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

I am very pleased to support the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013 on the floor of the Senate. I think I would be one of the senators in this place who have used right of entry over nearly 27 years as a union official. I know how employers have sought to restrict union officials providing workers with advice, providing workers with protection and trying to ensure that workers get a fair go on the job.

Let me, firstly, speak about Senator Abetz, because Senator Abetz was quoted by Senator Cash. Senator Abetz was the main advocate for the Howard government in this place to promote Work Choices. Senator Abetz chaired the committee that handed tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars to a coalition government to tell workers through the media that Work Choices would be good for them and that allowing the employer more flexibility would create more jobs. For Senator Abetz to come in here with any credibility on workplace relations issues is an impossible task, because Senator Abetz has no credibility on workplace relations issues, through being the architect of Work Choices in the Senate and the defender and promoter of Work Choices in the Senate. I will come back to Work Choices.

Secondly, we have Senator Xenophon. Senator Xenophon and I would agree on many issues and we would disagree on many issues as well. I have had discussions with Senator Xenophon on what seems to me to be his phobia of penalty rates and this discredited argument that you will simply create more jobs by denying workers on low rates of pay the capacity to get a penalty rate. When I was a low-paid tradesman, when I first came to Australia, it was penalty rates that kept food on my family's table, it was penalty rates that let me save up to buy a car and it was penalty rates that allowed me to take my kids on a holiday.

I just do not think it is right for people who have had a privileged and wealthy upbringing to lecture anybody in here about getting rid of penalty rates, because penalty rates are so important for so many people. If employers cannot arrange their businesses flexibly enough, with all the flexibility they now have, without having to rip away at workers rights and conditions, including penalty rates, then they should go and do something else, because obviously they are incompetent, ineffective employers. That is the bottom line.

After 27 years as a trade union official I just get a bit sick of the rhetoric you hear, the demonisation you hear from the coalition on the role of the trade union movement in this country. I would put my record as someone promoting productive performance in the workplace, someone promoting best practice in the workplace, someone promoting good industrial relations in the workplace against any coalition senator in this place. I did it for a living. I was looking after workers, having to argue with workers that they had to improve productivity, having to argue with workers that some of the work practices in place had to be changed.

What is never mentioned in here is that the great revolution on productivity under the Hawke-Keating governments was a revolution that was facilitated by the trade union movement. Without the trade union movement going out and arguing for improved work practices on the job, for increased skills on the job, then this productivity revolution that you hear so much about would never have taken place. It was the trade union movement that also said, 'If you want us to be flexible then you have to look at the whole productive performance of the organisation.' It was the trade union movement that ran the best practice campaign to ensure that it was not just an exercise of cost-cutting, of ripping away at workers' penalty rates, their shift allowances and other allowances that they had gained over the years. It was the trade union movement who said that you actually have to look at a whole range of issues. Those issues include the quality of management on the job. We argued as the trade union movement that best practice, that productive performance, required a range of issues to be dealt with. That was about getting decent management systems in place, modern management systems.

When I first became a union official in the early eighties there were not many companies that had a business plan in place. The first business plans started to come into the manufacturing industry when the Hawke government started paying to have business plans put together in companies around this country. That is how great the management was in this country. There were no business plans in the early eighties, and we wondered why we could not have an international vision, we wondered how we could not be productive and we wondered why we could not compete internationally—because the management systems were absolutely ridiculously poor. Towards the end of the Keating government there was an inquiry undertaken by David Karpin, a senior executive of Rio Tinto at the time. This was not some union stooge coming in and saying that you have to do certain things. What David Karpin said was that the management systems in this country were abysmal and that they did not meet international standards that were required for industry to compete effectively in a global economy. He set out a range of recommendations to improve the productive performance of management in this country. That was one issue: getting management systems in place that actually facilitate improving productivity.

The other areas are the areas that you hear lots of discussion about: research and development. The manufacturing industry over the years has become a huge base for research, development and innovation in this country. That is why, if we rip away at the manufacturing industry, the capacity for this country to have a broad based economy and to have decent jobs for working people will be massively diminished, because we cannot simply be a quarry, we cannot simply be a farm and we cannot simply be a tourist destination; we have to have a broad based, high-skill economy for the future of this country.

A few years ago, when you spoke to a manager—not only in the manufacturing sector but around the country—about how you could improve logistics, they did not know what the word 'logistics' was, until it started to be written on the back of trucks. The logistics of getting a product from one spot to another, making sure it moved effectively and efficiently from the suppliers to the factory and out of the factory to the consumer was not a concept that was there. But we, under the Hawke and Howard governments, and I as a union official in that period, looked at all these issues. I was on the government's best practice committee, both as the Assistant National Secretary of the Manufacturing Workers Union and the National Secretary of Manufacturing Workers Union. We looked at companies all over the world with government officials and business people to see how you increase productivity, and you do not do it by simply coming here and slandering good unions, slandering good union officials and slandering workers who want representation through the union movement, as we see time and time again from those on the opposite side.

