Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think it is interesting that we are here today discussing the government’s workplace relations policy, Work Choices, because I understand that at this very moment there is a discussion going on within the government ranks about whether the Prime Minister is going to keep his job or whether he will be removed for ‘operational reasons’. Will he be fairly or unfairly dismissed? I do not think it matters. I think that on the other side of the chamber they are trying to figure out how they can get rid of the Prime Minister, because he has become a substantial liability to them. He has become a liability because it is his ideological obsession with deregulating Australia’s system of fairness and wage justice that has brought the government to the situation they find themselves in today. It is a situation where the Australian public are making it very clear they have had enough of Work Choices and enough of AWAs, and they want to see a return to fairness and justice in the Australian industrial relations system.

We should remember that it was Mr Howard who, back in 1996, said that he wanted Australians to feel ‘relaxed and comfortable’. I have never forgotten that. I can tell you that a lot of Australians today do not feel relaxed and comfortable. Senator Ursula Stephens, during question time today, pointed out that every week record numbers of people in New South Wales are losing their homes because they cannot meet their mortgage payments. The government waxes on about the low interest rates. The fact of the matter is that today a much greater percentage of household income is spent on mortgages than ever before. That is why people have been losing their homes—as interest rates have gone up on five consecutive occasions.

Mr Howard also told us that no Australians would be worse off under his government. Well, after 10 years many, many Australian families are worse off. A lot of Australians are worse off, particularly those that have been forced onto Australian workplace agreements as a result of this government’s policies. But Mr Howard tells us that Australians have never been better off. What an absolute load of rot that is.

I recall over the past 10 or 11 years of this government the various debates that went on in this parliament as the government sought to whittle away and to undermine our system of industrial relations fairness and wage justice. They presided over an ever-increasing gulf between, on the one hand, a reduction in the protections for ordinary workers who relied upon industrial awards and the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and, on the other hand, executive salaries, which have skyrocketed. You now pick up a copy of the Financial Review any day and see the levels of bonus payments, levels of directors’ fees and salaries that are paid to senior executives, and there is absolutely no cap or control on them. The government have used the corporations power to extend their reach into industrial relations, but they have only used it for the weakest—the people who have the least bargaining power when it comes to their employment. They have not once considered the use of the corporations power to try and rein in the growth of executive salaries in this country.

When the government gained absolute control of the Senate after the last election, it proceeded apace to basically rip up the entire system of industrial protection in this country to give effect to the Prime Minister’s long-held ideological obsession. Suddenly the definition of a small business went from 20 or 25 employees, as we all understood it was, to 100, so that any person employed in a business of fewer than 100 employees lost their rights to pursue an unfair dismissal claim. We just heard from Senator Birmingham about how many times we voted against the government’s changes. I am proud of the 42 times I voted against them, because what you were voting for, what you were putting through as legislation, was taking away the fundamental right of a worker to sue—to take action legally—if they believe they have been unfairly dismissed.