Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President and fellow senators, as a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia I rise in the chamber to outline my position on the Fair Work Amendment (Respect for Emergency Services Volunteers) Bill 2016, which is of great significance not only to the people of Victoria but most certainly to the people of Queensland and citizens across our great nation. In short, this legislation relates to the Victorian government's battle with the Country Fire Authority, and that is why this bill is often called the CFA legislation. Like so many issues that come before this parliament, the CFA bill is an issue of freedom versus control. We have to decide, today, if government can control communities or set them free. With freedom versus control in mind, let us consider this bill.

Dr Maria Montessori, perhaps the greatest authority on human development based on a deep understanding of human needs, said, 'Discipline and freedom are so co-related that, if there is some lack of discipline, the cause is to be found in some lack of freedom.' Humans are profoundly in need of freedom and discipline. Freedom and discipline are symbiotic. They are wed.

This legislation is the first I have spoken to in the chamber. And I pledge to all senators here and now that Dr Montessori's words will be in my heart and mind whenever I have matters to consider. The question will be: what freedom do we surrender to ensure stability and discipline in Australian society?

Other pressing legislation soon to come before this chamber includes the bills for the Australian Building and Construction Commission and the Registered Organisation Commission. Those bills can also be classified as control versus freedom issues. In considering the CFA bill, my intention is to look at the broader industrial relations landscape and assess community needs entirely. Freedom to choose destiny, when applied to the CFA matter, could be simplified thus: should the 60,000 wonderful brave people of the Country Fire Authority be able to freely choose whether they come under the control of a union enterprise agreement or not and should they remain as volunteers free from union control or not?

For 160 years local communities managed the proud CFA brigades of Victoria. The Daniel Andrews Labor government wishes to stop communities from making choices about local fire brigades and enshrine union management processes in an enterprise agreement. An EA is ultimately an issue of control versus freedom, especially when it is an overwhelming 400 pages long. The control mechanism proposed by the Andrews government will be amplified if the fire union bosses dictate the daily operations of community rural fire brigades. The bosses will have the ability to dominate by enforcement of the EA. Is this union involvement productive, efficient and justifiable? Rigorous attention to laws and rules is a noble pursuit, but sometimes it is tainted by unconscious good intent or ignoble intent.

When crucial and important legislation comes before this parliament there are a number of tests beyond freedom versus control that we should apply. I am not saying anything new when I comment that tests should centre on the community benefit of any proposed legislation. I am sure as we all vote we are cognisant of how our decisions affect communities.

I am fortunate enough to have travelled this country from the north of Queensland to rural Victoria to get to the bottom of how rural fire brigades work in Australian communities. The legislation that is before us will not only affect Victorian volunteers; it will affect other statutory bodies that rely on volunteers. So when considering the CFA bill we packaged all of the government's proposed IR legislative agenda and talked to many groups about the interlock between each and every aspect of the government's IR program, including the Australian Building and Construction Commission and the Registered Organisations Commission.

As part of my listening with Senator Hanson we heard from many people affected by the government's IR program. We asked: how will it affect them, what changes were needed, were there better solutions and what were their needs? We gave people the freedom and right to be heard, and found it richly rewarding. We first listened to the concerns of ACTU secretary Dave Oliver and CFMEU national secretary Mike O'Connor. We listened to small businesses, tradies, building subcontractors, individual unions, United Firefighters Union secretary Peter Marshall and Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria CEO Andrew Ford. It was rewarding listening to union members and families, paid and volunteer firefighters, large businesses, industry and employer groups, respected IR consultant Grace Collier and ACCC Chairman Rod Simms. We continued to listen as we deliberated over the three pieces of legislation. We learned that the IR carve-out in the powers of the ACCC has led to much discord that could easily be addressed by implementing a level and fair playing field between the expectations of company directors and union bosses.

While we are talking about union bosses' fiduciary duties, where they sometimes let their workers down is that they do not address the core issue of putting more money in members' pockets. How could everyday Australians get more money? Let's get the union movement behind comprehensive tax reform addressing PAYE and payroll tax. Reform would reduce the burden on their members—and that is the key. A reduced tax burden on everyone can only increase employment and reduce cost-of-living pressures.

