Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013. When Mr Rudd was re-installed as the Prime Minister of Australia last night, the speech he gave after assuming the leadership of the Labor Party indicated that he wanted to take a certain direction in relation to where the Australian Labor Party would now go. One of the statements he made to the Australian public was that he wanted his government to work with the business community. In effect, he was acknowledging that the former Gillard government had failed to work with the business community in relation to a number of pieces of legislation that had been passed. On the basis of that statement, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Eric Abetz, took the opportunity, in good faith, to write to the now Prime Minister of Australia setting out our concerns in relation to the bill that is now before the Senate. Senator Abetz basically said to the now Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, 'We take in good faith the statement that you have made'—and he made a number of statements, as I said—'in which you indicated that you wanted your government to work with the business community.' And in the letter that Senator Abetz sent to the now Prime Minister he set out a number of very serious concerns that not only the coalition has with the piece of legislation that we are currently debating but that business and industry—those people, those employers, who will be directly impacted by this legislation—have themselves set out in the submissions they have provided on this piece of legislation.

If you do not like what the coalition says in relation to this bill because you believe that perhaps the coalition and Labor have an ideological difference in relation to this type of legislation, you only have to listen to the concerns that were just put by Independent Senator Xenophon. Senator Xenophon gets on very well with the union movement and he himself introduced legislation, when he was a member of the South Australian Legislative Council, that dealt with right-of-entry laws. As he stated, he has very serious concerns in relation to the occupational health and safety of work sites. But even Senator Xenophon, in reading the legislation and in speaking with those who are directly impacted by this legislation, has set out some exceptionally serious concerns that even he says the government should heed before we pass this legislation. Indeed, in his letter to the now Prime Minister of this country, Senator Abetz said that this bill has received significant criticism from both businesses and unions. So it is not just business; even the unions have come out and criticised the legislation that the Senate is tonight passing under a guillotine. Senator Abetz further states: 'It would be advantageous if this bill were deferred until after the next election.' He then says: 'I note that many provisions of this bill were not foreshadowed before the last election and nor were they the product of the recent Fair Work review.'

It is a question of whether Mr Rudd really does want to differentiate himself in relation to the direction the former Gillard government was taking. By executing Ms Gillard last night and replacing her with former Prime Minister Rudd, the Australian Labor Party acknowledged that the direction they were taking under former Prime Minister Gillard was the wrong direction. Otherwise, why would the Australian Labor Party have executed former Prime Minister Gillard?

This bill is not a response to the government's own Fair Work review, and if it is not a response to the government's own Fair Work review, you have to ask yourself why the former Gillard government would bring such a piece of legislation before the parliament. There can only be one reason for it. There is one reason and one reason only that this bill has been brought to the parliament: it is that the militant union movement, as we all know, controls the Australian Labor Party and the militant union movement has demanded from former Prime Minister Gillard certain things they wanted passed before the 2013 election. Because the former Gillard government was controlled by the militant union movement the Senate is tonight debating a piece of legislation that merely responds to the demands of the unions.

This is not legislation that is in the national interest. It is not legislation that is going to further business and industry in this country. I remind those on the other side that governments do not employ people. We in this place do not employ one person in Australia. That is the role of business and industry in Australia, whether it be a big, medium or small business. The role of business in Australia is to give Australians jobs. The role of government should be to provide a policy environment that is conducive to businesses employing people. If government is not providing a policy environment that is conducive to businesses and industry employing people, only one thing happens. It is very simple: business and industry close down. When business and industry close down Australians lose jobs. That is a lose-lose situation for everybody.

Unfortunately, that is what we are going to see if this legislation passes. It will just make it that little bit harder for the employers in this country to do business. As so many employers have done under the former Gillard government and the former Rudd government, and quite possibly, now, under the current Rudd government, they will quite literally just close their doors. Again, that is a lose-lose situation for businesses and for workers, because if you do not have businesses and you do not have employers, workers do not have jobs.

The coalition is deeply disappointed that in bringing this bill before the Senate the government has effectively put aside the bulk of the remaining Fair Work review recommendations. Australians need to remember that it was this government that commissioned a review of the Fair Work laws. It was this government that had a body review the Fair Work Act and come up with a number of recommendations. Why did the government bother to have a review of the Fair Work Act and the Fair Work laws if the legislation we are debating tonight in the Senate puts aside those recommendations and says: 'We are not interested in what our specialist review panel said. All we are interested in doing is listening to the demands of the union movement and producing a piece of legislation that does nothing more and nothing less than respond to the demands of the union movement'? That is what this legislation does. Labor has used the so-called second tranche to grant additional union rights, without any reason as to why, and to respond to a separate report on workplace bullying.

What also concerns the coalition in relation to the rushed passage of this legislation tonight is that, yet again, as with so many of the pieces of the legislation the Senate has been forced to pass this week under a guillotine, we are tonight faced with passing yet another piece of legislation in relation to which the government has failed to conduct a regulatory impact statement. The government fails to abide by recommendations of their own Office of Best Practice Regulation. The role of the Office of Best Practice Regulation is to look at legislation and consider whether or not that particular piece of legislation is going to have an impact on business, industry or stakeholders. If the Office of Best Practice Regulation comes to the assessment that there will be an impact, it recommends to the government that it should undertake a regulatory impact statement. That would seem pretty obvious, because how do you debate a piece of legislation that is going to have an impact on business, industry or stakeholders without actually understanding what that impact is?

