Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a joke! We have legislation that is probably meant to be bipartisan. This was handed to the parliament at 4.30 yesterday, which, at more than 500 pages, in the words of the second reading speech:

… from the sheer size of the legislative package the effect of these amendments goes across all of government and is essential to effective implementation of a new resource and governance framework.

The legislation affects every portfolio, covering amendments ranging from the Auditor-General Act to the Water Act and many in between.

So for this being handed to us for the first time and to the parliament for the first time at 4.30 yesterday we are now meant to be in this chamber on a gagged debate to have a formalised position on it right away! This is the worst sort of governance. Let us make no mistake, there is a reason why this has occurred. If you go to the minister's web page, it was made clear that this legislation was meant to be ready from the beginning of this month, to be introduced in the week of 2 June. Why did it happen? Why do we have a situation where there is a minister who is so overloaded that we end up with legislation of this gravity and of this reach in a rush to the parliament in the final days which was actually meant to be largely bipartisan? A lot of the work on this was commenced when Senator Wong was Australia's finance minister. There is a simple reason: we have a finance minister who is currently doing the job of two people.

This is the direct consequence of Arthur Sinodinos as Assistant Treasurer having stood aside and not being replaced for so many months. The outcome is you have got one person with a workload that he cannot handle and, as a result, the parliament gets completely bypassed on a piece of legislation that covers and affects every portfolio and agency. The reason we are in the situation of the opposition being expected to have a position on all of this when we only got it at 4.30 yesterday is a direct consequence of this government not been willing to make a decision on whether or not they have an Assistant Treasurer, because what has happened is that the finance minister has been dealing with the budget issues and at the same time has been dealing with the superannuation advice issues—the FoFA legislation—and this got put in the back drawer. So even though the department had every belief that this was going to be introduced to the parliament in the first week of this month, the fact that we have not had an Assistant Treasurer, the fact that this government cannot make up its mind on the future of Senator Sinodinos, has put us in a situation where we have a finance minister who cannot carry the load. The outcome of the finance minister not being able to carry the load is very simple: this parliament gets bypassed.

We cannot have a situation where this legislation does not make its way through both houses by 1 July. There are deeply significant outcomes for government if this legislation has not made its way through both houses of parliament by 1 July. The opposition will be responsible on that. The opposition will play a responsible role in making sure that we deal with these issues in a more responsible way than the government has. But no-one should be in any doubt. It is not that Senator Cormann does not have the capacity to deal with legislation like this—I presume he does; the problem that we have is that we have not had an Assistant Treasurer for so long now that we have got one person with an inbox that is meant to be there for two and the outcome is work that is meant to have been done is falling apart. And, of all things, what is it about? Public governance! The thing that they cannot actually have any orderly system for is something that is about public governance, performance and accountability.

This parliament should not be in a situation where a decision by the Prime Minister to be one down in his ministry while the inquiries are going on in New South Wales—and I make no reflection on any of those inquiries or the likely outcome of them—results in a policy outcome that we are facing right now, and the policy outcome we are facing right now is that we have a finance minister trying to also be an Assistant Treasurer and not keeping up. As a result of that, the opposition is put in this position. I am not going to pretend to the parliament as I make a speech on this bill that I have been able to read it and work through with all the different 250 acts that it intersects with, checking all the cross references, as I normally would, as any responsible member of parliament already would. I do not know this for a fact, but I suspect the member of the executive responsible for introducing this legislation was not afforded that opportunity either.

I expect we have a situation where even the executive member of this House who introduced the legislation had not been given the opportunity to go through, clause by clause, what he was introducing. That is an appalling situation for this parliament to be in, an absolutely appalling situation. Normally, on any bill, we have a circumstance where there is an opportunity for scrutiny, and it is frequently the case that the government play a very constructive role with the opposition. If we have not been able to answer all the questions, having read through legislation, they will then afford us a briefing with senior public servants to work through the detail. If there are questions that we still have not had answered and a bill is up for discussion, it is not uncommon at all for ministers to play a responsible, decent, cooperative role—as we did when we were in government—and say, 'Okay; we'll put that bill back for a little bit longer.' No-one has that option now, because the Minister for Finance has been overloaded with too much work, because of the circumstances of Senator Sinodinos, and we end up with a circumstance where the parliament is now debating legislation where the truth is that none of us are sure what is in it.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You drafted the legislation!

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The drafting of this legislation—no doubt, a lot of the work on this was done when Senator Wong was finance minister.

Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—

I said that minutes ago, if you were listening. Keep up; you'll do fine. When Senator Wong was finance minister, a lot of work was done on this. The extent to which what is in front of us is a direct reflection of that, no member of parliament knows. There will be members of the Public Service who have gone through this in a lot of detail. That is good and that is their role. Members of parliament have a role too. That is why we are elected; that is why we are here; that is why Australia is not a country where the public servants simply make executive decisions and can change the law. Constitutionally, that responsibility rests with us.

We have a circumstance where not one of the 150 members of this House is going to be across the detail of what is in this bill beyond what we were told in the second reading speech by the member of the executive when it was introduced. That is all we are going to have to go on. I am not reflecting on the second reading speech. It would have been given in completely good faith. But every member of this parliament has been placed in an impossible situation, and no member of this parliament, in dealing with this bill, is going to be able to properly exercise our own constitutional responsibilities—not one of us. This is not a problem unique to members of the opposition; it is members of the government as well, and it will go all the way to the person who introduced the bill.

