Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to speak on this document. I heard Senator Abetz waxing lyrical about individual flexibility agreements, and I could not help myself but come and present some balance to the argument that the coalition put every time they talk about flexibility.

Workers around the country know that when the coalition talk about flexibility they mean giving more power to the employer. They mean taking rights away from ordinary workers and providing the boss with even more control over the lives of ordinary workers. That cannot be denied, because the coalition are not only on the record on this issue but also have actually practised their ideology on workers. Their ideology is to say to a worker, 'You will go to work, you will be scared of your employer, you will do what your employer tells you to do, and if the employer wants flexibility that is what you will give them.' That is what Work Choices was all about. Whenever you hear Senator Abetz talking about flexibility, don't listen to the code; listen to exactly what it means. It actually means that they want to go back to what their DNA is all about, and that is ripping away at the rights of workers in this country.

There is no doubt that flexibility is the thin end of the wedge for Senator Abetz and his team to move back to Work Choices. Let's make no bones about it. Work Choices is what Senator Abetz is about when he talks about flexibility. I happened to have been a union official during the Work Choices era and I know what Work Choices was about. I know what individual flexibility was about. It was pitting an individual worker against an employer. Some employers were small and some were big, but it does not matter to an individual worker, because whether you work for a small employer or a big employer the power relationship lies clearly with the employer.

When you talk about a worker having the right to give 28 days notice to get out of some kind of flexibility agreement, that takes a great deal of courage if the employer says, 'I don't want you out of that flexibility agreement; come into my office and sit down with me and we'll talk about it.' This could be a migrant female worker having to sit down with a tertiary educated employer to try and negotiate a flexibility agreement. You know what that means. The power relationship between that migrant female worker and the tertiary educated employer results in that worker getting the rough end of the pineapple. They get the problems to deal with.

It is absolutely clear that the coalition are on the move again to run up Work Choices. They will change the name; they will try and say it is fairer; they will tell us they have learnt their lessons; they will tell us it is dead and buried—but it is only the name that is dead and buried. Work Choices underpins exactly what the coalition want to do. If they ever get the opportunity again to have control of the Senate, that is what we will have. All the denials in the world will mean nothing. They will rip away at workers' penalty rates; they will rip away at shift allowances; they will rip away at leave entitlements—and it will all be under the guise of flexibility. So don't come here and parade your flexibility promises, because flexibility is bad news for workers in the context of coalition policies.

We are about building a smart industry, not an industry where, in the guise of flexibility, workers are under the thumb of the boss. Flexibility is simply shorthand for Work Choices and ripping rights away from workers.