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

As indicated, Labor will be opposing amendment (43). Let us be clear about what amendment (43) does: it inserts in division 3A the requirement in relation to the workplace relations fact sheet. The fact of the fact sheet, as it were, was disclosed in some media just recently. What we see now is that the Howard government, not content with spending millions and millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on government advertising in industrial relations and other portfolio areas, wants to use its legislative authority to impose a requirement that millions of existing Australian employees be given a fact sheet by their employer. It is quite extraordinary that the government believes it is appropriate to require this in workplaces. It really is yet another example of government-mandated propaganda.

Let us be clear—this is not about information; this is not about making sure people know their rights: this is all about the government knowing it has an issue with the popularity or lack of popularity of Work Choices prior to the election and using every means at its disposal to try to remedy that. This is all about government spin. Senator Abetz may well get up shortly and talk about the importance of employees having information about their rights. It is interesting, isn’t it, that we did not see this attention or this commitment to providing employees with information about what the Howard government would do on industrial relations before the last election?

I do not recall, Senator Abetz, the full horror of your Work Choices position being articulated to the electorate. Does anyone here recall any Liberal Party advertising that said, ‘Hey, guess what—we are going to allow your penalty rates to be taken away’? Whoopy-do. ‘Hey, guess what—we are going to allow you to trade off public holidays.’ ‘Hey, guess what—we are going to protect only a very small number of conditions and we are going to talk about protected award conditions, but they are actually not protected.’ I do not recall any of that sort of advertising funded by the Liberal Party. Amazingly, after the election and after Work Choices was put in, we suddenly saw this heartfelt commitment by the Howard government to provide employees with information about their Work Choices legislation.

So let’s be clear: what this amendment inserts into the act are provisions relating to the workplace relations fact sheet. It also gives the government a broad discretion to amend the form and content of that fact sheet through regulation. This will potentially allow the government to avoid scrutiny about the content of the fact sheet during this debate and subsequently, and it may well allow the government to insert a requirement for further or different information prior to the federal election.

We understand what this amendment is all about. This amendment is all about putting in place a legislative framework which will require government propaganda to be given to employees. Of course, what we know is that this is all about getting this information out prior to the next election. That is what this is about. This is a pre-election stunt. It is interesting from a government that says, ‘We are about freedom, individual freedom’ et cetera. They are actually also going to require employers, at the risk of breaching the provision in the act, to give employees these fact sheets within a period of seven days upon commencement of employment and they will potentially face fines if they fail to do so. It is quite interesting. We have government-mandated propaganda and potential fines for employers if they fail to pass this on to people.

So, yes, Labor is opposed to this. We do not think it is appropriate to have mandated government propaganda placed in this legislation. This is a government that spent $55 million on advertising its Work Choices legislation. Now, on the basis of pollsters’ advice, they are ditching the phrase ‘Work Choices’ and they are spending potentially up to an additional $36.5 million on their second tranche of Work Choices advertising. I note that the minister has never come in here and discounted that figure being on the public record, nor has he ever said how much the government intends to spend between now and the next election on the Work Choices mark 2 campaign, or the ‘Let’s Pretend it’s not Work Choices’ campaign, which is probably a better way to badge it.

This government spent, I think, $4.1 million at a cost of about $25,000 an hour on their first tranche of the mark 2 Work Choices advertising campaign and this is a government that, the day after the Prime Minister’s announcement, had full-page advertisements in every national Australian paper and every metropolitan daily over that weekend saying, ‘This is our whiz-bang new change to our legislation.’ Paradoxically, one of the things we found out in estimates is that they actually class that as non-campaign advertising. How Orwellian is that? You make an announcement about a policy change, you get the taxpayers to pay for it and you call it non-campaign advertising—non-campaign advertising that just happens to be drafted in consultation with the Prime Minister’s office. This is the sort of grubby political advertising propaganda that we see from this government, which knows it has got a political problem with its industrial relations system but which is not interested in actually resolving the problem. What it is interested in is resolving the spin. This is an amendment that is all about yet more Howard government propaganda with respect to workplace relations.