Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to discuss this urgent and vital measure that will alleviate the growing regulatory burden on employers and employees across Australia. The government is proud to introduce the Fair Work Amendment (Repeal of 4 Yearly Reviews and Other Measures) Bill to ensure that the Fair Work Act continues to operate effectively and prudently while also ensuring that the Fair Work Commission retains its independence. This bill contains three key measures. The first is to repeal the requirement for the four-yearly review of the modern awards. The second is to enable the Fair Work Commission to overlook minor procedural or technical errors when approving enterprise agreements. The third is to apply the judicial misbehaviour and incapacity act to Fair Work Commission commissioners in order to improve public confidence in the Fair Work Commission and ensure the highest standards of behaviour from this very important role. There is absolutely nothing controversial about this bill. The bill seeks to take the politics out of the Fair Work Act. It will in fact ensure that, whether you are an employee or an employer, the application of the legislation will allow for timely resolution. Unfortunately, those opposite in the Labor Party, and their wayward allies in the Greens, for reasons of posturing and theatre alone have decided to oppose these measures and to introduce their own amendments.

But let me first speak to the strengths of this bill. The centrepiece of this legislation is the repeal of the four-yearly reviews of modern awards. These reviews represent an immense regulatory burden that needs to be removed to allow the Fair Work Act to provide steadfast rulings and decisions. The current review began in January 2014, and it is still going. In its review of workplace relations, the Productivity Commission has found that the current framework is one that is 'hugely resource-intensive for all involved'. The government, I can assure you, is committed to removing these burdensome costs in a timely manner for employers, for unions and the Fair Work Commission. By seeking to streamline the current operation of the Fair Work Act, employment disputes and agreements will be able to be resolved in a far more timely manner. This repeal has wide-ranging support from the Australian public. Indeed, it is a rarity to have the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Industry Group and the Australian Council of Trade Unions in lock-step in consensus on a legislative change. It is a truly revolutionary moment when the partisan lines of industrial relations are set aside to allow Australians, employee or employer, to benefit from a robust piece of legislation that delivers fair and just enterprise agreements for all. This bill has done exactly that.

In November of last year, these groups co-authored a letter to the Minister for Employment, Senator Cash, indicating—in fact, pleading—that the four-year review requirement be removed from the Fair Work Act. Surely this act of unity demonstrates that this bill is a measure designed specifically to improve workplace agreements for all Australians. By lifting such a time-consuming and resource-intensive constraint from the Fair Work Commission's operations, the government is ensuring that the Fair Work Act can operate in a comprehensive and timely manner.

Furthermore, the bill will adequately provide an appropriate transition period. The current review that has been ongoing since 2014 under this bill will be concluded under the existing framework, but, importantly, after this mandatory review has been concluded the bill will remove the requirement for the new review to commence in 2018. This is a position that is broadly supported by the Fair Work Commission, by businesses and also by the trade unions. This amendment is both thorough and considered. I remind the chamber that the Fair Work Act's stated objective is that the award system be simple, easy to understand, stable and sustainable. Repealing the requirement for four-yearly reviews of modern awards will go some way to meeting that objective.

The second measure of the bill is what is technically known as a no-brainer. The fact that, currently, entire enterprise agreements can be thrown out over a simple mistake, such as a typo or a spelling mistake, illustrates the level of unneeded regulation and ridiculous red tape that is weighing down the bargaining process. We in the government are committed to providing Australia with a balanced framework for enterprise bargaining. By targeting these absurd barriers in the current legislation, these amendments will guarantee that the framework can operate with ease. Let me give you an example of the absurdity of the current regime. The current legislation states that if an employer were to staple a notice of employee representative rights to any other documents, the commission, within its current framework, is allowed to reject the entire application and force the employer to start all over again because the staple is in the wrong place. Heaven forbid that there is a typo in any of these forms, for, yes, a typo in the current framework also constitutes a procedural error that warrants rejection from the commission.

