Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

He can direct them! He can seek that information. The Howard government does not want this information out because it realised in May 2006 that exactly what we on this side of the chamber said would happen has happened—that those AWAs, for the vast majority of people, are about reducing wages and conditions. That is why you do not want this information out there and why you do not want to come clean.

Despite the government’s refusal to give out any of this information—not to ask the Office of the Employment Advocate or the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations more broadly to do a review and tell the Australian people exactly what is happening under AWAs—some information is still getting out there. It is even getting out there to Liberal candidates. We know, for example, that Pru Goward on Radio National recently made the following statement about people in the seat of Goulburn, where she was campaigning for the New South Wales election:

... they were telling me that their shift loadings were being cut and their incomes ... were going down.

Today in question time we also heard about the Nationals’ candidate for Tweed, Mr Provest, who had raised concerns about his son’s penalty rates and indicated that more needed to be done to protect those penalty rates. The reality is that, despite the government trying not to release figures and not telling people what is happening on AWAs, even their own candidates are starting to become aware of the impact Work Choices is having on working Australian families.

The Australian people understand this. They understand that if Prime Minister Howard were so sure that AWAs were good for working families he would require that the data be released. Why have you stopped everything since May 2006 when the damning statistics were released by your own Office of the Employment Advocate? Why have you stopped any further information coming out? If you were so sure this is doing good, you would not be frightened, Senator Abetz—through you, Mr Deputy President—of releasing this data. The reality is that the Howard government has simply refused to release information on the impact of its industrial relations changes since May last year.

I think Australians deserve to know what the impact is. I am a South Australian senator. I think South Australians deserve to know the impact of Australian workplace agreements on their wages and conditions. I think all Australians deserve to know that. Why will you not release the information as to what AWAs in my home state of South Australia or, indeed, around the country are doing to workers’ wages and conditions? You do not want to release it because you do not want people to know the truth. The reality is that the government simply wants to hide it.

What is most concerning on this first anniversary is this: we know, because Senator Minchin, a South Australian senator, has let the cat out of the bag previously, that the government wants to go further. We know that Senator Minchin, in front of the HR Nicholls Society, virtually apologised for the fact that these extreme laws did not go far enough. So, one year on, I ask Senator Abetz or anyone else in the government: how much is left? How much more do you want to do? What further unfair changes do you want to try to ram through and impose on Australian working families? What are you going to do to the wages and conditions of South Australians and of all Australians? We already know that Senator Minchin is of the view that the government needs to go further in industrial relations changes and in stripping away fairness from the workplace.

Let us have a look at some of what we do know from Australian Bureau of Statistics information. A report on ABS statistics was released not long ago. The report shows that on average, across the country, workers on AWAs earned three per cent less than workers on collective agreements. When you take out the state of Western Australia, which is obviously doing extremely well economically because of the resources boom, the shortfall is even greater—around 10 per cent. The two major sources of data on the gender pay gap show a recent deterioration in women’s pay relative to men’s, especially in the private sector, with some or all of the gains over the previous decade being lost under Work Choices. It has also been demonstrated that women in permanent full-time jobs are working 1.3 hours more per week if they are on an Australian workplace agreement than if they are on a collective agreement. So they are working longer. But there is more. They are earning five per cent less per week; and when you look at the hourly wage, the shortfall for women on AWAs is about eight per cent and for casuals it is about 17 per cent. It is completely untrue to say that AWAs are good for working women or good for workers who have very little bargaining power. That is the reality. And that is why the government does not want to show the information it could release on the actual impact of AWAs.

Why doesn’t the government do what it should do, and that is come clean with the Australian people? We know that the minister, Joe Hockey, has more than 400 answers from his department to questions put on notice at Senate estimates in November 2006 that are simply sitting on his desk. The department of workplace relations confirmed in February this year that, of the 800 questions asked, 400 answers have been provided but are being held up in the minister’s office. The reality is the government does not want to provide this information.

So let us remind ourselves yet again, one year on, of what we have seen. We know from the government’s own data that AWAs cut wages and conditions. And who can forget some of the cases that have hit the headlines in the last 12 months? One that I particularly remember was the dismissal on the day of the commencement of this legislation of two apprentices in South Australia who were unfairly retrenched. It is referred to in the Adelaide Advertiser today. The only thing protecting them was South Australian industrial laws, the very laws you want to try and override, insofar as they relate to contracts of training. The reality is that what your government has done is undercut wages and conditions, undercut job security, and removed and eroded people’s rights in the workplace. That is the legacy of the Howard government.

We need to cut through all the rhetoric from the other side about Work Choices and look at what the real facts are. We need to think about people like the Spotlight workers; like the Cowra abattoir workers. We need to think about people like Annette Harris, who was told: ‘Here’s the 2c an hour but you lose the rest of your penalty rates and other conditions.’ We need to consider workers such as Michael King at the Hilton IGA, who was told: ‘Either you get a wage-cutting AWA or no job at all.’ And we need to think about the employees at Lufthansa who are up to $50 a week worse off. These are the real stories, the real personal experiences of working Australians one year on. So we can truly say when we look at these and other statistics, but particularly at these personal stories of Australians, that these laws are hurting working Australian families. (Time expired)