Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Since 2007 the unions in this country have donated $100 million to the Australian Labor Party. Today in this bill the government repays them in spades. Industrial relations affects every Australian worker, every business operator and every industry sector. All in this place have a genuine desire to improve our industrial relations system. But what has been put forward by the government in this bill, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022, will take our system backwards. The bill is as much a missed opportunity as Labor's first budget. It doesn't improve the lives of Australians.

The inane rhetoric about the coalition being against wage increases or improved conditions is of course absurd. The government said it would support workers and that it would work to support all Australians and businesses. Instead, it will sacrifice them at the altar of unionism. Once again, Labor has sidelined the national interest in favour of its niche interests. Peter Strong, the former CEO of the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, summed it up when he said:

The government's approach to the modern workplace is nothing but ideology and cronyism becoming policy. . . The legislation is a trojan horse . . . for the empowerment of unions in every workplace in Australia.

If this bill passes in its current form it will impose the most radical changes on Australia's industrial relations systems in decades—changes which will complicate the system, create conflict in workplaces and cause delays; changes which will undermine the autonomy of businesses in favour of agenda-driven collectivism at the behest of unions; changes which will usher in economy-wide strikes the like of which we have not seen in recent memory; and changes which will kill productivity at a time when increasing productivity is needed to contend with high inflation, rising interest rates and low unemployment.

The overlay of this legislation on top of that high inflation and dramatically increasing cost-of-living pressures under this government makes for a potential economic powder keg. Make no mistake about it: it is Whitlam-esque in nature. For Australians struggling with cost-of-living pressures, the changes to multi-employer bargaining proposed in the bill will increase their costs of living forever. Strikes will cripple supply chains. Crippled supply chains will lead to shortages, including of essential goods. Shortages will drive up the price of groceries and other products. And this bill again shows Labor's inconsistency. On 21 November last year the ABC's David Speers asked the Treasurer whether industry-wide bargaining was a yes, a no or a maybe. The Treasurer responded in this way, very definitively: 'It's not part of our policy, David.'

This legislation is bad for Australians, it's bad for the nation and it's bad for our future. Before I address the bill specifically, let me say something on the manner in which it has been brought into this parliament. With this bill proposing such drastic changes to our industrial relations system, one would expect the government to afford adequate time to consider its details, not just for this parliament but for Australian industry sectors and businesses large and small. Instead, we have been given just a few weeks to scrutinise a 250-page bill with an additional 260-page explanatory memorandum. Many of those opposite have little or no experience in running a business. If they did, they'd appreciate that most business owners, especially those with a headcount of one to 30 employees, are running operations themselves. Typically they're working 14-hour days. When they're not working they're managing the family household and caring for their children. I don't know when the government expects small business to examine over 500 pages of this legislation in order to truly gauge the impact on their businesses, on their families and on their employees. And, as the Independents have pointed out in their contributions earlier in this debate, neither have they had reasonable time to examine what it is that the government is proposing here.

On top of this, the Labor government has done a deal with the Greens to force through a three-week Senate inquiry on one of the most significant pieces of legislation in our country's history. Time and again this government sanctimoniously lectures us on how it is the embodiment of integrity, transparency and accountability. But, time and again, its actions betray its words. Labor's recalcitrance surrounding this bill exposes its true dishonesty and its obsession with pleasing its union masters.

In its desire to push the bill through the parliament at warp speed the government shows its utter disrespect for Australian workers and for Australian businesses and industries. It thinks Australian's lives and livelihoods can be toyed with. Just as we are right to consider Labor's methods, we are right to consider its motives. The bill is not about consensus, as Labor would have you believe from the charade that its Jobs and Skills Summit—which deceived Australians—now turns out to be. It's about control. It's about Labor handing over control of our industrial relations system to the unions. It's about Labor reimbursing their union paymasters for the millions of dollars unions have put into their campaigns.

The coalition wants to see wages increase. We want to see workers' wages rise; of course we do, particularly to help Australians deal with cost-of-living pressures inflicted on them by this government's catastrophic energy policy decisions, among many other bad decisions they have already made just in the last five months. But there is no evidence that this bill will bring about rises in wages. In fact, it will lead to job losses.

Let's get back to first principles. Employers in industry and business create the vast majority of jobs in Australia, not the government. If employers are forced to pay unsustainable wages, their employees will soon find themselves without a job when their employer's business goes bust. A balance has to be struck between what an employee wants and what an employer is able to afford, so the business can survive. That is best negotiated between employees and an employer at the enterprise or workplace level. But that fundamental tenet is in jeopardy under the bill. In fact, it's trashed. The negotiation of wages and conditions will be taken out of the hands of individual businesses and their workers under Labor's proposed changes to multi-employer bargaining.

Under current legislation, multiple employers can apply to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and the Fair Work Commission to bargain together. They do this knowing that they expose themselves to industrial action, which could affect the parties alike. Importantly, this process is voluntary. As it stands, multi-employer bargaining is a choice for employers—it's an opt-in arrangement—but changes under the proposed legislation will compel employers to bargain together, specifically where common interest can be established. Here is the inane thing: the common interest criteria is so broad, the equivalent of vague generalisations, that it will be satisfied on almost every occasion. That is a deliberate measure within this bill.

Let me illustrate this absurdity. Let's say you have five businesses: a restaurant, a cafe, a clothing retailer, a supermarket and a hairdresser. They are all located in the same area—for example, a local shopping centre. In this case, the common interest test under this legislation is met. Despite each business's vast differences, the geographic location is used as the justification for multi-employer bargaining. Here is another example. Let's say you have two pharmacies, one in Queensland and the other in New South Wales. In this case, the common interest test is also met. Despite operating in different jurisdictions and localities, the service offered is used as a justification for multi-employer bargaining, such is the elasticity of the common interest test. Yet we all know that businesses, even within industries, are unique. They have workers with different qualifications, different experiences and different skills. They work different hours in different locations with different conditions. But these niceties will count for absolutely nothing under Labor's revised legislation. In fact, the common interest test is designed to trivialise the identity of individual businesses in favour of group identity. As the bill is currently drafted, employers can also be compelled to bargain where it's in the desire of the majority of employees across affected workplaces but—critically—not within an individual business or workplace.

So rushed is this bill that the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations has already agreed to amend this part of the legislation, even before it came into the chamber. Under those proposed changes, a majority vote would be required in each individual workplace before industrial action or multi-employer bargaining agreements can proceed. But even with this amendment a small business can still be compelled to bargain against the wishes of an employer, and the door will be flung open to non-unionised worksites being forced to bargain. So when Labor says its proposed legislation will preserve the ability for businesses to opt in to multi-employer bargaining, it's an absolute lie. At the multi-employer negotiation table, the autonomy of businesses and the aspirations of workers will be crushed as they are coerced to a one-size-fits-all agreement.

What about an employee's flexible working arrangements? Under the Fair Work Act, currently, an employee can request them and an employer can refuse them on reasonable business grounds. Labor's legislative changes will, instead, see disputes managed by the Fair Work Commission, including arbitration. This is absolutely unprecedented in Australia's workplace relations history. It gives the Fair Work Commission the right to determine how an employer manages their workplace. Changes to multi-employer bargaining amount to Labor's intent to kill off enterprise bargaining and, in its place, install a new centralised wage fixing system and umpire.

Don't take our word for it: consider what the Productivity Commission has said in its interim report, released last night, into Labor market productivity. The Productivity Commission highlighted concerns with multi-employer bargaining. It outlined the risk of diminished productivity when wages and conditions are set for a group of firms in a one-size-fits-all approach. It said businesses would have to compromise their requirements and flexibilities, and it even noted multi-employer bargaining could give rise to anticompetitive behaviours, which would impact consumers through increased prices and reduced quality.

Let's be under no apprehension about the underlying agenda of this bill. Union membership in this country has been in decline for decades. Indeed, union membership across Australia's private sector workforce today is less than 10 per cent. We strongly support choice. If people decide to join a union, that is their right to do so and we respect and honour that decision. Since the federal election, the Labor government has been resurrecting and empowering union leaders, and multi-employer bargaining is the mechanism through which union leaders can assert their movement's relevance in the 21st century.

Under the proposed changes in this bill, the bargaining process will be heavily influenced by union members. Many businesses will have to contend with the union machine and its mob-like intimidation and extortion for the first time. That's exactly what the union leaders want and it's exactly what this government is delivering on a platter to them. Multi-employer bargaining will allow union leaders to cannibalise businesses, and right now they're licking their lips at the prospect.

Here's a hypothetical situation. Five businesses from a shopping centre are at the multi-employer negotiating table. There are three small businesses, each with 15 employees, half full time and half part time. There are two larger employers or businesses, each with over 50 full-time employees, including HR and legal specialists. Some employees within those two larger businesses have union representation. What hope do the three small businesses have in securing favourable terms? They have neither the time nor can they afford the legal expertise or resources to ensure that their interests are best represented in a joint bargaining position.

Terms will effectively be dictated to these employers, such as adopting unaffordable wages. From there, these employers' operations will be constrained and the viability of their small businesses put at risk. If you ever wanted to see what the Monopoly board game looks like in real life, Australian businesses will experience it under multi-employer bargaining. Here's something even more perverse: multi-employer agreements cannot be voted on by employees without the approval, consent or permission of bargaining representatives. In other words, the unions will have a right of veto, believe it or not.

The government and unions would have you believe that this bill is about increasing wages and making bargaining more accessible to more people. If that were the case, why did Labor and the unions fight tooth and nail against the coalition government's reforms to improve and streamline enterprise agreement making which sought to balance the needs of both employers and employees? If that were the case, why did Labor and the unions not support our changes to the better off overall test when we were in government? Today, all their rhetoric about wanting to drive higher wages and reduce bargaining complexity is nothing more than a smokescreen. Beneath their words is an insidious agenda. This bill flagrantly seeks to shift power from employers and employees to the unions.

If you think this isn't about union empowerment and control, consider Labor's intent in abolishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission. The industry watchdog has an exemplary track record in cracking down on union intimidation, thuggery and criminal behaviour in the construction sector, especially the harassment and abuse of women on job sites. Labor's move will mean that the CFMEU will no longer have to pay millions of dollars in civil penalties. No wonder bullies like John Setka have been 'impressed', as he says, by Labor's decision to adopt this bill. The ABCC's abolition will see economic activity decline by an estimated $47½ billion across the economy by 2030. That's the cost to the economy that Labor is happy to bear to appease its own paymasters.

There are two important features of this bill which propose changes that must be mentioned. First, it will expand the size and scope of employees who are compelled to bargain; and, second, it introduces new sector strike rights. Both elements vastly increase the risk of industrywide industrial action. The employees of any business with a headcount of 15 or more staff, be they full-timers, part-timers or casuals, will be able to stop work and strike. That's tens of thousands of businesses across the country. We know that empowered union leaders will make unreasonable pay demands which employers and the economy cannot afford. When those wage ultimatums are not met, it will be 'tools down and take it to the streets'. Multi-employer bargaining will engender stoppages, shutdowns, walkouts and protests on an unprecedented scale. Go back and have a look at some of the footage from the 1970s and 1980s, under the Whitlam government. That is a taste of what we are about to experience in our country. It will revive the crippling economywide strikes of the 1970s and 1980s, and it has the potential to make the disruption and economic damage of those decades look like we are on easy street.

We should be sceptical about union commitments to conciliation. Indeed, union assurances that industrial action will be a last resort are of course vacuous. There's no shortage of strike action right now—for example, the rail union, protesting for months in Sydney, causing disruption after disruption for commuters. If this legislation is passed in its current form, we risk normalising that sort of strike action.

Here's a pertinent question: why are union leaders demanding so much that there be worker strike powers under multi-employer bargaining, including the right to strike simultaneously and in sympathy? It's not because they intend to use those powers sparingly. Rather, it's because they want to exercise them readily and at every opportunity.

The government may not heed our warnings or like what we're saying, but perhaps they should pay attention to the views of many others who have made comment in this debate. Across Australia, business groups, industry groups and employers—small, medium and large—are united in their opposition to Labor's industrial relations overhaul. Remember, these are the same groups that went to the jobs summit in good faith. They met with the incoming Prime Minister and the new government and said that they were willing to negotiate, to be part of the conversation, and they have been betrayed.