Yet again, the government comes to this place and asks the Senate to debate a piece of legislation on which, again, like so many pieces of legislation that we have been forced to push through this place this week, the government has failed to comply with the recommendations of its own Office of Best Practice Regulation and conduct a regulatory impact statement. Not only that, when departmental officers in the Senate committee hearings on this bill were asked, quite genuinely, 'Why was an exemption granted in relation to this bill? Why was the government was not required to provide or undertake a regulatory impact statement?' the departmental officers were unable to give the Senate committee an answer. That is because there was no answer.

It was a little like the exemption that was given in relation to the 457 bill that we are going to slam through this place tomorrow—again, under guillotine. Minister O'Connor looked at the legislation and did not like the fact that the Office of Best Practice Regulation had said, 'You are required to conduct a regulatory impact statement, because this legislation will have a severe impact on stakeholders.' Minister O'Connor did not like that, because he knew that there would be an impact, but he did not want the Australian public to know the extent of the impact. So what did Minister O'Connor do? He picked up the phone to the Prime Minister, and he said to the Prime Minister, 'I need an exemption from the requirement to provide a regulatory impact statement.' The Prime Minister asked, 'Why?' Minister O'Connor said, 'Exceptional circumstances,' and—lo and behold!—an exemption was granted. At a Senate committee hearing last week we asked the department what the exceptional circumstances were that would entail the Prime Minister granting an exemption from the Office of Best Practice Regulation's requirement that a regulatory impact statement be conducted. Again, the departmental officials looked at us and said, 'We have no answer to that.'

Given that this bill will affect every employer and every employee in Australia, the coalition believes that coming to this place tonight and debating this legislation would have benefited from a regulatory impact statement having been conducted so that not only the parliament could understand the impact of this legislation but also the community too, in considering these changes to the Fair Work Act, would be able to decide whether or not they were good or bad changes.

When I say that this legislation is being rushed through the parliament to respond to the demand of the union movement, you need to look at what Mr Rudd said about right of entry and the union movement way back in 2007. Way back when Mr Rudd was campaigning on the Kevin07 slogan, what did he say in relation to right of entry and the union movement in this country? This is what the now Prime Minister of Australia said in relation to the right-of-entry provisions. He said: 'We'll make sure that current right-of-entry provisions stay. We understand that entering on the premises of an employer needs to happen in an orderly way. We will keep the right-of-entry provisions. We will allow unions to get about their proper work but without disruption to businesses.' That was Mr Rudd at a press conference on 28 August 2007.

Then you look at what the former Prime Minister, and the now current Prime Minister, said in relation to union thugs. What did Mr Rudd say in relation to Mr Joe McDonald from the CFMEU back in my home state of Western Australia? Mr Rudd said:

The laws that we have in Australia concerning union right of entry—

because, for those who do not know, Mr McDonald is a serial offender in relation to breaching union right-of-entry laws—

if we're elected to form the next government, it would be identical to those which currently exist under this Government.

Remember, that was in 2007. It was the Howard government that was in power at that particular point in time. Mr Rudd went on to say:

I have no time for any thuggery from any individual and that includes this individual, hence my recommendation to the national executive that he be expelled from the party forthwith following his remarks yesterday

I have no time for any thuggery from any individual and that includes this individual—

and by 'this individual' he was referring to the CFMEU's Joe McDonald—

hence my recommendation to the national executive that he—

Mr McDonald—

be expelled from the party forthwith …

Again, the coalition says to Mr Rudd, as Senator Abetz said in his letter last night, if you really stand by the statements you made on assuming the role of Prime Minister of this country last night that you want to change direction and that—to quote from Senator Abetz's letter—'you indicated that you wanted your government to work with the business community,' why, then, is the now Prime Minister of Australia allowing this bill to be slammed through the Senate tonight?

What this bill does is completely contradictory to what Mr Rudd said in the lead up to the 2007 election in relation to the right-of-entry provisions. The right-of-entry provisions under this particular piece of legislation are being fundamentally changed and are well and truly swinging the balance completely in favour of the union movement. We have two concerns in relation to the right-of-entry provisions. One is that the right-of-entry provisions will relate to the default location. If the employer and union official cannot agree, the default location becomes the lunch room. Our other concern relates to the employer being liable for travel costs for union officials exercising a right-of-entry permit in a remote location.

In relation to those two provisions of this particular bill, there is one thing that is glaringly obvious, and that is that neither of those two provisions were recommended by the Fair Work Act review panel. The Fair Work Act review panel was commissioned by the Labor government to conduct a review of the fair work laws in Australia. It made certain recommendations, but none of those recommendations form part of the legislation that will be slammed through the Senate tonight under guillotine. In particular the recommendations in relation to right of entry, the recommendations that the default location be the lunchroom and that the employer be liable for the costs of a union official exercising a right of entry permit were not recommended by Labor's own Fair Work review panel.

Despite what Mr Rudd said in 2007 and despite what former Prime Minister Gillard said in relation to right of entry laws, because former Prime Minister Gillard is also on the record as saying that she would not change the right of entry laws, that is exactly what we are going to be doing tonight if this legislation passes the Senate. On the basis that the provisions in relation to right of entry were not part of the government's own recommendations from its own Fair Work review panel, the only conclusion that we can come to is that, once again, like so many pieces of legislation that have been slammed through the Senate tonight, they are not in the national interest, they are not in the interest of employers and employees, they are only in the interest of the militant union movement who control the Australian Labor Party.