There are occasions—and many of us have been in these circumstances—where we have, during the course of debate, found holes, gaps, in legislation. Earlier this week, the government itself, on one of the bills that gets the maximum level of scrutiny, an appropriations bill, discovered that there was nearly $1 billion missing because a schedule had been omitted. A cursory check of the legislation showed that there were meant to be two schedules, and only one was included. These errors do occur and, during the course of the debate, they get worked through and fixed. That does not mean that we will not still have policy differences across them and political differences—of course we will—but there is also a straight scrutiny role that is played by this parliament. The mismanagement, the chaotic management, by this government means there will not be a single member of the House of Representatives who knows the contents of this legislation when we vote—not one of the 150.

Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—

Those opposite who are interjecting from time to time might be comfortable with that, but those who have been in this place a little bit longer, including you, Deputy Speaker Randall, have been in circumstances where legislation has significantly benefited from the scrutiny that is offered within this chamber. None of that is going to occur on this bill. There will be a significant debate on one of the parts of it, because one of the parts of it involves a direct broken promise that does not even date all the way back to before the election; it actually dates back to Monday. On Monday we were given guarantees by the Prime Minister about the pay for cleaners. We know that, in this bill, that is going to get undone. Be in no doubt that the opposition will be moving amendments to take those provisions out that affect cleaners. Be in no doubt that we will be doing that. If those amendments fail here in the House of Representatives, we will still support the legislation. We will not be voting against the legislation if our amendments fail here, because there are deep problems for probity in governance if the rest of the legislation does not get through. But, if our amendments protecting the wages of cleaners are successful in the Senate, be in no doubt that we will insist on those amendments. The onus will then be put back on the government to decide whether or not they too want to play a role as responsible as the role that the opposition is prepared to play on this.

The minister's second reading speech went through the extraordinary scope of the legislation in front of us. Normally the quick way to work out what is in legislation is to pick up the explanatory memorandum. This one is bound. It is not a little stapled document; it is bound. What we have here is far-reaching legislation. I hope there are not errors in it. But the truth is: if there are errors in it, they are not going to be worked out during a gag debate within the House of Representatives. If there are errors here—mistakes that will then have significant consequences for governance and probity—it will be found out after the event, when something has gone wrong, because there will be no parliamentary process capable of properly bringing it to light.

The act commences operation on 1 July. It will replace the two significant governance acts that we have been dealing with for a long time in this House. Anyone who has been engaged in committee work or roles in the executive has a working knowledge, at least, of the differences between the Financial Management and Accountability Act, known as the FMA Act, and the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act, the CAC Act. Whenever you deal with an agency, as a member of the executive, your first question is always, 'Is it an FMA or a CAC Act agency?' because that then determines a whole lot of governance processes that go with it. That entire model and that framework gets replaced by what is before us now.

This goes to the heart of the entire way that the Commonwealth is governed. It goes to the heart of the rules around the probity requirements for the Commonwealth public servants we have and the framework within which they operate. Effectively, this legislation is the gateway between the parliament doing something and the Public Service implementing it. That is what is in front of us. This is no small side piece of legislation that happens to have been rushed through; this is actually at the core.

I can understand that there are circumstances when the Public Service will want to check and go through details and will take longer in getting a brief up to a minister. The truth is, though, that the web page had made clear that the Public Service believed that this was going to be ready to be introduced on 2 June, and there seems to be no doubt at all that the blockage has been because we have a Minister for Finance who is doing the job of two people. If anyone thought, 'Let's just get Senator Sinodinos to stand aside, and we'll sort it all out later on; we'll just park the position; Senator Cormann can carry the load of both, and it won't be a problem,' well, it is a problem. The problem is that we now have 150 members of the House of Representatives, none of whom are able to do their job properly on this bill, and it is a bill that affects the full range of Commonwealth departments and agencies.

The act which was one element of Commonwealth financial accountability review reforms, which was undertaken when we were in government, will consolidate in one piece of legislation all the governance, performance and accountability requirements for Commonwealth government entities. The act aims to improve transparency and consistency across Commonwealth operations. Whether the act does that as intended, I cannot tell the parliament, and no member of this parliament can either, because none of us are across it because none of us have had time. The act is also designed as an evolution of the existing financial framework, so it builds from the base that we are already at, containing new elements which are designed to improve the quality of public financial management in the Commonwealth. The act itself was subject to a two-year-long consultation and consideration process prior to being passed by the parliament last year. The act sets out the principles of a coherent financial framework for all Commonwealth entities. The act aims to create a financial framework where Commonwealth entities have the flexibility and incentives to adopt appropriate systems and processes that help them achieve their objectives efficiently and effectively.

We in the opposition recognise that the amendments contained within these bills are for the purpose of facilitating the transition from the existing framework to the new framework under the new act. We know that that is what they are there to facilitate, but none of us knows whether they do it effectively. All we can say—and all any member of parliament can say—in this debate, because of the circumstance which has been forced upon us, is that we know what the bill intends to do. I do not presume any ill will from the government in terms of the intention behind this, but I do presume a complete, appalling failure on the part of the government to properly manage this process, where they thought they could get away with pretending that one minister was not there for a while and letting the Minister for Finance do the Assistant Treasurer's job as well. All of that has now fallen in a heap, and the parliament is the loser as a result.

The main bill, the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2014, is meant to have the effect of replacing references to the FMA and CAC acts with the equivalent provisions in the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act. It is intended to simplify enabling legislation where provisions of the act cover a matter which had previously been dealt with in the enabling legislation. It is intended to amend enabling legislation to clarify which matters, and to what extent, are covered by the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act and which matters, and to what extent, are covered by the enabling legislation. Examples of this are things like disclosure-of-interest arrangements. The main bill also has provisions to provide clarity in relation to provisions in the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act which would commence after 1 July this year and provisions within the existing financial framework which would continue to operate beyond 1 July.