Those at the coalface understand the inherent risks and damage which will come from Labor's proposed changes to multi-employer arrangements and bargaining. Let's consider what they've said. Andrew McKellar, CEO of the Australia Chamber of Commerce and Industry, described multi-employer bargaining as, 'seismic shifts to Australia's workplace relations system reversing decades of tripartite consensus'. Innes Willox, the Chief Executive of the Ai Group, labelled the bill as, 'fundamentally flawed and needed to be rethought and reworked'. He went on to say:

The proposed changes … risk taking the country down a path of more strikes, fewer jobs, centralised decision making and less trust within our enterprises.

We must avoid extreme changes that risk imposing damaging strikes and harm on the community and businesses. We urge the government to take a breath and avoid rushing to introduce such extreme changes to our workplace relations system.

Jennifer Westacott, Chief Executive of the Business Council of Australia, who has literally bent over backwards to deal with the government to negotiate with them in good faith—again, a participant at the jobs summit—has spoken at length publicly and in private with the government about their desire to see a reasonable arrangement arrived at, and that they would support that arrangement. But here is what Ms Westacott has had to say:

We want wages to go up but that won't be achieved by creating more complexity, more strikes and higher unemployment.

She also said:

We are deeply concerned that the new system could see small businesses swept up in a complex system dominated by unions and lawyers, currently one large workplace could vote to pull smaller workplaces into an agreement.

And:

…we are staring down the barrel of a more complex system that runs the risk of stifling innovation and fossilising the economy.

They are not the words from a Liberal Party frontbench member or one of our impassioned local members really concerned about small businesses in their electorate; they are the words of somebody who is leading the Business Council of Australia on a bipartisan basis.

This side of politics can often have some critical words about what we think is a fairly passive approach by some within the business community toward this particular issue, particularly around industrial relations, but this Labor government has managed to unify them in one voice, has managed to bring them together to condemn this bill. In subsequent years when we see the impact of this bill on workplaces, on small businesses, on employees, on an increase in the unemployment rate there should be no surprise. The Australian public has not, in our living lifetime, experienced what we believe will be delivered by this bill.

Enterprise bargaining must remain the cornerstone of our workplace relations system. Our industrial relations system is far from perfect, but this bill and its proposed reforms to multi-employer bargaining will be a throwback to an industrial relations system of a bygone era, a system which clearly is not fit for purpose in modern-day Australia; a system which will add to, not alleviate, the cost-of-living pressures; a system which forsakes Australians, businesses and industry in favour of unions; and a system which will cause catastrophic economic damage at a time when we can least afford it.

This bill must be defeated, and, failing that, it must be significantly amended. Many of the independents in this place and in the other place were elected on a platform of integrity and accountability, and the coalition seeks their support on that basis. This is their opportunity to stand for their values, values clearly absent from this Labor government, as the independents, to their credit, have pointed out in this chamber only today. It is government which has haphazardly put forward one of the most unprincipled and damaging pieces of legislation in the history of the Australian parliament.

I will move an amendment in relation to this bill. It's an amendment which has been given great consideration. It provides balance. It attempts to do some good where the Labor Party, at the moment, seek only to do harm to businesses and to the relationship between businesses and employees across the country. The unprecedented preferment of the union movement through this bill is something that is not in our country's best interests.

I said in my opening remarks that this bill delivers a very significant dividend to the union masters who have paid $100 million to the Labor Party since 2007. They would have considered that to be a large amount of money. In anyone's terms $100 million is a lot of money. But the dividend on that $100 million investment is going to be felt every day by way of benefit to the union movement at the cost of workplaces and the viability of businesses across the economy. Don't be expressing any surprise about this because that is the reality of what we're debating here today. In relation to this bill, I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:   ."The House declines to give the bill a second reading and calls on the Government to:

(1)give the Australian Parliament three months to review these significant changes rather than trying to force through the legislation this year;

(2)amend the legislation to exclude changes to multi-employer bargaining which will lead to more strikes and fewer jobs without increasing productivity or wages;

(3)admit to the Australian people that these extreme industrial relations changes will result in significant red tape and higher costs for small, family and medium businesses;

(4)work with the Opposition, crossbench and other stakeholders to make improvements to the Better Off Overall Test and changes to enterprise bargaining as outlined in the former Coalition Government's legislation introduced in 2020;

(5)abandon the move to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission and the Registered Organisations Commission;

(6)redraft this legislation to ensure matters are dealt with separately rather than as an "all or nothing" approach; and

(7)in the event the bill is passed, an independent review be conducted of the operation of the amendments made by this Act as soon as practical 12 months after the bill receives Royal Assent and cause a copy of the report to be tabled in each House of Parliament".

There is no more urgent matter that requires the attention of this chamber and the other place. There are businesses that will face viability questions within a short period of time of this bill being passed. The impact on employees and their families, if they lose their jobs because those businesses close, will be significant. It will be felt by them not just in small businesses but in medium and larger-size businesses across the economy.

The government in terms of their process should be condemned. They stand condemned, and any reasonable commentator in this place or who has contributed to the public debate on this bill has been as one in condemning the government for their course of action and the intent within this bill. The House should vote down this bad bill.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill makes clear that we finally have a government that wants to see wages move. After 10 years of deliberate, harmful, shameful wage suppression from those opposite, this bill means more money for people in my community of Chisholm to spend in the community, to spend in small businesses that are such an important part of our local economy. In rising today to speak in support of this bill, I want to acknowledge those people who have worked so hard to push for pay and gender equity and a fairer bargaining system, who have been committed to advancing the ambitions of our nation. I acknowledge those who have fought for wage justice in our own time and who have been part of the struggle through history. I think of the low-paid women workers in the Tailoresses' Union in Victoria, my home state, who took action in the 19th century after being excluded from industrial laws due to their work in sweatshops undertaking piecework. I think of brave, bold Zelda D'Aprano who in 1969 famously chained herself to the Commonwealth Building, protesting the failure to deliver equal pay, and refused to pay full price for tram fares, reflecting the pay gap between women and men, paying a fare proportionate to her wage rather than that charged for men. I think of the early childhood educators, care workers, United Workers Union members who will see their wages improve as a result of this legislation.

That we are putting forward legislation to change the way workers, including women workers, are able to win fair wages is significant. As history shows, this is part of a long struggle. Where are we today? The gender pay gap is at 14.1 per cent. The care and community sectors, including aged care, early childhood education, disability care, health and a wide range of social and community services are some of the fastest-growing sectors in Australia. It is predicted that in the next five years Australia will need to fill over 300,000 jobs in the health and social assistance sector—far more than in any other sector. A recent report by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia found that 65,000 workers are leaving the aged-care sector each year, which shows just how grave the crisis is that is facing aged-care residents and aged-care workers. And recent research shows that 30 to 48 per cent of educators leave the early childhood education and care sector each year. Those rates are double the national turnover average and triple the average rate of turnover for primary school educators.

People are leaving or under extreme pressure in vital sectors because their work is not properly valued and remunerated. As it stands, there is currently no simple, effective and fast mechanism to properly value the work of care and community sector workers. Enterprise bargaining is difficult and largely ineffective in the care and community sector. These are highly fragmented workplaces where single-enterprise bargaining doesn't work. In early learning alone there are over 17,000 individual centres and over 7,200 providers, and 80 per cent of the sector is operated by single-centre providers. In aged care, unions currently can't bargain employer by employer, because the main funder doesn't sit at the bargaining table.

Work value and equal remuneration order cases are expensive, take years to progress and have been largely unsuccessful in addressing the undervaluation of care work. The current system makes it almost impossible to bargain in other low-paid sectors, such as contract cleaning, where around two-thirds of the workforce is reliant on the award. Contract cleaning and contract security tenders by companies normally involve a range of cost inputs. The highest cost is usually the cost of labour and wages. To win a tender for a contract, contractors compete on price, generally locking in an estimate of wages over the life of the contract. The result is a race to the bottom. Those with the lowest estimated wages win the contract. Those companies that are willing to provide better pay and conditions to their workforce are unable to compete in this terrible race to the bottom.

To enable low-paid workers to participate in multi-employer bargaining will be life-changing and will make it easier for companies that want to provide good wages and conditions to do so. This bill is about getting wages moving and building a better future for all Australians. I am so proud to be part of a government that is ambitious for my community of Chisholm, for their wages, and for all communities across Australia. There is so much to be said about what this bill means and what it does, but at the heart of it is this: respect, fairness and dignity. These are principles that mean something to this side of the House, and we will put them into action through delivering secure jobs and better pay for workers across Australia. Thank you.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have a saying in the bush: when your neighbour starts preaching religion, reach for your branding iron, and when politicians start preaching religion, then God help us all! I've found that saying to be very true.

This is not a socialist government, but it's in the socialist tradition, this government. Their aspirations are always laudable. We admire aspirations for people who are in very lowly paid jobs. But the government's implementation is deplorable, and I suspect that that's the way this bill is going to turn out. Small business will be backing, very strongly, amendments that will be coming, and every single one of the crossbenchers, as I understand it, will be voting to exclude small business. I can't see why the government doesn't want to go down that pathway of excluding small business. If they want some overall catch-all base wage, I think everyone here would agree with that. But to turn small business into a jungle in which they're the little guys—I think that's what's going to happen here. As for farmers, we're particularly worried. They employ a small number of people but in some industries, like the banana industry, they employ 100 and, in some cases, 200 people.

Paul Keating said that we're going to be the freest economy on earth, all protection and support levels to be removed, and this country will no longer be an extended sheep run or some sort of extended coalmine. Well, if you take away the protection, your farmers are up against farmers throughout the world who get 48 per cent of their income from the government. Our farmers only get five per cent of their income from the government. So how can they possibly stay alive?

When Keating made that announcement, it was on the ABC one morning. I threw a shoe at the wall and said, 'Is the bloke mad?' Either we close down all industry in Australia or we go to slave labour wage levels. The architect of slave labour wage levels in this country was no other than Paul Keating. I was sort of wrong because I said it was an either/or. It wasn't; it was both. We lost the industries and we lost the pay scales. We lost both in what happened. Let me be very, very specific: our cattle numbers are down 23 per cent, our sheep herd is down 72 per cent, our dairy production is down 15 per cent and our sugar production is down 16 per cent. That's your big four. Absolutely disastrous.

Now, since we have to import everything from overseas—as I said, you either close down all the industry in Australia or you go to slave labour wage levels. So we closed down all the industry in Australia. Seventy-two per cent of the motorcars in the eighties were made in Australia. Now no cars are made in Australia. And the ALP can take the full blame for it.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, it's a fair call, I take the interjections, because it must be shared by the Liberals; you're absolutely right. I withdraw the statement, because you must share the blame with this mob over here. You removed 25 per cent of support levels for the motorcars. The other mob removed 25 per cent as well, right?

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was in 1990!

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It doesn't matter when it was, you did it! You were the free marketeers that did it. You completely destroyed the wool industry. I wouldn't be laughing—the lady in the second row there thinks it's funny that the wool industry in Australia vanished under that new regulation. She thinks it's funny. I don't know her name but I hope it's recorded in Hansard that she's laughing at the idea that the wool industry in Australia was completely destroyed. Let her talk, because the more she talks the more people are going to understand who she is.

Food prices in Australia—in fairness to the initiative by the federal government, Woolworth and Coles were allowed to grow from 50.1 per cent of the food market to well over 80 per cent of the food market. Now they have a duopoly position. I'm not blaming them. They're there to maximise profits. Food mark-ups went from 130 per cent back in the nineties to 240 per cent today under your free-market policies. Medical insurance has gone up almost exactly 400 per cent, electricity has gone up 412 per cent, housing has gone up 811 per cent and motorcars have gone up over 500 per cent. There has to be an increase in wages. In light of all that, there has to be an increase in wages. But if you don't increase the protection then vast industries in this country are going to go broke. You've already wrecked about half of agriculture—that has gone—and now you're going to wreck the rest of it.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's a lot of rubbish; it's not true.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What is not true? Are you questioning that the cattle numbers are down 23 per cent? Are you questioning that? Go and have an argument with the ABS, because they're not my figures—they're the Australian Bureau of Statistics' figures. Dairying is down 15 per cent, sugarcane is down over 15 per cent and, biggest of all, the wool herd is down 72 per cent. You say it's not right—well, tell me what's not right about it! I'd like to know what's right. If it's not right, take it up with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, not me.

