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

I continue my remarks that I started before the debate ceased before question time. I was talking about the fact that these four-yearly reviews and removing this requirement within the Fair Work Act is something that has broad support. It is something that was suggested not just by those in industry—by the employers and industry groups—but also by our union movement. These four-yearly reviews that are part of our modern awards under the Fair Work Act are costly. They take up the resources not just of the parties but of the Fair Work Commission.

What has been proposed instead is sensible. Parties can make an application to the Fair Work Commission to amend the modern awards. This is an approach that used to happen back before the Work Choices era and before the Fair Work Act. We are not saying that these awards are frozen in time. What we are saying is that when a party wishes to make a variation to their award they can do so by making an application.

As I said, we had all this fanfare from the government when in opposition and in their first days in 2013 and 2014. They talked a lot about the about the need for workplace relations reform. They beat their chest a lot about having to make our workplaces more productive, and they ranted and raved about the need to stop the 'great wages explosion'. That was their justification for doing the Productivity Commission review into the Fair Work Act. It was only just recently that the Treasurer actually backed away from that rhetoric, saying that without significant reform in the Fair Work Act there would be a great wages explosion. In fact, the opposite has happened.

As recently as yesterday the Governor of the Reserve Bank came out and said that we are in crisis when it comes to wages growth in this country, that wages growth is flat-lining and that, in real wages terms, we are going backwards. They are not the words of a radical unionist or the words of the Labor opposition; they are the words of the Governor of the Reserve Bank. Actually, yesterday, in quite a remarkable turn of events, he called upon workers to essentially demand more of their share of profits. He said that workers should demand their fair share and cut of profits. Like the Reserve Bank governor, many in the union movement and many in business are advocating for the same.

This is an example of how wrong the government got this one, by saying that without reform of the Fair Work Act there would be a wages explosion. Well, that did not happen. What also has not happened is great reform of the Fair Work Act. Since they came to office, we have seen tinkering like this. Whilst this measure is welcomed, it took a long time to get to this point. Whilst this measure will help with prioritising the resources and the focus of the Fair Work Act, it has taken a long time for us to get to this point.

What is not in this bill, and why Labor has moved an amendment—something that this government should consider and bring on for a vote tonight—is the opportunity to protect penalty rates. We still have a chance. There are 11 days until the cut to penalty rates kicks in. What Labor has said, what workers have said and what a number of businesses and industry have said is that, when Fair Work makes a decision that is wrong and not in the interests of workers, of businesses or of the economy, we should change the rules. That is the role of this place. We are changing the rules today about how often we review modern awards. We are saying to the government, 'Let's also change the rules about take-home pay and call on the Fair Work Commission when considering variations to the modern award to not cut take-home pay.'

On 1 July, 700,000 of our lowest paid workers in this country will have their penalty rates cut. We are talking about predominantly women who work in the pharmacy sector, predominantly women who work in the retail sector and predominantly women who work in hospitality. In these three industries, which are made up of predominantly women—women of different ages—workers are about to have their Sunday and public holiday penalty rates cut. For those on the government benches who do not know what that means, let me share a few examples. A retail worker who always works a Sunday will lose up to $6,000 a year in their take-home pay—$6,000 a year, or $77 a week. For people working in hospitality—the people who have come to see me in my electorate and who have seen other Labor MPs—it could be anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 if they regularly work the Sunday shift depending upon the hours that they work. These are not millionaires. They are not the millionaires this government will give a tax cut to—many of whom, like the Prime Minister, will get a tax cut of over $6,000—and the Prime Minister is doing nothing to stop the very low paid in our community receiving a pay cut of $6,000 the very next day. This is the crisis that we are in. These are the priorities of this government—ensuring that those at the very top end of the pay scale get tax cuts whilst those earning the smallest of wages are copping pay cuts. That is straight out what it is; it is a straight-out pay cut. That is where Labor is saying it is in the power of this place to make a decision today, tonight to stop that from happening. Stop forcing these families further into poverty. This is a straight pay cut with no compensation.

Some in the government have argued that this has happened in other sectors. That is not true. When there have been trade-offs in relation to penalty rates, it is for a higher base rate. There is something called enterprise bargaining. All agreements under the enterprise bargaining scheme must reach the better-off-overall test. The commissioner must be satisfied that the better-off-overall test is reached. Yet, in this decision made by the Fair Work Commission there has been no effort for these workers to be better off overall. That particular part of enterprise bargaining does not actually apply to the modern award. So these workers are, purely and simply, going backwards. They will have a pay cut. So I call upon government members—those in the National Party and those in the Liberal Party—to do the right thing: cross the floor and vote with Labor on this. Support the wages and protect the wages and take-home pay of those earning the least in your electorate. It is the least you can do when you are giving yourself and all of the people on higher incomes in your electorate a tax cut. At least protect the pay of some of the lowest paid in your electorate by supporting Labor's amendments to this particular bill.