There are other bills that are associated with this bill. As well as this one, we have this one, another one here and another one here. Not a single member of parliament, not one of us, has read all of these, but they are all here and they are all being debated right now. We are all meant to vote on them and decide whether they should be the law of Australia on the basis that we know what they are intended to say, but none of us are actually sure what they do say.

These extra bills—the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Consequential Modifications of Appropriation Acts (No. 1), (No. 3) and (No. 5)) Bill 2014, the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Consequential Modifications of Appropriation Acts (No. 2), (No. 4) and (No. 6)) Bill 2014, and the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Consequential Modifications of Appropriation Acts (Parliamentary Departments)) Bill 2014—relate to amendments to appropriations bills to ensure that Commonwealth entities have access to the funding that has been approved by the parliament. All of the detail of this seems pretty mundane, in that it is not something that is going to be part of mainstream public debate on these issues, but the whole work of our Public Service actually hinges on them and hinges on the detail of this being right. The amendments in the bills being debated should ensure that we get a smooth transition to a new financial framework, which had largely been developed when we were in government. The new government has continued with that, I believe, in good faith. As I say once again, I do not presume any ill will, but I do presume a fair degree of incompetence in the way that this has ended up before us.

The amendment which we will not be supporting is that part of it that relates to cleaners. Some of us will remember the bonfire that became the fizzer that was known as repeal day. One of those amendments stipulated that the owner of a mule or bullock required for naval or military purposes shall furnish it for such purposes and that the owner may have to register it from time to time. There was another one removing the hyphen from the word 'e-mail' and changing the wording from 'facsimile transmission' to 'fax'—all changes which I am sure small business were hanging on because it would make a fundamental difference to the red tape they had to deal with! But, in the middle of those relatively harmless changes, there was one substantial change. This was the move to abolish the Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines under the guise of red tape.

The Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines have been important and they have affected the take-home pay of some of the people on the most modest wages in our country. They have a very direct impact on their take-home pay. The Prime Minister gave a guarantee on Monday that their pay would not be cut. Let us have a look at what this bill does and how we have a Prime Minister who we used to think could not make his election promises last a few months, from before the election till after, but we now discover cannot make his promises even see out the week.

The Prime Minister's red tape stunt to axe the Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines, which regulate the minimum pay and conditions for cleaners, will provide real pain for some of Australia's lowest paid workers. It is a cruel and callous move and it is totally unjustified. The government tried to bury the attack on minimum conditions for cleaners among some other 8,000 regulatory changes. Not only did it come without any warning from the government but it came this week after a guarantee from the Prime Minister that it would not occur. I would love to believe that this has slipped through because of the way it has been rushed, but I reckon this is the one clause that they did know about. I reckon on this one the government knows exactly what it is doing.

Before the election we were told that the Prime Minister would not touch workers' pay and conditions. There is no way of reading this part of the bill without seeing it as an attack on pay and conditions. Cleaners stand to lose up to $344 a week. We have a Prime Minister who has been talking ad nauseam about the impact of $550 a year that is fully compensated. Here is an impact of up to $344 a week for some of our lowest paid workers—a cut from the Clean Start rate of $22.02 to the award rate of $17.49. As I said in the debate on gagging this legislation, how do you argue that that is anything other than a cut? How does anyone argue that that is anything other than a cut? The Clean Start rate under the guidelines is $22.02 an hour and the award rate is $17.49 an hour. If those opposite can argue that the $17 figure is higher than the $22 figure, good on them—it will make them eligible for the top job because they can give similar answers during question time.

This is a cut. This is a broken promise from the election. It is a broken promise from Monday. On Monday we were given a guarantee by the Prime Minister during question time and by Wednesday we have legislation in the parliament providing a hit to the take-home pay of cleaners employed by the Commonwealth. This is under the guise, of all things, of removing red tape. I do not think there is a single low-paid worker who believes that their wage is red tape. We already know the way the government's first budget acted to hurt many low- to middle-income Australians. Now through these bills the government is seeking to cut the pay of some of Australia's lowest paid workers. The Prime Minister said on Monday:

I want to make it absolutely crystal clear that no cleaner's pay is reduced.

And:

This government has not reduced the pay of any cleaner full stop, end of story. This government has not reduced the pay of any cleaner.

The second quote was actually true on Monday. They had not—they waited until Wednesday to do it. But, after this has been voted on and proclaimed, the guidelines will be ditched and we will have a situation where cleaners' pay gets cut. The second quote was true at the time but the first one was an absolute broken promise, which did not even last 48 hours:

I want to make it absolutely crystal clear that no cleaner's pay is reduced.

The Prime Minister stood there and gave a guarantee to some of our lowest paid workers but 48 hours later he is cutting their pay.

Labor opposes the government's decision to abolish the guidelines that apply to cleaners working for Australian government agencies and contractors. We will do everything we can to block this move. When we have the debate here we will move amendments to take this out. If the Prime Minister's word means anything, the government will support those amendments and then we can all support this legislation, presuming what we think is in it is in fact there. If our amendments are defeated in the House, we will still not oppose the legislation for the very simple reason that our entire governance framework for the Commonwealth will be at risk if these bills are not in place by 1 July and we are not going to behave irresponsibly. But we will then move those amendments in the Senate if they still do not form part of the bill. If our amendments are successful in the Senate, be in no doubt that we will insist on them. We will not be resiling from the fact that we do not want to see the circumstance where Australia's lowest paid workers have their pay cut.