Electricity, under the much-maligned Bjelke-Petersen government, was $674. That's what you paid. For two or three years after Labor took over, they left everything in place, and then they introduced free-market policies. The price had been $674—I speak with authority, because I was the minister—and there was no justification for increasing the electricity price by one dollar. All the power stations were paid off, we had plenty of reserve up our sleeve, we didn't need any new power stations. But when we went to the free market under the incoming Labor government—

The ex-leader of the opposition—this might be one of the reasons he's 'ex'—is laughing! He thinks it's funny! When they went to free-marketing in electricity, the price went from $674, where it had been for 11 years, straight through the roof up to over 2½ thousand dollars. And now, with the Greenie's implementation, it's gone up over $3,000 for a householder. Who's to blame? The ALP government in Queensland is to blame, undoubtedly. They've been there for most of the last 30 years.

In all probability, I will support this legislation because I know the enormous cost-of-living rise that ordinary people have had to sustain. But I will most certainly be aggressively supporting the efforts by the crossbench to eliminate small business from the ambit of this legislation. I will most certainly be strongly supporting those moves. I would take them myself, but other people have taken them and I will support them.

Honestly, the modern power station will be an algae power station with zero emissions, and I pay tribute to Minister Plibersek that she knows the name of the algae that you use. So CO2 will not be an emission and it will not be a pollutant; it will be a product. We want to produce as much CO2 as we can possibly reduce and put it into algae ponds. You can't do this everywhere, but you can do it in North Queensland; we've got a lot of flat country and a hell of a lot of water. That's the modern future, and we can produce electricity out of that for around about $27 a megawatt hour. Currently I don't think you're going to get electricity for much under $100 a megawatt hour anywhere in Australia. But because you're making more money out of the algae, which— (Time expired)

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022. There's a problem for households and working people in Australia—it's that everything is going up except people's wages. This is what this legislation is designed to deal with. When we take away all the sound and the noise and the fury and the rhetoric of the opposition, they fail to address the question: how will they get wages moving in this country?

The fact of the matter is that the bargaining system is broken—or, if not broken, then on its last legs. The number of enterprise agreements being signed each quarter is falling. Agreements are now too easily terminated, with workers in collective bargaining being presented with, 'You'll either go to the award or you'll cop a wage cut.' The pendulum has swung too much to wage reduction in this country. Wages have stalled. The previous coalition government presented budget after budget where they promised that wages would move at a certain percentage, and they never succeeded once; it always came in under that.

There is a gender pay gap in the country. Productivity has stalled. The working person's share of national output is frozen. Irregular employment is at an all-time high. And we saw under the coalition government institutions like the trade union royal commission, the Registered Organisations Commission and the Australian Building and Construction Commission used as political weapons to diminish rights to freedom of association. Furthermore, if we don't pass this legislation, the share of real wages will fall further against inflation. So, this is not a consequence-free vote where the opposition can say that if we pass this then certain things will happen. I say to the people of Australia, if we fail to pass this legislation then certain things are guaranteed to happen. Real wages will fall further.

This bill tackles all the issues that contribute to the fact that everything is going up except people's wages. It is well past time to deal with this issue. There has been a cry by those opposite, who failed to take a wages policy to the election and have failed for a number of elections to do so, that we are now rushing. How long do working people in this country have to wait to be able to get a wage rise? When is the right time, for this coalition, for a wage rise? Do we truly believe that if we wait another three months they will somehow change their mind? I think not.

It is not a surprise that this government is putting these policies forward. At the 2015 ALP National Conference, at the 2018 National Conference and at the 2021 National Conference these policies and similar policies were debated. At the 2016 election, at the 2019 election and at the 2022 election wages policies were put forward. This area of wages policy has been discussed by Labor and the new government in a much more authentic, detailed and credible fashion than many policies have been debated in the national parliament in the past 10 years.

And let's talk about timing. I couldn't interpret the speech by the member for Kennedy, but let's look at the rest of the crossbench speeches. They say we need more time. What I say to them is, when inflation is low, the previous government said, 'Now's not the time for wage rises; we need to help dismantle the bargaining system.' Now inflation is high, and that apparently is not the time when we can debate wages. To Australians listening to this parliamentary debate, the truth is that for the critics of this bill it is never the right time for us to debate wage rises in this country.

This bill is not going to create the wages tsunami which is apparently going to increase the price of everything. This is not the early 1980s. In the early 1980s we had a clumsy industrial relations system, we had an economy that was very highly based around manufacturing, and there were different problems in the wages system and the productivity system than there are now. The fact also is that the unionisation rate in this country is far below what it was in the early 1980s. We are not going to return to the early 1980s, and it's spurious to offer that as some sort of prediction of the future. The reality is that employers today, business today and people today have different challenges. The truth is that what's holding back productivity in this country is a lack of skilled staff; it's not how much you're paying the skilled staff.

What we see in this bill, when we strip away a lot of the angst, the pearl clutching and the finger pointing of the now opposition, is that it will essentially provide greater access to bargaining and arbitration for feminised and low-paid sections of the economy. This union bogeyman rubbish is just what I said: it is rubbish. History repeats. I say to the new members of the crossbench: if you read the parliamentary debates for the last 120 years you will see that whenever there was an effort to increase standards for working women and men in this country—unpaid maternity leave, the 40-hour week, the 38-hour week, four weeks leave, occupational health and safety standards, award increases, compulsory superannuation, three per cent superannuation, nine percent superannuation, 10 per cent superannuation—the coalition has always said, 'Now is not the right time' and that the sky will fall in.

What is the actual trauma that the coalition is so worried about? The union that they love to hate, the CFMMEU, already has multi-employer bargaining. It doesn't change. The problem is that they seem to be worried that award increases will somehow change the economy. The truth of the matter is that in many sectors of the economy, even with the award increase, we're not going to catch the market rates that are currently being paid—but we will increase the safety net.

People who have never argued for a wage rise in this country are now arguing that they want more time not to argue for a wage rise for Australian workers. At the end of the day, people clothe industrial relations in the great issues of communism, capitalism and blah, blah, blah. The fact of the matter is that workplace relations, which I have been proud to work in for all of my adult working life, is a lot more simple: employers need employees and employees need employers. Industrial relations is not the World War I battlefield or the black-and-white television images that this opposition wants to present. The biggest problem for employers is actually getting staff. The biggest problem for employees is being able to get enough wages to pay the bills. These laws, when you take away the sound and the fury, are actually sensible and moderate.

I will tell you who doesn't need these laws: surgeons—they set a rate; lawyers already have rates and barristers already have rates; doctors already have rates across employers; plumbers already have rates; electricians already have rates; and the C-suite of directors will always tell you that we must pay directors and CEOs more to deal with international standards of competition. They have industry standards and multi-employer bargaining. The fact of the matter is that this is for the disability carers who tonight will be looking after people with dementia; it's for the students riding through the rain to deliver food so we can have some takeaway food; it's for the women overcoming the motherhood tax, where they've had to have broken income; and it will be for the people of our COVID experience—the drivers, the shop assistants, the regional workers who managed to help keep supplying food to the cities, the cleaners, the security and the aged-care attendants. The fact of the matter is that we have a two-speed wage economy in this country. If you're strong enough to bargain then you already get the good gear. But if you don't have access to the bargaining system then you fall further and further behind.

I say to the people of Australia about this bill: the simple fact is that the sun will come up tomorrow, the chickens will still lay eggs, the dogs will still bark and business will still continue in this country. This law is a continuation of the great Australian experiment of a fair go for all. Australian workers—Australian people—are not commodities; they can't just be left to market forces. Australian workers are entitled to a system which respects their labour much more than a bare minimum. I look forward to this legislation being passed in the form it's in and I encourage the crossbench to pause and reconsider. After 10 years of argument, why should Australian workers who are doing everything to help the economy wait a bit longer while those who hate wage rises continue to hate wage rises?

Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, just eight business days after the introduction into the House of perhaps the most significant industrial relations reform proposed since the WorkChoices legislation in 2006, I rise to speak on the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022.

Coming from a family of small business owners, and having managed, built and grown multi-employee businesses across several sectors, I confess that while I welcome discussion around this reform I am immediately concerned that the due process that should support a robust consideration of legislation of this magnitude is being severely truncated. With my most recent experience having been in the area of building communities and campaigns to bring people, businesses and organisations along when advocating for significant reform, there is much in this current process that leaves me feeling that, despite assurances, this rushed process isn't in everyone's best interest. There will be many in my community who will be left with significant concerns as to what this legislation means for them, their businesses and, indeed, their jobs.

Ultimately, I suggest that even after a flurry of briefings, which I've been grateful for, and a commitment to personally review every proposed drafted amendment, this bill still has a long way to go. Surely, if we're to learn anything from the failed WorkChoices legislation it is that it's worth doing the work well right from the beginning rather than rushing headlong into significant reform which has not been tested for any of its unintended consequences.

There are elements in this bill which I support, such as measures to improve job security and gender equity, and in enhancing the antidiscrimination framework. I'm also satisfied with the simplification of the better off overall test, which unions and employers worked together to improve. There are, however, elements in this bill which currently concern the people of North Sydney and me, including the potential for small businesses to be caught up in what may be complicated multi-employer bargaining agreements and how the construction industry will be regulated following the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

Disappointingly, what is also clear is that this process of legislating is a far cry from the Prime Minister's pre-election promise to lead a government that includes more Australians in politics and restores trust in our parliament. Under the guise of a pre-election promise to 'get wages moving', Australians, including those in my electorate of North Sydney, have been blindsided by some of the measures in this bill. To be clear, the people of North Sydney did not grant the minister a mandate to ram through a piece of reform as substantial as multi-employer bargaining, and while there have been assurances of large organisations having been involved in negotiations around this legislation, it remains the case that, when it comes to true engagement, most ordinary people in my community have not had a voice on the shape and form of this bill.

As a recently elected Independent MP, I have now had a glimpse of the so-called backroom deals which seem to be done in this place. We have seen here and in the media intense lobbying from the big end of town, those with the power and resources to access the parliament. In this I count large employer groups—businesses—and large union representatives. Individual employees, small and medium businesses and workers in the low-paid industries, who the government are wielding in advance to push their arguments forward, are largely absent. I have heard from them in North Sydney, and I am bringing their views to you here today, but the fact remains that this is a deal being done largely behind closed doors, and that's not good for our democracy. The overwhelming theme coming from my community is that reforms such as this should be duly prosecuted and duly reviewed. To do that, we need time to consider the implications of the bill. It is disappointing that in this case our government has chosen not to heed that call.

One thing is clear: we have a wicked economic challenge ahead of us. In the government's issues paper for the Jobs and Skills Summit it outlined that 'to support full employment, stronger economic growth, sustainable increases in real wages and higher living standards, we need to prioritise productivity growth'. With unemployment now down to 3.4 per cent and wage growth still low at 2.6 per cent, we do need to look at mechanisms for driving wage growth, and improved productivity growth is a key driver of that. Ultimately though, to drive wage growth we need a gamut of changes, not the ideological pursuit of a single reform. We need improved workforce planning, we need to strengthen education and skills to meet the needs of employers in our ever-evolving economy and we need to support business innovation and investments in new technology. To address the cost-of-living concerns we must also tackle the root cause of inflation and consider where the government's mantra of getting wages moving sits in the broader economic circumstance. If wage increases driven by increased bargaining are not backed by productivity gains, the result may well be a weaker economy, and there will be no benefits for workers.

Fundamental to our current industrial relations environment is the award system, which here in Australia has been progressively streamlined from 1,000 to 122 awards. While streamlining may have seemed desirable, the reality is that many of these awards are now far more complicated. As such, navigating them can be challenging, particularly for businesses who are do not have a human resource function, which, let's face it, is the majority of small businesses across our country. We must continue to work to ensure the awards we have in place are unambiguous and transparent so businesses and employees can get the true benefits of this foundational aspect of our industrial relations system.