In my role before I entered parliament, I worked a lot with people on the modern award. We have to be frank about the modern award. It is supposed to be a minimum safety net. But, as the cost of living continues to go up, in some sectors the modern award has fallen below the poverty line. This is why, I believe, the Governor of the Reserve Bank has spoken out and taken the extraordinary step of sounding more like a radical union official than Governor of the Reserve Bank. We do need to do more in this country to lift wages.

The government needs to stop its attack on unions and its ideological pursuit of unions and workers. It is spending more time pursuing union organisers who have not filed the right paperwork, who have not shown a right of entry and who have sat and had a cup of tea with a mate on a workplace than what it is doing to address the real issues and the real crisis going on in Australian workplaces. It does not care—and it is doing very little—about the fact that real wages growth is going backward. It does not care—and it is doing very little—about the fact that people are not getting full-time jobs and that we are replacing well-paying, full-time jobs with insecure casual jobs. The explosion of labour hire is out of control. No longer is it about filling a temporary labour shortage. Today, it is replacing good, secure, full-time jobs, particularly in manufacturing, the clerical industry and traditional industries where we thought you were secure if you had a full-time job.

I should note that, when it comes to the modern award, a lot of these matters are not in our modern awards any more. In our modern awards, they have been limited. It was quite a complex process to go through to get to the modern awards that we have. The whole system of Fair Work is supposed to be based upon the encouragement of enterprise bargaining. Yet, there are some weaknesses in our bargaining laws at the moment. We have not seen any reform around that. We have not seen the government come forward and say, 'Let's work on how we can improve bargaining.' Instead, we have seen a constant ideological attack on those who say exactly what the Governor of the Reserve Bank has said—that workers should demand more of a share of the profits in this country. The contribution by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer today in question time was just extraordinary. It demonstrated how out of touch they are with what is happening in our economy and what is happening in Australian workplaces.

Labor supports the bill that is before us, but, more importantly, we call on all of the backbenchers, all of the government ministers and all of the government members, as well as the crossbenchers, to support the amendments that are before us. There is an opportunity to ensure that the workers in retail, hospitality and pharmacy will not have their pay cut—a minimum safety net pay cut. Some workers are relieved that their bosses have said, 'We're not going to cut your penalty rates,' but they are relying on goodwill and a handshake, not on a safety net and not an agreement, and that is not good enough. That is not income security; that is not job security. There is an opportunity, 11 days out from pay being cut, for this government to do the right thing and support Labor's amendments before the House. There is an opportunity to start to talk about how we will address the crisis in our economy when it comes to secure work and wages growth. I urge all of those opposite to support Labor's amendments.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support and say amen to what the member for Bendigo said in relation to this issue. I rise to speak in relation to the Fair Work Amendment (Repeal of 4 Yearly Reviews and Other Measures) Bill 2017, and I support the amendment by the member for Gorton, the shadow minister. We want to make sure the modern award system is up-to-date, modern and meets the needs of workers and industry alike. While we have legitimate concerns about aspects of this bill, we agree with the broad intent and we are going to support it with a view to fixing some drafting mistakes through amendments in the Senate.

It is important to acknowledge that for many workers much more needs to be done, as the member for Bendigo pointed out. Procedural and technical changes are one thing, but they pale into insignificance when you consider that, in about 11 days, up to 700,000 Australians are going to have a pay cut. When cuts to weekend penalty rates are handed down on 2 July, those opposite will have been shamefully responsible. They have done nothing. This will be the largest pay cut that workers will have received in living memory. They could have stopped it. They sat silently and did nothing, sometimes complicit in urging it on. Sixty members of those opposite have supported the idea of pay cuts in their public comments.

While we support the bill today, we will never stop fighting the appalling indifference of those opposite which has been displayed on many occasions publicly and with the votes they have cast in this place in relation to the workers of this country. Two of the three changes proposed by the bill before us today are in response to the recommendations of the Productivity Commission over 15 months ago, while the third relates to recommendations made by Justice Heerey just over a year ago. They include: the abolition of four-yearly reviews, as recommended by the Productivity Commission's report into workplace relations, and there are provisions which would allow the Fair Work Commission to overlook some very minor technical and procedural errors when approving enterprise agreements where those errors are not likely to disadvantage employees, and that responds to a recommendation of the Productivity Commission. The Productivity Commission report into Australia's workplace relations system was handed to the government by 30 November 2015 and was publicly released on 21 December 2015, just before Christmas—almost a year and a half ago. The Australian public could well be confused about the government's response in relation to that. There has been no formal government response to the report. The government sat silently on the issue before the election and has remained almost mute since.

The only reason we are debating this bill today is the pressure brought by employer groups and unions to successfully push the government to do something about it. That is an all-too-familiar tale in relation to this particular government: indifference, lack of initiative, sitting idly and being dragged, kicking and screaming, to do something. This government seems to be a government paralysed by indecision. Even after all of that, there are legitimate fears that they have either not bothered to do anything properly or are incompetent to do anything at all. That is so characteristic of this particular government.

