Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

Labor opposes the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2014 [No. 2]. This bill is a virtual replica of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2013 which was rejected by the Senate on 14 May 2014. It is also a virtual replica of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2014, which was rejected by the Senate on to March 2015. The only difference is that this bill includes government amendments to the previous 2014 bill that were agreed to in the House of Representatives. This bill is unnecessary and imposes burdensome regulation on registered organisations that no-one wants—employee organisations do not want it and employer are organisations do not want it.

This bill epitomises the government's determination to destroy effective collective bargaining and effective trade unionism in this country. It demonstrates clearly that the extremists are in control in the coalition. We have Senator Abetz, a work choice warrior, pursuing this bill to try to stop workers having access to effective trade unions in this country. We saw what happened when this government had control of the Senate. They attacked workers' penalty rates, they attacked their annual leave loadings, they attacked their conditions. We only have to see what they are doing at the moment without the control of the Senate, they are proposing to increase the working hours of public servants in this country. They want to remove conditions from the Public Service in this country. They want to weaken bargaining and union representation of workers in this country. They want to change the higher duties qualification for public servants in this parliament. They want to change personal and carers leave for public servants. They want to attack the trade union movement and workers every opportunity they get. Nothing could epitomise that more than this bill and the actions that the cleaners in this parliament are having to take this week to protect their wages and conditions against attacks on the cleaners of this parliament. These are some of the weakest people in the parliament, with the weakest bargaining capacity. They are some of the people who need support to get decent wages and conditions. Some of the cleaners are working two to three jobs to keep food on their family's table, and yet this government attacks them by cutting their wages.

Look at Hutchison ports where, until Senator Abetz was forced into an embarrassing reversal, he basically indicated that sacking a worker by email or text message was okay. He had to retract that and move away from that, basically after providing what his real position was.

These people are extremists. These people do not care about workers' rights in this country. These people do everything they possibly can to diminish workers' capacity to balance up their bargaining power against the boss. That is what it is all about.

Look at this royal commission that they have established—a royal commission that is clearly exposed as a political attack on the trade union movement and their political opponents. That is what this government are about; they are about a naked attack on their political opponents. They use a royal commission and put their mate in as royal commissioner. Their mates go down and sit in that commission, attacking the Leader of the Opposition and attacking trade unionists on the floor of the royal commission. This is the same royal commissioner who accepted an invitation to go to a Liberal Party fundraiser. That is the type of behaviour that this government undertakes, and this legislation is part of that general attack on workers' rights to bargain in this country.

If you look at the ABCC: thankfully, this Senate has again stopped the attack on workers' rights in the building and construction industry. They have set up a Fair Work Building Commissioner who is biased, who is incompetent and who attacks the workers in the industry at every opportunity. This is a government which have absolutely no understanding of fairness and no understanding of the need for collective bargaining in this country.

They have established a Productivity Commission review to try to give them cover in order to cut the penalty rates of workers in the hospitality and retail industries. The Productivity Commission was cover—nothing more than cover!—to come out and say, 'Cut the penalty rates of workers in retail and other areas! Cut the penalty rates of some of the lowest-paid workers in the country!' And we know that is what this government want to do.

They think this country can become more productive by forcing workers into servitude. They think this country can become more productive by cutting wages to the lowest they possibly can. They think this country can become more productive by forcing workers to rely on tips, as workers in the United States of America do! This is a government that is completely out of touch with ordinary Australians—absolutely no idea what it means to struggle to put food on the table, to buy their kids schoolbooks, to put the kids into school uniforms and to send them off to school. They have absolutely no idea. All they want to do is act on behalf of their big business mates and act on behalf of their mates who do the brown paper bags in front of their Bentleys in Newcastle, to get their support for re-election. That is what this government are all about. No-one should have any misunderstanding about what this attack and this legislation are about.

They scrapped the low-income superannuation benefit for some of the lowest-paid in the country. Everybody knows that the lowest paid will need more support and more help to get a decent retirement—a retirement with dignity. But what do this mob do? They cut away at their capacity to get a decent retirement.

They have made a submission to the national minimum wage review, which basically said to give them nothing—give the lowest-paid in this country nothing! They are a government completely at odds with fairness and equity. They are a government which cannot be trusted. They cannot be trusted. If you look at what they said before the election in terms of industrial relations, in terms of taxation, in terms of funding for the ABC and in terms of pensions, then what have they done? They have gone back on every promise they made to the Australian electorate before the last election.