It is about decent, quality products. Certainly it is about cost, but that is only one element. It is about cost, it is about quality, it is about research and development, it is about innovation, it is about logistics and it is about management systems. It is not about what the coalition simply see as their holy grail, and that is achieving Work Choices again. We know that they really want to implement Work Choices again; they just do not want to say the name 'Work Choices'. What they are saying is that they will have an inquiry into productivity. That will go to my favourite organisation: the Productivity Commission—stacked full of academics, stacked full of people with PhDs and stacked full of people who have never been on a workshop floor in their life, pontificating about how workers can improve their productivity, looking at all the right-wing theories and trying to implement them through the reports. I am not a fan of the Productivity Commission because I have seen them in action. That is why the coalition are seeking to use the Productivity Commission as the basis to attack workers' rights and use the Productivity Commission as a front.

Let's look at the issues in this bill. There are family flexibility, stopping bullying, making sure that workers get access to their unions through right of entry, resolving intractable greenfield bargaining and other bargaining, and making sure that penalty rates are part of a worker's right in their award. We know that that is an anathema to the coalition. The coalition hate the thought of ordinary workers having access to a union, and that is why Work Choices was implemented.

Senator Polley interjecting—

Certainly, it is in their DNA, Senator Polley; it is absolutely built into their DNA; they could never get it out. Just to prove that, we had the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, who was a Work Choice warrior along with Senator Abetz, saying that it is dead and buried, but then he wrote a book called Battlelines. In a chapter called 'Unfinished business' he talks about Work Choices not being that bad. In his book, that is his DNA coming right out onto the paper.

A government senator interjecting—

Yes, you can believe it. The Leader of the Opposition, for those who cannot remember, has said if he writes it down then you can believe it. But what he is not saying is that if he just says it then you cannot believe it. That is the DNA of the coalition on industrial relations.

What did Work Choices give us? Work Choices gave us the situation in the individual agreements that were put in place—this is from a federal department assessment by DEEWR—that 16 per cent of 250 AWAs expressly excluded all protected award conditions. So the flexibility that the coalition loves was to get rid of all award conditions. The Labor Party thinks that award conditions should be strong, robust and protect minimum standards for workers. Penalty rates were excluded from 63 per cent of AWAs. Shift loadings were excluded from 52 per cent of AWAs. Only 59 per cent of AWAs retained public holidays. Twenty-two per cent of AWAs provided for a wage rise during the term. So over 78 per cent had no wage rises during the term of the AWAs. So when Senator Cash comes in here and uses terms such as 'the militant union movement' and 'the thugs in the union movement', we know it is all a cloak. It is all rhetoric to try to implement more and more limitations on workers' rights to get access to a union. That is what it is about.

This bill takes a completely opposite position to Work Choices. It is not about ripping workers' rights away; it is about looking after workers. As a former union official and as a senator for the Labor Party, I am proud to look after working people. I do not come here, as some have, and skite about my past life as a lawyer working for the big end of town ripping away workers' rights, because I believe workers have the right to have a decent standard of living.

To come in here and argue that the only people who create jobs in the community are those in business is ideological claptrap. A lot of businesses could not even operate without government. They depend on government to provide the roads, rails and other infrastructure that keep their business going. You would think that a business sets up and somehow all the roads appear around the business. You would think that all the schools suddenly appear out of the blue because a business sets itself up. You would think that all the hospitals are set up by business. What a load of nonsense to say that business people are the only people who create jobs. Of course businesses create jobs. But businesses depends on government to create the infrastructure to make sure that they can compete effectively throughout the nation. I am just a bit sick and tired of the ideological nonsense we hear from the other side of this chamber.

'We have to make it conducive for business to employ people,' says Senator Cash. Do you know what 'conducive' means under Senator Cash's definition? It means more flexibility—that is, fewer penalty rates and lower wages. That is what makes it conducive for business. You never hear that lot over there ever complain about the $10.5 million severance payments that big business give themselves. Is that a problem for productivity? You never hear about that from over there. Is that a problem for fairness and equity? It is never discussed over there. Big business can be absolutely incompetent. Business leaders can be absolutely incompetent and send a company nearly to ruin and pick up $10.5 million and walk away. Many workers would never see a fraction of that in their whole working lives. So I am not interested in the nonsense you hear from over the other side of the chamber.

Their argument is that if you do not have employers you will have no jobs. Well, what a revelation that is! That is part of the fear campaign that the coalition run on every issue. If you ever want to understand where the coalition are coming from in an argument, go with the fear factor. They say if you look after workers' rights then jobs will disappear. They say if you try to protect workers so that they can access their union then jobs will disappear. It is ideological claptrap with absolutely no evidentiary basis whatsoever. They are the Work Choices warriors on the other side. They would rip everything away from workers. This legislation is about giving Australian workers a fair go. We should give Australian workers a fair go, reject Work Choices, reject the ideological claptrap from those on the other side and make sure we get decent conditions for good workers in this country.