The Fair Work Commission has responsibility for ensuring modern awards, along with the National Employment Standards, provide a fair and relevant minimum safety net of terms and conditions. To do so, the commission has to be mindful of a range of factors, including the need to make sure the Australian award system is easy to understand, has simple language and is stable and sustainable to the Australian economy and the community. As a result, the four-yearly reviews of awards have been mandated as one of a couple of ways to make sure these objectives are met, the other being by way of application by employers or employees.

Both employers and employees, along with the stakeholder groups who represent them, have joined in criticising this particular scheme and claiming that it is a cost to the resources of both parties, as well as the Fair Work Commission. In fact, the current four-yearly review has been underway for about three years and is not set to finish until the end of the year, which runs extremely close to the start of the next review, which is set to begin in the new year.

Labor are not going to stand in the way of reforms that mean the Fair Work Commission can achieve its intended aims and outcomes. To that end, if the four-yearly review is not actually helping to achieve the modern award objectives due to its financially burdensome nature, we are going to support the legislation and amendments to fix that up. What we will not be doing is putting through legislation that is not properly considered and that will have unintended consequences.

The government has made clear that, while the removal of the four-yearly review scraps the mechanisms for a comprehensive review of modern awards, the capacity for variations of modern awards by application will continue. It is imperative that modern awards be able to be reviewed to ensure they meet the modern award objective. It is equally important that this be achieved through a process which is fair and makes sure that there is a fair balance between employers and employees.

While I was generally supportive of the object and the intent of the legislation, we wholeheartedly agree with the additional comments made by the Labor senators in the Senate legislative committee recommending further amendments, which Labor will move when the bill reaches the Senate. The bill, we think, should be amended to ensure the current four-yearly review process, described as 'award stage and common issues', can be completed; the current draft fails to make that clear.

Secondly, we believe that the provisions in the bill which require that the Fair Work Commission be constituted by a full bench are simply onerous and should be removed as well. There is absolutely no need for a full bench to hear this type of thing when you are talking about technical changes. Such an action makes it more difficult, so it needs to be removed.

The bill also gives the Fair Work Commission the power to approve an enterprise agreement which has generally been agreed to but for minor technical and procedural problems, provided the employees covered by the agreement are not likely to be disadvantaged by those errors. In this regard, technical errors can range from employers stapling additional pages to the back of forms to the use of company letterhead and incorrect phone numbers being used on notices. We support the intent of changing the act so that minor defects are corrected.

The use of the word 'disadvantage' in the proposed section 118(2) does not reflect the intent of ensuring enterprise agreements are genuinely agreed to. 'Disadvantage' has a very specific technical meaning in the Fair Work Act and, from listening to those opposite during question time and also during speeches, I do not think they really understand what disadvantage really is—certainly disadvantage with respect to industrial relations or enterprise agreements and agreements between employers and employees to vary those agreements.

Finally, in response to the recommendations of Justice Heerey's report, the bill applies the complaint-handling powers of the Minister for Employment and the President of the Fair Work Commission to Fair Work Commission members who formerly held office in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. There are some sensible changes enabling the parliament to establish a commission to investigate and report on alleged misbehaviour or incapacity of a Fair Work Commission member. These sensible changes, however, are victim to yet another government failure in leadership and taking on reforms. The Heerey recommendations flow from a report commissioned by the government in the wake of what I call the Michael Lawler saga. The Fair Work Commission plays an important role in industrial relations in this country and must be respected. Justice Heerey's report into this sorry saga was tabled in the Senate on 15 March last year, just over a year ago, and we are only now seeing the legislative response to that put forward. I can only assume the government has delayed putting this bill before the House for so long in the hope that enough time will pass to distance the Prime Minister from the issue. It is important to acknowledge—and I want to make this point today—that Justice Heerey's report vindicates the actions and conduct of the Fair Work Commission, particularly the manner in which the president of the commission dealt with that particularly challenging situation.

But, for all the talk of protecting workers, the government has gone completely missing in action in relation to the amendment that has been put by the member for Gorton. It is very happy to launch attacks on the trade union movement and the trade union leaders who represent workers each and every day in workplaces. But, in just 11 days time, over 700,000 of Australia's lowest paid workers, many of them vulnerable and working in the retail, hospitality, fast food and pharmaceutical sectors, are going to be hit with a big wage cut of up to $77 a week. Many of the 6,317 retail workers and 3,086 food and accommodation workers in my electorate of Blair in South-East Queensland could be affected. For these people, penalty rates are anything but a luxury. They deserve reward for the sacrifice they make in terms of the time away from their families and friends as they head to work on a weekend. When it comes to paying the bills, they need this type of work. It is important to put food on their table, clothes on their children and petrol in their car, and to pay school fees and school expenses for their kids.