Ironically, the recent success of the government's position supporting a wage increase for aged-care workers shows that this pathway of reform—that is, lifting the level of underlying awards—is indeed one of the fastest ways to move the dial on wages in Australia. I warmly welcome the recent decision of the Fair Work Commission to lift the award wage in aged care by 15 per cent and, in particular, the acceptance during that hearing of expert evidence that care work 'has been historically undervalued, and the reason for that undervaluation is likely to be gender based'. We know that over a third of all Australian women are employed in the health care, social assistance, and education and training sectors, with their average weekly earnings below the national average. Improving their pay and conditions would help close the gender pay gap.

Arguably, government led advocacy around increasing the award wages is going to bring about wage increases at a faster pace than this new proposed process of negotiated EBAs, which, by the minister's own admission, may take 12 months or more to get wages moving. I call on the government to back an increase to the minimum wage for all low-paid workers by committing to fund the increase in its submission to the Fair Work Commission.

Moving now to part 3 of the bill, which abolishes the Building and Construction Commission, or the ABCC, the construction industry, which employs roughly 1.15 million people, is operating at close to full capacity, with increased residential housing investments and infrastructure spends right across the country, including in my electorate of North Sydney. It faces challenges, like many other industries, like disruptions in global supply chains and shortage of labour. I've spoken to residential builders in my electorate of North Sydney who are fearful that the abolition of the ABCC will drive negative cultural changes in the commercial sector, which, due to the high levels of overlap with subcontractors, will flow through to the residential building sector, and that there's an unseen consequence flowing down the line. Furthermore, the Master Builders Association estimates the abolition of the ABCC may result in an 8.8 per cent increase in labour costs and a decline of nearly 10 per cent in productivity.

I can see some of the ABCC functions have been allocated to the Fair Work Ombudsman, which the government describes a 'full-service regulator'. But I am yet to be convinced that the Fair Work Ombudsman has adequate specialist construction competency or industry knowledge. We must also ensure there is not a vacuum left in the regulatory environment which will address safety and productivity on work sites.

Finally, I'd like to reiterate the danger in the speed at which some of these measures have been pursued. I support the inclusion of the review period, but think that a five-year review period is far too long and this should be shortened to two years at the most. I would encourage the government to take a collaborative and constructive approach to the review, keeping a watching brief on the implementation of the bill. In the words of a constituent of North Sydney, 'Develop a plan that makes Australia more productive, equitable and happy.' I'd like to work with the government to develop that plan, which needs to go well beyond the scope of this current bill.

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022. This is an important reform of our industrial relations system, one that works to mend what is broken. These amendments to the Fair Work Act have been flagged and have been on everyone's radar since August this year. And many of those provisions had been flagged several months and years prior to then on the other side of the recent election. This is in amongst reforms that fall in line with election commitments, things that nobody should be surprised about by now. Of course, I'm referring to the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission and the Registered Organisations Commission. These are two entities whose staff were so cognisant of their own demise that they likely started updating their LinkedIn profiles as soon as the votes started being counted on election night back in May. I have said it once before and I'll say it again: the ROC and ABCC should be dead, buried and cremated. This is as explicit an action of a government legislating an election commitment as you can get.

The Albanese Labor government has been upfront with the people about where it stands on industrial relations reform. It isn't about being pro business or pro union. It's about fixing a system that is broken. The Albanese Labor government has also widely consulted, whether it be with state governments of all political persuasions, business lobby groups of both the big and small varieties or unions, a very scary word for some in this chamber, not to mention outside of this chamber too. We can all parrot the same tired lines that wouldn't be out of place in a first-year commerce study group.

The real effect of those opposite's animosity towards unions and the union movement is that wages of working people would simply continue to stagnate. If those opposite consider this an unfortunate by-product of a broken system then they can join with the government on a unity ticket and make these reforms happen. If not then at least we know exactly what's behind the mask. This is despite what you may have heard in the member for Dickson's address-in-reply speech and from others. I know I won't be standing in the way of a pay rise for those who need it the most.

The government is coming into this place and introducing legislation to fix wage stagnation. These are the plans and solutions those opposite keep asking for. Well, here it is! There's nothing in it quite as scary as they would have you believe. Businesses and workers who successfully negotiate single-enterprise bargaining agreements can continue to do so. You have to bargain in good faith before you can think of going into arbitration. It's perfectly reasonable.

Those opposite seemingly condone the practice of pay secrecy at a work place, something that is often used to suppress wage negotiations. They also seem to be for having workers on insecure, perpetual fixed-term contracts, which we want to limit the widespread use of. This is a system where low wages have been baked in for quite some time now. This is a design feature.

I am, of course, cognisant of inflation, but I dare anyone opposing wage rises right now to give me a set of circumstances from the past decade where they felt comfortable with employee pay rises. I wouldn't hold my breath. For everyday working families that are just trying to get by, to feel as if they're improving their lot and their family circumstances after a long, hard year at work, that just simply isn't happening. This is why I'm proud to be part of an Albanese Labor government. We put our election commitments first. We put our big reforms first. And we put working people of Australia first!

Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If there's a lesson from this year's federal election it's that voters were sick of how politics operated in this country. They were hungry for change and wanted a new politics, one characterised by fairness, integrity, transparency, accountability and proper process. That's what voters were promised and that's what we wanted and that's what they deserved. And that's what we have seen from the new government on a number of issues. In general they have been consultative and have been guided by proper process. It has been a welcome change.

But there is a jarring contrast between those processes of good government and how this government has proceeded with the industrial relations reform. Some aspects of the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022 are the cumulation of constructive negotiations between employer and employee organisations over a number of years, and I commend those. But others, including compulsory multi-employer bargaining, were not. It is those aspects which fail the government's own test of proper process. These aspects of the bill were not in Labor's election policy; they were not canvassed at the Jobs and Skills Summit; and they were not subject to consultation.

Now the government are seeking to guillotine debate and force this bill through this House without time to understand the bill, talk to those who will be affected or identify unintended consequences. This isn't a way to make policy or to pass legislation. Particularly not for a policy area like industrial relations, which is notoriously complex. Even well-intentioned changes can end up backfiring, like the better off overall test which was introduced by Labor in 2008 and is being fixed by Labor 2022. This is why government legislation needs scrutiny and input from stakeholders from right across the spectrum. Without it we're going to repeat the mistakes of the past rather than learn from them. It's disappointing that government have gone down this path so far, but it's not too late for them to do the right thing and change course.

Looking at the provisions of the bill there are some aspects that are really welcome and which I support. I particularly support changes which assist in securing wages for low-paid workers. I was really heartened by Fair Work's recent decision to raise aged-care wages by 15 per cent and would love to see it rolled out into other areas with underpaid workforces, particularly in the caring sector. There could be tweaks made to the supported bargaining stream to make it more effective. Defining low-wage workers would help overcome one of the obstacles that has stopped this stream being used in the recent past. But these are quibbles, and I have no wish to delay these parts of the bill. I also strongly support the changes which would make it faster and more certain for enterprise bargains to be approved by Fair Work after they have secured backing from employers and employees. This is crucial. This includes reforms to the better off overall test and removing some impediments to the approvals process.

But there are other aspects to the bill which aren't as welcome. The most concerning is changing multi-employer bargaining from a stream where both parties need to opt into a stream to a stream where employees can compel the other side to join a negotiation or an existing agreement spanning other workplaces. Where this occurs an employer doesn't get to choose whether they want to bargain with other businesses, they don't get to choose which other businesses participate and they don't have the right to stop their workforce joining an existing agreement which may not be a good fit for the business.

This sort of change should be subject to wider public debate. It is not something that was widely discussed or understood during the election campaign, during the Jobs and Skills Summit or in subsequent discussions which I and the business community have had with government. It is a basic principle of government that you should engage the community on major reform before embarking upon it: set out the problem the country faces, tell us the solution you think is best and why the alternative options are inferior. Make your case, engage in the debate and convince the community to back your ideas. That's what I want to see, and it's what most Australians want to see. Australians would rather see lasting policy reform than have an industrial relations ping-pong with each change of government, as the coalition undoes Labor's policies and Labor unpicks the coalition's policies. That is no way to run a country.

One benefit of a national debate is that people know what to expect and can have their voices heard. It really troubles me that this bill is going to have a huge impact on thousands of smaller businesses around Australia, but most of them aren't even aware that it's coming. I've spoken to a number of business owners who simply don't understand the bill or what it means for them. When they learn that it could mean certain decisions affecting their business will be taken away from them and given to their workers or to the Fair Work Commission, they become truly alarmed. If I were still running a small business I would be alarmed too.

This isn't a piecemeal change but a transformation about how businesses interact with their staff, particularly smaller businesses. Even experienced industrial relations specialists aren't sure how it's going to work in practice, which means that no businessperson can possibly know. I don't think anybody knows, not even the decision-makers in the government. Small business owners have made it through the incredibly difficult times of COVID and got past lockdowns and restrictions, only to be faced with labour shortages, rapidly-rising interest rates, rapidly-rising electricity prices and a potential recession. They've struggled to hold on through perhaps the most difficult commercial environment in this country's history—and it's about to get a whole lot harder for them.

We can do much better than this. The best thing the government can do today is to split the bill into two parts. One part could encompass the support for higher wages in low-wage industries, along with measures that have been subject to broad consultation and which are generally agreed on all sides. This could easily pass the parliament, immediately supporting immediate wage rises for low-income workers, which I support 100 per cent. The other part of the bill could undergo further consultation and scrutiny, ensuring that legitimate concerns are heard and resolved, and exploring all the possible consequences of the bill. This would not hold up wage rises for low-income workers but it would be a sensible approach to contentious reform.

That is why I have prepared a second reading amendment to hold back the most contentious parts of the bill until they can undergo appropriate scrutiny. Splitting the bill is the best thing this House could do to improve the IR bill, and so I move:

That all words after "reading" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"until an inquiry into parts 11, 15, 18, 19, 21 and 22 of the bill is undertaken by a House or Senate committee, with the inquiry lasting not less than 90 days".

I will also move substantive amendments to the bill reflecting other concerns.

I believe that multi-employer bargaining should not be compulsory, or should be voluntary, or, if the government insists on its approach, that it changes the common interest and public interest tests so that workplaces cannot be roped into a bargain that has no merit. I also believe that the threshold for small businesses needs to be more than 15 people. A cafe or a retail outlet in Wentworth often has more than 15 employees, but these are not big businesses. They're not Coles or Woolworths, and they should not be treated as though they are. I also believe disputes over flexible work arrangements shouldn't go straight from a discussion between an employer and employee to Fair Work arbitration, an exercise that can cost tens of thousands of dollars and ruin the relationship between an employer and an employee. Let's put a step in between, where both parties can engage in conciliation with guidance and support from Fair Work before we bring in the lawyers. And I believe there should be an independent statutory review of the changes within 12 months to tell us if the changes are working as intended.

These changes would mitigate some of the harm the bill might impose on our economy, but they're not my preferred approach. My preferred approach would be that the government went back to first principles with its industrial relations policy and remembered that productivity drives wages. There's a lot we can do to accelerate productivity growth, but award modernisation would have to be near the top of that list—make awards simpler. Simplicity benefits employees and employers. It means employees can genuinely understand the conditions of their employment and are able to call out right from wrong, and it means employers can genuinely understand what their employees expect and deserve from them.

Under the current system, employees and employers inadvertently breach the same rules all the time. Awards should be so simple that that isn't possible. They should be so simple that a 15-year-old working their first job can understand an agreement, their rate of pay and whether their boss is following the rules. That's not currently possible with the general retail award, which runs to more than 100 pages.

Minister, I promise you: if you modernise the award, you will support employment, wage and productivity growth in this country. It will not be an easy process, but it will certainly be worthwhile and make a lasting impact on our economy. As it currently stands, I cannot in good conscience support the bill. The policy process has been flawed and the legislation itself is flawed. It will harm our economy and the very workers the government wants to support. This is why I propose amendments and why, if they are not successful, I will vote to oppose the bill and will be encouraging others to do so. I move:

That all words after "reading" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"until an inquiry into parts 11, 15, 18, 19, 21 and 22 of the bill is undertaken by a House or Senate committee, with the inquiry lasting not less than 90 days".

Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022. This legislation will deliver more secure jobs, better pay and a fairer workplace relations system for Australian workers. How Labor is that? That is modern day light-on-the-hill stuff—so LED lights, obviously.

I will talk briefly about two things this bill is designed to do. The first is to ban pay secrecy clauses, and the second thing is bargaining, something I've had some experience in through working for the Independent Education Union, particularly dealing in the Christian schools sector, where you sit down and look at awards and at enterprise bargaining agreements. I also did enterprise bargaining many years ago with some of the independent, standalone First Nations schools in Queensland.

One of the key objectives of the bill is to help to close the gender pay gap, a great thing to do. All sensible Australians know that women should not be paid less than men, but we need to move from just agreeing and nodding to actually doing something about that. This bill aims to ban secrecy clauses so that companies cannot prohibit staff talking about pay if they want to. These clauses have long been used to conceal gender pay discrepancies. We would hate for any future female workers to be discriminated against, wouldn't we? I'm sure we can all agree on that. Banning pay secrecy clauses will improve transparency, reduce the risk of gender pay discrimination and empower more women to ask their employers for pay rises.

Over the weekend I attended the Queensland state Labor conference on the Sunshine Coast. The conference was addressed by many people, including the Prime Minister and the Premier, particularly a woman with professional experience in both the public and private sector. Her first job was in the Queensland Public Service when she was 17 years old. As an AO1 in the state Public Service, her salary and conditions were known and aligned with people doing the same work. The pay of her co-workers and bosses was made public and transparent, and staff were free to discuss their salaries openly.

Leaving the government some years later to work in the private sector, she soon learnt that transparency around pay and conditions did not exist. Over the years, she has had contracts that prohibited her from talking about her pay. She's had to negotiate her own employment contract, salary and conditions, unsure of what deals her colleagues and peers had secured, fearful of asking for too much, anxious and always unsure if she was underselling herself, and completely reliant on goodwill and the blind hope that her employer would do the right thing by her. In her own words, she made this very clear point: 'If we can't see something, if we can't talk about something, if there's no transparency, it inhibits our ability to organise, to advocate and to get a better deal.'

Multibargaining is already possible under the Fair Work Act through three streams: single interest, multi-employer and low pay. The problem is, if you look at the data, we know that the system isn't working. Wages have flatlined for nearly a decade while profits have soared and productivity has increased—I wouldn't say soared but it's increased. So something is not working.

Under this bill we're not creating new streams of bargaining, we're varying the existing streams to make them workable and get wages moving, something that we took to the election loudly and proudly. The largest aged-care provider in Queensland, Blue Care, has offered workers a two per cent wage increase and has made no attempt to lift the offer despite being forced by workers to the bargaining table.

I want to touch on that bargaining table for a second, because when I did do enterprise bargaining I sat at a table, with employers, with the workers I represented. I'm sure the member for Blair would have done the same thing, sitting at a table. Nowadays, I'm told—I've been here a while—there's no table because people meet virtually, and there's no bargaining anymore. Because of that gap between EB and awards, bosses basically say, 'Your wages can fall off a cliff if you don't take what I'm giving you.' Basically, it's one step away from coercion, where your wages fall off a cliff, your conditions fall off a cliff, so there's no more bargaining, no more table. We need to bring back the bargaining table.

Back to Blue Care. The aged-care provider, run by UnitingCare, employs thousands of aged-care workers who do incredible work, but they've steadfastly refused to improve the offer—despite inflation running at about seven per cent in Brisbane and other major aged-care providers giving workers pay rises well north of four per cent. Frustrated Blue Care workers stand testament to a broken bargaining system that has ended after months of protracted negotiations in stalemate. That's not the way to run an industrial relations system.

Think of all that effort, all that goodwill, for nothing—all that goodwill and innovation curdling into rancour in a workplace. In early October, Blue Care workers voted down the company's continued two per cent offer and are now waiting for negotiations to resume in their quest for a fair pay offer. If you know these workers, if you've met these workers, how could you look them in the eye and say, 'This system is working'? It's ridiculous.

The issues facing Blue Care workers demonstrate, across the nation, the difficulty in bargaining when the bargaining does not involve the ultimate decision-maker on aged-care workers' wages—in this case, the federal government being present at the bargaining table. It also illustrates the current ability of employers to play out a negotiation endlessly, with no actual obligation at any stage to come to a final acceptable position.

Labor's secure jobs, better pay legislation will deliver on a range of commitments that we made at the 2022 election and at the Jobs and Skills Summit. Don't be misled by people saying that we did not take this to the election and that we did not take it to the Jobs and Skills Summit. We want our reforms to modernise Australia's workplace relations system, get wages moving and achieve gender equity for Australian workers, because we all know that Australian workers have been doing it tough. For the last 10 years Australians has had a government that has deliberately kept their wages low. Do you remember that? Do you remember the former finance minister belling the cat and saying, 'That's a deliberate design strategy.' It was something that just came out of his mouth as if it meant nothing, but think of the misery visited upon households because of that commitment by the Liberal and National parties—the reformed friend of the workers from 22 May.

The Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments did nothing to close the loopholes that have made Australian jobs less secure. But the Albanese government is taking the opposite approach, because that Albanese government believes in giving workers a better deal and a better future. We believe in Australians, and I commend Labor's legislation to the House because I still believe in the light on the hill.

Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I haven't been in this parliament for long, but already I feel like a broken record. Women want to work, but they want their work to be respected, and we do have to take care that we make the overdue changes in ways that produce the right result. This is a massive piece of legislation produced in a short period and there has been almost no time for community consultation. An amendment to the Fair Work Act it may be, but at 243 pages, with an explanatory memorandum to match and with further amendments to come, it's much more than that. The amendments have the potential to create vast and positive change, but the process is fraught. How do I balance what are the clear upsides of the bill against the concerns of business? This quandary has literally kept me awake at night this past week since the bill was tabled.

I represent a community with upwards of 17,000 small businesses, including cafes, small manufacturers, residential builders and skilled individuals who work as sole traders, as well as others who work in high positions in some of Australia's biggest companies. Also, in Goldstein, I represent thousands of women who work in the care sector, aged care, early childhood education and disability care. Almost 2,000 nurses, midwives and carers live in the suburbs of Bentleigh, Ormond and McKinnon alone. I also represent people—many of them women—who work fragmented shifts in other sectors such as retail and cleaning.

In being elected to this place, I vowed to speak up for those women, those who are not in the room and those who do not have the loudest voices as individuals, and I vowed to advocate for our prosperity as a nation. Wages, productivity and prosperity intersect, yet the share of GDP going to wages is at an all-time low. Productivity has grown at twice the pace of real wages over the last two decades.

The fastest-growing sector of the economy is the care and service sector. As Chief Executive Women said in its prebudget submission:

While the care sector, largely powered by women, has been the safety net of the economy, this sector has been widely undervalued. The care sectors are encumbered by critical workforce shortages, resulting from high levels of insecure work and low pay.

The face of modern unionism is a 40-year-old woman in the care sector; that's the reality. And more than four million Australian workers are now in insecure work. Many are women, an untapped resource, in part due to their lack of power. Not only are they saddled with the bulk of society's unpaid work, held back by a lack of child care, paid parental leave and super; they're undervalued when they do work. Often they're sandwiched between children, elderly parents and employers, rostered sporadically, disempowered, underpaid and, frankly, run ragged. Award wages merely keep them down. In turn, their children can be affected by intergenerational transfer of disadvantage. A recent survey of almost 6½ thousand retail workers asked them what they wanted. The answer was simple: decent pay, job security, predictable shifts.

Several of these concerns are addressed in this bill. I wholeheartedly support the provisions for supported bargaining for care industries. This would help give agency to these largely feminised industries where, in many cases, currently, hours are too short and shifts are irregular, precarious and changeable. Currently, women earn, on average, $472 per week less than men. The gender pay gap sits at 14.1 per cent and, disgracefully, it has only narrowed by a miserable 5.1 per cent since 1983.

These supported bargaining provisions will allow women to negotiate for better pay and conditions. The women who work in our care sector deserve this. And it's not only low-paid working women who stand to gain. All working women can benefit from changes to transparency rules around salary, which will enable female employees who are being paid less than their male counterparts to say so.

A new study by the ILO found that pay transparency measures can help to address the gender pay gap and reduce broader gender inequalities in the labour market. Pay transparency may provide workers with the information and evidence they require to negotiate pay rates and provide them with the means to challenge potential pay discrimination. Additionally, the capacity to not only ask for flexibility but also to ask the Fair Work Commission for a review should the employer say no is broadly a good change. I have suggested to the government that small businesses with fewer than 25 full-time staff should be exempt from this. This goes to one of my concerns about this bill.

Apart from the obvious issue of the very short time frame provided by the government for the consideration of this complex set of amendments, there are some unintended consequences, and there is much to clarify before this bill passes both houses. As the bill stands, small businesses with a headcount of less than 15 could be subject to mandatory multi-employer bargaining. And, as I said earlier, there are thousands of those small businesses in Goldstein. How they fare matters not only for those who own these businesses and those who work for them but also for the community that depends on them. Already these businesses are grappling with the higher input costs resulting from spiking inflation, especially energy costs. This alone threatens the viability of these businesses, many of which have been built up over decades of hard work and sacrifice by their owners. A headcount of 15 would potentially drag every cafe and small independent store and some early childhood education businesses into the net and subject them to mandatory multi-employer bargaining.

I've suggested that the government consider amending this provision to ensure that it does not have the consequences I have outlined. Based on what the small businesses in Goldstein that I represent are telling me, a figure of more than 25 full-time staff would be more realistic. This could simply be inserted into these amendments and left as existing in the rest of the act regarding issues like unfair dismissal. There is also deep concern among businesses in Goldstein about the flexible work provisions, two-year contracts and the zombie agreement transition provisions. Again, these issues could be resolved by explicitly setting a higher number of full-time staff in the flexible work provisions and providing a staged change to the other provisions.

On the question of single-enterprise multi-employer bargaining, I support explicitly directing the Fair Work Commission to preserve the primacy of single-enterprise agreements and providing a six-month buffer period after expiry of an agreement before an employer can be forced into a multi-employer negotiation. Common and public interest definitions need to be clarified to avoid competition issues, and a reasonable review period—less than the five years proposed—is needed, in my view.

Finally, I return to what I believe to be one of the most important elements of this bill. In its definitions, the legislation should make it clear that what we are seeking is gender equality in the workplace, not merely gender equity, as currently stated. Equity merely sets the stage for equality, putting women only at the starting line rather than requiring an outcome. If we are to get beyond our miserable long-term record on equality of pay for equality of work, if we are to get more women who want to work into the workforce, if we are to get the productivity benefits that that would create, if we are to get the growth we need for future prosperity and if we are to be able to look our daughters in the face and say, 'No more,' then this is what we must do.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the ILO gender equality conventions and the Workplace Gender Equality Act all say that gender equality means substantive equality between men and women. If, as the government says, this legislation is about elevating feminised workforces then this must be the result of this legislation, not merely the aspiration. The women of Australia have waited too long, and I stand here to say this on behalf of those in Goldstein and elsewhere who are not in the room.

Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government was elected with a mandate: to deliver a better future for all Australians. Core to that is to get wages moving for working Australians. We know that wages have been deliberately held back for almost a decade by those opposite. We know it because they told us. They said low wages were in fact a deliberate design feature of their economic plan. Let's think for a moment about what that means. It means less money in your pocket. It means that over this entire past decade, while prices went up—food, petrol, energy, child care, health care—there was no more money with your pay cheque. No matter how much those opposite claim to care about the cost of living now, that was a situation they did nothing to address for nine long years.

Which brings me to the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022. This bill does a number of important things that will provide benefits for all Australians. Specifically, it will get wages moving by modernising what the evidence of the past 10 years shows us to be a broken bargaining system. It will empower workers in historically overlooked industries to work together to negotiate with employers and providers for better conditions and pay. Unlike those opposite, I attended the government's Jobs and Skills Summit, and there I heard business and unions agree on this point: while the current system certainly isn't delivering the real-wage increases that Australians deserve, it is also complex and cumbersome for businesses, particularly small businesses without extensive HR departments and resources. Isn't it time, therefore, that we did something about a system that isn't working for anyone?

