Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make some comments in reply in this debate on the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008. At the outset, I thank senators for their contributions to the debate, particularly the senators who participated in the Senate committee inquiry process into this bill.

At the 2004 election, the Australian people did not vote for their pay and conditions to be stripped away through individual Australian workplace agreements. They did not vote to exchange the safety net for a limited number of protected award conditions that could simply be eradicated, without compensation, from a workplace agreement by the flick of a pen.

The opposition now say that they made a mistake with Work Choices. Perhaps, if they had sought at any time to tell the Australian people of their plans, the Australian people could have warned them about the mistake they were making. The member for North Sydney, the former Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, said:

... I don’t think many ministers in cabinet were aware that you could be worse off under Work Choices, and that you could actually have certain conditions taken away without compensation ...

That is a quote from a minister commenting on cabinet deliberations, confirming that Howard government cabinet ministers were not actually aware of the impact on working families, on ordinary Australians, of the legislation they endorsed. The member for Menzies, who was the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations at the time the Work Choices legislation was introduced, said in his speech during debate on this bill, ‘I have said before that I believe we did make a mistake in relation to Work Choices.’

At no stage has anyone in the opposition apologised for making that mistake. In fact, what we saw tonight from Senator Abetz was yet another rearguard defence of Work Choices, because he cannot help himself. He is still in this chamber defending Work Choices with every breath. The reality is that he is another one of those on the other side who want these extreme laws to stay in place and who have not accepted that these laws are not good for Australian working families.

I am not sure what is worse: a government that deliberately sought to reduce the rights and entitlements of Australian workers in the workplace or a government that did so accidentally, asleep at the wheel, blindly allowing pay and conditions to be slashed whilst ignoring that it was even occurring—the former Prime Minister insisting that it was merely a perception on the part of some people, saying, ‘We haven’t had people coming up and saying, “I’ve been affected,” but they have this general idea that others might have been.’ These are the same people—that is, the opposition who are now calling on the government to provide the economic modelling of the effects of the transition bill—who did not do any proper modelling on their own Work Choices bill; who refuse to release the limited modelling they did conduct; and who withheld key data of the effects of Work Choices from the Australian people.

Prior to last year’s election, we on this side of the chamber made our workplace relations policy crystal clear. In November last year, the Australian people voted for a fair, balanced and productive workplace relations system for the future. We made it clear that we would act immediately to prevent any new Australian workplace agreements being made. This bill delivers on that promise. We made it clear that we would allow workplaces using Australian workplace agreements as at 1 December 2007 to use individual transitional employment agreements in limited circumstances only in order to assist with the transition to the government’s new workplace relations system. This bill delivers on that promise. We made it clear that we would introduce a genuine no disadvantage test against the full safety net for all agreements. Again, this bill delivers on that promise. We made it clear that we would immediately commence the process of award modernisation, and this bill delivers on that promise.

ITEAs will only be available for a limited transitional period until the government’s new workplace relations system is fully operational from 1 January 2010. Under this government, there will be no scope for any individual statutory agreement to be made after 31 December 2009 and, under this government, there will be no need for any individual statutory agreement to be made after 31 December 2009. That is because this government will deliver on its promise to put in place a fair and flexible safety net of 10 legislated national employment standards and a further 10 minimum conditions contained in simple, modern awards for employees earning $100,000 or less. This will be a safety net that cannot be ripped away. Where an employer and employee choose to make an individual arrangement, it will be underpinned by the safety net. Where an employer and employees agree to make a collective agreement in the government’s new workplace relations system, employees must be left better off overall when compared with the safety net.

I want to turn now to an issue that had some focus in the debate today, and that is the relationship between workplace flexibility and productivity. There is no evidence that having Australian workplace agreements has made any difference to inflation, productivity or industrial harmony. What they did do was assist in stripping away Australian workers’ pay and conditions. Whilst this government is tackling the inflation challenge and the productivity challenge for this nation, the fact is that the former government simply ignored multiple Reserve Bank warnings about the inflation risks arising from skill shortages and infrastructure gaps. What they focused on was introducing a system which enabled workers’ pay and conditions to be stripped away. This is what they did instead of rising to meet the productivity challenge. Instead of meeting the productivity challenge, the former government created a workplace relations system that combined the greatest regulation this country has ever seen while reducing job security and basic protections for employees. Unsurprisingly, productivity growth did not increase with Work Choices changes. While aggregate data is of limited value in determining the impact of AWAs on productivity growth, the most recent national accounts data shows that productivity growth in the market sector was flat between March 2006 and September 2007 compared with the annual average wage growth over the past two decades of 2.3 per cent.

I listened with interest tonight to Senator Abetz claiming credit for the unemployment rate, a bit like Mr Costello in the other place. I wonder whether he will also claim credit for the flatlining of productivity that I have outlined and for the consecutive interest rate rises that we saw under the Howard government, and the last two. Will the opposition also claim credit for that? I wait for those on the other side to actually be consistent about which aspects of their economic legacy they wish to take credit for, because somehow I do not believe—