The government can make up its own mind as to whether it believes the Prime Minister's word should last a week and as to whether it believes the Prime Minister's word is worth anything. We were all here. We might not know what is in this bill, but we all know what the Prime Minister said on Monday and we know that this bill does not reflect it.

The revocation of the guidelines is not the only thing that should be concerning Australian workers. We have a series of issues that have come here. We have comments from Senator Abetz with respect to individual flexibility arrangements, the spectre of AWAs and now what they are doing with the budget with the increase in the retirement age. We all know the physical toll that jobs that involve physical labour—not white-collar jobs like we enjoy in this House—take on people. What is a perfect example of that? Cleaners—people who will take a direct hit with an increase in the retirement age and the pension age going out to 70. The government, with that move, is causing real pain. Labor will have none of it. We will fight it here in this House; if not successful, we will allow the bills through and fight it again in the Senate, where I hope our amendments will be successful. I hope they are successful here. If the Prime Minister meant what he said on Monday he will be voting for them—but we have seen a record of how long this Prime Minister's word lasts.

We will be fighting that part of it, but I do not want to underestimate the importance of the legislation as a whole. The legislation that is before us is critical to the entire governance framework of the public service. Australia has a very proud record of a highly professional Commonwealth public service. The good governance arrangements within which it operates have been a feature of that. There is goodwill from both sides of the House to improve the governance framework and move to this new model. To get the transition right, the detail of this legislation needs to be right. We have the embarrassing situation where, because this government has failed to make a decision about the future of Senator Sinodinos, every member of the House of Representatives is now forced to vote for legislation when the truth is not one of us has had a chance to read this since it was introduced at 4.30 pm yesterday—not one of us. We will have 150 members of the House of Representatives voting on this legislation as a leap of faith because none of us are sure what it says.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is somewhat of a parliamentary tradition, isn't there, that each year, at the end of the financial year, governments with an agenda rush to get critical legislation through before 30 June. You can definitely understand a first-term government with plenty of legislation on its books doing just that. I certainly recall that, in previous years, even Labor governments in complete disarray managed to find themselves with legislation stacked up and needing to be passed by 30 June.

What makes this very different is that we did not write this original legislation. This was legislation written by the Labor Party, and we are finishing their work for them. This legislation has Labor fingerprints all over it. They drafted it. They even passed it, in July last year, with the intention of it coming into force on 30 June this year. So to claim they have never seen this document before is a masterful waste of 30 minutes of parliamentary time. I have to commend the member for Watson. Many of his frontbench colleagues struggle to see out their time talking about their own portfolios, reading word for word from notes diligently prepared by staffers. Here is a man who can speak for 30 minutes about absolutely nothing. He did it with aplomb. He went on for 30 minutes, complaining that he did not know what cross-references had been changed in the two acts and that he would normally read the entire bill. He could have read the bill in the time he gave that speech. In that 30 minutes he could have turned his attention to the hundreds of cross-references that were omitted by his own drafters in the Labor Party this time last year. Let us be honest: we are just fixing up someone else's mess. Doesn't that ring a familiar bell—fixing up someone else's mess?

We are finishing a reform process that Labor started, making sure there is a new PGPA Act that will take the place of those two very important pieces of parliamentary architecture, the FMA Act and the CAC Act. But we know that a number of acts will be rendered completely ineffective if we do not make these changes. Apologies that it is being done late, but I think a first-term, first-year, first-six-months government has a perfect reason for having a large amount of legislative material to pass through these two chambers between budget and 30 June.

The bills are all about accountability and red tape. They do four things which should be broadly supported. They certainly do the things Australians would expect. What would they expect? They would expect that statutory bodies that operate under federal legislation report closely to parliament on their achievements compared to their objectives. That makes complete sense. They would hope that those who run these entities are responsible for risk management and the performance and sustainability of their departments. That makes perfect sense. You would hope that officers working within those departments also ensure that any funding they expend is expended for a proper purpose and, lastly, that red tape is never imposed unnecessarily. They are the very familiar tenets on which the coalition government was elected last year.

This is a bill that can hardly be a surprise. It is almost impossible for the opposition to claim they have been ambushed by this bill. I could understand if this was a newly created, freshly minted bill which the opposition had not had a chance to look at—but this is Labor Party material, Labor Party documentation and Labor Party legislation, scrutinised by both sides of this parliament as recently as the middle of last year, with changes that effectively amount to little more than cross-referencing. That is right: we realised, through diligent and iterative consultation with the respective authorities, that in many cases the footnoting and cross-referencing did not transfer correctly from the FMA Act and the CAC Act into the new PGPA Act.

This is a thoroughly reasonable proposition. It is vitally important. It has some connections to the Williams High Court decision, interestingly enough, and this bill will be needed by 1 July. But to hear the opposition with so little to say about a bill that is so obviously of their conception—one that is so thoroughly noncontroversial—and for someone as senior as the member for Watson to come before this chamber and claim that MPs have not read every word in the bill, stimulates me to highlight all the little pieces of cross-referencing that have been added in which were omitted originally and which made this bill ineffective, because that is all the member for Watson needs to read. If he really needs someone to do it for him, I am sure he can find someone and we can highlight the footnotes. Do we need to detain the chamber for half an hour to argue about that? It is pretty disappointing. There are some far bigger agenda items facing this country than the waste of that 30 minutes by the previous Labor speaker.

I will commend anything that reduces red tape. We are all passionate, on both sides of this chamber, about governance and probity reforms. To say this is an ambush of the Labor Party by the coalition is a complete fabrication. We support these laws. We support these amendments. We support these tiny changes which make this bill work and we support their introduction before 30 June.

