Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I appreciate your assistance in enabling me to put my position forward on behalf of the government. The HEWRRs also required that university agreements, policies and practices must be consistent with the freedom of association principles contained in the Workplace Relations Act at the time. This in practice meant that agreements in the higher education sector had to be stripped of provisions which the former government interpreted as encouraging union membership. It meant there was no leave to attend workplace meetings or to invite a union representative to come into the workplace to represent you in an industrial situation.

The HEWRRs system gave the ministers for education under the former government unprecedented power. It gave them the power to involve themselves in management of workplaces in the sector. I think other senators who have spoken in this debate today made the point very well—and it is worth making again—that the higher education sector is there to educate people and teach them things. It is not there, and not funded by the government, to impose an industrial relations agenda that it neither wanted nor asked for—and nor did the Australian community want or ask for it to be imposed in the higher education sector. It was disturbing for those of us who had a background in the higher education sector to see the amount of effort, time and wasted resources that universities were forced to use up in implementing the former government’s industrial relations agenda, at the expense of educating our young people so that they could gather those degrees that are necessary for them to have the best possible opportunities in life.