to unpaid parental leave.

The bill also seeks to provide expressly that a worker returning from parental leave has the right to request flexible work arrangements, such as part-time work. The right to request part-time work in those circumstances is clearly fundamental to people being able to re-enter the workplace, having taken time off to look after young children, at a pace which suits them. More and more, people are choosing to re-enter the workforce not on the basis of going from no hours a week to a full-time situation but on a gradual process. I am sure that everyone in this House and people listening to this debate will have people in their lives, if not themselves, who have experienced exactly that desire of wanting to graduate their return to work having taken time off to look after a young one. This legislation provides for an express right to request part-time work.

The second, broad area in which the bill seeks to amend the Fair Work Act is in relation to bullying. Bullying is a scourge throughout our community. It is particularly a scourge in the workplace and it is so important that we are doing everything we can to stop this scourge. There are some who estimate that as many as one in three—and more—people will at some point experience bullying within a workplace. Indeed, the Productivity Commission has estimated that the cost of workplace bullying could be as high as $36 billion a year. That is a very large number. It is about the size of the entire Victorian budget. So this is not just a cost to people's lives; it is a direct cost to our economy. That is why, in addition to this legislative package, the government is providing the Fair Work Commission with $21 million over four years to help workers who are bullied at work get help quickly and affordably.

In relation to this bill, a number of recommendations have been taken up, following the report from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment, chaired by the former committee chair the member for Kingston, which looked at the issue of bullying in the workplace. I acknowledge the member for Kingston's role in relation to that inquiry.

The bill essentially provides the ability for a worker who has been affected by bullying in the workplace to apply to the Fair Work Commission to have their complaint dealt with and dealt with as a matter of priority. The definition of 'bullying', which would be contained in the act as a result of this bill, would be the same definition provided for in the House of Representatives' committee report. The bill makes clear that 'bullying' does not include reasonable management practices, including performance management, conducted in a reasonable manner. No-one is suggesting that the ability for managers to manage their workplace, to seek improvement with their workers and to raise justifiable issues with workers about their work performance cannot occur. That can all still occur and, clearly, it is important that it does. It is important that that be seen as entirely separate to bullying, because it is.

Bullying is an issue beyond that, which very much occurs in the workplace and, as I said earlier, comes at an enormous cost. In circumstances where the Fair Work Commission, having heard a complaint in relation to bullying, then determines that bullying has occurred, the Fair Work Commission will be empowered to make the orders that it considers appropriate to deal with that circumstance.

We in the government stand in different shoes, as we have just heard from the previous speaker on this issue, because we see this as an issue which needs to be addressed upfront and very clearly. The coalition, in the way in which they are approaching this issue, seek to put additional steps in the way which make it harder for people to raise a bullying complaint. The more steps that you put in the way, the less likely you are to have people come forth with the very legitimate issues that they may have. The coalition, as you have just heard, are proposing variations to this legislation which would provide that a worker, before taking a matter to the Fair Work Commission, would first have to seek preliminary help, advice or assistance from an independent regulator. That is an obstacle that, for many people who have suffered the indignity of bullying in the workplace, who want to bring forward that matter, who have summoned up the courage to take the step to deal with it, will simply not jump. That is why it is very important that the bill before the House goes through in the way that is being proposed.

The third area in which we are seeking to amend the Fair Work Act relates to right of entry, and there are some very sensible provisions within this bill to clarify the roles of both parties in relation to right of entry as well as the role of the Fair Work Commission. Importantly the bill provides the power to the Fair Work Commission to deal with disputes about the frequency, for example, of right-of-entry visits and their impact on employers and, indeed, other occupiers of that place of work. The bill provides that where there are disputes as to where meetings will take place within a workplace as a result of a right of entry being used, the default answer to that dispute is that meetings can occur in the place where the relevant workers would spend their mealtimes or other breaks—which, again, is the normal, natural place where you would expect meetings of that kind to occur. These are sensible provisions which deal with the question of right of entry in the workplace.

The fourth area in which the bill seeks to amend the Fair Work Act concerns penalty rates. Penalty rates are a feature of our industrial relations system, and other systems around the world, which has been built up over a century or more to recognise that working outside the zone of nine to five carries with it a personal cost—a personal cost in terms of spending time with family, a personal cost of participating in one's community. So much of our society is organised around the principle that people are at work, by and large, between the hours of nine to five and that other activities, such as those that occur on a weekend, are designed for the weekend. So if you are working at that time it comes at a cost to you, and a penalty rate should be applied. Penalty rates are important from that point of view, but for many workers they have come to represent a significant part of their remuneration. People are relying on their penalty rates for the additional money they bring in. Penalty rates really go to the heart of the work-family balance which we try to achieve in our society. What this bill will do is amend the modern awards objective within the act so that an additional factor that will be taken into account by the Fair Work Commission when making awards will include:

… the need to provide additional remuneration for employees working overtime; unsocial, irregular or unpredictable hours; working on weekends or public holidays; or working shifts …

That as an additional factor in the modern awards objective gives a guidance to the Fair Work Commission in the making of modern awards and how to deal with the question of penalty rates when making those awards. That will be a very important provision, indeed.