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

I rise to speak to the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2014 and also indicate that the opposition has concerns with not only parts of the substance of the bill but also the way in which the government has sought to make potentially wide-scale changes to legislation. The member for Watson was absolutely right that if you have a bill of 500 or more pages introduced the day before and at the same time you seek to gag the debate on these matters then, clearly, due process is not being entertained. It is quite ironic that the bill itself is entitled 'public governance'. This is about governance and governing, yet the government itself does not want to have proper consideration of matters that will impact on 250 or thereabouts pieces of legislation and countless Commonwealth regulations.

Ms Brodtmann interjecting—

And, indeed, they go back for some time, as the member for Canberra has indicated. The fact is that the government's conduct here is that they do not want to provide due diligence in these matters and they do not want to illustrate the capacity to govern effectively. The other reference I would like to make to the title of the bill is accountability—'public governance, performance and accountability' is the name of the bill, yet what accountability is the government showing to the people of Australia by gagging this debate and not allowing examination of these matters?

It is quite ridiculous and absurd of the previous speaker to suggest that the opposition has had enough time—or, for that matter, that government members have had enough time—to absorb the contents of this bill. In fact, you would have to be reading a page about every three seconds to absorb the scale of the bill in question. That is the point the member for Watson was making, that if you believe you need to make these changes, that is all well and good, that is what the government should be proposing perhaps, but to deny the parliament the opportunity to examine the motives of the executive is not consistent with due process, it is not consistent with the Westminster system of accountability and it is certainly not in keeping with a good parliament by not allowing for that examination. So the opposition have grave concerns about the way in which this matter is being dealt with by the government and for that reason we strongly argue against the gag and reserve our rights to reflect upon much of the provisions of the legislation.

One thing that the member for Watson did highlight that has been of concern to the opposition for some time and has been the subject of answers by the Prime Minister in question time has been the potential to impact adversely on the wages of cleaners that are under Commonwealth contracts. Members would recall that questions were put to the Prime Minister in relation to the Clean Start rates, that is, the Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines, which are regulated in a way that ensures a standard of conditions of employment and wages for cleaners, the people who clean our offices and undertake the provision of services under Commonwealth contracts. In answer to a question about whether cleaners would be adversely impacted by the abolition of these guidelines, the Prime Minister said there would not be cleaners that would suffer losses to wages. Unfortunately, wilfully or otherwise, the Prime Minister is wrong.

If this bill is enacted, the Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines which regulate the minimum pay and conditions for cleaners will effectively wipe the floor with some of Australia's lowest paid workers. The impact of the abolition of the regulation would mean that future contracts that may be tendered would be tendered on the basis that those contractors could employ workers not on the minimum rate pursuant to this regulation but on the minimum rate pursuant to the award. The effect of that would be that cleaners would stand to lose up to $344 a week because of this government's decision, with a cut from the Clean Start rate of $22.02 to the award rate of $17.49. That is a cut of almost $5 per hour for cleaners who are under Commonwealth contracts, yet we have had the Prime Minister stand at the dispatch box here and, in answer to a question in question time, argue that cleaners' conditions of employment will not be reduced. This is symptomatic of a Prime Minister that does not know his own budget, that does not know his own legislation and that does not care about the adverse impact his decisions will have upon hardworking Australians. Indeed, it is also consistent with the intentions of this government to go further in changing conditions of employment for millions of Australian workers, I would contend.

So, firstly, we argue that the process by which this bill has been introduced is unreasonable. It has not allowed the opposition to properly consider these matters. It is being rammed through the parliament without proper consideration. And so far as the provision with respect to Commonwealth cleaning guidelines is concerned, we say that this decision, under the so-called guise of red tape, is a cruel and callous decision which is totally unjustified. It was clear from the outset that the government tried to bury this attack on minimum conditions for cleaners among some 8,000 regulatory changes. They came without any warning from the government. Now, with the introduction of these bills, we see how these guidelines will be abolished.

Mr Deputy Speaker Mitchell, you may recall—as you were, of course, a successful candidate in the last election—that before the election Tony Abbott said he would not touch workers' pay and conditions. He promised he would not cut wages or penalty rates. We know, however, that cleaners stand to lose $344 a week, as I said. We have concerns that there are other nasty provisions in this bill, and yet we have not been given the opportunity to examine the scale of the impact of this legislation upon other pieces of legislation and other regulations. We therefore caution the government on its approach; indeed, we criticise the government for its approach in ramming this bill through the parliament.

We have not only had denials from the Prime Minister in relation to the potential reduction in rates of pay for cleaners; we have also had denials from the Minister for Employment, Senator Abetz, who has argued that there will be no changes to cleaners' rates of pay—patently untrue. The minister is also introducing legislation to broaden the scope of individual flexibility arrangements, essentially heading back to those dark days of Work Choices. We are seeing the beginning, I would contend, of an agenda on industrial relations buried within this massive bill, which has not been given sufficient time for proper examination.