And then they brought about a budget that has been universally condemned—a budget that was about looking after their mates with their fat wallets at the big end of town and coming after workers and pensioners in this country. Well, this bill is another part of the push by this government to suppress workers' rights and to suppress workers' capacity to be able to bargain effectively against employers that want to reduce their wages and conditions. It has nothing to do with productivity; it has nothing to do with oversight of the trade union movement and it has nothing to do with decency for workers in this country.

Ten coalition MPs are on the public record in calling for cuts to penalty rates. I remember when I was on the job as a fitter in the power industry and in the shipbuilding industry. I needed my penalty rates to pay my bills, to pay my rent and, eventually, when I got a house, to pay my mortgage. The penalty rates were important!

This bill will weaken the organisations that will help workers maintain and improve their wages and conditions and protect their penalty rates in this country. This is another example of a coalition government that has no care for ordinary workers in this country, a coalition that will simply deliver for its big business mates whenever it possibly can.

And yet on this bill Senator Abetz has done something that I did not think would be possible in this term of government. He has actually united the trade union movement and employer organisations to say that this bill is unfair, that this bill is not appropriate. I was a member of one of the governing bodies of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union; I was a fitter; I was on the governing body of the union. The coalition is saying that I should have been treated and workers should be treated the same as high-paid executives on the boards of companies. It is an absolute nonsense.

Not one union who made a submission to the inquiry on this accepted the proposition that a worker, a volunteer, on a governing body of a union was the same as some high-flying executive on the board of a company—not one. Not only didn't the unions accept that position; the employer organisations would not accept that position either. The employer organisations drew attention to the fact that they had many volunteers on their governing bodies who were not being paid and should not be subject to the same checks and balances that are on high-flying well-paid professional people on the boards of companies. It just does not make sense. It is not what should happen. But this is about the political ideology, the extreme ideology, of the coalition, who will not even accept a bit of fairness about workers are represented.

The AIG have said they oppose this bill. They say:

The provisions of the Bill in this area will operate very unfairly on registered employer organisations and their officers, 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.

This is the AIG, the Australian Industry Group, one of the biggest, most respected, most influential employer organisations in the country, and they say: 'This is crazy. This is not what should happen. You will stop people volunteering to come on the governing bodies of the Australian Industry Group and employer organisations.'

That is exactly the same submission we received from unions and their representatives. Unions were saying: if you start to take penalty provisions against ordinary workers—who could be cleaners in Parliament House but on the board of a governing body like United Voice, the union—then they would be subject to the same penalties as a very wealthy, professional, former executive who happens to be on the board of a company. They do not match up. It just does not make sense. That is why the Australian Industry Group is saying: 'Nonsense! This is nonsense. It should not be done.'

The Australian Privacy Foundation in their submission says:

There has been no demonstration that existing law … is inadequate, e.g. that there is serious and pervasive corruption that is not being addressed because investigators and prosecutors lack authority.

Except for extremists such as Senator Abetz on the government side—those on the government side that want to destroy effective trade unionism in this county, those on the other side that want to diminish the wages and conditions of ordinary workers—no-one believes that this bill is an appropriate bill. The employers do not believe it; the employer organisations do not believe it; the trade union movement does not believe it; the ACTU does not believe it. the Australian Privacy Foundation in their analysis say that it is flawed. This is a bad bill from a bad government. That is the bottom line. It is about their ideology.

And it is not just the Australian Industry Group who oppose this. The Motor Trade Association of South Australia—I do not think you would call them some kind of communist group undermining the country—say this is not on, that you need amendments to this bill, and that the bill as it stands should be opposed. The Motor Trade Association of South Australia go through all of their problems with the bill.

This is a bad bill. The South Australian Wine Industry Association—I think Senator Edwards might be on that board or might be involved with them—criticised the alignment of directors' responsibilities. And they basically say they are a not-for-profit incorporated association and that the role of their board members cannot be directly compared to listed public companies.

So you cannot compare the work of a volunteer—a cleaner on the board of their union, a fitter on the governing body of the AMWU or an electrician on the governing body of the CEPU—with the professional people like ex-directors and ex-managing directors of companies, who are on boards of companies who are there for a profit. One is a voluntary organisation and the other is an organisation for profit. And to try to compare them is nothing more than an attempt to destroy effective organisation in this country.

Let me tell you that without an effective trade union movement in this country workers would end up like workers in America in the retail sector, where they have to depend on tips to get a decent living wage. That is what would happen. You would see workers not be in a position, as eminent economists have said, to have some countervailing force against the employers in this country. There would be no countervailing force because you would not be able to have effective organisations, and workers' wages and conditions, penalty rates, shift allowances and annual leave loadings would disappear. That is what this mob is about. Make no bones about it: it hates the trade union movement and it hates workers getting decent rights. That is what it is about. This bill must be opposed. (Time expired)