Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

By voting against this amendment, the government is clearly rejecting the panel's recommendation. There is no doubt about that; the government cannot have it both ways and say that they reject this proposal but yet have an open mind in relation to the review panel. The suggestion that we would seek to provide diminished protection for workers in relation to this amendment is another example of the sort of rhetoric that we got from one of the Labor senators during the second reading speeches about the coalition 'waging a war'—I think that was the term—or 'war being waged against workers'.

It is the sort of inflammatory rhetoric that you might have learnt 100 years ago at trade union training school that really does not have much persuasive capacity in the 21st century, especially when you know that the good professor and the good doctor who were part of this hand-picked panel—and I quote this again, and it is a direct quote:

The question for the Panel is whether it is necessary to require the parties to apply to FWA on every occasion an employee voluntarily seeks to transfer to a similar position in a related entity. We believe it would be preferable to spare both parties the time and expense of making such an application.

That is all that we are seeking to do: implement a very sensible, minor, technical and moderate recommendation of the review panel, and Mr Shorten and Ms Gillard simply cannot bring themselves even to acknowledge that this might be a good idea in circumstances where they are actually visiting the issue of transfer of business.

If we were in a position where the government had said, 'We have parked the issue of transfer of business to the side, we are still consulting and we are considering what we ought to do in this space,' I could accept that and we would not be moving this amendment. But the government has deliberately chosen, by this bill, to put transfer of business fair and square onto the legislative agenda. We then invite the government to accept one of the panel's very modest recommendations, and the government cannot even bring itself to accept it.

What it indicates yet again is that clearly certain trade union bosses have ensured that the government cannot move forward on a very simple, very straightforward amendment that Labor's own hand-picked panel, with skewed terms of reference, came to. The panel were mugged by the reality of the situation. They saw the red tape. They saw the consequences. They saw the disincentive. They saw that it was not good for workers. They saw that it was not good for employers. The arguments are there, made out so exceptionally cogently on pages 205 and 206 of the review panel's report, and the government cannot bring itself to support such a, quite frankly, nondescript amendment. It is yet another indication that this bill has been all about politics and not about genuine policy.