The timing for such a cut could not be worse. The figures clearly bear out that Australian workers are receiving the lowest share of GDP since 1959. The ABS data shows that labour's share of GDP in the third quarter of last year was down from 54.2 per cent to 51.5 per cent. Profit's share of GDP went up from 24.5 per cent to 27.5 per cent. Last year, the annual percentage growth in company profits was 39.7 per cent, but wages were flatlining at 0.9 per cent. That information was released on 5 June this year. In the first three months of 2017, company profits were up six per cent but wages flatlined at 0.3 per cent. Income inequality is worse than it has ever been before, or at least in the last 75 years that we have been measuring it. In its last quarterly update, the Bureau of Statistics revealed that nearly 1.2 million Australians are underemployed, at a rate of 8.2 per cent.

Australians are feeling the heat when it comes to cost-of-living pressures. The out-of-pocket cost of a GP appointment has risen across the board. In my home state of Queensland, it has gone up by an unbelievable 11 per cent since December 2014—an increase of $7.70 each time you take your kids to see the local GP. Energy costs are continuing to increase across the country. Thanks to the internal divisions of those opposite, costs will only get worse as they argue amongst themselves. Thanks to the government's budget, many low-paid workers will be hit with an increase in the Medicare levy. As a result, the tax bills of workers earning $30,000 or $40,000 a year will go up, while millionaires will get a tax cut from 1 July of $16,400. How can that be fair? It is simply not. Where are the LNP members in Queensland's regional and rural areas? Hospitality and pharmacy workers are absolutely critical in terms of the economy in country towns across Queensland.

In the midst of all of this, the government has decided that now is an opportune time to begin slashing workers' pay. If those opposite were serious about doing anything to improve the lives of Australian workers, they would support Labor's bill and support this amendment to protect the take-home wages and pay of over 700,000 Australians. While they feel the need to give $65 billion of tax cuts to the biggest companies in Australia, apparently ordinary Australians deserve to do more with less money in their pay packets. We know that cuts to penalty rates will not end there. This is the thin edge of the wedge. We know that those opposite will support—as their friends in the business community will, also—cuts to penalty rates in other sectors of the economy. We know this because those opposite have spent years making the point that penalty rates, allegedly, according to them, are a thing of the past. Over 60 members of the government, including the Prime Minister himself, have called for penalty rates to be either cut or abolished altogether, while some have gone so far as to describe that as a gift to young people. While they might fight amongst themselves about the Finkel report or marriage equality, something that brings unity to those opposite is the idea of stripping away the pay and conditions of Australian workers.

There is a total lack of regard for how tough people are doing it, particularly in regional and rural areas. Nurses, cleaners, paramedics, ambulance officers and people who work in pharmacy, hospitality and retail are all terrified. If you are not listed in those occupations and sectors which have been hit by the pay cut from July, you are worried sick that you will be next. If the government were genuine about doing something, they would stand up for these workers. They would put a line in the sand and stand up to support Labor's amendments in the Labor private member's bill. We will not oppose this bill progressing to the Senate, but we stand ready to amend it to make sure there are necessary changes once it gets there. It defies belief that those opposite will not support Labor's position in relation to that and stand up for workers. They are the voters and they are their constituents. They should stand up. They are elected to this place to stand up for their constituents, but they are not.

A $77-a-week pay cut is simply not good enough. It is cruel and indifferent behaviour from those opposite. I call upon them to do the right thing. If those opposite truly want to implement significant reforms for working people and benefit working people, the solution is simple: support Labor's bill to protect take-home pay and support the amendment of the member for Gorton. Unfortunately, this government seems far more interested in handing out tax cuts to millionaires and multinationals than actually doing their jobs and standing up for low-paid and vulnerable workers across the board.

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

The original question was that the bill now be read a second time. To this the honourable member for Gorton has moved as an amendment that the words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House I will state the question in a form that the amendment be agreed to. The question is now that the amendment be agreed to. I give the call to the most honourable member for Melbourne.

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

This Fair Work Amendment (Repeal of 4 Yearly Reviews and Other Measures) Bill 2017 says it is about amending some aspects of the Fair Work Act to deal with minimum standards of appointment and to deal with so-called technicalities and problems that arise during the bargaining process. You would think, with a bill of that ambition, that we would pick up on some of the big issues facing this country and facing low-paid workers in this country, in particular.

In just a few days time penalty rates will be cut. That will hit a number of people pretty hard. It will hit young people pretty hard. The burden is going to fall disproportionately on women. And it will hit those people who work at night or on weekends or public holidays—sometimes to make ends meet, to get themselves through university or TAFE, other times to make sure they have enough money to meet skyrocketing house prices and large mortgages.

At a time when household debt is growing to record levels in this country, you would think that a bill that is, supposedly, about dealing with a fair set of minimum standards and conditions would address that. You would think that it might also address the situation of people working at Coles or Woolworths—or Hungry Jack's or McDonald's or KFC—who, in fact, have never seen a penalty rate in their working lives. That is because they work on weekends or at night and they are working under enterprise agreements that have been struck so that those workers get paid less than the hourly rate of pay set out in the award. You have people who might not work Monday to Friday but just come in on Saturday and Sunday. They might not get any alleged trade-off that happens during the Monday to Friday hours, but they are coming in and working on Saturday and Sunday—an 18-year-old working in McDonald's is getting paid less than what is set out in the award. You would think that a bill that says it is about making sure there is a fair minimum safety net of conditions would address that. This is a growing problem and it is a scandalous problem.

