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

Forty pages of amendments were guillotined, Senator Murray reminds me. I recall getting 336 amendments some 30 minutes before the committee stage commenced, but that is another issue.

Time and again in this place the government voted in that debate against putting the principle of fairness in the legislation. In fact, I recall Senator Abetz making some interesting comments during that time. When we were trying to ask him to justify this, Senator Abetz said, on page 50 of the Hansard:

You could have fairness without actually saying it.

Clearly, you could not have had a modicum of fairness, because now you have bowled up with a bill that has ‘fairness’ in it, in an attempt to try to deal with your political problem that is Work Choices. Senator Abetz also said:

Very briefly, it is implicit in what the parameters are. To use fancy words to say that as a result of putting in the word ‘fair’ it somehow will or will not make it fair will not necessarily assist anyone in this debate.

What a ridiculous contribution to this chamber! What a ridiculous contribution, particularly in the light of what you are now doing, which is seeking to put some words about fairness into this rotten piece of legislation. Let us also remember that in that debate this government voted not only against fairness but against the protection of penalty rates, against the protection of meal breaks and against pay equity. Who can forget that? Pay equity is the principle that you should have equity between different types of jobs, and it entitles women to earn the same wage for work of equal value. The government voted against that, and then bowls up here and try and convince the Australian people, through these amendments, that this is a political fix to all the problems that its Work Choices legislation introduced.

This is not a government that believes in fairness at work. This is a government operating with a simple and arrogant approach to governing this country: pollsters first, advertising second and policy third. That is what this bill is all about: pollsters first, advertising second and policy third. This bill is not about the Howard government listening to the Australian people; it is about the government listening to its pollsters. It is not about tough decisions, conviction and the national interest; it is about politics—first, second and third. It is not about the government providing fair compensation for employees; it is about the Howard government hiding the unfairness of its legislation until after the next election.

The reality is that since this Prime Minister secured control of this chamber he has changed. The arrogance which came with that power has caused the Prime Minister to betray the Aussie battlers he always claimed to represent. Mr Howard could have created a workplace relations system built on fairness and balance and on protecting vulnerable workers, but instead he fell under the spell of implementing his lifelong obsession to impose his extreme views about industrial relations on the Australian people. Let us not forget that it was Senator Minchin, the Leader of the Government in this place, who came out with some honest statements about the government’s real plans. The government’s real plans are nothing to do with reintroducing fairness. That is just a political fix to get you through to the next election. Senator Minchin made it very clear, in March 2005, when he said to the HR Nicholls Society:

We do need to seek a mandate from the Australian people at the next election for another wave of industrial relations reform.

In other words, Senator Minchin did not think the Work Choices legislation went far enough. That is the real agenda. The only reason we have some words about fairness being introduced into the Work Choices legislation now is that the government knows it has a political problem.

The Australian people are not going to be fooled by this. When the Prime Minister says he is not for turning on the fundamentals of Work Choices he is actually being truthful. This is his creation. It is his political labour of love, and he wants it to continue. As I said, we know from Senator Minchin, and from comments by the Treasurer and others, that the government actually wants to go further in industrial relations. What none of the government really wants—unless they are dragged kicking and screaming to it—is a fairness test. That is why we saw Mr Costello refusing to rule out removing the test we are currently debating, until after the election. And that is why we have this quick political fix. We have the spectacle of this government no longer using the words ‘Work Choices’ because they have become a hated name of its hated laws. And, as I said, this government continues to use taxpayer funds to try and fix its political problems through advertising.

Finally, what does the government do? It brings this bill into parliament. It is the Prime Minister’s way of pretending to fix Work Choices without really fixing it. Minister Hockey does the same. He has been saying for months that there is no methodology to determine whether employees on Work Choices AWAs are better off, because of the need to compare apples with apples, but he found a methodology quick smart when the polls and the Prime Minister demanded it. For a bill that is supposed to be about fairness, it is interesting that the government could only bring itself to mention the word ‘fair’ five times in 83 pages of new laws.

We know the Prime Minister is a clever politician, but the fact is that this is a quick political fix, not a real fix. And that fact is made clear by asking one simple question: does anyone in this chamber, or any Australian, actually believe this bill would be before this parliament if this were not an election year? Of course it would not be. The electorate will judge the Prime Minister’s motives and his quick political fix later this year. The task for the opposition is to judge this bill. Any cogent analysis of the bill shows that the so-called fairness test within it is a fake fairness test. It will not bring Australians the fairness that they have lost, because of the extreme nature of the Work Choices legislation. The only way to do that is the Labor way—by ripping up Work Choices and ending unfair Australian workplace agreements.

But Labor supported this bill in the House, and we will do so in the Senate. Work Choices is inherently unfair, but if there is a chance that this bill will make a difference to one worker in Australia in the interim we will support it. If a low-paid worker is offered an AWA this afternoon, and that AWA takes away all 11 of their protected award conditions—like overtime and penalty rates—for no monetary or non-monetary compensation, then this bill might just stop that AWA. But let us make no mistake: this does nothing to alter the inherent unfairness of Work Choices and its key objective, which is to cut workers’ pay and conditions.

However, this bill fails resoundingly in many other areas. The hundreds of thousands of workers who have already signed up to unfair AWAs and who have received no compensation for losing these conditions get nothing from this bill. Since Work Choices commenced, workers who have been offered AWAs which took away protected award conditions without any compensation—like the AWAs for the workers at Spotlight or the AWAs for the casuals at Darrell Lea—will get nothing from this bill. The bill will not produce any fair outcome for Australian workers who have lost other important award conditions such as rostering protection, redundancy or long service leave entitlements. Under the government’s new test, these employees will not be entitled to these award conditions or to any compensation in lieu of them. In fact, if they are offered these basic entitlements, which used to form part of the safety net for workers in this country, they will now be considered as fair compensation for the loss of other award conditions such as penalty rates and overtime. Effectively, workers have to trade one set of conditions against another. In the words of Orwell: some award conditions are apparently more equal than other award conditions.