Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Where was the investment in the future anywhere in the country? The other thing that I am most critical about, especially in terms of Work Choices, is that it was totally based on the false premise that individual employees were able to bargain fairly with their employers. Of course, everybody knows that that was simply not the case. It never has been the case, and the experiment demonstrated that absolutely. AWAs were one of the most pernicious aspects of Work Choices and were used to undermine the safety net for workers. That is very clear, and it is a good thing that we are finally getting rid of AWAs.

The workers who were most affected by Work Choices and who were the most vulnerable because of the power that was given to employers in those circumstances were women workers in low-paid jobs and workers from non-English-speaking backgrounds. I hear the current members of the opposition talking about the employees in the textile industry who are now losing their jobs. These people were most adversely impacted by Work Choices, but at that time I did not hear any empathy from the opposition or even any pretence that they understood the circumstances in which those people were put. The Greens opposed Work Choices in the Senate. We campaigned vigorously against the laws at the time they were announced and put through this parliament. The policy that we took to the last election was explicit in calling for the complete abolition of Work Choices, and we are still campaigning for that.

We are disappointed that the government has not carried through on its promise to totally rip up Work Choices. Rather than the government ripping up Work Choices, its Fair Work Bill builds on some of its key elements, such as not providing a fair dispute resolution process and consolidating the shift made under Work Choices from the conciliation and arbitration power to the corporations power under our Constitution. Also, the bill maintains restrictions on matters that can be agreed to in enterprise agreements. Matters relating to the environment or climate change initiatives will not be allowed in agreements under the bill. I think that is most unfortunate because, as I will indicate in a minute, some of the best ideas actually come from the workplace, where people come up with innovative ways of addressing issues. To disallow these ideas I think suggests that we do not have the whole-of-government approach that we are being told we have on climate change. Another issue is that, while the government is keeping a type of individual agreement that has more protections than AWAs, it will continue to have the potential to exploit workers. Also, the current bill maintains severe restrictions on employees taking industrial action.

The Greens have been trying to negotiate some amendments to the legislation. I take this opportunity to congratulate my colleague Senator Rachel Siewert on her work on this bill and on the amendments that she has crafted to try to address the concerns of the Greens and those of many workers. We want this bill to provide the protections, rights and responsibilities of a fair, just and sustainable society. Our amendments include giving Fair Work Australia the power to resolve general workplace disputes. Without this amendment workers have no means of resolving disputes, except by going to court to enforce their rights. We also want to remove restrictions on the matters parties can agree to in enterprise agreements. We also require more transparency to individual flexibility arrangements so we will know whether they are being used properly or whether they are being abused. That is a matter that my colleagues are trying to negotiate with the government.

We need to get rid of Work Choices and replace it with a fair, just and sustainable law for the workplace. We need to build resilience in our community, and fair employment laws are an important part of doing that. We want to ensure a framework that provides for genuine flexible working hours, paid parental leave and workplace democracy. I want to talk about those for a few minutes. On genuine flexible working hours, now is the opportunity to explore what optimum conditions we can provide, because the certainties of the old order are over. We have a global financial crisis, a climate crisis and a peak oil crisis. All the old certainties are gone. When you ask people ‘What do you want more of?’ they say that they want more time. They are sick of working seven days a week and very long hours. They are tired of being forced into a situation where they very often have to put their children in care for longer hours than they would like to. Very often families would like to do things together at the weekends and they simply cannot because of their working arrangements. There are also issues in relation to people with children with disabilities, people looking after aged parents or other people in the community and so on. People say: ‘I would just really like more time. I would like greater flexibility.’ Now is the opportunity to offer that.

We need paid parental leave. That is very clear. It is one thing which would improve the productivity in the workplace. Right now, we need that productivity in the workplace, and we need it especially from those women who have had years of training and experience. We need those people to stay on in the workplace. They are not necessarily going to do that unless they can get paid parental leave. I think this is absolutely critical. If we want to keep people with the right skills in the workplace for the long term and not disrupt their career patterns then we have to be very focused on that.

I just want to mention workplace democracy for a minute or two, because if you think about an individual workplace you can extrapolate those principles to the country. If you go to people and ask, ‘What makes a happy and satisfied employee?’ they will tell you that it is not just about the wages they receive. They will talk about being appreciated and having the person who employs them appreciate the fact that they are there and appreciate the contribution they make. Employees also appreciate people thinking about their training needs and the opportunities they might have for career advancement whilst working in a particular company. They talk about democracy in the workplace. They talk about whether there is fairness and inclusion or whether the boss, who owns the company, gets all the perks while the workers generate the profits for the company but never share in the perks or the benefits of that work.

Employees talk about communication—the need for people to be honest with their employees, tell them what the situation is, take them into their confidence and actually discuss with them creative solutions to the problems that the company might be having or the opportunities that the company might have. Very often the people on the factory floor and the people in small businesses have been thinking about ways to improve the business for a long time and they have never actually been asked or had the opportunity to feed in their ideas without fear or favour and have those ideas tested.

Employees also talk about bosses who lead by example. If you want to have loyalty and satisfaction from your staff then you have to have the same values in your leadership role as you are expecting of the employees in the organisation. You do not want negativity in the workplace undermining people there. You have to remember that people in the workplace have lives outside work. Just because you own the company or you run the business you may want to work in it 24 hours a day seven days a week but the people who work with you have families. They have other responsibilities and community concerns and want to be engaged in the community.

If you extrapolate these ideas to the nation you find that that means instead of this nasty dog-eat-dog, really hostile workplace that was set up under the Work Choices regime you move to—