The Fair Work Act is an act which is working very well and it stands in stark contrast to what we had prior to this—which was, of course, Work Choices. Under the Fair Work Act, productivity is up—three times higher now than it was under the Work Choices legislation. Employment is up: more Australians, despite the global economic crisis, are employed today than ever before. A significant and critical measure when looking at efficacy of industrial relations legislation is that industrial disputes are down—on average around one-third the rate that was experienced during the time of the Howard government—and wages have been steady. Central to the fact that the Fair Work Act is working well is that at its heart lie collective bargaining and enterprise agreements. The act provides for an appropriate balance between workers and their employers and it provides for flexibility for employers and employees to reach the working arrangements they would want, but at the heart of this, in terms of the setting of standards, is collective bargaining. That is a very different philosophy to what the Howard government sought to do under Work Choices and what, if it were ever to happen, a future Abbott government would do in this sphere as well. What is in the DNA of the coalition is to have an industrial relations system which does not have at its heart collective bargaining between employers and their workforce but rather individual bargaining between an individual employee and their employer in circumstances where there can be no equality of bargaining power between those two entities.

Throughout our legal system there are notions of equality of bargaining power. In commercial law, for example, it is determined that where people do not have an equality of bargaining power then that can affect the legality of arrangements which are reached in those circumstances. But what we had under Work Choices was legislation which allowed for a situation where there would inevitably be an inequality of bargaining power, where an individual would be asked to go one-on-one with a multibillion-dollar company and seek to bargain on something which equated to equal terms. That is patently ridiculous, and it is why Work Choices was so unfair. And that is why any return to a legislated scheme of individual contracts would also be deeply unfair.

We know that, despite what is being said now, if there were to be a future Liberal government, that is exactly where a future Liberal government would head. We know that before 2004 there was no word about enacting Work Choices but, on gaining control of the Senate, that is the very first thing that the then Howard government did—the signature piece of legislation throughout that term of government, and not a word breathed of it in the election beforehand. We know that when AWAs were implemented under the basis of that, penalty rates were stripped away under most of the AWAs that were agreed to. We also know that since 2007 Tony Abbott has said, for example in 2008, 'Work Choices was good for wages, it was good for jobs and it was good for workers, and let's never forget that.' In 2009 he said, 'Workplace reform is one of the greatest achievements of the Howard government.' And in his book Battlelines he said that Work Choices was not all bad. That says everything when you bear in mind that, were they to be elected to government, the current policy of the opposition is to have an industrial relations system which would legislate for individual contracts. When you marry up Tony Abbott's comments with that now stated objective of the opposition were they to win government, it is completely clear what would happen in that event, and that is that workers would lose their rights as a result of a system of that kind. This act provides balance and that is what we need to keep.

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

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013. The bill before the House today proposes to amend the Fair Work Act 2009 in six areas. They are: amending the existing family-friendly arrangements provided under the act; amending the modern awards objective to provide a fair and relevant minimum safety net of terms and conditions; introducing new anti-bullying measures; amending right of entry provisions; amending the functions of the Fair Work Commission; and also providing some minor technical amendments.

This bill was referred to the House Standing Committee on Education and Employment on 21 March this year for inquiry. The reason for the referral was that 'The bill makes changes to the Fair Work Act that will have an impact on each employee and employer in Australia. It is important that the parliament be fully aware of this bill and identify any unintended consequences.' I agree that the bill makes changes to the Fair Work Act that will impact on each employee and employer, and that is why I support an inquiry into this bill so that employees, employers and their respective representatives can have the opportunity to comment and be heard on the proposed amendments. I am concerned that this bill is being hurried through, rushed through, parliament before the committee report on the inquiry has been finalised and tabled and therefore before members of the House have had the opportunity to review the report and consider the committee's recommendations.

There were 41 submissions made to the committee for this inquiry, and there was one 3½-hour hearing scheduled for Melbourne that took place on Friday, 24 May. The public hearing was conducted primarily as a series of roundtables with union, employer and community groups. I congratulate and thank all of the parties who made submissions, attended and presented at the public hearing. The transcript of that hearing is publicly available, as are the submissions to the inquiry.

