Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in this debate, which is very similar to the debate that took place this morning on another motion about the same matter. Unfortunately, I did not get an opportunity to speak then, as the time allowed for that debate was expiring. I want to talk about some of the furphies that have been introduced into this debate over this motion and in relation to the same issues that were raised earlier this morning and try to deal with them, because, quite frankly, I took exception to many of the comments and allegations made about the motives of the government in this matter. This morning Senator Murray referred to this government as a lazy government with respect to trying to have a shorter—than what he would like—inquiry into this legislation. I take exception to those comments and reject them.

Let us just go through the facts about what the government has actually been doing. An enormous amount of work and consultation has been undertaken by this government to get this legislation right, right back from when it was developed as a policy position. We announced our policy intentions about this matter in April 2007 and we provided detailed implementation strategies of the policy in August 2007. These policies have been in the public realm for almost a year.

Since taking government, we have also been involved in a comprehensive consultative process with unions, employers and other experts about the development of our policy position into the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008. That has taken place at many levels. There was certainly significant consultation with the National Workplace Relations Consultative Council and its subcommittee, the Committee of Industrial Legislation. That involved experts from employer and employee organisations sitting around the table and developing the policy into a bill through consultation. The bill was then subject to discussion at the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council, and the council debated the bill and the effects of the bill and ultimately endorsed the Rudd Labor government’s policy directions and our intention to go forward with the bill. There was enormous consultation. With the greatest of respect—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President Watson—Senator Murray knows how difficult that consultation can be. So an enormous amount of hard work has been done by this government to get this bill balanced, fair and right.

I do not suggest for one second that that sort of consultation should replace Senate scrutiny. I am not suggesting that at all. But whenever we talk about referring bills to committees, we need to also look at what is required, the work of the committee, and whether the committee can actually do its job in a particular time frame. Mr Acting Deputy President Watson, you are the new deputy chair of the committee that is going to look at this reference. The Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations was established yesterday, and we have absolutely no work before us. So it is really a question of whether the committee can do the work required by this chamber—or what the government thinks the committee can actually do in terms of scrutinising this bill—in the appropriate time. There should not be any arbitrary minimum time for scrutiny. It really depends upon the size of the bill, its impact and the amount of time it has been in the public domain.

Contrast that consultation process with that of the Work Choices legislation itself. Had anyone seen it? No. It was developed in secret with some employer-friendly lawyers over a long period of time. There was very little consultation. We did not have any idea what was in it. There was never any policy position put out from the government. They certainly did not go to an election with any detailed policy or implementation plans. They put it in this place and effectively gave us a single day of hearings when we had to jam through all the people who wanted to make substantial submissions. It was really an obstructed Senate process as far as I was concerned, and we had a very short time to do it.

Senator Ellison made some reference this morning to the size of the bill. He said that it was some 100 pages in length. Let me remind the Senate that the Work Choices legislation was some 800 pages in length. And, after the truncated Senate scrutiny process, when we got to the day when the bill was going to be debated in the chamber, we had another 100 pages of amendments put on the table, none of which would have substantially changed the legislation.

We do not say that we do not want to have Senate scrutiny. In fact we say we do want to have Senate scrutiny. But what we also want to do is to make sure that the bill is passed in a reasonable time frame to put an end to AWAs. That was clearly what we went to the election with. We said we would end AWAs and that is what we will do. We have worked with unions, employers and academics to develop a bill resulting from our public policy position that was front and centre going into the election. I acknowledge that Senator Ellison acknowledged that this morning. He said that industrial relations were front and centre in the election—absolutely. There were no secrets about what our policy was, and we have gone through a comprehensive, consultative process right up until now.

Now that we are at the point where we have done that, we have a bill that in today’s press was described by Heather Ridout, Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group, as being ‘balanced and fair’. I make the point that people from employer organisations can say that because of the work that was done by this government in developing this consultative process. Again, I make the point: that does not mean we do not need a proper Senate scrutiny process; we do. That is what we support. But the committee can clearly do this work in the time that has been allocated by the government. We have no other work before us. We have been in the position many times when we have had to work very hard, and I object to some of the statements that were made this morning by Senator Ellison, when he said: ‘Let’s do the hard work. What this government is scared of is doing the hard work.’ We want to do the hard work on our committee. We can do that hard work and carry out a proper scrutiny process—hear from everyone who wants to be heard and go wherever we need to go to hear from those people. But a lot of that work has already been done, as I outlined earlier in my contribution.

