John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

Anyone with a sense of justice, equity and fair-mindedness, Senator Bernardi, would realise what that agreement was about. It was not about delivering fairness, equity and justice to people. The sooner you wake up to it, the better, because you should understand, as much as anyone else. You have got an intellect. Come to grips with the facts. Even Senator Mason here knows that these people, under the Darrell Lea or even under the Spotlight agreement, were not in receipt of fairness, justice or any equity whatsoever. They were simply the subject of a rip-off by their employers. Fortunately some of those matters have been redressed. This legislation has been portrayed by some as a backflip. That is complete nonsense. This maintains the harsh, unfair, unjust and extreme IR laws—the Work Choices laws—that this government put in place back in November 2005.

That the government have gone down this path is a hypocritical act. It is of course welcomed that they think there might be a need for a sense of fairness, equity and justice, but this is too little too late. The government have let a wash of AWAs go past already, and those AWAs are not subject to any fairness test that this legislation might pretend to put in place. Purely and simply, the legislation will take effect from a prospective date. That is, of itself, insufficient—if there was unfairness in the legislation, that unfairness should have been redressed in the original legislation, not some 15 to 18 months after the legislation was originally passed. This is purely and simply a political stunt by the government to try to crawl back in the polls. That is all it is about—it is a political move on the part of the government, and I can understand why the government is making this cynical political move.

This does not restore anything to those who have already signed away conditions of employment through an AWA. To believe that these people entered into it necessarily in a willing and helpful fashion is quite nonsensical when one knows that many of these people are in a vulnerable position and would have to enter into an agreement of their employer’s making and choice rather than to sacrifice any income. It does not save anyone who comes on as a new employee and is forced onto an AWA, and it does nothing at all for those people on NAPSAs—notional agreements preserving state awards. Why? Because these cease to exist from 27 March 2009.