With most inquiries conducted there are a wide range of views put in submissions, and the inquiry into the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013 was no exception. Broadly, the ACTU and the CPSU appeared before the committee at the one public hearing that was held and supported the passage of the bill. The community representatives that appeared before the committee at the public hearing focused on issues relating to flexible working provisions, as well as parental leave and antibullying measures. I note that Carers Victoria spoke in detail about the significantly lower rates of workforce participation of carers compared to other Australians and made the point that this was rarely by choice.

The employer representatives that appeared before the committee raised serious concerns about the bill. Mr Stephen Smith, Director of National Workplace Relations for the Australian Industry Group, made the following opening comment to the committee:

We are very disappointed with the content of this bill. As the committee is aware, the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2012 implemented mainly technical changes to the Fair Work Act which neither unions nor employers particularly objected to. We had high hopes that this particular bill would address some well-recognised problems with the legislation and deliver a more productive, flexible and fair workplace relations system. Unfortunately the bill fails to address that. It is extremely lopsided, in our view, it does not even attempt to strike a balance. It expands the entitlements of employees and unions in numerous areas, and employers issues of concern are not addressed at all.

Mr Dick Grozier, Director of Industrial Relations with Australian Business Industrial and Director of Workplace Policy with the New South Wales Business Chamber, said:

… since this inquiry was established and the submissions were lodged, there have been a number of developments, and the most obvious of those is the report from the equivalent Senate committee.

He then goes on to say:

In case it is unclear, we remain of the view that the appropriate recommendation from this committee is that the bill not be proceeded with. In our view, it has been hastily drafted—and we think there are a number of signs of that in the bill, as we are adverted to in our written submissions. It has not been subject to an impact assessment, and we think that is a very important omission. It has not been subject to anything like proper consultation. In the main, where it draws upon or purports to draw upon recommendations either of the expert panel or of the House committee, the proposals are inconsistent with those recommendations. So it remains our view that the recommendation from this committee should be that the bill not be proceeded with.

Mr Daniel Mammone, the Director of Workplace Policy and Director of Legal Affairs with the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said:

… ACCI does not support the bill in its current form. Whilst a number of provisions could be supported, in the context of other amendments which would redress the existing problems identified by industry, in its current form it is simply unbalanced, and this has been the view of leading business organisations across Australia.

So three significant employer associations do not support the bill in its current form. Master Builders Australia also made a submission to the inquiry, and I note that MBA is a peak employer association for the building and construction industry and that building and construction is a major driver of our national economy. Locally, for my electorate of McPherson on the Gold Coast, our economy has been dependent on the building and construction industry for many, many years. Master Builders Australia said in its submission:

Whilst Master Builders supports measures to improve the operation of the FW Act—

the Fair Work Act—

the Bill's provisions will further compound the current statutory constraints on employers to structure their workplace to suit their business. This submission highlights that the changes which would stem from the Bill are not balanced, as they work against the viability of business and strengthen the role of unions. They do not provide any measures which enhance productivity. The selection of the chosen items for priority enactment is not based on any criteria that guided the Government's processes for reviewing the FW Act and hence, as indicated throughout this submission, the Bill should, at the least, be deferred.

They go on to say:

The Bill should be deferred until a properly considered comprehensive, productivity focused range of reforms are placed before Parliament. At the least, a fully formulated Regulatory Impact Statement should be prepared which objectively assesses the costs and benefits of the amendments.

I have serious concerns about process. As I have said, the bill was referred to a House standing committee for inquiry. Forty-one submissions were received. A half-day public hearing was held. The committee's report has not been finalised and tabled. Members have therefore not had the opportunity to consider the report or its recommendations, and that is because the report has not been finalised. And yet here we are today debating the bill. That is being done against a background of significant concerns being raised by peak employer associations.

I do not believe that the views of either employees or employers should be dismissed in a debate about workplace relations. I believe that the inquiry should be completed, the report tabled and members given the opportunity to consider the report and its recommendations before the bill is debated. Feedback from industry groups is not as positive as I am confident the government would like. I have already spoken about the views put by employer associations at the public hearing and referred to the submissions put by Master Builders Australia, but there is much more in the submissions. The National Farmers' Federation said in its submission:

The NFF is of the view that the proposed amendments are unbalanced, pro union and regressive. … The Bill if passed will put stress on farming businesses and risk jobs, job prospects and is likely have a detrimental effect on the Australian economy.

There is a common theme here, and it is that peak employer associations representing industry are of the view that this bill is not balanced.

