Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was very pleased to have the opportunity to participate in Labor's Fair Work Taskforce hearings held in Launceston on 29 June—Senator Polley, who is in the chamber, also attended that hearing—and in Hobart on 30 June. I was invited to join the Fair Work Taskforce by the shadow minister for employment and workplace relations, Brendan O'Connor, and it has been a very worthwhile initiative.

Before the last federal election, the Liberals promised not to touch workers' employment conditions. Mr Abbott stressed, 'Workers' pay and conditions are safe with us.' As Leader of the Opposition, the now Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, said that Workchoices was 'dead, buried and cremated'. But there is a massive gulf between the government's rhetoric and their actions when it comes to the reintroduction of Workchoices.

Consider the Abbott government's record to date on workplace relations. The Commission of Audit recommended radical changes to current entitlements, including cutting the minimum wage in real terms every year for a decade. The government has introduced a number of fundamentally unfair workplace relations bills, which seek to cut hard-won workplace entitlements and conditions. And the government's Productivity Commission Review has put working conditions on the table, particularly penalty rates. We can see from the Productivity Commission's draft report that they are being used as a proxy for the Abbott government's assault on penalty rates.

And let us not forget the government's attack on unions. After all, it is Australia's trade unions that are the main obstacle to the government's campaign to cut the pay and entitlements of working Australians, and they do not like it. I spoke last year on a bill that was designed to tie up registered organisations, especially trade unions, in so much red tape that they would not effectively be able do their job.

A similar bill was introduced into the Senate, which I spoke on earlier this year, and I am pleased neither of these bills have passed the Senate. However, we now see the third iteration of this bill on the Notice Paper this week. We have said again and again that these bills are not about transparency, which is the government's line on this issue, but they are about silencing unions and that is exactly what the government intends to do, despite the fact that many hard-working union members have paid money for effective representation. I should also mention the government's expensive political witch-hunt in the form of an $80-million royal commission into trade unions.