We, therefore, have grave reservations about the impact of this bill. I foreshadow that Labor will be moving an amendment to the bill at the consideration in detail stage of the debate to ensure that these guidelines remain operative. It will be, in the end, as always, Labor that will stand up for hardworking Australians and their conditions of employment. It will be the Labor Party that will stand between the government and hardworking Australians to prevent this government ripping away those conditions of employment. I will certainly be moving an amendment in the consideration in detail stage to do just that.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to continue on from the contribution from the shadow minister and member for Gorton about how the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2014 seeks to abolish the cleaning guidelines. These guidelines currently are enabled by regulation 7B of the Finance Management and Accountability Regulations 1997, which in turn enables section 64 of the Finance Management and Accountability Act 1997. This bill seeks to repeal section 64 of the act and, therefore, would render these cleaning guidelines inoperable. The section clearly states:

The regulations may authorise a Minister to issue guidelines …

I want to take a moment to let the House know what the impact of abolishing these cleaning guidelines will be on the lowest paid yet hardest working Commonwealth workers: the cleaners. As the shadow minister has outlined, cleaners stand to lose $344 a week because of this government's decision. Buried in the pages and pages of the document before us is this cruel measure to abolish the cleaning guidelines. It means a cut in the take-home pay of so many people working so hard in government buildings. There will be a cut in the Clean Start rate, which is $22 an hour currently, back to the award rate of $17.49. That is a pay cut of $5 per hour to people on very low wages. This hit to cleaners, who, as we know, are some of the lowest paid workers, just shows how ideologically driven this government is. Labor opposes the decision to abolish the guidelines that apply to the hardworking cleaners of Australian government agencies and their contractors. We will do everything we can to ensure this move is blocked.

Let us just take a moment to reflect on who these cleaners are, because it is very easy in this place to pretend that they are a section or rule in a bill before us and forget about the faces and the actual people. On International Cleaners Day, which was recognised only a few weeks ago, we acknowledged the people who are quite often forgotten—the people who came out of the basements to be remembered and recognised. The government, it appears, need to be reminded every day about these hardworking Australian cleaners, who keep their workplaces clean. They include Chris Wagland and Carlos Pavez, two people who live here in the ACT and in Queanbeyan, just outside the ACT. I remind you that Queanbeyan is part of the marginal electorate of Eden-Monaro. They are two people in the direct line of attack who will face the potential of having wages cut if these changes go through. The repeal of the Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines means that people like Chris and Carlos could face the loss of $340 per week.

Chris is the President of the ACT branch of United Voice and is the cleaner of a government building. She has worked in government buildings and in cleaning for almost 30 years. Her story is a direct reflection of decisions that are made here in this House. Thirty years ago, Chris started cleaning a Defence building. At the time, she was directly employed by the government, only for that contract to be outsourced and put out for private tender. While she has taken on many other jobs, she continues to work in cleaning. In 2006, she lost that contract in Defence. She refused to sign an Australian workplace agreement that was dropped on the cleaners in her workplace as a result of Work Choices legislation, so she lost her Department of Defence cleaning job. Today, she is back there, after a battle and after a cleaning contractor who was not introducing AWAs and who was a signatory to the Clean Start guidelines won the contract. Today she has proper wages and conditions. But from 1 July this could change again.

As I mentioned, Chris lives in Queanbeyan. She leaves to go to work in Canberra every day at 3 am, to start at 4. She is the proud mother of three sons, and her youngest is still at school. She said that one of the benefits of starting early is that she gets to be at home to help with caring duties. She has strong Christian values, and that is what has motivated her to fight. She has spent her working life standing up to say that cleaners deserve respect and decency—particularly our cleaners working in Commonwealth buildings. Every single other public servant is paid much more than our cleaners. Yet the government seems determined to go after its cleaners' wages. And how? By these amendments in this bill today and by abolishing the cleaning guidelines.

Carlos is a refugee from Chile who arrived in Australia in 1974. He is almost due to retire. He has been cleaning in Canberra's institutions for over 35 years. At the moment, one of the places where he cleans is the department of forestry building. He is a family man with four sons and 10 grandchildren. He is a community leader. He is passionate about his soccer, and I am sure he is spending many nights at the moment staying up and, if he is not working, watching the World Cup.

Why I tell these stories is to remind the House that decisions they make affect real people—ordinary people doing a job that most of us would choose not to do, but doing it to support their family. The workers that work in these government buildings are being punished as a result of this bill. Their campaign to ensure that they had decent rates of pay will be undermined and undercut as a result of decisions made by this government on red tape repeal day and today with this bill. These are some of the lowest paid workers. It is so rich coming from this government, which talks about pay parity, that it has forgotten about them or is trying to hide what it is doing to them in this legislation today.

The PM and his ministers constantly stand up, campaign and rant about the need for pay parity when it comes to paid parental leave. They stand up and say that women in the private sector should have the same benefits as women working in the public sector, and that is why they are pushing for a very generous paid parental leave system which would see the government subsidise private sector workers—women—to the tune of $50,000. Yet here today we have seen the government do the complete opposite and backflip. Today they are seeking introduce guidelines that could see the cleaners' wages cut so that they would not have pay parity with their fellow workers in the private sector.

As we speak, cleaners working in the private sector in Melbourne doing similar work to this—cleaning offices, working in big buildings in the CBD, working in big corporate offices—are paid in accordance with the Clean Start rates, the Clean Start agreement and, therefore, these cleaning guidelines. Yet we are seeing this government make the push to see its cleaners be pushed back to the award. And that is what really stinks about this—a government that is willing to push for pay parity for the private sector in a paid parental leave scheme but, in another bill before the House, push its cleaners back to the award. It is not interested in pay parity for our lowest paid cleaners. It is not interested in ensuring that cleaners can actually afford to put food on their table.