It has taken some pretty dogged investigative journalists at Fairfax, and some people like Josh Cullinan and the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union, to go and do the work and realise that right across the country people who are doing part-time work—that many parents would hope their kids would do—going off and working over the weekend or at night are getting paid less than the minimum award. You would think that if the government were concerned about what is happening to the minimum safety net they would come up with a proposal to address that.

You would think the government, if they were concerned about a minimum safety net, might have listened to what the Reserve Bank governor had to say recently. Wages in some places in this country are, effectively, going backwards, with wage growth at record lows. People have seen the cost of living go up and power bills go up, with wholesale power prices having doubled under this government since they abolished the carbon price and sent a shudder of uncertainty throughout the industry and caused half the industry to go on an investment strike. You would think the government might say, 'Maybe we do need to have a look at whether the minimum wage is high enough in this country or whether our laws are making workers too scared to ask for the pay rises they are entitled to,' because that seems to be one of the things happening in this country.

We could change our laws to help by lifting the minimum wage, by ensuring that penalty rate cuts do not go through and by ensuring that people working at Hungry Jack's or at Coles or Woolies get paid their proper legal minimums. We could fix all of those things, but the government is not doing that.

This bill is supposedly about addressing minimum safety nets, but I looked through it to see what the government was going to do about the growing problem of insecure work. The fact is that there are so many people who will graduate, go out and look for a job, but find that the jobs that are available are increasingly part-time or casual or on a contract. The government might have looked at some of the Senate inquires before that have shown that there are people at our universities who are working there, who fronted up and told the inquiry they worked for 10 years at one university, in the same department, doing the same job, but they were never entitled to a day of sick pay throughout that whole 10 years; they were treated as casual for all of that time, on repeated, rolling contracts. What does that do to a person who is trying to start a family or buy a house? They know the job is going to be there, but they front up to the bank manager and say, 'Could you give us a loan?' and they say: 'No, sorry. You're classified as casual. You're on short-term contracts.' What about when you are trying to start a family and you want to know whether you can rely on your job, and you look at it and realise that you actually have next to no rights at all?

This is even happening in our schools, with many teachers starting out and getting a one-year contract. For many teachers it happens throughout their lives. And it is not because the school might go out of business tomorrow. We are always going to have schools and are always going to educate our kids, so why on earth are teachers on short-term contracts, like university staff? Casualisation is growing throughout the country and people are feeling the pressure. Casualisation is up; debt is up; house prices are up; energy prices are up; but wages are going down, and we have to fix it. We have to do something about it, but this bill does nothing about that. It professes to be about addressing a safety net, but it does nothing about that. The government says it is just dealing with some technical issues that have arisen for some people when they have been bargaining, as is allowed for under the act. They say, 'Some technical issues have arisen, and we have to fix that.'

I will tell you what else is happening when people are trying to bargain under the Fair Work Act at the moment. Employers are fronting up and saying, 'Well, you're trying to bargain for higher wages.' Some employers, including this government for the public servants, just say, 'We're not go to bargain with you at all unless you accept a very bad deal.' And there is nowhere you can go to get redress for that, so you find yourself three or four years into it with no pay rise at all, and the government has an effective pay cut, just through stalling the bargaining process. They are not interested in fixing that.

Even people who have managed to get a good enterprise agreement in this country are not safe either. When their enterprise agreement expires, the quid pro quo, when these laws were first introduced, was, 'We're going to make you bargain and do the highwire act of having pretty much nothing in your award, and everything is going to be in your enterprise agreement.' The quid pro quo is that when your enterprise credit expires it remains in force until it is replaced by a new one, so you do not fall all the way down to the award. But now, under the act, employers are fronting up and saying, 'You're enterprise agreement has expired. Rather than let that minimum floor stay there until we negotiate a new one, we're going to go off to the commission and terminate your enterprise agreement to give us a leg up in the negotiations.' They know that if they terminate the agreement, workers fall all the way back to the award.

As a result, you have people around the country who are facing potential pay cuts of 30 or 40 per cent, because the employers have said, 'We're just going to terminate your agreement, and then you will rely on our good graces for the wages and conditions you get after that.' It effectively puts a gun to people's heads, because then they are told they have not got their old agreement or the current agreement to rely on. They are falling back onto the very low level of the award, and they are told to accept the measly deal they are offered instead. That is something that could be fixed up.

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

That is what is happening at Coles.

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

I hear a Labor member interjecting about Coles. The member for Wakefield is sticking up for the dodgy deals that were done at Coles that mean that if you are working on weekends—and this is what I have heard from a lot of people in the industry—some people might be better off under the Fair Work Commission's decision because they never saw the penalty rates in the first place. Before Labor members interject, they ought to consider the facts, and the fact that worker after worker after worker is fronting up saying, 'I have been underpaid.'