This bill also protects workers by banning job ads that advertise below the relevant minimum pay rate—a fairly commonsense course of action to me. It will help close what is a stubborn gender pay gap by banning pay secrecy clauses and expanding access to flexible work arrangements. My colleagues the member for Spence and the member for Moreton both mentioned this. My personal experience is that pay secrecy is absolutely used to underpay women—it happened to me. I don't say that because I'm special; I say that because it's really, really common.

Minister Burke has consulted exceptionally widely on this bill, and I know he remains committed to reaching acceptable outcomes for all parties. The consensus-driven approach is a hallmark of this government, working together in the national interest. We will continue to consult with stakeholders and engage in the Senate's important inquiry process but, as the Prime Minister is fond of saying, we don't want to waste a day of the privilege of being in government. We don't want to waste any time before making these sensible improvements to our workplace relations system to make it work better for everyone. Australians have already sat through a wasted decade, watching their real wages go backwards—now is the time for action.

Crucially, this bill continues this government's focus on addressing gender inequalities. Just yesterday I was proud to vote in favour of our legislation to deliver the recommendations of the Respect@Work report in full. Last month I voted to make child care cheaper for 96 per cent of families in the system, and to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks. The minister's approach to this bill has been underpinned by recognition that some forms of work in this country are not valued as they should be. These professions—health care, aged care, disability support and early childhood education—are, you'll be surprised to know—or maybe not—powered overwhelmingly by women. For too long they have been either explicitly or implicitly undervalued precisely because they are associated in our collective consciousness with the term 'women's work'. That was the finding of the Fair Work Commission just last week when it ruled in favour of giving aged-care workers a 15 per cent pay rise.

This government values the work these Australians do, and is going about creating a workplace relations system that reflects that. We are taking action to deliver on our commitment to the Australian people to get wages moving and to deliver more secure jobs, better pay and a fairer workplace relations system. Ultimately, giving hardworking Australians—Australians who care for our kids, nurse us when we are sick and provide support to our most vulnerable—the respect, the recognition and, yes, the pay they deserve seems like something all of us in the place should support. I hear nice words in this place about how much we value frontline workers in the caring professions—and yes, largely women—but then there are always the buts, buts, buts. They want all these things for workers but—so put your money where your mouth is and enable these hardworking Australians to get the money they deserve.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We've heard a lot about mandates and we've heard a lot about the impact of this proposed bill, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill, even from the Independents who recognise the risk to the Australian economy, the risk to small business and the risk to our country. I did a little bit of research because there is an entire generation of Australians who are not aware of what it looks like when the unions run this country. They just have not seen it and so they don't understand it. I wanted to check my memory because I was only a young child and then in the late eighties—13 January 1987—I commenced as an apprentice, so I thought I should check some of the previous reports on just what it was like for industrial relations when pattern bargaining and union activity were at their height.

On 25 August 1975 the Herald in Melbourne reported, 'From midnight tonight about 9,000 shipyard workers will strike for 24 hours.' 'Doom town' is the headline. My personal favourite was on 22 September 1979, 'The body snatchers turn the wharves into battlefields.' It quotes that the ports of Sydney and Melbourne have been free of disputes for only two weeks in the past 18 months, most stoppages caused by demarcation and poaching. It is just quite incredible that they lost more than 131,000 working days on the waterfront in disputes in 1978, and a source at the container terminal at White Bay said 1979 should have been a 'quiet year' because they weren't due to negotiate their awards until the next year, 1980. But that wasn't the way it turned out. We move forward to March 1987 and in the Australian, 'Unions on the march, a national 24-hour strike that yesterday paralysed the already limping Australian building industry and a warning of further militant activity to come.'

This is what happens when the unions are running this country. Another personal favourite, 'The billion-dollar House on the Hill', this parliament. The original cost estimate in 1978 was $220 million, when the first shovel of dirt was turned it had risen to $275 million and by August 1987 it had blown out to $1,047.8 million. Here's the big part of that, the final figure being above $1.2 billion. Guess what? The building has been a nightmare with the BLF calling a 14-week strike in 1984 and smaller industrial action that has continued. This is what this type of activity does. It drives up the cost for every Australian, whether in construction, on the wharfs, in imports or just trying to be in business but getting held up by this type of activity.

A couple of the types of things that were happening: 1989, Sydney Morning Herald: 'About 200 angry building workers halted the national wage case yesterday by invading the court and jeering at the wage bench. They commandeered the building lifts and poured into the court on the 39th floor.' 'Wild brawl over dockyard plan: a policewoman was bitten on the arm and six striking Cockatoo Island workers were arrested. When a demonstration outside the NSW Labor Council building yesterday erupted, more than 50 police, including tactical response group officers, had to swarm and respond.' This is the type of activity that the Labor Party wants to bring back into our nation. To give you a quick summary of what impact was, in 1972 two million working days were lost as a result of strikes. In 1973 it was 2.6 million, and in 1974 almost 6.3 million days, keeping in mind that in 1980 this country only had a population of 14 million. Whitlam's stacking, more industrial action, more industrial trouble.

Those opposite continue to claim they have a mandate for this decision, a mandate for this activity. Well, we've done some research—and this has been provided to me. We went back to have a bit of a look. Let's have a look the comments that leader Albanese and others might have made. To ACCI on 5 May 2022 there was no mention—not one, not a single mention of this proposal. No wonder industry and business think this has been dropped on them from out of the big blue sky—not a single mention. There's another opportunity here, the Prime Minister's speech to the National Press Club on 18 May 2022—nope, wasn't in that either.

What else have we got? Perhaps it's on their policy page. Perhaps that's where we can find it. It says, 'I want to talk about the first eight elements of Labor's Secure Australian Jobs Plan'. No, no mention of industrywide bargaining in Labor's policy on their website at that time—none. No-one expected this, certainly not business, certainly not small businesses, certainly not those who are out there and will be directly impacted.

Even Minister Burke didn't rule it out in the questions that were put to him by the Australian. The Treasurer makes a lot of noise in question time, but from what we can gather he didn't quite get this one right. David Speers said, 'I'm asking you about industrywide bargaining. Is it a yes, a no or a maybe? Chalmers—the member for Rankin, the current Treasurer—said, 'It's not part of our policy, David, I've just explained to you what our policy is on industrial relations, and we've already announced that some time ago. It is not our policy.' I find this outrageous. It is no wonder that even the independents are up in arms about the time that this has taken. It is too short. These are very, very detailed considerations. They have a direct impact.

Why does Labor want to do this? As the Leader of the Opposition outlined it is to pay off those unions that've supported them. We cop a lot of flak from that side about those of us on the side who don't come through the same sorts of places as the Labor Party. As I said, I started as an apprentice on 13 January 1987 at the Fairymead Sugar Mill. I can tell you that it was a heavily industrialised workforce. My first experience of a strike was when 200-plus workers from that mill walked out, wandered off and left the apprentices behind—because apprentices don't strike. You continue to go to work. My first experience was in my fourth year, out the front, with someone saying, 'Solidarity brothers, solidarity.' I said, 'Mate, what is going on?' He said, 'Well, they're going fishing and we've got to stay here and oil the drill machines and the pedestal drills in the workshop.' That went on for a number of days.

My experience with this type of activity is personal. When I completed my time—working with a number of individuals I had worked with for four years—if I didn't get my union ticket the day after, the first thing that happened was I was black-banned. I was black-banned from the place I'd been at for four years, as an apprentice, because it was unacceptable.

One of my greatest regrets is that I never learnt how to weld, because in those days demarcation prevented me from learning. It's a skill I would love to have. I am really pleased that the current crop of apprentices don't have to deal with this sort of nonsense.

I do want to shout out to a few of people I used to work with: Stumpy, Joel, Rabbit, Ross, Les, Davey, Pick, Hiscock—whose nickname I won't use because it's highly inappropriate—the boss, Alan Teasdale. There are a number of others who have names that I just can't repeat in this place. They would be appalled at this because they were always willing to fight for their rights. They were always willing to do what was necessary to keep their business running, particularly a sugar mill—which, as you know, Deputy Speaker, has to run continuously when it's on. They would be appalled at anything that would change the risk to this country; that would decrease our level of security; that would impact business and mean less employment, not more employment, because it is business that has to pay the bills.

This is always about balance. You have to get the balance right between the needs of the employer and the needs of the employee. I can see those opposite shaking their heads. They don't they think it is about balance. If the business is not making enough money they can't pay the wages and it is gone, so you have to get this right. This takes time. I say to those opposite: stop trying to charge this legislation through. You've got even more challenges in the Senate than you do in the House of Representatives. These are big changes. They're difficult changes. We've seen industry come out and absolutely attack you, which is really unusual. The fact that they are all lined up and oppose these changes should say something to the Labor Party—that this is not the right decision.

I'll come back to the people I used to work with: they were good, hardworking Australians. They were union members, and proud of it—and that is great—but they were more proud of their country. There are a number who are gone now, and I miss every single one of them, but I know they would not support this, because it is the wrong decision. It is the wrong decision; Labor should reconsider what they're doing here. Listen to the crossbench if you don't want to listen to us. Listen to business. Listen to small business and listen to the people out to pay the bills. We have to get the balance right or, quite simply, the country will suffer and the outcome will be bad for all Australians.

Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I had the very great honour of sitting in this House to hear a remarkable speech. It was delivered by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations on his tabling of this Fair Work at Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022.

I heard a minister of this House speak of gender equity and the importance of the care economy—a feminised workforce that is overworked, underpaid and undervalued. He spoke of the gender pay gap that is stubbornly high. He spoke about worker rights that have diminished drastically over the last couple of decades, due in no small part to the prevalence of insecure work. Insecure work is a scourge on our society that means workers sit by the phone, waiting for a call to a shift. They're unable to plan their lives: unable to commit to playing sport, to volunteering and to being at their kids' school events because missing an offer of work or turning down an offer of work means you don't get offered another shift. It means working two and three different jobs just to make ends meet. It means no ability to get bank loans for that desperately needed new car because of the nature of your work, and owning a home is only a dream. You have no power to ask for a pay rise or to raise occupational health and safety issues at work because it means you won't get another shift.

The minister stood there in this House and spoke of flatlining wages, despite company profits continuing to rise. What the speakers on that side of the House who keep talking about businesses failing don't seem to acknowledge is that the workers' share of national income is at an all-time low. Profits are continuing to rise but wages are not.

In the tabling of this bill, the minister spoke of a Labor government ready to change all of that, because that is what Labor governments do. They make big reforms that benefit all Australians. I have to say that I almost cried when listening to the minister give that speech in this House, in this chamber, because we have not heard words like that spoken by a minister for a decade. Finally, Australians heard a minister of their government speaking the truth about what it is like to struggle to get by, even when you have a job.

The reforms outlined in this bill, which so many of my colleagues have and will speak on over the course of this debate, go to the heart of that Labor-style reform which makes working people's lives better. Again, it was music to my ears when the minister spoke of the power of organised labour coming together in a union and working with multiple employers to maximise the process of bargaining. This is because we need to get wages rising, and bargaining is the answer. Bargaining works; we know it does. The data is evident: wage outcomes are better when organised workers stand together and bargain with their employers.

Listening to the previous speaker fearmongering—'chicken-littleing' about the sky falling in and about the world of strikes coming at us in droves because of this legislation—was absolute nonsense. It shows complete ignorance about the real world. I worked in the union movement for 20 years and striking is rare: it is a last resort. I can say that only once in my whole working life did I go on strike, and we, as nurses, cried our eyes out as we walked out those doors and laid down our tools—but so important were the issues that we had to do that.

The vast majority of bargaining ends in agreements. That's what happens. Making it easier to bargain is not about industrial action; it's about being efficient and getting wages rising. Bargaining just one aspect of getting wages rising through this bill: removing rolling fixed-term contracts; making it easier to recover unpaid entitlements; allowing flexible arrangements that work for workers and not just employers; allowing the Fair Work Commission to tackle insecurity; for women, introducing a ban on sexual harassment that means women don't have to leave the place of employment; removing secrecy clauses; making it easier for the commission to order pay increases for workers in low-paid, feminised industries—and more.

