Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The big idea behind the Fair Work Amendment (Bargaining Processes) Bill 2014 is that productivity should drive wage negotiations and wage outcomes, and that this will balance real wage increases against ensuring low levels of unemployment. The bill will amend the Fair Work Act to ensure that, when approving an enterprise agreement, the Fair Work Commission must be satisfied that productivity improvements at the workplace were discussed during bargaining for the agreement. All of the existing enterprise agreement approval requirements under the Fair Work Act will be retained.

The bill also amends the Fair Work Act to provide further guidance and greater transparency regarding the circumstances in which protected action ballot orders can be made. It ensures that the Fair Work Commission must not make a protected ballot order where it is satisfied that the claims of an applicant for a protected action ballot are manifestly excessive or, importantly, would have significantly adverse impacts on productivity at the workplace. The idea that productivity should be at the heart of wage negotiations and wage outcomes is not a new one. We saw it, perhaps, at its best during the period of the prices and incomes accords. This idea was a bedrock of the accords driven by the Labor government in the 1980s, which were a considerable contributor to helping Australia out of its economic malaise at the time.

Let us have a little bit of a look at the importance of productivity, or doing things smarter—which is what we really mean when we are talking about productivity in the workplace. In the medium term and in the long term and to some extent even in the short term we know that productivity is absolutely central to our standard of living improving.

Paul Krugman, the well-known Nobel laureate economist—who is, I should say, very much not on our side of politics—has said:

Productivity isn't everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. A country's ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker.

The point here is that we want to raise wages. We on this side of the House want to raise wages. We do not want to reduce them. But we know, as Krugman points out, that if we want wages to go up we have to raise labour productivity. We know from years and years of economic research that, if wages go up faster than productivity, unemployment rises. This is a very basic result in economics. But let us go beyond the theory. Let us have a look at what some of the researchers have said.

I will look at a paper written by none other than the member for Fraser and published in the Australian Economic Review in 2003. At the time he was at the Kennedy school of government at Harvard University—a great institution. He did a very interesting piece of work where he looked at six increases in wages in Western Australia between 1994 and 2001 to look at the impact of wages going up faster than productivity—minimum wages were the focus—on employment. On six occasions between 1994 and 2001 the minimum wage in WA was increased by between 3½ per cent and over nine per cent. After each of these increases the employment to population ratio—the employment rate—in WA fell relative to the rest of Australia. He then shows—he does the econometrics on this—that a one per cent increase in the minimum wage reduces employment by about 0.13. In fact, in a later correction to the paper, he said that that number was too low—in fact it should have been higher.

The really interesting part of this is that the employment impact is most substantial amongst younger employees, where the fall in employment is almost three times higher. If you raise wages faster than productivity, then you raise unemployment for younger people at three times the pace of the rest of the economy. The member for Fraser is a good economist and many other economists have confirmed that result. For the most part their results have been even stronger than his, but directionally they have confirmed exactly what he found—so we know that if you raise wages faster than productivity you drive up unemployment.

It is very important to note that productivity comes from far more than just squeezing employees. We know that productivity comes from working smarter, above all. That is innovation—working smarter; finding cleverer ways of doing the same things. Australian businesses, when encouraged to do so, have been extraordinarily good at doing exactly this. We also know that productivity comes from investment—building the capital stock—in public infrastructure: in roads, rail and telecommunications, and from private sector investment, which we saw starting to fall away dramatically in the latter period of the Labor government.

Australia has been at its very best when it has been delivering rising wages aligned with strong productivity. In our great economic history since European settlement we have consistently avoided oversupply of unskilled workers, and we should continue to do so. In doing so, we have been able to achieve rising real wages aligned with rising productivity. Central to that have been very high levels of capital investment putting upward pressure on wages, and we should celebrate that—that has been absolutely central to the economic miracle of 200 years that we have seen in this country.

I spoke about unemployment, and, of course, at the heart of any wage negotiation is this issue of unemployment. But nowhere has this become worse, particularly in the Labor years, than in the case of youth unemployment. There is no question that youth unemployment was a disaster during the period from 2007 to 2013.

