Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I take the opportunity to refer to aspects of the Fair Work Bill 2008 that has been introduced into the Senate in the last few days. I did not have an opportunity to speak in the second reading debate, for a variety of reasons—as I think you would know, Madam Acting Deputy President Brown, being a government senator. One of the things I did have a chance to do was have a read of some of the coalition’s contributions—particularly Senator Fisher’s contributions to the legislation last night—and it struck me that they are like the Bourbons. Talleyrand said the Bourbons ‘have learned nothing and forgotten everything’ once they were restored to power. That is what happened. The coalition have learned nothing and forgotten everything.

One of the main reasons that Labor won power at the last election was not the power of the trade union movement or its mobilisation—did we not mobilise in 2004, 2001, 1998, 1996, 1993 and 1990? Why could we not then shift the population that shifted in 2007? One particular individual contributed to that shift. That is a lady called Annette Harris, who is now retired and who worked at Spotlight, up in Coffs Harbour in New South Wales. Mrs Harris worked at that company and had worked there for some years but, as a result of the introduction and passage of the coalition’s workplace legislation in the last government, her employer presented her with a document to sign which allowed her to receive, in exchange for $90 a week that she would lose, 2c an hour extra. This is what the document that she was asked to sign had in it: all penalty rates on late nights and weekends would be abolished, all penalty rates on public holidays would be abolished, all overtime penalty rates would be abolished, all tea breaks would be abolished and some public holidays and rostering rights would be abolished.

Mrs Harris was a member of the Shop Assistants Union. She was, like some union members, though not all of them—a majority of them are not—a lifelong Liberal voter. This is what Mrs Harris said to the Australian in July 2007:

… John Howard was always my hero. I thought the world of him. I thought he was a good prime minister. But now it has totally changed my way of thinking as far as he’s concerned …

As I said, the opposition have learned nothing and forgotten everything. They do not understand that people like Mrs Harris, lifelong Liberal voters, voted for us for the first time in their lives last election. Why was that? The answer is clearly that the former government decided to move away from state intervention into the workplace and leave it up to whatever happened there—the weak would look after themselves. Once they moved away from state intervention, lifelong Liberals deserted them en masse.

They get themselves tangled up with the trade union campaign. They think the trade union campaign contributed to their defeat. What contributed to their defeat was the fact that they walked away from intervening in the workplace, which we had done in a bipartisan way in this country for almost a century. This had been done by both our side of politics and theirs. They were committed to the compulsory arbitration system almost right up until John Howard got in in 1996. They were well aware and did that opportunistically. What was the reason that these conservatives were prepared to go into the workplace to employ state intervention? You can take a look at history. Particularly in Europe, conservative parties saw the results of the chaos and crisis that were caused by civil unrest. They did not want that to occur in their country. In many cases they introduced some of the welfare state provisions that we enjoy today. They were introduced and sustained by conservative governments.

When you look at Mrs Harris, who said she was a lifelong Liberal voter, why did she desert the party that she had been voting for all her adult life? The reason is clearly that they abandoned the workplace to people who were unscrupulous. There were too many employers being unscrupulous in the use of the Work Choices legislation. Almost immediately after the legislation was passed, a Cowra abattoir wanted to sack all their workers and rehire them on less wages and conditions. That happened because this parliament passed legislation to make it possible to take those conditions away from those men and women and their families. I imagine that a number of those people out there were probably lifelong National Party voters, and they walked away from their party as well. The coalition walked away from these people. For a century, the coalition or their equivalents elsewhere in the Western world were quite prepared for the state to intervene to regulate. Whether it was the introduction of free education, universal medical services or social security, all of these matters were introduced often in a bipartisan way or through pressure from conservative governments.

I go back to why. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, conservatives were looking at the chaos and crisis that had occurred as a result of the dislocation from the French Revolution and then, in the 20th century—from 1917—from the Russian Revolution. They did not want that chaos, that violence, occurring in their country. So they made concessions. But John Howard and his ilk walked away from that intervention. That is why people like Mrs Harris and the Cowra abattoir workers—after seeing what these workplace changes did in some of those places—walked away from voting for the party that they had been voting for for many years.

When I look at the coalition’s contribution I get a little confused because, as I said, they have homed in on the trade union movement’s campaign. I am an ex-trade union official. I contributed to trying to unseat the coalition at the last election and at every one I could from the time I was able to vote, in 1974 or 1975. Since then I have done everything I have been able to to make sure that they have not been on this side of the chamber. I am not proud to say this—and the coalition are still wrapped up in this—but at the height of the Your Rights at Work campaign, when there was so much money being spent on advertising and workplace visits, union membership declined. At the same time as union membership was declining, our votes were going up. Why was that? I go back again: the coalition walked away from ‘Howard’s battlers’. They walked away from them in droves, and they were repaid for that.

In my contribution today I want to commemorate Mrs Harris, who probably more than any other individual in this country contributed to the coalition being on that side of the chamber. A lifelong Liberal voter, she was being asked to exchange her penalty rates and conditions for 2c an hour. She walked away like many others did in that period. We are seeing again the terrifying spectacle of the coalition not understanding that they have had for almost a century this compact to be involved in the state, to support regulation. They have walked away from it. Look at the doormats in the National Party and some of the things that they put up with from their Liberal colleagues. Jack McEwen would be turning in his grave over some of the things that the National Party allow the Liberals to stand over them on. Mrs Harris should be commemorated not just by the labour movement but by Australians generally for ensuring that this government will re-enter the workplace to make sure that there is no unfairness, there is no injustice and people are not bullied or bludgeoned into accepting conditions that they do not have to. For that, we owe Mrs Harris a deep debt of gratitude.