If the government was actually concerned about addressing matters to deal with bargaining and technical errors, they might look at the fact that this act severely limits the internationally recognised right to take industrial action and the right to strike. Talk about procedural errors! There are people who have tried to bargain to get better wages and conditions. Under this act, they have to jump through hoop after hoop after hoop—their notice of intention to have a bargaining period and then to take industrial action and then to go through the ballot process—only to have the whole thing pulled up on the basis of a technicality. It is very, very clear that the workers are saying, 'We want the ability to negotiate to have better wages and conditions,' and instead it gets pulled up on a technicality. Yet, there is the ILO, the International Labour Organization, and Australia is a member of the ILO—and that has not changed. So when it comes to that, what happens? The government does not say, 'We are clearly out of whack with our international obligations, so we better tidy up the act.' No, they turn a blind eye to that.

The only technical errors that they are prepared to fix up are the ones that do not seem to benefit employees in any meaningful way. There is a suite of amendments that could be made to the Fair Work Act to actually improve job security, minimum wages and conditions and the right to organise and to bargain for the people of this country, and the government is turning a blind eye to that. During question time today, we heard the Prime Minister again saying, 'The answer is to give big companies a tax cut. Of course, we are concerned about people's low wages. The answer is to give big companies a tax cut.'

Does anyone really think that when the big four banks, who make $30-odd billion profit between them a year, are given a tax cut and when that tax cut is a $7 billion hit to the budget that they are going to employ $7 billion worth of extra people? Come on! It is going to go straight into their pockets. Australians get this. They know that if you give the big companies in this country a tax cut, it is just going to help line the pockets of shareholders and profiteers, who are not the people who work in there. People know it intuitively. Over the last decade, the share of profits is growing and the share of wages is declining, of our national pie, and people are feeling it. They know that something is wrong, that something is rotten. There are things we could do to fix it up and the Fair Work Act does need amending.

The Greens were very, very pleased to go to the last election as the only ones pointing out the hole in the Fair Work Act, saying, 'Your penalty rates could be cut under this.' We went to the election pointing it out and said, 'It needs to be fixed.' The government, of course, said 'Well, there's no way we're going to do that. We'll leave it up to the independent umpire.' But my jaw dropped when Labor in opposition said, 'We'll do the same thing.' Labor and the Liberals went to the election on a unity ticket on penalty rates, saying, 'We'll abide by the commission's decision.' Had Labor won the election, which probably would have been a better outcome than what we got, they would be cutting penalty rates right now. That was the position they took.

When we wanted to legislate to protect penalty rates, the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, said, 'It might never happen. Aliens are more likely to land from space.' Well, we knew there was a problem in the Fair Work Act and we pointed to it and said, 'Fix it.' We pointed to the problem in the Fair Work Act and said, 'Fix it.' Labor decided to hide behind making a submission and instead of having the guts to change the law, they said, 'We'll go to the Fair Work Commission and make a submission.' That had no effect. But what members of parliament can do that no-one else can do is change the law.

I am very, very pleased that Labor has now come in behind the Greens' position, and I will be very pleased to support the amendment that they are putting up, because, when we released our draft bill, there were 24 or 48 hours of silence before Labor decided that that would be a good idea and came up with their own. So I am pleased that Labor is doing that.

But the test is really whether the government and members of its backbench are prepared to stand up and support it, because we have the opportunity to stop the penalty rate cuts coming into effect. We have got a couple of days left to do it. I urge the government—in particular, the members of the government backbench who say they are concerned about this—to do something about it, because we could actually fix it before this place rises and, if we did that, I think that the Australian people would thank us for it.

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

I thank the honourable member for Melbourne for his contribution, and I look forward to the member for Wakefield's contribution.

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

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I am rather grim with the onerous burden you have put on me to perform!

It is always interesting talking about industrial relations in this place because you are always amazed at how short people's memories are. I remember that, when I started out as a union organiser and I worked for the shop assistants' union—so the member for Melbourne will be interested to hear what I have to say—we had two awards. We had the retail industry award and the fast food award in South Australia. The fast food award in South Australia never had any penalty rates in it; it was always a flat rate award.

So it is interesting to hear the member for Melbourne come in here and talk about agreements—talk about agreements at Coles or Hungry Jack's or McDonald's—with no historical analysis behind that. He does not look at the previous two decades of enterprise bargaining, does not look at the state awards system and does not look at the period where Australian workplace agreements were pretty much cutting out every single penalty rate in the retail industry. So it was not the Coles EBA versus some great award; it was the Coles EBA versus an award that was not being updated and was being systematically undermined by the Howard government. Now we have the Turnbull government doing the same thing with awards; we can see that in the penalty rates. So it was not the Coles agreement versus the award; it was the Coles agreement versus an Australian workplace agreement that cut out every single penalty rate. Workers around this country understand that, at that time, enterprise bargaining agreements were their one protection as to wages and conditions.

