Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I cannot allow the comments of Senator Cameron in this place this evening to go unchallenged. It is disappointing that a person who comes into this place and represents the people of Australia has got such a jaundiced and narrow view of the relationships between employers and employees.

Senator Carol Brown interjecting—

Acting Deputy President Bishop, I have been an employer for 35 years or so in both the private and the public sectors, and I can assure you—and I can assure Senator Brown through you—that very rarely are the interests of the employee and the interests of the employer not closely aligned, because if they are not closely aligned it comes at the demise of everybody in the organisation.

I would say with some pride that I have been successfully negotiating agreements in both public and private sector organisations. In the case of the public sector, the emergency services organisation of which I was the CEO and had great pride in administering was an organisation of great complexity, an organisation involving staff at very different levels in the city, in the regions and in different sectors of the emergency services. As a result of good negotiation, as a result of consultation, as the result of mature communication, we were successful in arranging that agreement. It stood for some years and it stood very successfully. I will not sit here and listen to Senator Cameron going on in this jaundiced way as if every relationship between every employer and every employee in some way or other reflects his view of the world.

The second case that I wish to refer to was when I had the pleasure of operating a fuel distributorship in the state of Tasmania. I was successful, after some period of time, in negotiating an agreement with all of my fuel drivers. I believe that at that time it was the first agreement of its type that was actually negotiated in Australia. It ended up tremendously to the benefit of those drivers. It also, incidentally, ended up tremendously beneficial to my company, and we had to fight the TWU right through to the Industrial Relations Court in Hobart before common sense prevailed, because the alternative, unfortunately, was not a good option for either me, my company or indeed the drivers themselves. It led to tremendous flexibility for the drivers. It led to me investing several million dollars in a new trucking fleet. It led to a revolution in not only the way in which fuel was distributed in Tasmania but also the safety of the vehicles and of course, therefore, the safety of the wider community.

I do not intend to go on much longer. I was not intending to speak. But this is the Senate of Australia. This is the place in which we have robust debate, and this should be the place in which we have reasoned discussion in which we can share views and come to some commonality. While Senator Cameron comes into this place again and again and preaches the bile that he does, we are never going to receive that particular unanimity.