Given the money that the Labor Party claims to have spent on jobs and skill creation and skill development, and the number of programs they claim to have put into place, we might have expected that the track record would in fact be superb. But let us have a look at the facts. Between the time they got into government in 2007 and the time they left in 2013, there was a significant increase in youth unemployment. Note here that, in the four years leading up to the new Labor government in 2007, we saw a 13 per cent growth under the Howard government in youth employment. But between 2008 and 2013, we saw an eight per cent reduction in youth employment. So we went from a 13 per cent increase in employment to an eight per cent reduction in youth employment across the economy.

At the same time, we can look at youth participation rates. They were running merrily along between 2004 and 2008, rising from 70 per cent participation up to 71 per cent—nice work by the Howard government. But, from early 2008 through to 2013, there was a reduction in participation for younger Australians from 71 per cent to 66 per cent—a disastrous drop; a five per cent reduction across the time of the Labor government.

They might say, 'That is all right; we were putting them all into training.' But we also find that the youth unemployment rate went from nine per cent in January 2008 to 12.4 per cent by the end of 2013. What a shameful record of youth employment and youth unemployment we saw from the last Labor government. We know there are terrible hot spots in western and north-western Tasmania. It got to 21 per cent unemployment under the Labor-Greens alliance, destroying jobs in Tasmania; in Cairns it was almost 21 per cent again; in North Adelaide it was around 20 per cent; and in south-eastern Tasmania it was 19.6 per cent—a social and economic disaster.

So the question is: what are we doing to address this? And alongside what is being proposed in this bill, we are working hard to strengthen the economy—and we know that a strong economy equals strong jobs growth. We are negotiating free trade agreements. We are investing record dollars in public infrastructure. We are removing excess taxation. We are reforming training and education—reforming our vocational education and training system. And we are establishing world-class employment services.

But this is not all. This legislation asks the Fair Work Commission to consider whether productivity was part of the negotiations in coming to an enterprise agreement. But we need the Fair Work Commission to come to terms with the scale of this problem and begin to address it. Indeed, the old industrial relations club used to understand the role of productivity, as I said earlier. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke understood that real wage hikes in the face of sluggish productivity are a disaster.

So what has the Fair Work Commission been doing? The short answer is that it has been making the situation worse, and is prioritising large wage hikes above jobs for young Australians, by not paying attention to productivity. This has been absolutely at its worst for the young in our population.

As I said, we all want rising wages; this is a bedrock of Australia's economic success. But you achieve rising wages by working smarter, investing more, building more infrastructure and improving our education system. You cannot simply raise wages in the absence of productivity gains.

I want to focus on two particular decisions made by the Fair Work Commission. The first was the modern awards review focused on apprentices, trainees and juniors of August 2013. A full bench of the Fair Work Commission handed down its decision on apprentice provisions in the two-year review of modern awards. It granted wage increases for first- and second-year apprentices, phased over a 12-month period. They effectively hiked the four-year wage structure for a junior apprentice who has completed year 12 from, in the first year, 42 per cent of full salary to 55 per cent, and, in the second year, from 55 per cent to 65 per cent. Effectively, what they were doing was significantly, sharply, increasing wages for first- and second-year apprentices, and, importantly, dissuading employers from wanting to take those apprentices on. The Fair Work Commission also decided that adult apprentices should receive 80 per cent of the fully qualified tradesperson's rate, which is a 10 per cent increase over what it previously was, and they passed on many costs of apprenticeships to employers, including such things as textbooks and travel costs.

This is an extraordinary conclusion, and it flies in the face of ensuring that wages track productivity. There is no question that this will be contributing to the unemployment of young people in Australia.

In a second decision, in March this year, a full bench of the Fair Work Commission granted an application by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association to increase the rate of pay for 20-year-old retail employees from 90 per cent to 100 per cent of the adult rate—a 10 per cent wage increase. There is no argument to say that we have seen 10 per cent productivity gains during this time. So the impact of this decision, based on research we have seen from people such as the member for Fraser, must be to raise unemployment amongst young people.

This irresponsible bias, to ignore the basic economics of employment relationships, is a serious problem for young people, for employers and for Australia. The most disenfranchised in our population are the unemployed, and to increase the number of people who are out of employment through these sorts of decisions is a travesty.

It is time for the Fair Work Commission to recognise this, and to show some concern and compassion about the extraordinary increase in youth unemployment bestowed on us by the previous Labor government. Yes, we need to ensure that there is a strong economy with lots of job creation, strong support for job seekers and extensive support for training and education, but we are doing all of that. Now it is time for the Fair Work Commission to get real and confront youth unemployment.