We now have modern awards in place. But guess who put them in place? Guess whose advocacy put the modern awards in place in the retail industry and the fast food industry? Guess whose advocacy and submissions put those penalty rates in place? It was the shop assistants' union's, the SDA's, advocacy, because we knew exactly what it was to bargain in a situation where conditions were going south, where penalty rates were being removed in their entirety—through an act of legislation, I might add, which the member for Melbourne now tells us is the preferred way forward. So it was a union, the SDA, that put the modern award in place. And now we are being pilloried for it in the Fairfax press and by all these other Johnny-come-latelys. There is this fake union—this made-up union—that has been set up under the Corporations Act. So there are some people in this place with very, very short memories.

I will be honest with you: I do not love enterprise bargaining. It is a tough situation. But the SDA was not the only union that had to operate in that sector. Many other unions had to go through difficult bargaining situations—and sometimes necessary bargaining situations—to ensure that the economy grew and wages grew.

A whole lot of difficult decisions get made when you are sitting down and making enterprise bargaining agreements. No union in the country would not understand that situation. At Holden, when we had the global financial crisis, when we had a downturn in car manufacturing, the workers there made some very difficult choices related to their EBA, to stop people being made redundant.

So let us not have this sort of student-union politics from the member from Melbourne—who, on many other issues on IR, talks pretty good sense. I agree with him about casualisation, particularly of teachers. My mum is a teacher. We are seeing graduate teachers and more experienced teachers constantly forced into the contract system, where they do not know where they are working from one term to the next. So I am not critical of everything the member for Melbourne has to say, but on enterprise bargaining he has a very short memory, and it is all driven by wedge politics.

As I said before, there have been some pretty big changes in the enterprise bargaining system. I do not think those changes have quite been digested. Let's hear what Peter Sams, a Fair Work deputy president, said of the Coles agreement. He said the test was 'clearly not what was intended' by the Fair Work Act. He referred to the act's explanatory memorandum, which said that although each employee must be better off overall, the BOOT does not require the FWC to inquire into each employee's individual circumstances. There is a good reason for this, which is that when you do an enterprise bargaining agreement—surprise, surprise!—enterprises then change their methods of doing things. We have a situation now where we have night fillers aggrieved and thinking that they might be better off under the award. But, if they are put under the award, what is to stop Coles putting them on day shift and having a day fill? I will tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker: nothing at all. I have seen that happen at supermarkets. When it got expensive at night they had people come in and fill during the day. So you have to be very careful in making comparisons.

Enterprise bargaining does benefit employees. That is what it is meant to do. It is also meant to benefit firms. It is meant to make the whole place more efficient, and workers are supposed to share in those efficiencies, in that productivity. That is what enterprise bargaining is supposed to do. There is not a person in the Labor Party who does not believe that we should have a fair safety net that protects workers and, on the other side, an enterprise bargaining system that allows for real wage growth. It is important to remember that workers approve these agreements by ballot—that is, they vote for them. They have two weeks to consider it. They get a document that compares the EBA and the award and they look at things, decide whether they are better or worse off, and vote accordingly. And they have rejected agreements before, many times. We have seen agreements voted down on the basis that there might be a better deal next time round, and people are sent back to the bargaining table. I do fear, though, that some of these decisions coming out of the Fair Work Commission are going to make enterprise bargaining not workable, particularly if they are applying rules so haphazardly—that is, they are applying one rule to retail and different sets of rules to different agreements in other places.

We can have this debate up hill and down dale. We have this weird alliance at the moment between the Greens and George Christensen, betting up on the shoppies, but I would remind them that the idea these agreements are sweetheart deals between big employers and the union is just nonsense. In South Australia we went out of our way to offer a template enterprise bargaining agreement to small business. We copped some criticism for it and we copped a heap of misinformation about it. But here is the rub: the union offered up this template deal to small business, through Business SA, which is the business organisation of choice in South Australia, and do you want to know how many employers took up that supposed sweetheart deal which did such a great job for employers?

Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One.

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

One big fat zero!

So if it was such a great deal for employers, why wasn't there this rush of small businesses to get the same advantages as Coles and Woolworths? I will tell you why there was not such a big rush: because when you went and asked them, they said, 'No, no, no, it costs me too much money.' That is because workers got a penalty buyout. That is because workers got pay rises over and above the award. That is why. So these agreements are good. That is why workers vote for them, and that is why employers—often small employers—do not readily avail themselves of them.

I think we have to be very careful when we talk about enterprise bargaining. The member for Melbourne, who has now left the chamber after giving all of us his missives, should think carefully about getting into the same car as George Christensen and the Nick Xenophon Team, both of whom in the past have wanted to cut penalty rates—they are no friends of workers. You have to be very careful in this business about who you side with. More generally, I think that some of the member for Melbourne's criticisms of this bill are quite sensible, and he is right: of all the things in the industrial relations world that we would be talking about and that should occupy this parliament's time, why would you come in here with these fairly piddling, almost administrative rounding errors, now greatly amended by the Labor Party? I wonder why you would do that when the greatest threat to workers at the moment is enterprise bargaining agreements being cancelled willy-nilly?

