Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move Greens amendment (1) on sheet 5818:

(1)    Schedule 3, page 25 (after line 29), after item 9, insert:

9A  All kinds of transitional instrument: application of better off overall test

(1)    FWA may make a determination under this item on application by a person covered by a transitional instrument.

(2)    If FWA is satisfied that the transitional instrument would not pass the better off overall test in section 193 of the FW Act, FWA may make any order that FWA considers appropriate to remedy the situation, including:

             (a)    an order terminating the instrument;

             (b)    an order varying the instrument to comply with the better off overall test.

This amendment relates to allowing Fair Work Australia to terminate transitional instruments that would not pass the better off overall test. We believe the biggest gap in the government’s transitional arrangements is letting unfair Work Choices AWAs continue virtually indefinitely. I raised this during my speech on the second reading and in fact raised it in debate on the forward with fairness bill in March last year. The ALP, quite rightly, spent the previous three years strenuously opposing Work Choices AWAs and their ability to undermine the award safety net. AWAs that ripped away wages and conditions from workers were at the forefront of the campaign against Work Choices and of course the ALP election victory. Yet the ALP is prepared to let those workers continue to be ripped off and denied collective bargaining until their agreements pass their nominal expiry date, and that can be as late as 2013. As I said in my speech on the second reading, Work Choices is not quite dead yet. It will have a slow death and it will not be dead until the last AWA is terminated.

The Greens do not believe the presence of statutory individual agreements that fall below the safety net represent a fair and just industrial relations system. The Australian Greens have held a consistent position since before the last election that substandard agreements, individual or collective, should be able to be terminated and the employee employed under the more favourable conditions of the award or a superior collective agreement that covers the employer. We moved amendments in respect of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward to with Fairness) Bill 2008 to provide a mechanism for employees to terminate unfair AWAs. These amendments were unfortunately not supported by the government and many workers have stayed on unfair AWAs ever since.

Workers must be given the opportunity to terminate agreements that do not meet the conditions of the new safety net. I include here, too, a number of employees who were employed on AWAs subsequent to the ALP being elected and then bringing in their legislation. The point of a safety net is that it is universal. It provides for wages and conditions that we as a community believe are the minimum that all workers should enjoy. The new, modern safety net must therefore be available to all workers. The Greens amendment provides for employees to apply to Fair Work Australia and for it to terminate or vary an agreement that would not pass the better off overall test. It is an amendment implementing recommendation No. 1 of the majority ALP senators’ report on this bill.

We believe that Australian workers must not be condemned to working under recognised substandard conditions. We do not believe they should be under those conditions any longer. We believe that the government had an opportunity to fix that. They have not taken it and we cannot understand, quite frankly, why they believe it is okay for certain workers to be under substandard conditions when the government had the opportunity to ensure that they are not. Because the government did not take that opportunity, this amendment provides for that. Nobody can say that AWAs are dead until workers are off them, which could be as far away as 2013. That puts paid to the government’s claims that AWAs are dead. They are not dead and the government have not done anything about getting those workers who are still subject to them off them. This amendment does that.