This bill provides an opportunity to do exactly that by increasing the focus of the fair work legislation on productivity. I commend this bill to the House.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is clear from the Fair Work Amendment (Bargaining Processes) Bill 2014 that the government has learnt nothing from the Work Choices debacle of the mid-2000s. Given this bill's very poor construction and the ambiguity within the bill, it seems that the bill really does appear to be nothing more than an attempt to undermine the right to bargain collectively, freely and autonomously and to undermine the right to strike.

Having said that, perhaps people more generous than I would want to give the government the benefit of the doubt on the bill, and for that reason I will be looking very carefully at the outcomes of the Senate inquiry into the bill to see whether or not there is some merit to the changes that are being proposed. But, given the circumstances of the bill being introduced, the timing, and the way the bill has been put together, it does really seem to be much more about perception that substance. It is another attempt to imply that the fair work legislation is somehow the cause of difficulties for labour productivity in this country, which is an issue to which I will return.

But before I do, I want to generally talk about the reasons why I said that the bill was an attempt to undermine the right to bargain collectively, freely and autonomously and an attempt to undermine the right to strike. Those issues go to the heart of one of the very clear differences between Liberal Party and the Labor Party. In the Labor Party, consistently with international law, we believe that there is a right to collectively bargain and that collective bargaining is to be preferred to individual bargaining in the workplace. To the contrary, the Liberal Party has always preferred individual bargaining, and we saw that under Work Choices.

In Work Choices, the Australian workplace agreements were statutory individual contracts that were able to, and did, undermine minimum working standards and conditions in this country. By way of example: 63 per cent of Australian workplace agreements made under Work Choices removed penalty rates, another pet hate of the coalition.

I am sure that members opposite do not necessarily want to be outed as still supporting individual contracts, but if you want evidence of that just have a look at the other fair work bill that is presently before this parliament, and has been for most of the year. The other fair work bill of course seeks to privilege and support their use of individual contracts by changing the individual flexibility agreement regime.

It is unfortunate and regrettable, but the Liberals seem to have learnt very little from their experience with Work Choices and are still pushing the bandwagon for statutory individual contracts, which of course are deeply problematic, and we saw that under Work Choices. We saw the conditions that were stripped away using AWAs at the time. But, on this side of the House, we understand and support collective bargaining. It is also, as a matter of international law, something that should be supported. You might recall that the ILO strongly criticised the Australian workplace relations laws known as Work Choices because of the way that they privileged individual negotiations ahead of collective bargaining.

To explain what I mean when I talk about our international obligations in respect of collective bargaining, I just want to mention a very helpful article, ' Protected industrial action and voluntary collective bargaining under the Fair Work Act 2009'by Shae McCrystal from the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney. To recite the discussion about our international obligations, Shae says:

Australia is bound in international law to respect the right to strike under Article 8(1)(d) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as a component of the principles of freedom of association protected by the Constitution of the ILO … and as a component of the obligation to respect the right of workers to organise to protect their economic and social interests in Article 3 of the ILO’s Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention … obligation is not limited to protection of the right to strike for the purposes of collective bargaining, but extends to recognition of the right to strike for workers to protect and further their ‘economic and social interests’ … Further, Article 4 of the ILO’s Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 … requires ratifying States to encourage and promote the full development of voluntary collective bargaining between employers, their associations and workers’ associations. The essential element of this obligation is the promotion of collective bargaining which is of a voluntary nature. This has been found to imply recognition of the autonomy of the bargaining parties.

That is a very good and convenient summary of the international obligations that we have.

In contrast to the international obligations that we have, this is a bill that places fetters on bargaining parties' autonomy and rights to conduct negotiations freely. Again, it harks back to Work Choices—continually trying to regulate what parties have to do when they are bargaining in the workplace. If you want to talk about over-regulation and red tape, think about the prohibited content provisions of the Work Choices legislation at the time. There was a lengthy list of things that parties were not at liberty to include in their enterprise agreements—a lengthy list of restrictions and limitations on parties' autonomy and right to collectively bargain freely. And what are we now seeing with this bill? We are seeing a new obligation, a new box to be ticked when an application is made to the Fair Work Commission to approve an agreement.

Of course parties talk about productivity in their bargaining. But this legislation is not about encouraging productivity measures; it is about finding another piece of red tape for parties to have to go through when they go to the commission and ask for approval of their workplace agreement.