You can talk about Coles, I suppose. There is a hearing on at the moment, so I will not offer my views, but there are a substantial number of Coles employees who face a decrease in their conditions. There are many other workers across the country who have the same problem. The CUB workers had an 180-day dispute when their employer terminated the agreement and tried to take them back to the award. It was hugely costly to CUB, in terms of their production, and hugely costly to those individuals who fought that battle. But they were fighting a battle on behalf of every employee who has an enterprise bargaining agreement.

But not everybody has unions. Not everybody has someone to protect them. Coates Hire is an equipment hire business. We have all been to Coates Hire. I have been to Coates Hire and hired machinery that I used well—or I hope I used it well! I hear the member for Moreton laughing! The workers there are always very helpful and always very decent. They faced a pay cut of up to 40 per cent unless they agreed with the company's position to slash wages and conditions. Talk about having a gun aimed at your head! I will finish on that note.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all honourable members for their contributions to this debate on the Fair Work Amendment (Repeal of 4 Yearly Reviews and Other Measures Bill) 2017. I also thank the honourable senators on the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee for their inquiry into the provisions of the bill. The government has amended the bill in response to their recommendations.

This bill implements sensible measures to fix clear issues with the operation of the Fair Work Act. The bill repeals the requirement for four-yearly reviews of modern awards. This measure is widely supported by both unions and employer groups. The Productivity Commission found that the current system is hugely resource-intensive for all involved. I think this finding comes as no surprise to any stakeholders who have endured long hours and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars during the current drawn-out process.

This process is so important and expensive that the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Industry Group and the Australian Council of Trade Unions saw fit to jointly write to the Minister for Employment, asking the government to abolish these reviews—we are on a unity ticket on this one. The $87 million in regulatory savings this achieves is an important step in reducing complexity in the workplace relations systems. To ensure an appropriate transition period, the bill will allow the current four-yearly review to conclude in a timely manner under the existing framework. Importantly, it will remove the requirement for a new review to commence in January 2018. This is something that is broadly supported by all stakeholders. The government has also moved amendments to clarify that the Fair Work Commission can complete any reviews that have commenced but have not concluded by 1 January 2018 in respect of large numbers of awards, known as 'common issues', such as the ACTU's claim for a family friendly work arrangements clause in all modern awards. This amendment acknowledges concerns raised by the Labor senators during the Senate inquiry.

The bill makes another commonsense change to the Fair Work Act by allowing the Fair Work Commission to overlook minor procedural or technical errors when approving an enterprise agreement, as long as it is satisfied that the employees were not likely to have been disadvantaged by the error. The inflexibility of the requirements for approving an enterprise agreement is well known. There are numerous examples of minor errors, like inadvertently providing an incorrect phone number on a notice of employee representational rights, unnecessarily holding up the approval of enterprise agreements that have already received a majority yes vote from employees. This inflexibility does not protect workers in any way—it just delays potential pay rises.

There have been some inaccurate criticisms that this bill somehow removes safeguards or equates them to technicalities. To be clear, the bill does not undermine existing safeguards in the Fair Work Act that are designed to protect workers or equate these safeguards to mere technicalities. These safeguards remain, and the government expects that they continue to be strongly enforced. The government has further amendments to allow schedule 2 of the bill to apply to applications to approve enterprise agreements that were made to the Fair Work Commission before the commencement of the bill. This recommendation was made in response to the Fair Work Commission's submission to the Senate inquiry.

The Senate inquiry also heard concerns from Professor Andrew Stewart about the use of the word 'disadvantaged' in these provisions and that it may require clarification. The government has moved amendments to make clear that the term 'disadvantaged' relates to the employee's ability to genuinely agree to a proposed enterprise agreement. The Fair Work Commission has observed an increase in the number of potentially non-compliant notices of employee representational rights following a change to the Fair Work Regulations 2009, which specify the form of the notice, earlier this year. If schedule 2 were only to apply from commencement, the Fair Work Commission would need to reject these agreements. This amendment is sensible and appropriately addresses the concerns of the Senate inquiry and the Fair Work Commission.

The bill balances common sense and flexibility in the agreement-making process. The bill protects existing safeguards provided to employees during bargaining by enabling the Fair Work Commission to approve an agreement despite a minor procedural or technical error only if it is satisfied that the employees were not likely to have been disadvantaged because of the error. Finally, the bill will also implement the sensible reforms suggested by the Hon. Peter Heerey AM QC following his inquiry into complaints about former Fair Work Commission Vice President Michael Lawler. There is currently no formal mechanism to inform the parliament's consideration of allegations of misbehaviour or incapacity against Fair Work Commission members. The bill will allow parliament to take appropriate action by quickly establishing an inquiry into such matters and be well informed of any case for asking the Governor-General to terminate their appointment. These changes proposed by this bill are commonsense measures that will improve the practical operation of the workplace relations system. They reflect recommendations of two independent reviews.

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

The original question was that the bill now be read a second time. To this the honourable member for Gorton has moved as amendment that all words after 'That' be admitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the amendment be agreed to.

Question negatived.

The question now is that the bill be read a second time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.