Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I commence my remarks on the Workplace Relations Amendment (A Stronger Safety Net) Bill 2007 by congratulating the Labor members on the Employment Workplace Relations and Education Committee on their minority report on this bill. All of them come with extensive experience of not only actually having a real job—as opposed to what people claim we do in this place—but also representing the needs of workers: something that, according to those opposite, we should all be ashamed of. So I commend to the Senate their report and a number of the submissions that the inquiry received, although, as has been outlined by my good friend Senator Carol Brown, the inquiry was, as it often is in this place, unnecessarily hasty.

Those of us that were involved in the original debate for an industrial relations system that dare not speak its name anymore—Work Choices—will recall in particular Senator Abetz, when he had carriage of this legislation, assuring us that we did not need to discuss fairness because it was implied. We did not need a safety net, we did not need fairness and we did not need pay equity because no-one would behave in an unethical manner. No employer would try and exploit an employee—none of the examples that workers’ representatives brought to the committee and brought to members of this place would ever take place, and those of us on this side of the chamber and from the trade union movement and other worker representative organisations were being unnecessarily alarmist. Well, it would seem that perhaps we do need fairness—or perhaps we just need a political fix. Perhaps people do not see the original legislation—the system that dare not speak its name—as being fair and balanced, and therefore there is a political problem. Though those opposite try and make much of the booming economy and the resources sector in my home state, there is a political problem there when it comes to fairness and the treatment of workers in occupations where they are not as well equipped in representing their own interests—the bargaining is not that even. So this is a political fix to a political problem. It is not a real fix, nor is it a practical fix to a real problem—that was the removal in the first place of the no disadvantage test. To see that, you only have to compare the words of the Prime Minister with what is going on in the workplace. On 4 May 2007, when the Prime Minister made the announcement of this political fix, he said at his press conference:

But where the penalty rates et cetera are taken out or are modified in any way there’ll be a fairness test and the fairness test will inquire whether adequate compensation has been provided in return. Now in the great bulk of cases that compensation will take the form probably of an increase in the hourly rate to take account of the non payment of penalty rates but the compensation can take a non-monetary form and in examining whether adequate compensation’s been paid the authority will have to look at all aspects of the agreement. In some cases extremely flexible working arrangements can be given in return for the non payment of penalty rates.

What does that mean to the average person who is trying to get a job as a childcare worker, who wants to work as a part-time or casual shop assistant or who is working in the hospitality industry? How do they negotiate their way through that? We then learn that, if they do not think the authority has examined their individual agreement properly in ensuring they get adequate compensation, their remedy is to take it to the High Court. Well, that is fair, isn’t it! Talk about out of touch and talk about desperation.

The reality is that this piece of legislation will simply keep a weak or nearly non-existent safety net in operation and the bill does absolutely nothing to provide for a genuinely stronger safety net. That is the fairness that Senator Abetz said we did not need to have in the original Work Choices legislation.

Then we come to the effectiveness of the government advertising. You can always tell it is a political fix when it is advertised before we see the legislation. You absolutely know it is a political fix to a political problem when the ads are on television before the committee can even see the draft legislation.