One difficulty with adding in another consideration for the commission to take into account in the bargaining approval process, as my colleague the shadow minister pointed out, is that it can hand a party that does not want a bargain to be struck a veto power. So by refusing to talk about productivity and discuss productivity in the course of bargaining until other issues, such as wage rises, have been dealt with or at all, the employer is effectively adding another roadblock. Obviously, it would be an employer because it is generally unions and workers that are motivated in seeking new enterprise agreements, continuing to build on the conditions and wage rates in existing previous agreements. You are giving a tool to a party who does not want to bargain, to say, 'I'm not going to allow for this box to be ticked,' and it will take away the ability of the commission to approve the agreement. Of course, the real consequence of taking away the commission's ability to approve an agreement is that conditions do not change, pay does not go up and the productivity discussion in and of itself has been used as a tool to prevent those things from happening. It is a fetter on the commission's ability to approve the agreement and that fetter, again, interferes with the rights of the parties to conduct the negotiations as they see fit. Why should they not be able to conduct the negotiations as they see fit?

Another issue with the bill in terms of collective bargaining and the right to strike is the change to the protected action ballot provisions. A protected action ballot is important to the right to strike in this country. We have had protected industrial action in this country since the early 1990s. One thing that happened under Work Choices was the introduction of protected action ballots. Protected action ballots were possible prior to Work Choices, but they became mandated under Work Choices. The provisions said that if you want to exercise your right to strike in this country, with the immunity that you get for protected action—immunity from being sued or fined—then you have to first have a ballot. But you cannot just have the ballot; you have to go to the commission and ask them to give you an order allowing you to have the ballot. That is what a protection action ballot is. I know, having appeared in applications for protection action ballots myself, that it is a process that can be derailed by a party who does not want to bargain or does not want another party to be able to take protected industrial action. And which employer does want their workers to take protected action? Very few of them, I wager.

But, having said that, I think the fact that, as a lawyer, I appeared in protected action ballots demonstrates that they already attract legal involvement and that is a cost to bargaining, a cost to the parties, and a cost to the employer and the workers.

If this bill goes through—and we will see what the Senate says about it; perhaps there is merit to it—on my first reading of it, it seems to me that this will be another opportunity for parties to lawyer up, go down to the commission and pick fights about the nature of the claims and their effect in the event that they are granted. It is a bit nonsensical, of course, because a claim is only a claim. Unless it is actually granted or agreed to, it can have no effect on productivity. But the broader point is that you can readily envisage lengthy affidavit material, trawling through any of the claims that have been made in the course of negotiations for the collective agreement, picking fights over each of them and having lengthy legal proceedings not so that people can take the protected action itself but so they can actually get the ballot and then decide whether as a collective to take the protected action.

In terms of the access to justice issues and the ability for parties to progress through bargaining, it is an opportunity for lawyers to make some money. But it is not an opportunity that will be given to people to continue to move through the bargaining process in an orderly way and in a way that is free from unnecessary red tape.

We hear a lot about unnecessary red tape from the coalition, but making it more difficult to bargain at the workplace, taking away people's international obligations surely is, if nothing else, red tape.

As I said earlier, this is a curious bill. Obviously, the government have had many months to bring in this bill. They have brought it in at the end of the year. The other Fair Work Bill has been before the parliament for months. It is a bit clumsy in the way it has been drafted. But, to me, it also seems to be another example of attempts by some to imply that the Fair Work Act is somehow damaging for productivity. As anyone who paid any attention to the speech of Glenn Stevens, Reserve Bank of Australia governor, in Hobart, this year, would have noted , labour productivity is growing at a faster rate under the Fair Work Act than it grew under the Work Choices legislation. The governor gave labour productivity as an example of something that was pleasing and that sectors were working to improve productivity. The governor told us, in the graph that accompanied that speech, that it is growing at around two per cent per annum. So we know that labour productivity is on the increase. My friend and colleague Josh Bornstein has written an article suggesting that attempts to link the Fair Work Act to some sort of productivity crisis is hyperbole and, with respect, I completely agree with him. What he said was:

The productivity crisis campaign (PCC), which started in 2010, involved an all too familiar pattern: a loud and influential chorus of voices spanning big business, right wing print media and conservative politicians repeatedly trumpeting that IR laws were suffocating productivity and required urgent amendment to introduce greater flexibility.