I was so proud to be here when the minister spoke his historic words, and I am proud to be in a Labor government ready to make real reform that will without doubt change people's lives. I ask the members of this House—those who are determined to amend this or even to vote it down—to listen to all voices. Listen to the workers who need this legislation as soon as possible. Don't be duped by scaremongers. This is not radical legislation. It is practical, it is workable and it will benefit businesses as well. We know that. Don't tell workers you just can't take it all in. Don't delay their wage rises. Don't delay this bill. The Chicken Littles are out there crying, 'The sky is falling!', and this legislation is far too important to be gazumped by Chicken Littles.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I and every other member in this place was elected as part of a democratic process that is the envy of many countries around the world. Internationally respected democracy does not and should not stop on election day. However, the treatment of this bill is, in my view, undemocratic and seriously undermines the parliamentary process. The government is deliberately rushing this bill through the parliament.

Members have had their opportunities to speak to the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022 curtailed, and it is so rushed that even the minister identified the need for amendments when introducing the bill. A bill of this significance, with broad-ranging impact across all industry sectors, requires proper scrutiny. This cannot be achieved when members are provided with a copy on the day of introduction and given less than two weeks to review, to explore the implications or to meet with industry and employee representatives—even just to talk to businesses in their electorates that will be affected by this—particularly when this bill is more than 250 pages long.

If this bill is as urgent and as important as the government suggests, where was the exposure draft? I think we all know the answer, because exposure drafts provide scrutiny and discussion, and they become part of the public discourse. The minister, in his second reading speech, outlined the guiding principles of the bill, and these included the need to increase wages, close the gender pay gap, address gender equity and improve job security. I don't think there's anyone in this place that disagrees with these principles. However, we must seek to achieve these in a consultative and constructive manner, not one that will unleash known and unknown consequences that, I believe, will return Australia to the industrial mayhem of the 1970s.

There is no better illustration than in part 3 of the bill, which abolishes the Australian Building and Construction Commission. We must have very short memories in this place if we are to think the removal of the ABCC is a good idea. The ABCC was established following several royal commissions into the building and construction industry. The 1990-1992 New South Wales royal commission was led by Roger Gyles, who found numerous illegal activities—from physical violence to theft. The Terence Cole royal commission, between 2001 and 2003, found a disregard for enterprise bargaining, unlawful strikes and the use of inappropriate payments. At the time, Cole said:

These findings demonstrate an industry which departs from the standards of commercial and industrial conduct exhibited in the rest of the Australian economy. They mark the industry as singular. They indicate an urgent need for structural and cultural reform.

At the heart of the findings is lawlessness. It is exhibited in many ways.

In all seriousness, do we really want to return to the dark days of intimidation, violence and lawlessness on our building sites? I think not. As such, I do not support part 3 of this bill.

There are many elements of this bill that I do support, and I know that I'm not alone in forming the view that the government should split this bill in two. The parts I do support comprise parts 4 through to 10, parts 12 to 14, parts 16 and 17, and parts 24 and 25. However, with respect to pay secrecy, I must say I am concerned that the intended outcome will not be achieved and that it may simply result in employers choosing not to pay more to staff that they find to be of greater value to the business—for fear of accusations of unfairness or an onslaught of requests from other employees who, quite simply, may not perform or be as valued.

One of my main concerns in this bill is the disproportionate effect on small business. Such enterprises do not have the financial or human resource capacity to accommodate additional complexities to what is already a complicated and laborious system. In South Australia there are 3,502 businesses employing between 20 and 199 employees, and 50,584 businesses with one to 19 employees. Combined, they represent around 36 per cent of all businesses in the state. The potential impost on these businesses cannot be understated.

In contrast, only 0.1 per cent of businesses employ more than 200 employees. Enterprise agreements favour these large employers with resources, with huge HR departments to negotiate with employee representatives. The cost-benefit is that the investment in time and resources versus the risk associated with bargaining is worth the outcome. In this context, it's not difficult to determine why enterprise bargaining has declined.

Others have weighed into the debate, including former prime minister Paul Keating. Ironically, he recently described the former Labor government's changes to the Fair Work Act as overly prescriptive and legalistic resulting in enterprise agreements falling over if a hypothetical worker is worse off in the future or if a third party that is not even a part of the agreement complains. Keating cited this as the reason for the dramatic decline in enterprise agreements and employers' avoidance due to fears of protracted negotiations without real incomes.

This bill does not address Keatings observations. In fact, it exacerbates the problem by laying the foundation of what is likely to result in industrial action, greater complexity and even more onerous responsibilities on employers, particularly small businesses. Instead of many of the proposed changes that are here, all we will be doing is making life harder for mum-and-dad businesses. For example, flexible work arrangements outlined in part 11 are broadened and, concerningly, give employees the right to request the Fair Work Commission to arbitrate when their employer has refused to grant their request for flexible working arrangements or in circumstances where the parties cannot agree on a compromised flexible working arrangement. It's absurd that the Fair Work Commission may be given powers to rule over an independent decision of a business owner.

There are many circumstances where businesses are legitimately unable to accommodate requests for flexible working arrangements. For example, in a small fruit and vegetable store in my electorate workers are needed between 4 pm and 9 pm. That's the busy time. That's when they need staff—not times that may suit the employee outside of their rostered hours. I do acknowledge that employees who are experiencing family and domestic violence need all the assistance and flexibility that can be afforded them, but there are many businesses that simply do not have the capacity to accommodate this.

We just haven't had time, with respect to this bill—COSBOA, just trying to meet with as many businesses as possible that are going to be affected by this. So I've put forward an amendment, and I move the motion circulated in my name that will take small businesses out of this equation and lift it up to 100 employees, because, quite frankly, 15 employees is so small. That's a local fruit and veg store and it's a local petrol station. Do we really think that they should have to deal with the unions? My goodness, they wouldn't have an HR department! They're lucky if they have a payroll assistant. More commonly than not it's the owners of the business who are spending their Saturday nights doing the payroll themselves.

If this amendment is not passed we will be pitting small business against the might, power and money of the unions. I have to say that I think much of this whole bill is actually about building the union movement rather than seeking to assist employees. What we need to do is to improve the award system, and that's what we saw recently with regard to aged-care workers. We don't need to force most businesses in Australia to go down through an enterprise bargaining agreement when they don't have that capacity or ability to do so.

I move:

That the following words be added after the words 90 days:   ."; and

(1) parts 1, 2 and 3 of the bill are added to the inquiry; and

(2) calls on the Government to change the definition of a small business from 15 to 100 employees".

I would ask all members in this place to consider this amendment very thoughtfully.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Cassandra Fernando (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am proud to stand here today, speaking in support of the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022. This bill goes to the core of why I put my hand up to represent the people of Holt, and why I got involved in politics in the first place.

I stand here today because I believe that the conditions for workers in this country need to be improved. For too long wages have not kept up with the cost of living, insecure work has been on the rise and gender equity has gone largely unaddressed. I saw this as a worker, as a health and safety representative and as a union organiser. The legislation before the parliament this week is the beginning of the Albanese Labor government's reform to modernise the workplace relations system, because it's clear that our current system is not working.

This situation was not helped by those opposite when they were on the government benches. For nearly 10 years their government's policy of deliberately keeping wages low and suppressing workers' pay made it harder for Australian families to get ahead. Working people in this country have clearly had enough, which is why they rejected the coalition and their antiworker agenda earlier this year. This change of government had an instant effect on wages. We made a submission to the Fair Work Commission, calling for a substantial increase in the annual wage review, and this resulted in a 5.2 per cent increase to the minimum wage. And just last week we saw the fantastic news that there will be a 15 per cent interim pay rise for aged-care workers, which is celebrated on this side of the House.

However, we know that individual wage cases are not enough. This side of the House knows that working Australians need big-picture reform that addresses deep rooted issues in our workplace relations system. The bill before the House today honours the government's commitment to get wages moving and to improve job security. A key part of this reform is boosting enterprise bargaining. For the past 10 years, under the watch of the coalition, Australia's enterprise-bargaining system has been in decline. We know that when the bargaining system is working as it should it lifts wages, reduces wage disparity and leads to lower unemployment, particularly for young people, women and low-skilled workers. Around half as many new agreements were made last year compared to the 2013-2014 financial year. This is the opposite of what we need to see in our economy, and the bill before the House today will address this problem.

This will simplify the requirements that need to be met by an enterprise agreement for it to be approved by the Fair Work Commission. Unions and business both agree that the current requirements are overly complex. This bill replaces the current criteria with one broad requirement: for the Fair Work Commission to be satisfied that an enterprise agreement has been genuinely agreed to. This change will make it easier for agreements to be approved, while maintaining sufficient protection for employees.

Importantly, this bill also introduces a number of measures to tackle gender inequity. Our wage system places a lot of emphasis on the independent industrial umpire, the Fair Work Commission, but currently the commission does not have to consider gender equity when it's making its decision. The secure jobs, better pay bill changes this. The bill will make gender equity a central objective of the Fair Work Act. This means addressing the gender pay gap will be at the heart of pay decisions made by the commission. This is a big change, and an important one. Over the past week we've read commentary from the extreme Left and the extreme Right. They seem to have found common ground in attacking some of the most pro-work legislation this chamber has seen in a decade. I know that those who genuinely have workers interests at heart will be supporting this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let's be clear: the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill is the Labor government's payday, and payback and power for the unions. The most militant of Australia's unions pour multimillions of dollars into Labor campaigns and control the Labor Party itself. This bill will be at the expense of small, medium and large businesses, courtesy of the Labor government.

Measures in this bill are going to cost the economy as well as individual small, medium and large businesses. The abolition of the ABCC alone is going to cost the Australian economy $47.5 billion, as estimated by EY, between now and 2030. The EY report also said there will be a decline in the output of the construction sector and a fall in manufacturing output. And the expansion of multi-employer bargaining and increased strike rights will come on the back of rising inflation and rising interest rates, with absolutely no productivity gains at all for business, industry or the broader economy. There will be extensive and protracted strikes, as we've seen previously; increased costs for business and consumers; and no increase in productivity and fewer jobs.

The abolition of the ABCC effectively gives control of Australia's fifth-largest industry to the CFMMEU, a construction industry that contributes nine per cent to GDP and employs 1.15 million people. As has been the CFMMEU's history, there will be even more union aggression, thuggery, bullying, intimidation and strikes on building sites, with flow-on additional cost to domestic housing construction.

Businesses are desperately concerned about this bill, and we can especially see that through some of the sectors, including mining and the resource sector, that are all opposed to patent bargaining or multi-employer bargaining. They know that not only is this bad for their businesses, but it also runs counter to the monetary policy efforts of the Reserve Bank. The Reserve Bank governor has also said we need to preserve the flexibility in the labour market.

Now we all know that patent bargaining totally ignores the differences and complexities faced by businesses in various locations and markets around Australia. And local workers in each area or community have a very sound understanding of the capacity of their business and the business they work in to pay and come to agreements around terms and conditions. The businesses themselves value their employees, knowing that they are critical to the success of that business. No longer will businesses be the decision-makers with their employees. Along with employees, the Labor government, via the unions and Fair Work Commission, will dictate terms and conditions, particularly in areas of common interest, for businesses whether they be in Augusta, in my part of the world, in Sydney, in Perth or even in Donnybrook—great diversity there!

The Fair Work Commission will not have any idea how their unilateral multi-employer bargaining decisions will impact in practice, in real terms, on the great complexity of businesses located in rural, regional and remote parts of Australia. But the fair work decision will be the same for each of these businesses, irrespective of their specific circumstances, locations or markets. That's one-size-fits-all with civil penalties for companies, and the battlelines are already drawn. We've seen John Setka on the warpath already. Building and construction sites are in the firing line, and won't there be a free-for-all at the ports. There'll be impacts on logistics, supply chains, imports, exports and the impact on perishable products is also ahead in Labor's rush to go back to the pre-Hawke and Keating years. We've seen the NFF come out about being concerned about what this will do to the ag sector.