Let's be honest about what it is like to live on the award today. You can work full time as a cleaner with a pay rate is as little as $17 an hour, and you do not have enough money in your budget to pay the bills. One of the motivations for putting my hand up to run for the seat of Bendigo was a conversation that I had with cleaners in Bendigo at the Bendigo shopping centre. We were sitting around talking about what would be a fair pay rise to ask the boss for. They laughed and said, 'Lisa, we couldn't ask for the price that we need to help pay our bills.' They say that they are always one bill away from disaster. The award is too low. There is something simply not right when someone working full time cannot pay the bills. Yet that is the destiny that this government is trying to force these cleaners onto. It is trying to force its cleaners in government buildings back to those poverty wages currently experienced by people working on the award.

What is also clear is that this government does not understand how cleaners working in government buildings will end up on the award. It is clear that the PM, with his comments before the House, does not understand how the contracting system works and the nature of competitive contracting. Wages are a core component of contracting. Eighty per cent of the cost of a cleaning contract is wages. So, if you can tender on the award rate of $17.49 against a company on the Clean Start rate of $22 per hour, you are $5 an hour cheaper than the company that is paying the cleaners in accordance with the Clean Start rates. That is why the Prime Minister's statement 'I want to make it absolutely crystal clear that no cleaner's pay is reduced' is either a demonstration that he does not understand how contracting works or he has misled this parliament, because, when the cleaning contract for this place—or for other government buildings—goes out to tender, there will be a company that currently has a contract tendering on the Clean Start rates of $22 an hour base rate competing against a company on the award, which is $17.50 an hour. That is what this government has done. It has reintroduced competition based upon price, not quality. So that company has the choice, if it wants to continue that contract, to either bust its cleaners back to the award, costing those cleaners $344 a week, or lose the contract to a company paying the award.

The fact that the government is gagging debate on this bill highlights how little care or regard this government has for its lowest paid workers and how little understanding they have for how some of the measures in this bill will hurt working people.

The fact that the government is trying to hide that it will abolish cleaning services guidelines is another demonstration of the twisted priorities of this government. These guidelines will enable companies to compete for government contracts on the award, directly undercutting the wages of hardworking cleaners—cleaners working in government buildings. As I have said, these are already some of our lowest paid workers. They worked hard, they campaigned and they got themselves a decent pay rise. There were protections in place to ensure that they got a decent rate of pay, yet one of the first acts of this government has been to delete the very instrument that ensures that they continue to get these rates.

We are all for competitive tendering, as long as it is a fair competitive tendering process. This bill takes away the fairness. This bill will see companies which respect their cleaners and pay them at a decent rate having to compete with companies paying the award. Ultimately, it will result in a $5-an-hour pay cut. That is why the words of the Prime Minister are so disingenuous when he stands up and says, 'I want to make it absolutely crystal clear that no cleaner's pay will be reduced.'

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013—the PGPA Act—is scheduled to replace the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997—FMA Act—and the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997—the CAC Act—from 1 July 2014, as the main legislation covering the financial operations of entities across the Commonwealth. It is important legislation.

To support this change the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2014—the PGPA(C and TP) Bill—has been introduced into parliament to repeal the CAC Act and to substantially reduce the number of operative provisions within the FMA Act, as it is now known. The PGPA amendment bill generally makes necessary technical amendments to the PGPA Act that had become apparent over the past 12 months as a result of the development of the supporting rules, as well as some amendments which are needed to properly implement the operation of the supporting PGPA rules to be proposed to parliament.

This bill also addresses—this is important—some drafting errors in the PGPA Act that were not noticed during its drafting. We heard the member for Watson talk about the fact that Labor was, indeed, the party which, when in government, introduced this bill. But they did not get it right. How often have we heard that Labor did not quite get something right? They missed by that much!

Mr Morrison interjecting—

I hear the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection chuckling. He might well chuckle, because Labor missed out by just that much when it came to border security. There were 55,000 people arriving on hundreds of boats but that all stopped when the coalition put in place its new border protection regime. They put in place a minister who actually knew how to stop the boats. But I digress.

The PGPA (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill will make amendments to around 250 pieces of legislation as a result of the PGPA Act's introduction. The amendments include technical changes to replace reference to the FMA and CAC acts with references to the PGPA act; repealing or amending provisions in enabling legislation where the PGPA provisions will operate in future, or where they operate together, such as with corporate planning and annual reports; application provisions to specify when provisions in the PGPA Act apply, such as in relation to annual reports; savings and transitional provisions for various provisions in the FMA Act and CAC Act to allow for an effective transfer from those arrangements to the PGPA Act.

We heard the member for Watson earlier in this debate over egging the issue when he was talking about what a huge thing this was. It is important but the member for Watson did over egg the issue, when some of these matters are just cross-referencing in this legislation.

The Australian Constitution provides that amounts for the ordinary annual services of government and amounts for other purposes cannot be presented to the parliament in the same bill. As a result, the bills are being presented in three separate bills. I will go through them: the ordinary annual services of government bills numbered 1, 3 or 5; amounts for other purposes bills, numbered 2, 4, and 6 and amounts for the parliamentary departments.

We heard the member for Watson talk about the necessity to push these through. Yes, there is a necessity to get them through before 1 July 2014. The member for Watson, the leader of opposition business, made out that the necessity to get something through in a quick and timely fashion was something that had never occurred since Federation. Certainly under his watch as water minister, Labor tried to get through the Water Act such that the Murray Darling Basin Plan could be implemented.

We saw 8,000 people turn out to a protest rally at Griffith. In fact, it did not start as a protest rally. It actually started as an information session by the Murray Darling Basin Authority to—

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

Get back to the bill.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will get back there, member for Gorton, but this is important. Those on the Labor side of the chamber claim that it is unusual for this parliament to be rushing through timely legislation but when the member for Watson was in charge of water he attempted to rush through legislation which affected hundreds of thousands of people who grow food on behalf of this nation.