He asked, rhetorically:

Where was the evidence for all of this? I undertook research to try and understand these concerns. No dice.

Where is the evidence that the Fair Work Act requires some sort of silly tweaking to affect labour productivity? Where is that evidence, given that, as I say, labour productivity has been increasing faster since the implementation of the Fair Work Act then it ever did during the Work Choices era?

The Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Philip Lowe, made a speech recently to the Australian Business Economists conference in which he talked about what Australia needed to do in order to become a highly productive and great economy. Do you think the Deputy Governor said that the most pressing priority is to tweak the Fair Work Act to change the approval process and to change the protected action ballot provisions? He did not say that, you will be shocked to hear, Mr Deputy Speaker. He said that we needed to invest in human capital. He talked about skills, he talked about knowledge, he talked about our relationship with Asia. He did not say we should fidget with the Fair Work Act. For that reason, I think we should all be very sceptical about this bill.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I went to bed last night I had a big smile on my face. I had been to the coalition Christmas party, where we thanked all our staff. It was a terrific night. Everyone was in great spirits. The Prime Minister spoke. He thanked our staff for the hard work they do. There was a great feeling of camaraderie there. After the party, I did a little bit of work in my office and then headed home. As is my wont, I got my iPod out. I thought: 'I'll just watch 7.30 because Bill Shorten, the Leader of the Opposition, is going to be on it. This will be worth watching.' Leigh Sales said: 'Leader of the Opposition, you've left the government with an enormous budget hole. MYEFO is about to once again show that the income the government receives is going to go down. Spending is not stopping because all the spending cuts promised are being blocked in the Senate. What is your solution?' The Leader of the Opposition said: 'What we need to do is improve productivity. "Productivity" is a word the government has stopped using.' I thought: 'Isn't this wonderful news! This is a real change that we are seeing here. The Leader of the Opposition has recognised that we must improve the nation's productivity. This is wonderful news.' So I went to bed with a big smile on my face thinking this is going to be fantastic.

So I came in here today and thought: 'Let's see whether the Leader of the Opposition is going to back his words with some action. We've got a bill here which is all about increasing the nation's productivity. This is going to be great. All of a sudden the opposition is going to say, "Yes government, we're prepared to help you."' And then, sadly, I had to sit through 15 minutes of the member for Griffith. And what did she have to offer in terms of our efforts to increase productivity? I am not saying that this is a ground-breaking bill that is going to change the nation's productivity overnight; but it is going to do a bit, it is going help. But what did we get from the opposition? Sadly, we got nothing but negativity—and, not only that, we got the outlandish statement that this is putting additional red tape into the process and that we should be taking red tape out of the workplace relations system. If the member for Griffith truly believes that, then I look forward to seeing what the opposition proposes to do. If she wants to deregulate the workplace, if she wants to take all the red tape out, we on this side are all ears, we are ready to listen to what the opposition has to say. We are extremely keen to take out of the system the red tape that was added in the last six years to the extent that we are sadly now seeing once again youth unemployment and long-term unemployment rise in this country to levels which all of us here collectively should be alarmed at and saying we need to collectively do something about. The member for Griffith said, 'Where is the evidence?' That is the evidence of how the six previous years of Labor government failed. There is the evidence of what their changes in the Fair Work Act did. Have a look at what is happening to youth unemployment and long-term unemployment in this nation. You could not have evidence more stark. Everyone said when the Fair Work laws came in that youth unemployment and long-term unemployment would be the litmus test of those laws. Sadly, they have failed—and that is the evidence.

So what are we trying to do here in terms of changing the productivity debate in the nation? The explanatory memorandum sets it out—and this is not major:

Examples of improvement to productivity may include but are not limited to elimination of restrictive or inefficient work practices; initiatives to provide employees with greater responsibilities or additional skills directly translating to improved outcomes; and improvements to the design, efficiency and effectiveness of workplace procedures and practices.

That is what we are asking for here. Yet those opposite cannot bring themselves to say they understand that, given the current circumstances the nation finds itself in, we need to do something to lift labour productivity. If we are to address the current budgetary circumstances, improving and increasing labour productivity has to be a key aspect of it.

