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

This is the other thing I find interesting when listening to the interjections from the other side: they are defending their position. They are laughing about it because they have still not accepted the fact that Work Choices hurt working people. And the people who have been hurt most are the most vulnerable people in our community—the people in low-paid, low-skilled jobs who did not have any bargaining power. They allowed and set up a system of systematic abuse and the stripping away of wages and conditions.

The strange thing is that lots of evidence about the massive abuses that were taking place is now coming from departments that are no longer controlled by that government. I do not like to use the word ‘hypocritical’ very often, but I do find it somewhat hypocritical that the previous government—the now opposition—have a new-found interest in vulnerable Australians when they did not really seem to care before. If they had cared before, they may not be over on the opposition benches now. But it is a little bit late to care now. We see their new-found interest in openness, in transparency and in fairness and we find they have a new-found interest in VSU. During estimates we had senators coming in saying, ‘Isn’t it outrageous the impact the VSU legislation has had on people who used to work for the university unions?’ I did suggest to the coalition senator during estimates that maybe he would want to move a private member’s bill to undo the legislation that he supported in the previous government.

It is quite bizarre to see these flips, flops, flaps and fuddles going on with the opposition as they try to sort themselves out and work out what they actually stand for now, where they want to target themselves and who they need to attract to give them some traction in the political arena. Given their performance so far, I think they are going to struggle.

We have heard a lot of data on what Work Choices actually did to people, but I want to give the Senate some information about some of the impacts of agreements that have failed the fairness test. I understand that the previous minister, Mr Hockey, in some of his interviews around the place explained the introduction of the fairness test in this way: no-one in the cabinet of the previous government seemed to understand that Work Choices could actually rip away the terms and conditions of employment of many Australians and reduce their wages. They were either all ignorant—I suggest that that is what he must have been getting at—or asleep at the wheel. That is not surprising. That was obvious in so many things that the previous government was flapping around trying to do. But he wanted to be the champion and, once he was able to convince his cabinet colleagues that Work Choices could rip away the terms and conditions of vulnerable working Australians, they wanted to introduce a fairness test. It was a phoney fairness test, but nonetheless there it is.

What happened was that so many agreements still continued to fail the fairness test—the miserable low base that the previous government decided to put into the fairness test. For having their conditions, their penalty rates, their shift loadings, their public holidays and all those things ripped away the phoney fairness test was put in place to compensate them. But of course the problem was that that did not discourage shonky employers from trying to rip everyone off as much as they could. I do recognise that there are many fine employers that have integrity and treat their employees very well indeed. But there are a lot that do not, and nothing could be a better example than the fact that, of all the agreements that failed the government’s fairness test—and you should understand that the fairness test is for the worst possible wages and conditions allowed for by law—50 per cent failed because they offered less than $50 per week below the required rate and 39 per cent failed because they offered from between $50 and $199 per week below the required rate. And again, that is the lowest rate required by law. A further 10 per cent failed because they reduced wages and conditions combined by between $200 and $499 per week below the legal minimum, and one per cent—and thank heavens it was only one per cent—failed the fairness test because those AWAs were offering more than $500 per week less in wages and conditions than the legal base minimum rate.

Even with the fairness test in place, with employers supposedly understanding it and with the $100 million or so of taxpayers’ money that the previous government spent on advertising as well, we still had this large percentage of agreements coming through trying to rip off workers, many by more than $500 per week below the worst possible wage allowed under law.

Mr Hockey was just dead wrong when he said that the government did not know that this was going to be the outcome and that he had to explain to his cabinet colleagues that this could be a consequence of Work Choices. In the first WorkChoices booklet that went out with the original Work Choices legislation, there is the example of Billy. This is what the government said in their advertising propaganda:

Billy is an unemployed job seeker who is offered a full-time job as a shop assistant by Costas who own a clothing retail store in Canberra. The clothing store is covered by a federal award. The job offered to Billy is contingent on him accepting an AWA.

Take it or leave it was a common approach with AWAs.

The AWA Billy is offered provides him with the relevant minimum award classification wage and explicitly removes other award conditions.

As Billy is making an agreement under WorkChoices the AWA being offered to him must at least meet the Fair Pay and Conditions Standard. The AWA Billy is offered explicitly removes award conditions for public holidays, rest breaks, bonuses, annual leave loadings, allowances, penalty rates and shift/overtime loadings. Billy has a bargaining agent assisting him in considering the AWA. He understands the details of what is in the AWA and the protections that the Fair Pay and Conditions Standard will give him including annual leave, personal/carer’s leave, parental leave and maximum ordinary hours of work. Because Billy wants to get a foothold in the job market, he agrees to the AWA and accepts the job offer.

The government’s own propaganda talked about a Work Choices AWA being able to strip away public holidays, rest breaks, bonuses, annual leave loadings, allowances, penalty rates and shift and overtime loadings. We have Mr Hockey saying that the cabinet ministers did not understand that these things could actually happen, but it was in their own propaganda. I may be wrong about this, but I think on that initial campaign the then government spent $55 million of taxpayers’ money to make people sign a take it or leave it AWA which made them worse off.

I can only suggest to the now opposition that it is a little bit too late to care. You did not care then; you do not really care now. When the next election comes around you will not be talking about Work Choices and the reintroduction of these sorts of AWAs, yet that is what you want to do. The Australian public know it. We see it throughout the public hearings into the inquiry into the bill that is about to come before the Senate—the constant defence, day after day, witness after witness, by coalition senators protecting AWAs, harking back to the glory days, trying to get employers to say we really want them, just so the coalition can put AWAs back on the agenda and introduce them again. It is because they have not learnt from their mistakes. They do not care about vulnerable Australians; they do not care about working people. Quite frankly, this motion before us today is just a political stunt, an opportunity for them to get up and grandstand, but it means nothing—