Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I know they do not have to turn up. But, in circumstances where subclause (3)—‘if any of the persons’—applied, that would, in effect, mean that, for that particular category of people, if there are no union members then it would be a vote of the majority of the workers. We have already clarified in subclause (2) that for each person mentioned in subclause (1) that is a member of the permit holder’s organisation then their right of entry is assumed. What we are dealing with is a situation where there are no people who are actually members of the union. One of the difficulties that have been encountered is where a union asserts that it may have the right of entry because they have the capacity to represent somebody ‘whose industrial interests the permit holder’s organisation is entitled to represent’.

Those of us who were at the hearings heard that, for some workers, that might be a multiplicity of unions. In fact, one of the union officials said that they have about 27 pages of rules determining whether or not somebody can be a member of their union. In those circumstances, you could potentially have a rolling number of entries for the same employees. What we are saying is that, where you do not have union members, either the employer says yes or the majority of workers can indicate that they are interested. Of course, in this day and age of communications, if somebody does want to communicate with a union, it is not that hard to look up the phone number and make contact outside of work hours and meet them after work or at lunchtime et cetera. This is about coming into the workplace and the potential for the associated intimidation that goes along with that. Once again, we are talking about, if I might say, those circumstances where union officials are not behaving as one would expect and hope a union official would behave. That is why you have to have these sorts of clauses. We do know of examples; indeed, we just had one on, I think, page 2 of today’s Australian. Sure, it is different to a right of entry, but it is the sort of behaviour—picketing et cetera—where genuine intimidation of workers by trade unions occurs.

We believe that our amendment would provide appropriate balance and protection for small businesses, but we note that the numbers are agin us. In those circumstances, I suggest we move and we will be voting simply on the voices.

Question negatived.