And that is what this bill seeks to do. It is part of a suite of bills that honour the commitments that we took to the last election. There has been much outrage from those opposite when, on occasion, we have had to readjust some of our policies because of the budgetary circumstances we find ourselves in. We have been accused of all sorts of things, including breaking election promises. Yet here we are, with three workplace relations bills that implement the policies we took to the last election, and when we try to implement them, what do those opposite do? They say to us, 'Sorry, no; you cannot implement the commitment you took to the last election.' The hypocrisy knows no bounds.

So, what is this bill, in greater detail, seeking to do? The Fair Work Amendment (Bargaining Processes) Bill 2014 implements the final tranche of the government's amendments to the Fair Work Act that were clearly outlined in the coalition's election policy to improve the Fair Work laws. The bill makes three important improvements to the processes of bargaining whilst retaining important employee protections and employee rights. The improvements are: putting productivity back on the agenda, as I have outlined, by requiring parties to at least discuss improvements to productivity during negotiations for a new enterprise agreement, and ensuring that unions and employees do not use industrial action as a tool of first resort by ensuring that they have at least first attempted to engage in a meaningful discussion with the employer before resorting to industrial action. To ensure that the claims in support of which industrial action is being taken are not unrealistic or implausible, industrial action is an important employee right. It is a right that must be exercised responsibly rather than capriciously.

This is not radical legislation. This is legislation that implements policy that we took to the Australian people, and the Australian people gave us a tick to say yes, we approve of your policy agenda—then opposition, now government—and we vote you into office and would like to see it implemented. We must ask the question of why, sadly, those opposite will not allow us to implement our workplace relations agenda. And we need to take a step back, because we also need to look at why the changes to the Fair Work Act were put through by those opposite. They did it because they operate at the behest of the union movement, and they cannot objectively stand back and say: 'Okay, yes: unions, you are an interest group, and we understand what you are arguing for, but, as a government, we have to correctly listen to what you have to say, but we also have to take into account what employers are saying. And we also need to take account of those employees outside of the union movement, because, as we know, union movement membership is declining.'

If you are implementing legislation by listening to only one part of the debate, you get a skewed debate. And, as I highlighted earlier, that has consequences. And the sad thing at the moment is that the consequences are hitting our young and they are hitting the long-term unemployed. I ask the House collectively again to look at the statistics in those two key areas, because that is where the impact is being felt of the stubbornness of those opposite to not allow the government to implement the policies it took to the last election. And I would ask those opposite: what is wrong with us trying to put a productivity component into bargaining? What can be wrong with that? These are not unreasonable requests. Why won't you allow us to do it? Why won't you support this? This is asking that productivity be a component of bargaining.

Say you went out into the community and said, 'Well, we're actually opposing this.' And the explanatory memorandum sets out what they are opposing: 'elimination of restrictive or inefficient work practices; initiatives to provide employees with greater responsibilities or additional skills directly translating to improved outcomes; and improvements to the design, efficiency and effectiveness of workplace procedures and practices'. They are opposing that, at a time when we have to do everything we can—as the Leader of the Opposition said on 7.30 last night—to enhance the productivity of the nation. That is what he said last night. And I had a big smile on my face and thought, 'We're going to see a change from those opposite; we're going to see those opposite actually looking to do what is in the best interest of the nation rather than continuing to play political games.' Yet what do we have today? Back in the cold, hard reality of the chamber, the political games continue.

This government is about laying the foundations of long-term, sustainable growth for this nation. We know we have to do this to fix the budget. We know we have to do this to make sure that young Australians in particular have a future where they will have real incomes that are greater than ours. We want to set the next generation up so that they will have an improved standard of living compared with the one we enjoy here. But we need to wake up, because what is happening at the moment in this place is that every measure we take to try to do that is being opposed. And who will suffer the consequences? It will be our children and our grandchildren. And I would hope over Christmas that we can have a long hard think about that—about not what is in our short-term political interest but what is in the interests of the nation.

Christmas time is a time to reflect, and I say to my wonderful communities in Wannon: have a very merry Christmas. Enjoy the festive break and take some time to contemplate. And I say to those opposite: please do the same. Please reflect on where we are at, as a nation, at the moment. Because, if you will not willingly participate in us taking the action that we need to get the nation back on track, to make sure that we can provide the standard of living that we enjoy for our children and grandchildren, we as a nation are going to be all the poorer for it. So I ask you and beg you to think about that over Christmas.

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

At the beginning of my remarks I just want to reflect on a couple of things that the previous speaker mentioned. At the beginning of his remarks, the member for Wannon called on the member for Griffith to smile. Last night there were lots of parties around the place. There were lots of festivities.