In the future, One Nation will address comprehensive tax reform. For now, the most interesting conversation I had was the one at the Education and Employment Legislation Committee hearing on Wednesday 28 September in Melbourne with United Firefighters Union national secretary Peter Marshall. Mr Marshall was passionate about his union and has served the Victorian community fighting fires. I honour his commitment. Mr Marshall offered the view that the CFA's failure to adequately manage firefighting meant that statutory responsibilities of volunteer firefighters had to, in effect, be controlled by the EA and thereby come under the UFU's control.

Listening to paid and volunteer firefighters—in committee, at fire stations and in personal conversations—showed that the CFA requires standardisation of practices and operating manuals, congruent with best practice. It is clear that the politicisation of the CFA board and management has weakened and done much damage for many years. The Victorian Minister for Industrial Relations, in her recent letter to me, advocated that the EA is a way to implement recommendations from the 2009 bushfire royal commission. This all begs the question: is the union a vehicle for Victorian government ministers, or are they a vehicle for the unions?

It is true that the Victorian CFA needs a clear operations manual. What I find most bizarre about the solution proposed by the Andrews government is that the proposed control mechanism is a 400-page enterprise agreement. It is not as if these plans of the Andrews government are malicious; they are not. The focus is supposedly on the need to keep the community safe and to keep all firefighters, paid and volunteer, safe. The changes are intended to standardise operations and give clear guidance. It is a noble intent by an ignoble means. Strangely, and I say this is as respectfully as I can, both the Andrews government and the firefighters union seem to think that a 400-page enterprise agreement is a clever idea when, clearly, few in the community, especially in rural Victoria, think that it is. It is not clever.

It is true that we may sometimes need control mechanisms, rules or guidelines. Yet that mechanism must accept that freedom is paramount and add value if a freedom is removed. A solution that controls people's lives must add value—not heartache, disaster and discord. Premier Andrews' solution fails the core test of the value in control versus freedom. I challenge my fellow senators to think for a minute what would eventuate if the Andrews government blueprint for control of local communities were replicated in my home state of Queensland. Imagine for a minute if Annastasia Palaszczuk came down to the Rural Fire Brigade stations and issued an edict that volunteers across Queensland should be controlled by union bosses and follow 400-page enterprise agreements with onerous new control mechanisms. What would happen if Annastacia Palaszczuk brought about the same changes to other statutory bodies that married paid staff and volunteers? This bill protects Queensland from such action. Make no mistake, I stand in this chamber very proudly on the side of freedom. Every piece of legislation that comes before us should tick that simple box: whether it promotes freedom and happiness for communities. There is nothing more asinine or debilitating than a nanny state.

There is another test that legislation before this parliament should meet. I turn senators' attention to the reason we are here: the liberty and freedoms for states and individuals enshrined in our Constitution. In writing our Constitution, our nation's founding fathers clearly intended competitive federalism. It was always the design of those who wrote the Constitution that the states would be responsible for matters such as industrial relations. Our founding fathers wanted to set the states free and, in choosing their destiny, the states would compete for trade and prosperity, and that could only benefit the Australian people. Because both sides of politics have decided to kick around the issue of industrial relations and allow emotion, egos and power plays to take over, we now have one of the most bastardised industrial relations systems in the modern world. Political trickery has replaced sensible discourse in the IR space, campaigns respond to a 24-hour news cycle and outcomes are based on who can shout the loudest or use the most emotion. It is highly unfortunate that we need this legislation as it tramples on a state's rights. It controls a state government when people should be free to make their own decisions. However, sometimes we need an intervention to assist freedom. Conversely, we need to remember that the Andrews government, bleating about federal intervention, is in fact relying on an EA under federal legislation.

