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

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

I particularly want to focus on the non-answers provided by Senator Abetz in relation to two issues, which demonstrate yet again how the Howard government’s extreme workplace laws have been bad for working Australians and their families. The first issue which this government is extraordinarily embarrassed about is the enormous backlog in the processing of agreements under their so-called fairness test. From the government’s own figures, we see that over 100,000 Australian workplace agreements are waiting to be approved under the government’s new system. This is a complete bureaucratic bungle. This is a red-tape nightmare for working Australian families and also for employers who are party to those agreements.

There is a backlog of over 100,000 Australian workplace agreements awaiting approval. Guess how many, under the new system, the Howard government have managed to actually process since their much trumpeted and much advertised new industrial relations laws—the result of what Mr Textor told Mr Howard to do. They have managed to process just over 6,000. There is a backlog of over 100,000 and just over 6,000 have actually passed, and 42,000 agreements require more information to be provided. This demonstrates many things. The first thing it demonstrates is that when the government pushed through its extreme industrial relations laws, it did not have a plan other than to get through to the next election. We all know, everyone in this chamber knows—and if those on the other side were honest they would get up and acknowledge this—that the government’s so-called fairness test was nothing more than a fig leaf to get them through to the next election. Australian working families know that these Howard government laws are bad for working people. They are bad for their wages and conditions and for their job security. They know that. The government passed a set of laws that were nothing more than a fig leaf to get them through to the next election because their polling information was telling them that Australians knew what was happening. They knew that these laws were about stripping away hard-won entitlements such as penalty rates, overtime, shift allowances and so forth. The government have got a complete bureaucratic bungle here, with over 100,000 agreements just sitting there waiting to be processed, with 30,000 a month coming in. Even if this government were re-elected, how many months would it be before this backlog was processed?

I ask the Senate to consider one thing—and the minister refused to engage with this issue when asked the question: how many of those 100,000 agreements are in fact so unfair that they fail the fairness test? As a result of your bureaucratic bungle, how many Australian workers are working under agreements which would not pass your so-called fairness test and will continue to have to work under inferior wages and conditions and under agreements which strip away penalty rates, overtime and shift allowances? How many Australians are covered by those 100,000 agreements? How many Australians will be working under agreements which are actually unlawful? The fact is you do not know. You cannot give an answer. All you can say is, ‘We’ve managed to process just over 6,000, but we do have 100,000 outstanding.’ There may be 100,000 working Australians involved here, some of whom will be covered by an agreement which is so unfair it would fail the fairness test, but they will have no recourse for months under this government. They will continue to have to take home lower wages and experience inferior conditions because of your unfair laws and because the one change you put in place prior to the election has not been able to be implemented.

Finally, in relation to the revelations in the papers today about the way in which the government’s laws make it easier to sack people, yet again what we see from Senator Abetz is not a denial that these laws make it easier to sack people—he did not even deny it; we see him shooting the messenger, shooting the academic. We see the same thing over and over again from Senator Abetz in this place. He is not prepared to engage with the argument. All we get is a personal, smear attack. That is all he does. He attacks the individual. Come in here, Senator Abetz, during question time and answer the question, and explain to the Australian people why your laws make it easier for large employers to sack people. If you do not believe that that is the case, explain why it is not. What we saw again today is ducking and weaving, and another political attack on various individuals, but not dealing with the key issue. (Time expired)