A group of people who were not smiling when they came in to work today were our hardworking cleaners. With all the parties that come about come lots of bottles and lots of mess, but yet these cleaners do not get extra time to clean up our mess. They do not get extra time to make sure that this place is ready for work. They had to get on and work harder than they ever had before to make sure that this place was clean and ready for business today, cleaning up the mess left behind by people in this chamber and in this House today. Their productivity rates today were through the roof. They had to work overtime, really hard, to make sure this place was clean and ready.

This bill actually has nothing to do with productivity. It may say the word 'productivity', but it actually will not increase productivity in the workplace. This bill uses the word 'productivity' to actually attack workers, attack unions and attack their ability to bargain for a decent wage.

Our cleaners, as I mentioned, this morning worked really hard. They also today met to endorse their log of claims. The story of our cleaners here in Parliament House is a frustrating one, not just for themselves but for all the cleaners that we have in the country, particularly those working in government buildings. They have had a pay freeze. They have not had a wage increase for some time. Our cleaners here endorsed their log of claims asking their cleaning company, who is contracted by this government, for an extra 85c an hour. That would basically help them keep up with the cost of living. They are on minimum wage and they are hoping for, in their process of bargaining, an extra 85c an hour to help meet the cost of living.

Yet this bill says that they need to talk about productivity first, as part of the bargaining process. I hope their employer in the government is ready to talk about productivity and talk about increasing their time when it comes to the end of session to make it a fairer productivity. The cleaners here already work superhard, and I do not think anybody in this building would deny that they work superhard. Yet the requirements in this bill say that the employer has the ability to say, 'Before we even talk about you getting a decent pay rise because your pay has been frozen, we need to talk about productivity.'

The cleaners here have a very good story to talk about when it comes to productivity. There are working harder than any other person in this building to make sure this building is ready. I dare any member of parliament to stand up and say that they are not productive workers and that they are not meeting a high standard of productivity. The reason why the cleaners have to now bargain for a fair pay rise is because this government has scrapped the Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines—another attack by this government on some of the lowest-paid workers in this building.

This bill, as I have said, is not about productivity. This bill is poorly constructed and bad policy. Its wording, I believe, is actually quite tricky. It actually seeks to undermine the genuine good faith bargaining process. A few words, a few changes and a few phrases swing the entire process of collective bargaining in the employers' favour. I am probably being a bit stronger on this than some of my other colleagues, but I just wanted to demonstrate a couple of examples of how this bill will swing in favour of militant employers as opposed to the militant unions the government likes to bash and beat the drum about.

Within this debate the government does not recognise that not every employer genuinely wants to bargain in good faith. There is a risk that this bill will give veto power to employers. A new requirement, which states that the Fair Work Commission must be satisfied that improvements in productivity were discussed during the bargaining phase of the agreement, has now been inserted into this bill. What do you do if you are that low-paid cleaner, if you are already working superhard and you have backbreaking workloads? How do you become more productive if you are already working excessive workloads?

This bill gets away from the core principle of collective bargaining, where employers and employees sit down and genuinely engage in good faith bargaining. Introducing all of these new requirements that must be satisfied before the commission can approve an agreement puts more and more restriction on what can be bargained. It is not inconceivable to think of a situation where an employer says: 'I don't want to talk about productivity until we've discussed cutting wages, holidays and other conditions. I don't want to even talk about what we need to do to satisfy a silly rule that's been put in for the Fair Work Commissioner until we talk about cutting wages, holidays and other conditions.' There is example after example of where employers have done that. You just have to look at Victoria and what the former Liberal government did to the hard-working ambos. They refused to sit down and genuinely bargain in good faith around a log of claims before those hard-working ambos agreed to a number of conditions that the government had put on the table.

Does it mean that agreement can never be completed if a union refuses to budge on some matters? These changes will create constant deadlocks. What we need in our fair work system is not a system that creates deadlocks between bargaining groups. We need a system that allows groups to navigate their way through to an agreement. This amendment is another example of how this government, through this bill, seeks to deny workers the opportunity to genuinely bargain in good faith. It gives employers greater bargaining rights.