A recent Productivity Commission report into lifting productivity at Australia's container ports stated that productivity growth has been one of the primary drivers of increasing living standards for Australians, and that restrictions on how workers are deployed by a business might mean that the costs of producing a service are higher than they need be. The report also said that, if unanticipated disruptions or shocks within input markets are not met, businesses will likely face higher costs and lower profitability and that ultimately the broader community bears these costs through price rises or temporary shortages of supply.

For the first time we see small businesses with the unions in their businesses, and this really appals me. It concerns me greatly, as it does those small businesses. Labor has frequently quoted COSBOA as supporting multi-employer bargaining. Well, I've never had a small business asking for the unions to control their business. Small business is defined as those with 20 or fewer employees, but now small businesses with between 15 and 20 employees are in the firing line. Small businesses will either actively reduce their existing workforce to stay below the 15-employee threshold to limit exposure to the unions, or they will limit business growth to stay below the 15-employee threshold.

I've already had businesses that are aware of the impacts of Labor's changes saying this is exactly what they will have to do. They cannot afford to be in the firing line, so there'll be fewer jobs and fewer flexible jobs. It's often small business that gives people their first job, and often their last job, in life. Small to medium businesses employ 97 per cent of people employed in Australia, and many of those will be caught by this legislation and will have unions knocking on their doors. These are the businesses that don't have a dedicated HR department. They're often small businesses with 20 or fewer employees who work their hearts out in their businesses in our communities in rural and regional areas.

But what is equally concerning is the 60,000 businesses that are currently employing between 20 and 40 people and that will now be dictated to by Labor and the unions. How many of these will reduce their workforce and businesses to sit below that 15-employee limit? And how many of these same small businesses will not be able to compete for employees when other sectors have been forced to increase their terms and conditions by Labor, the unions and the Fair Work Commission? I've met a number of businesses that are particularly concerned about this, and I've got example after example of businesses doing everything they can to employ as many people as possible to give them that opportunity.

We know that this is bad legislation for inflation, bad for productivity and bad for jobs. What the unions will have now is extraordinary and uncapped power to place demands on businesses for continuous pay rises and changes to terms and conditions, all determined by Labor, unions and the Fair Work Commission. I know of one particular business, one of the employers who has over 15 employees, that makes a special effort to make sure that as many women who have kids at school are employed between school hours. She employs people to be on the earlier shift and then employs these particular employees during those hours to give them a great opportunity. Then there's another group that comes in after that. This legislation is going to affect her. It's going to affect bakeries. It will affect restaurants as well because, if you're serving lunch and dinner, that will put you above that headcount of 15, and that will put you fairly in the firing line.

There are a number of other sectors that will be affected. I'm loath to actually mention businesses by name in this parliament. I don't want to see them targeted at all, but I know that that is what will happen in various sectors as a result of this. And it will happen; we have seen this previously, and we will see it again.

This is bad legislation. It is bad for inflation, it is bad for productivity and it is bad for jobs. With those comments, I will complete my remarks.

Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For far too long the circumstances of working Australians, especially low- and middle-income working Australians, have been getting harder. Wages have been flat and stagnant. Work has become more insecure. The gender pay gap has remained stubbornly wide. For a woman, earnings are 14 per cent less on average than they are for a man. Is it any surprise that women then retire with half the superannuation of men?

Over the last decade, conditions for some of the lowest-paid workers—the people, mostly women, who undertake some of the most important work in our communities: educating and caring for the very young, providing dignity in care for the very old—have gotten harder and they've gotten meaner. Without question, for the last 10 years workers have been left to fall behind, which means that, for no good reason, Australia as a whole has fallen away from our core ethos, our core value, of fairness and egalitarianism.

Now, at a time of relatively high inflation, the flatlining of wages has left Australian households suffering from sharp cost-of-living pressures. There was no reason for that to have occurred, but there was a cause. Wage stagnation in Australia didn't happen by accident. Low wages are not a naturally occurring phenomenon. When the economy is properly managed in this country and the market is shaped by responsible policies that flow from our values and from our commitment to fairness, social inclusion and shared wellbeing, then wages rise in fair proportion to profits, productivity and workforce demand.

But all of those threads were cut by those opposite. All those sensible connections and mechanisms of fairness were severed by those opposite. Low wages and insecure work were inflicted on the Australian people by a coalition government that more or less bragged about how these were a cornerstone of their economic approach. Low wages and insecure work were inflicted by the regulatory and systemic antifairness engineering of those opposite.

People in the Australian community, in my electorate of Fremantle and everywhere else should be crystal clear in understanding that there was no reason and no justification for stagnant and falling real wages in this country. In recent years we have seen rising and, indeed, record profits. We've seen growth in productivity. We have seen workforce shortages. Yet wages have gone nowhere and workers have seen their standard of living fall. Company profits as a proportion of the economy have been at a record high, yet wages as a share of the economy have been at a record low. That is wrong. It is a perversion. We know wage growth is possible. We know it's possible because last year, just to take an example, the wages of CEOs across 20 companies in Australia rose on average by 17 per cent. That's nine times the increase received by average, ordinary, full-time wage earners, whose real wages went backwards last year.

The Albanese Labor government is not going to stand by and ignore a bargaining system laid waste by those opposite. This bill will restore fairness and balance to a system that was deliberately twisted into dysfunction by the coalition. The bill puts job security and gender equity at the heart of the Fair Work Commission's decision-making process and creates two new expert panels: one on pay equity and the other on care in the community sector. It enables the commission to help resolve flexible working arrangements. It provides greater access to bargaining for low-paid workers. It will ensure that multi-employer bargaining, which is already contemplated within the act, can actually work properly when it's the right approach to take. And, of course, it follows on from this government's successful advocacy for a five per cent rise in the minimum wage and a 15 per cent rise in the pay of aged-care workers.

The bill will put a sensible framework around the use of fixed-term contracts, acknowledging that the number of workers who deal with that kind of rolling insecurity has increased by 50 per cent since 1998. The bill also gives immediate effect to the recommendations of the 2019 Migrant Workers' Taskforce, thereby reducing the scope for exploitation and the potential to undermine local working conditions.

Despite the enthusiasm by those opposite for an exercise in collective amnesia, Australians will not forget; we will not forget. They're not going to forget that the hopeless Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government went out of their way to break the social compact in this country, that they went out of their way to break our bargaining system, to dud workers and to demonise workers' representatives. Australians are right to expect a fair deal when it comes to wages and working conditions. That is core to our way of life. Australians young and old should expect safe, secure and properly paid jobs. Women, men and non-binary Australians should absolutely expect gender equity and freedom from sexual harassment in their workplaces. And all working people should expect the ability to bargain for and achieve wages that are not perpetually falling behind the cost of living, that are not disconnected from profits and productivity but instead deliver to workers their share of effort and enterprise.

That's what this Labor government is about. That's what this bill is about. It could be titled 'Cleaning up the mess and the damage of the coalition government, part 12', but let's accentuate the positive. This bill is what it says: secure jobs, better pay.

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When we get elected to this chamber, yes, different people support us here and different interests get behind different candidates. But when we are sworn in as members of parliament it is our responsibility to put the people of this nation first, not to make decisions that are related to payback and rewarding those who helped you get elected. And I take my hat off to the union movement and congratulate them, because in exchange for the tens of millions of dollars they donated to the Labor Party at the recent election they have achieved a spectacular return on that investment.

This bill before us, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022, is exactly what the union movement would want. It is not about workers, it is not about employers; it is about rewarding the union movement for their financial support of the Labor Party. In some ways we should not be surprised that one of the first things they would do upon being elected would be to repay the union movement for the financial support given to the Labor Party at the recent election and many elections before.

I also express my deep regrets to Paul Keating. Paul Keating thought he'd changed the Labor Party and he thought the Labor Party had learned from him and his leadership on these issues. This shows, to Paul Keating and others who thought the Labor Party had learned how a modern industrial relations system needed to work, that that is not in fact the case. Poor Paul Keating, who did so much hard work to bring the Labor Party's attitudes on industrial relations into a modern era, through these reforms is seeing that hard work evaporate before his eyes. We're seeing this Labor government go back to the attitudes of the 1970s.

We've heard members of the government attacking the industrial relations system in this country, and you would think it was a system created by the Liberal Party. The government are attacking the Fair Work Commission and the Fair Work Act legislated by the Rudd-Gillard government. But it's their system. It's the Labor Party's system that they legislated and created that they're now attacking and blaming for the apparent poor outcomes when it comes to wages and other things for workers. But this is a Labor Party regime, put in place by the Rudd-Gillard government, that they're now suggesting, through crocodile tears, is leading to all these terrible for workers.

Well, they could therefore start by apologising for the framework that they themselves have legislated and that they're now attacking and tearing apart and stop trying to suggest that it's in any way the fault of the previous Liberal government. We basically left that regime untouched. We attempted during COVID to make sensible changes to the Fair Work Act, and the Labor Party absolutely refused to have any discussion about sensible industrial relations reform whatsoever. So, the system we have is absolutely one the Labor Party created, and for them to now suggest that it's a broken Liberal Party system is rank hypocrisy and is absolutely laughable. Of course, union membership in this country has collapsed in the past two decades. I think the most recent data from the ABS showed that membership was down around 14 per cent.

You would think that if the logic of those opposite held true, that workers in this country were so poorly treated and hard done by, then union membership would go up. Employees who, according to the arguments of those opposite, thought they were being dealt such a poor hand, would naturally join unions, not leave unions. If they were unhappy with their conditions, their wages, their representation and their employers, they would be joining unions, not leaving unions. It's completely ludicrous—absolutely ludicrous—to suggest that the situation in our nation right now is one of workers believing that they are fundamentally hard done by, and that the system that operates now is one in which they can't achieve good outcomes between them and their employers.

This is ultimately what this bill is about: turning Australians against each other. In an atmosphere of harmony that we have, compared to decades gone by, what this government wants to do is turn Australian against Australian. It wants to say to employees: 'Your enemy is your employer. They are out to screw you over. They hate you, they don't want to look after you. They don't value you. The only way for you to improve your circumstances is to go to war with your employer.' I have not ever dealt with an employer or met an employer that doesn't value their employees as the greatest asset in their business. To suggest that we need to create a regime in our industrial relations systems that turns harmony into warfare, that says, 'We want employees to be turned against their employers,' is absolutely disgraceful.

We need to fight against this and stand up against it, particularly the suggestion that the last few decades of relative harmony that we have had in the workplaces and on the shop floors of the businesses of this country is something that we need to fight to cling onto. I acknowledge Paul Keating and his government, and the reforms with Bill Kelty, a great union leader who understood the value of productivity being central to industrial relations reform. He understood that enterprise bargaining at the business level was a way of letting employees and employers come together, talk about the specifics of the business and come up with changes and improvements to the award structure that were better for employees and employers. Compared to the 1970s in particular, we have had relative harmony in the way in which employees and employers negotiate their pay and conditions in this country.

I'm not going to say that the Fair Work Act brought on by the Gillard-Rudd government is anything fantastic, because it took us pre-Keating 1991, 1992, and 1993—pre-Keating and Kelty. That, through Paul Keating's own words, is exactly why we have had such a reduction in enterprise bargaining agreements in our economy—it's because of the stringency that was put in place, the theoretical 'person worse off under the boot' test that meant so many agreements were not worth negotiating. So we could go back to that Keating-era enterprise bargaining regime, and the coalition would support that, but that's not what the government is proposing whatsoever. The government is repaying their union movement for millions of dollars of donations to their political campaign. They are trying to help the union movement rehabilitate their relevance. Employees of this nation have turned their backs on the union movement, evidenced through the collapse in membership, because they don't need them anymore—they're very happy with the harmonious workplace environment and negotiating environment that they have under the systems that we've had for the past few decades.

This is not about workers. This is not about gender pay equity or anything like that. This is about giving back relevance to the union movement and helping the union movement rehabilitate their membership by triggering a new war in workplaces between employees and employers—which neither want. The only people that want that are the union movement, and we saw in the seventies what the economic outcomes are of that. And they are not good for employees. They are not good for employers. They are not good for our economy. But they are good for the union bosses. And we in this chamber need to do a lot better than pass laws that are not about the people of this country but are about a vested interest like them, and that is why I implore the House to defeat this bill.

Debate interrupted.