Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers given by Senator Abetz during question time today. For months and months in this place Senator Abetz and his colleagues have claimed the unions and the Labor Party are Chicken Littles. They have claimed we are Chicken Littles running around prophesying doom now that the new industrial laws, the Prime Minister’s lifelong political dream, have passed this parliament. Senators opposite, aren’t the chickens coming home to roost? For that matter, Senator Abetz, a fair percentage of them are roosting on your doorstep in Tasmania.

Let us look at some of the reported incidents that have emerged since 27 March, three days ago. The Financial Review today reports in a break-out on page 7:

A Tasmanian sports club manager was dismissed on Monday after 10 years’ service. The worker was sacked at a disciplinary meeting ...

The meeting, we are told, was rescheduled from last Thursday to Monday, the day these laws came into force. A company called Triangle Cables sacked nine employees on Tuesday for no specified reason. The Melbourne company, InstallEx sacked the workers as permanent employees and offered them their own jobs back as casuals or independent contractors. Two people who worked in a photo lab in Sydney were sacked, one a permanent employee aged 65. A maritime worker from Cairns was sacked following a disciplinary meeting on 14 March. He did not hear a thing about it until 27 March, the day after these laws commenced.

During the year, those on the other side constantly argued that we needed to catch up with New Zealand and other countries around the world who have tried this workplace experiment. They implied that somehow we were missing out on something special that these countries had. As I said a few months ago, the irony is that they are actually right. But, while they were pretending that we were missing out on a positive world of workplace happiness and personal wealth aplenty for workers, the reality is now only too clear: we were missing out on a world of unnecessary hardship and unfairness—one of lower pay and poorer conditions for the hardworking men and women of this great country.

That is what these stories of hardship and unfairness tell us, and that is what Work Choices was always about. It was never about choice, flexibility or higher wages. It was about handing the limited power and rights that workers enjoyed to their employers. John White, owner of the Tasmanian firm Delta Hydraulics, which I am sure Senator Abetz is well acquainted with, put it best today on the front page of the Australian. As Brad Norrington reported:

The Howard Government’s new industrial relations laws have given John White the legal ammunition he has wanted for many years to sack 10 per cent of his workforce.

“The gun’s been removed from the employee’s hand,” Mr White said yesterday.

The article went on to point out that, with 98 staff, John White’s company falls under the exemption from unfair dismissal for businesses employing fewer than 100 workers. While he claims that he will not be moving to sack workers overnight, it is a bitter time ahead for the Delta Hydraulics workforce, with White giving notice that he will be looking again in three months to see what productivity is like. This is exactly the kind of fear and intimidatory workplace practice that Labor feared under these divisive laws. It was always going to be this way under Work Choices and it is a national disgrace.

Again today in question time we found a government that is not prepared to address important questions about the demonstrated impact of these laws. Rather, we found a government hiding behind rhetoric, obfuscating and attempting to avoid at all costs questions of any kind. Question time is a quest for transparency and accountability. That quest for transparency should see ministers in this parliament and those who represent them in this chamber prepared to address the questions asked of them, especially on such a serious and important issue as the impact of the new industrial relations laws. But this government is turning a blind eye.

To see this we need only look at Telstra, a company that, for the moment, is still owned in large part by the Australian people and is subject to government control. On 28 March it was reported in News Ltd papers that Telstra was seizing on the commencement of these laws to ban union officials from some of its work sites. It was one of the first cabs off the rank once these changes came in. As we have seen, it is not alone now, a few days later. The sad fact is that this government refuses to tell the parliament anything, but its ministers are prepared to say all sorts of things to the right audience behind closed doors. (Time expired)