One of the areas which I think demonstrates this is their changes to protective action. The government have introduced a new provision which means that the Fair Work Commission must not make a protected action ballot if it is satisfied the applicant's claims are manifestly excessive, having regard to the conditions at the workplace and the industry in which the employer operates, or would significantly adversely impact the productivity of workplaces. That pretty much knocks out any form of industrial action. So when the members of the government stand up and say, 'We acknowledge that it is the right of a group of workers to take industrial action,' it is just total lip-service. The whole point of an employee being able to take industrial action is to remove their labour. So that is going to have an impact on the productivity of workplaces. This one particular change to the Fair Work Commission basically knocks out any employee's ability to take industrial action. They are using the word 'productivity' to disguise the fact that they are trying to knock out people's ability to be able to take industrial action, which has been a longstanding tradition in this country.

I have just a couple of examples when it comes to the militant employers that I have talked about. The government seeks to amend section 44(3) in the way in which the government proposes different and higher standards on unions wanting to take protected industrial action over those of employers. Let's talk about employer lockouts. The government likes to talk about militant unions, but what it is not talking about is employer lockouts.

An example is Schweppes. A few years ago around Christmas, multinational owned giant Schweppes locked out 150 workers at the Tullamarine factory. They were locked out after wanting to take protected industrial action to protect the rosters that they had. The employer locked them out because they were trying to impose on the workers a roster which would have seen them move from an eight-hour-a-day shift to a 12-hour-a-day shift, thus completely changing their workplace situation and removing something that we have held up in this country for such a long time: the eight-hour day. The employer locked them out, and these workers were without pay over the Christmas period. I will never forget that Christmas Day, being there with those workers locked out, out the front of their workplace. It was a very hot Christmas that Christmas, and they were there. They were there not because they wanted to see a massive increase in their pay. They were there because their employer wanted to radically change their roster, thus not only reducing their pay but significantly changing their workplace-life balance.

This bill is only going to aid the employers that do not want to genuinely bargain, that are actually going after fundamental basics and principles that Australians expect to have in their workplace. Another example in relation to this area has to be our cleaners and our shopping centre cleaners who, in bargaining at the Melbourne airport, also took industrial action. Pay talks broke down, again around Christmas, when 100 cleaners said that they would not accept a deal which was $4,000 a year less than other cleaners working at the airport. Again, our cleaners at the airports are low paid workers, and what the boss had put on the table through bargaining would have taken away several allowances and meal breaks which would have seen them paid $4,000 a year less. Now, if these particular amendments were already in place, the cleaners' ability to stand up and say, 'That's not fair. We won't accept that deal,' could have been knocked out by the commission because of the impact on productivity in the workplace. Yes, if a cleaner stops work, it impacts on the productivity of a workplace. It absolutely does because it means the toilets do not get cleaned. That is what it means.

This bill is not, as the government has said, about ensuring that workers continue to have that right to take industrial action. This bill is not, as this government says, about productivity. This bill is entirely about weakening workers' ability to collectively and genuinely bargain. This bill is about enhancing the employers who do not want to do the right thing and about giving them greater powers. There are examples that we have going on currently and in the last five to 10 years where companies have used bargaining to lock out workers, where companies have used bargaining to radically cut wages and conditions. Yet there is no attempt in this bill to see a levelling up of that playing field. This bill goes after workers and puts the veto opportunity in the employers' hands. This bill seeks to undermine the entire principle of collective bargaining, and it should be opposed.

What disappoints me the most about this bill is that the government have just not been honest. They are hiding behind the words of productivity. They are hiding behind the words of good-faith bargaining. But it could not be further from the truth. It denies Australian workers the right to collectively bargain in good faith with the employers. Collective bargaining has been a key feature of a fair and modern democratic society. Worse still, it creates deadlock in Fair Work Australia. There are going to be disputes where the employer or the employees may go too far. There are going to be disputes which need to be resolved by an independent umpire—Fair Work Australia. Yet all this bill does is make their job harder. It will create more deadlocks, more lockouts and more noisy actions, because it does not create an environment for genuine good-faith bargaining.

In conclusion, I hope that our cleaners here at Parliament House do not ever have to file for a protected industrial action ballot. I hope, when their employer reaches an agreement with a fair pay rise and goes to the government and say this is what we need increased in our contract price to pay your cleaners a fair deal, that the government listens and does the right thing by the hard-working cleaners, because under this bill they may not have the ability to take industrial action to get a fair outcome. I ask the House to oppose the bill.

Debate adjourned.