Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I continue my speech from yesterday, when I was quoting the coalition's dissenting report. That report reads as though there are many, many unions acting improperly with members' funds but not one employer group, and that members of employer groups have nothing to gain from this legislation. The final sentences highlight that this bill is solely about trashing unions and about seeking to destroy collective bargaining.

I turn to substantive parts of the references committee report—a report that was necessary because of the shortcomings of the recommendation from the legislation committee's report. Many submitters—both employer groups and trade unions—said that even if the recommendations were accepted by the government the legislation would still cause great disruption and harm to the operations and effectiveness of the administration of registered organisations in Australia. This is due to the significant unintended consequences of the bill, and the training and financial burdens imposed by the bill.

The references committee report went to great lengths to incorporate arguments both for and against the bill, and to include arguments from both employer groups and trade unions. It is a report that I believe clearly crushes the arguments for the bill. The report highlights how, in drafting and conceptualising the bill, the Liberal government has fundamentally missed the point about the nature of officials and officers of many registered organisations.

Far from being commercial, for-profit companies, these are membership organisations that survive on the work of volunteers. I highlight comments from the Australian Industry Group regarding the proposed material personal interest requirements of the bill. They said:

The provisions of the Bill in this area will operate very unfairly on registered employer organisations and their officer, and it is essential that the Bill is amended. The Bill would impose a far more onerous regime for officers of registered organisations than what applies to directors of public companies. The regime, if enacted, would undoubtedly deter persons from standing for office in employer organisations. In practice the provisions of the Bill would seriously impede many organisations from carrying on their daily business operations.

The ACTU reiterated this concern, from the perspective of trade unions, in its submission. It said that the committee should be cognisant of the fact that the burden of this regulation falls not just on the full-time salaried leadership of unions, but on many rank-and-file members who are elected as unpaid delegates to governing bodies, which may meet as infrequently as once a year or once every two years.

If registered organisations cannot get members to fill the various office and delegate roles required for their organisations to function appropriately then what happens to these organisations? They will die a slow death, and the Australian community will be worse off.

The report also highlighted evidence from the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation that the minute-keeping requirements of this bill were too onerous. The evidence was:

While organisations do keep extensive records of their meetings, it is often the case that they deal with sensitive and confidential issues and do so under an agreement that such matters remain “in house”. Examples of this are in dealing with an organisation’s employees, industrial strategy and commercial issues.

A blanket requirement to record minutes, and for such records to be made public, will only foster and encourage a lack of transparency as organisations respond to this requirement with more “off the record” discussions and more informality and consequently reduced accountability when dealing with issues that are considered sensitive or confidential.

I felt that the ANMF hit the nail on the head with this evidence.

The requirements in this bill around the management of registered organisations are too rigid and impractical. With regard to the training of officials, this bill would impose upon registered organisations a requirement to have their training recertified by the new commissioner, even if their training has been approved by the current Fair Work Commission. The Ai Group raised that they had already spent significant resources on developing a training program required under the 2012 changes. They submitted:

For example, there are four organisations—us, the ACTU, the AWU and one other organisation which I cannot recall—that put huge resources into having their officer training programs developed and approved. There is nothing in this legislation that grants automatic approval for those training courses. We have got to again run the gauntlet with the Registered Organisations Commission.

Talk about increasing red tape on business!

Of course, there are always loopholes available, and it was interesting that the ACTU said:

… that the passage of the bill could result in many employer organisations deregistering as registered organisations and instead, adopting corporate structures. By forming companies limited by guarantees, the organisations could then avoid the disclosure, training and oversight provisions of the bill.

So on one hand this bill will severely damage the effectiveness of trade unions, but provide an out for employer groups to actually become more secretive and more exclusive than they already are. Maybe that is the real reason for this bill?

The report also highlights that the penalties under the Registered Organisations Act were tripled in 2012, and that these penalties are sufficient to act as a disincentive. The report notes that the bill has been drafted in such a way that the new serious contravention category actually has a circular definition. That is the definition of 'serious contravention' includes a contravention of the act that is 'serious'. Of course, no definition of 'serious' is provided, creating an ambiguous definition to allow the commissioner to apply a serious contravention whenever he or she chooses.

Further, given the different functions of corporations from registered organisations, the attempt to copy the serious contravention provision from the Corporations Act is totally flawed. As evidenced in recent months, criminal law is able to prosecute wrongdoing. The actions of the few should not be used as an excuse to enact draconian measures on registered organisations and their membership.

And I repeat that I do not condone officers of registered organisations, or anyone in a position of trust, acting inappropriately, misusing trusted funds or taking benefits when they are not entitled. The reforms by the previous government are sufficient to improve accountability of trade unions and employer groups, and this has been clearly demonstrated over recent times. I urge senators to vote against this bill.