If this bill's passage is delayed it will have consequences for payments continuing to be made under the provisions of the FMA Act and the CAC Act. The delay would have consequences for the amendment of 250 acts across the Commonwealth to support the implementation of the Public Governance Performance and Accountability Act 2013 and the development of related PGPA rules and instruments.

While these amendments to enabling legislation are typically difficult to quantify in monetary terms, it is expected that simplification of these regulatory requirements will contribute to long-term efficiencies in terms of achieving improved governance, and transparency and accountability arrangements for Commonwealth entities, including non-corporate Commonwealth entities and Commonwealth entities within the Australian government.

It is important that we get this through before 1 July 2014. I look forward to seeing what the amendments will be from the other side. We heard the member for Watson complaining about gag motions. There were gag motions placed in the last parliament on what was called the clean energy legislation. We called it the carbon tax. All Australians called it the carbon tax. There were gag motions placed on Gonski.

Ms Owens interjecting—

There actually was, member for Parramatta, a gag motion on Gonski. I was lined up to talk about some of the important things in Gonski but was prevented from doing so, by a gag motion, from the then Labor government. There were gag motions placed on so many other important pieces of legislation we wanted to have a say on, when we were in opposition, but we were prevented from doing so, because Labor wanted to rush them through.

We heard the member for Watson using terms such as chaos, incompetence and broken election promises, all of which were writ large when he and his party were in government over the last six years. Chaos and incompetence. He should not come into this chamber and utter those words when we recall the sheer chaos and incompetence we had from Labor.

The other side talk about the Public Service. Our public servants do a good job; let us be honest. The member for Fraser, who has just joined us, would agree with me that the public servants of Australia do a good job. From what the member for Watson said, we would think that the only friends of public servants in this country are those on the other side.

The APS employed 167,257 staff on 30 June last year. This was 907 fewer than a year earlier. It was the biggest decline in 14 years. The federal bureaucracy, under Labor, copped its largest staff cut since the late 1990s, according to the then latest State of the service report. Labor are no friends of the Public Service.

We realise this bill before us is important. We know it was introduced by Labor in the last days of the last parliament. We heard the member for Bowman eloquently say that the changes we are making, through this legislation, were omitted by Labor's own drafters in the last parliament. It is important to remember that we are merely finishing a reform process started under Labor.

A core piece of legislation—the PGPA Act—was passed in June 2013 and is due to come into effect on1 July 2014. It has to. We were left to do the difficult work of putting meat on the bones left to us by those opposite.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ha ha!

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will repeat that for the member for Parramatta. We were left to deal with the difficult work of putting the meat on the bones left to us by those opposite. More than 250 other acts make reference to the two predecessor bodies of financial-framework legislation and many of these would be rendered ineffective if consequential legislation were not enacted to align those 250-plus acts to the main PGPA Act before it comes into effect.

Many of the amendments in the consequential bills merely—that is an important word to consider, in the context of this sentence—insert cross-references to the PGPA Act in substitution for all references to the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997 and the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997. 'References and cross-references to the FMA and CAC acts required rigorous checking before the bills could be finalised for introduction.'—they did not get that rigorous checking when Labor pushed it through by 1 July 2013.

As the member for Watson himself seemed to acknowledge, this has been a complex and time-consuming task. It has. We are fixing up the mess by Labor. I am sure the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, sitting here beside me, would know all about fixing-up messes left by Labor. He and he alone has probably had the biggest mess to fix up. Most critically, if the PGPA Act cannot commence without these consequential amendments also being made, all current appropriation acts would be rendered ineffective.

The provisions contained in the PGPA Act and bolstered by these amending bills seek to modernise the Commonwealth's current financial-accountability performance and reporting framework, by shifting from a prescriptive compliance based approach to a broad principles based approach based on uniform duties, stronger accountability, better reporting and a focus on risk. That is something we all want to see, as legislators. Traditionally, the high level of scrutiny placed on the work of the Commonwealth public sector and the low level of tolerance for failure has created a culture that limits the ability to engage positively with risk.

These issues have been a frequent point of criticism from the commercial and third sectors when they find themselves joined, in some way, with Commonwealth entities. These reforms acknowledge that acceptance of some risk is necessary to improve performance, allow for more effective joining-up with others and reduce unnecessary administrative burden. An increased focus on risk management and better dialogue on risk issues within government and the parliament will lead to more informed strategic and operational decision making within the public sector.

We heard the member for Watson criticising the Minister for Finance, Senator Cormann. I agree, in some part, with the member for Watson that the Minister for Finance has had a big job to do; a very onerous task. Most of it is concerned with fixing up the debt and deficit-legacy left by Labor: $123 billion of deficit; $667 billion worth of debt, if left unchecked. It is not being left unchecked, because the Minister for Finance, the Treasurer, Mr Hockey, and the rest of the Liberal-Nationals coalition are getting on with the job of fixing the mess left by Labor.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

By increasing the deficit!

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After you've doubled it!

Mr Brendan O'Connor interjecting—

Ms Rishworth interjecting—

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They can cry out all they like, because these four opposite were some of the people who created that mess. We are getting on with the job of fixing it. An increased focus on risk management and better dialogue within the parliament will lead to better decision making. The amendments contained within these bills go to supporting a better way for the Commonwealth to do its business. We all want that. That is something I had understood Labor would support. It was, after all, the government that introduced the PGPA Act in the first place. It was the party that introduced it, in the last days of the last parliament. I look forward to hearing and reading the Labor amendments. With that, I commend the bills.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.