I reject the argument that this is the result of a government wanting to ram this legislation through. We want to do no such thing. But, because we have engaged in such a comprehensive consultative process and clearly made our policy position public over the last 12 months, clearly put it before the Australian people at the federal election and clearly got endorsement from them to do what we want to do, we want to get on and do it. The committee can do it in that time frame and the Senate should allow us to do that.

We had many furphies introduced into the debate about the sitting calendar. Quite frankly, the motion before us is not about the sitting calendar of the Senate. That is an important issue, but that is a different debate. It has been introduced into this debate simply as a red herring. The question before us is whether the committee can perform a proper scrutiny of this legislation in the time that the government would like, and the answer to that is yes. The opposition’s argument is not for the Senate to play a new-found, active scrutiny role. I have rarely seen that in the time I have been here, which is nearly six years. They are simply using that argument to frustrate this government’s legislative agenda, something that we have an absolute, clear and unambiguous mandate from the Australian people to introduce. Let me put some of those arguments to bed. As I said, if you want to have a debate about the Senate sitting calendar, let us have that debate at some point in time. But let us not confuse that argument with the process of referring a bill to a committee, because the committee is going to do its work outside of parliamentary sitting times anyway.

We have had to suffer some of the most ridiculous arguments about hypocrisy, as if our wanting to pursue our legislative agenda and give an appropriate level of time for Senate scrutiny, allowing the Senate committee to do its work, was somehow taking the reverse position of what we argued when we were in opposition. We are not saying that we want to simply ram the bill through. We are not doing what the previous government did on the Telstra bill. We are not doing what they did on numerous other bills, such as the Employment and Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Welfare to Work and Vocational Rehabilitation Services) Bill 2006. To put the record straight on that, the previous government opened up and awarded tenders for that process before they even introduced the bill, completely bypassing any Senate scrutiny process. They had a token inquiry at the end, but it was after it was all done and dusted because of their abuse of their numbers in the Senate.

Their arguments are just not true. We want to have, and will have, a proper scrutiny process. But the difference is we can do it in the time we say because of the enormous consultation with stakeholders that has already taken place, because of the public nature of our policy implementation position and the development of that into the bill.

The opposition do not seem to have understood the result of the election. The only choice Work Choices ever gave any worker was ‘take it or leave it’. The instrument which delivered that choice was the AWA. We were absolutely clear about wanting to remove that instrument. That is what the Australian people voted for in the previous election. We want to do that. The previous government want to frustrate us in doing that. They know that thousands and thousands of AWAs are still being made unfairly and that people are still losing conditions and pay, but they are still ideologically attached to AWAs.

We have heard all sorts of comments. I actually heard the Leader of the Opposition, Dr Brendan Nelson, say that he is going to ensure that we deliver on our election promises. He is going to ensure that! Let us make no mistake: one of our election promises was the introduction of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008 and the abolition of AWAs. That was one of our election promises, but what do we see from coalition senators? We simply see an attempt to frustrate that promise and to push the introduction of the bill out past the parliamentary sittings so that it cannot be passed for many months. So AWAs will continue in operation and the previous government will delay our election promises and implementing the mandate that we received.

I reject the arguments that have been put forward by the opposition. As I said, I also take exception to and reject the arguments put by Senator Murray in respect of how we got to this point. We support proper Senate scrutiny. We have always done so. The previous government cannot make that claim. Like Senator Siewert, I do not need to go into all the numerous examples. We have talked about them over the last couple of years. There are many examples of where the previous government used the Senate numbers to avoid any form of Senate scrutiny. They are trying to run the line that that is what we are doing when clearly we are not. You could not have a more transparent process than the one the new government have undertaken. This is simply a way to frustrate this government implementing its legislative agenda.

Let me say again very clearly that, as chair of the committee that this bill will be referred to, in my view, the committee is able to conduct a proper, thorough Senate scrutiny process of this legislation within the time frame outlined in Senator Wong’s amendment. It has no other work to do at this point in time. We are able to do it. In fact, we proved that we were able to do it many times in the past, even when the previous government set us much more unrealistic expectations than the time frame that we are suggesting at the moment. We have the ability to do this. The Senate has the ability to do this. The integrity of the Senate will be protected through this process. This argument can be for no reason other than that the former government is seeking to frustrate the introduction of this bill for debate in the Senate chamber.

Question put:

That the amendment (Senator Wong’s) be agreed to.