Many have also said that the bill fails to deal with the recommendations that arose from the Fair Work review that was undertaken in 2011 and 2012. For example, the representative from AiG noted at the public hearing that in a number of areas the bill conflicts with the recommendations of the review, with the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry noting that the legislation continues to delay changes to the act in favour of amendments which were largely not recommended by the panel.

This leads into the next issue that was highlighted, which is that a regulatory impact statement was not drafted for this bill. A number of submissions point this out, questioning whether due process had therefore taken place. The lack of a regulatory impact statement deprives the community of the opportunity to look at a detailed assessment of the predicted impacts of the bill prior to its implementation, with Master Builders Australia noting:

… a fully formulated Regulatory Impact Statement should be prepared which objectively assesses the costs and benefits of the amendments.

This bill has been given an exemption from having to provide a regulatory impact statement, but, at the Senate inquiry, departmental officers could not provide any substantive reason for it being provided with this exemption. Considering the range of changes proposed under the bill, it is difficult to rationalise that such an analysis would not be needed.

This issue in turn leads to the effect that changes such as the ones outlined in the bill can have on businesses. At the public hearing, the representative from Australian Business Industrial and New South Wales Business Australia noted that the amount of time needing to be devoted to employment matters because of the complexities of the act creates an issue for business, further stating:

As one goes down the business size spectrum, this increasingly becomes an inhibition on employers from taking steps and often exacts quite a high personal cost on them because they become concerned about staffing problems that they do not seem confident to redress and also about not being able to take steps to benefit their business.

Later, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry representative stated:

The problem with the legislation, and particularly this bill, is that it imposes a lot of impediments on businesses when they are making decisions about employing people and making decisions about what they can do about problems within their business.

One of the changes that has the potential to affect businesses is the proposed right-of-entry change. ACCI, in its submissions, noted:

Quite clearly, the existing right of entry regime is not the same as the previous laws which existed prior to the commencement of the Act in 2009 and the new proposals are both trying to fix issues as a result of these changes, but is also introducing new costs and problems on employers.

Other submissions to the inquiry outlined concerns related to changes that would make the default location for union meetings the lunch room, in the absence of an agreement between the union and the employer. Business SA, in its submission, said:

These amendments need to be seen for what they really are and that is an avenue to assist unions to recruit new members.

As part of the amendments unions will be given the right to hold discussions in the area where meal breaks are taken.

If this amendment to the Fair Work Act is made employees will have to sit and listen to a sales pitch about joining a union or leave the lunch room.

Surely employees are entitled to eat a meal without being potentially harassed about joining a union.

The Australian Mines and Metals Association makes this point in its submission:

Key among employers’ concerns about the Bill’s proposals in this area is freedom of association and the need to protect employees who have no desire to meet with unions or to have any intrusion into their rest time.

Another issue that was raised is the inclusion of penalty rates in the legislation. In the public hearing, the Australian Industry Group said:

Our view on penalty rates is that they are an issue that should not be addressed in legislation. They are an issue that should be left to the tribunal. Our problem with this bill is that it seeks to require that awards either contain penalty rates or puts criteria there that until now have not been there and have not been a problem.

This bill, as I have stated, does not reflect the points of the Fair Work Act review, the recommendations of which seem to have been put aside for consideration at another time, despite clear disappointment being voiced by industry groups. It is concerning that there was no investigation done into the potential impacts of this bill, considering the flow-on effect it may have for businesses and employees. The House committee inquiry should have been allowed to conclude and the report tabled and considered by members before this bill was debated.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013. On many occasions I have come into this House and spoken in support of over 87.3 per cent of the bills that have come from the government. But this bill is one that I cannot support because it is fundamentally flawed, it is bad policy and there are no strong productivity outcomes for our nation as a whole. On closer inspection of the bill—in trying to understand its genesis—call me cynical, but it does look like it has been orchestrated as some kind of payback to the unions for supporting the Prime Minister.

I note a bill like this was not put forward under the reign of the previous Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd; and, as a result, the faceless men turned on him and dug the knife in and there was blood, political blood, everywhere. That is why we now have a bill before the House which is fundamentally flawed and poor in its choreography—in particular with regard to the right-of-entry provisions. I employed over 100 staff and had 14 depots around Queensland. There is a place in the Australian landscape for good union representation, but this bill goes way too far with its demands for right of entry to small businesses.

The bill speaks to employees of employers as bad people, but I can tell you that the relationships between staff and employers across the nation in small business are good ones. They are good relationships where employers are often more than just a boss; they are a marriage guidance counsellor, they are a friend. These types of reforms are not needed for small business. If there is an argument for right of entry to large business, then so be it. But this bill cannot be accepted for small business across this nation.

Debate interrupted.