There will be debates in this chamber and forever more about the merits or otherwise of states doing their own thing on IR. We get that. Our country's IR system is broken, and as a party we will have a lot more to say about this in the coming term of parliament. As the song teaches, though: one day at a time. At its heart, industrial relations is about relationships. Perhaps in Australia the term needs to be changed to 'industrial recklessness' in which workers, honest union members and business owners pay the price. As broken as the IR system may be, nothing is more broken than the Australian government. That is why minor parties are on the rise and why I am confident our party will win significant support at the next Queensland election.

At the core of the CFA dispute is broken government at its worst, and broken government has manifest itself by being a lazy, lazy government. Lazy government has for many years known about and ignored the systemic issues in Victoria's Country Fire Authority. For a long time, governments have known from royal commissions established after great tragedies of national significance that there are issues with the way fires have been fought, both in rural and city areas, and the need to interconnect between the city and rural services. I would hazard a guess that many reports have been written for ministers of the Victorian government saying the lack of an effective operational manual is the issue in the Country Fire Authority and urgent action is needed. These reports have most probably sat at the bottom of the red box given to the minister each Friday. Perhaps they have sat in some ministerial advisor's suitcase on the way to Malaysia to watch the Grand Prix and dance around seminaked. Perhaps governments were too worried about the 24-hour news cycle to think that they could not take on the challenges. Perhaps the 'Twitterati' scared them into silence. Perhaps the baubles of office and ministerial leather were all too consuming for so many ministers who need only have asked these communities what their needs were.

I know about lazy government. Remember, I am a Queenslander. We live it every day. Considering our state's wealth, Queensland right now is languishing in economic growth because of lazy, terrible government. Listening is a straightforward process for Senator Hanson and me. The formula for the success of Pauline Hanson, as much as academics and political talking heads might tell us otherwise, is nothing simpler than listening to people about the solutions that their local communities need and then speaking out and serving the people. That is what government should do and should have done many years ago with the CFA issue.

The Andrews government took the extraordinary steps of sacking a responsible CFA board and replacing it with nodding yes men and women. It was a much debased thing to do. There was a lack of discipline and, instead, more control was exerted rather than listening to what freedom could have been given to the board in its pursuit of better outcomes. In this state's House, our country's house of review, I apply this test: is my vote needed to pass legalisation that protects the people of Queensland and wakes a lazy Victorian government to the realities of life, jolting it out of its comfort zone and reminding it that there are more people in the community than union bosses? These are the tests that we have laid out for whether legislation should be passed. This bill awakens lazy state government in Victoria and Queensland and around our country. It sets communities free to pursue respect for volunteers. It may for now bulldoze a state's right, but in the context of what is wrong with our industrial relations landscape it is a badly needed bandaid and it removes a complex set of rules not required in an EA format.

Based on my experience leading heavy industry and in using breathing apparatus in emergency rescue training, similar to that used by firefighters, I know that safety depends on clear management structures and chains of command, with disciplined standard operating procedures. The Andrews government enterprise agreement weakens both and will undermine safety. Victorian firefighters and communities will pay the price as standards continue to deteriorate. If the Victorian government is at all interested in safety and communities, I suggest that he gets back to the basics of effective management and leadership—clear accountability with statutory bodies responsible to the government on behalf of the people of Victoria. This bill is needed to keep the Victorian and Australian communities safe. It passes the community needs test.

I will write to the Victorian Premier and suggest that he scraps the enterprise agreement, implements a simplified 20-page enterprise agreement for paid firefighters and creates a dignified and sensible operations manual that all communities across Australia can use in steering the direction of local firefighting brigades. My letter will be that short and that simple. It will be a suggestion, and he can take it or he can leave it. And the people of Victoria can take his decision to the next election or leave it. This legislation will, as the title highlights, show due respect to our courageous and dependable firefighters—paid and volunteer.

Good policy and good politics involve listening and then engaging in hard work. Senators here may hear the four One Nation senators say a lot over the next term, but be assured that what we say is the result of the rewarding work of listening to everyday Australians about what people need. That is our secret, and that is why people know that we say the things that need to be said and do the things that need to be done. We need to pass the Fair Work Amendment (Respect for Emergency Services Volunteers) Bill 2016 to uphold statutory accountability, to restore freedom and to enable safety.