As it stands, the current legislation makes enterprise bargaining more expensive, the process protracted and entirely unproductive. This is not only a cost to the employer but it is an immense cost to employees and to the Australian economy. If you want to promote a sluggish and low-growth economy, as those opposite seem to want, then by all means let us sit belligerently on our hands and maintain the status quo of the current legislation. But, while I can see the flimsy trade unionist rationale from the Labor Party, who oppose those reforms, we on this side of the chamber will not sit idly by as the economy is held back by cumbersome barriers such as this one.

Those opposite will say that we are removing the safeguards in the current legislation. I can assure you that we are most certainly not. How can this bureaucratic process be a safeguard if it promotes more paperwork, more red tape and, ultimately, more confusion for businesses and employees alike? Yet this is what we are hearing from those opposite. We are committed in this government to a common-sense approach to the agreement-making process. This amendment will allow employees who are satisfied with agreements from their employers, even those with a minor spelling or procedural error, to be approved by the Fair Work Commission provided that these small technicalities do not disadvantage the employee. This is a flexible and a fair measure, and it's designed to allow the legislative framework to continue to operate in the rare event that employers commit a minute procedural error.

To allow for these reforms to operate fairly, the government is seeking to implement the sensible reform of applying the Judicial Misbehaviour and Incapacity (Parliamentary Commissions) Act 2012 to members of the Fair Work Commission. It is only fair that those administering the rulings of the bargaining agreements are kept to the highest standards of impartiality and good conduct. The government is adopting this reform as suggested by former federal judge the Honourable Peter Heerey AM QC, who has delivered a report concerning former vice president of the Fair Work Commission Michael Lawler. As spoken about by Senator Burston so eloquently, as indicated in the report, there is no formal mechanism currently that informs the parliament of allegations of misbehaviour against the Fair Work Commission members. Without any formal checks or balances, the Fair Work Commission's position as an independent body is severely compromised. How is this possibly fair?

By not reforming the current legislation, we enable bad behaviour. We become enablers of bad behaviour. We allow individuals to abuse their positions and allow the vital process of enterprise bargaining to become a protracted and costly affair. Mr Heerey's recommendation ensures that the parliament, upon the discovery of allegations of misbehaviour against the Fair Work Commission members, will be able to quickly establish an inquiry into those allegations. This particular reform guarantees that due process and accountability are restored to the Fair Work Commission, and these actions will strengthen the commission. Furthermore, it will improve public confidence in the Fair Work Commission.

This issue has drawn significant commentary from our friends in the fourth estate. The measures we're introducing are designed to improve workplace relations for all Australians. The aggressive behaviour of the militant trade unions over the past year has drawn ire from our side of politics and from the press, but, most importantly, from the Australian people. There is no appropriate time for bullying and harassment in any workplace. The lawlessness displayed by the CFMEU and by John Setka demonstrates that Labor will continuously support malpractice and criminal conduct in the workplace. But the government will not be deterred from ensuring that public confidence in the workplace agreement process is not sidelined by the actions of a few violent thugs. The integrity of our workplaces for both the employee and the employer requires that the legislation can be relied upon to effectively rule on agreements when such issues arise.

It is bizarre—it's extremely bizarre—that those opposite in the Labor Party and in the Greens wish to link these measures to penalty rates. I found Senator Watt's 20 minutes of talking about penalty rates to be nothing short of extraordinary. This bill has absolutely nothing to do with penalty rates—nothing to do with penalty rates at all. To assume otherwise or pretend otherwise is nothing more than political opportunism.

This bill is purely about reforming the procedural and accountability measures of the Fair Work Act and of the Fair Work Commission. The actions of the ALP and the Greens witnessed in the House of Representatives, where they sought to insert their own amendments into this act with the explicit purpose of compromising the commission's independence when ruling on penalty rates, demonstrate the divisive politics that those opposite seek to extract from this very important bill. If the Labor Party and the Greens want to ensure that all employees get a fair go then, surely, their support of this bill could be taken as a given. But if we want to talk about undermining Australian employment prospects, if we want to talk about limiting access to new employment opportunities, limiting access to jobs, well, then, let us look no further than the Australian Labor Party. Let us turn to their political agenda that has been promoted under the shroud, this guise, of fairness and equality that is nothing more than a covert cover for a redistributionist agenda.

The irony, of course, is that the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Shorten, established the Fair Work Commission in 2009 as an independent body. This decision by Mr Shorten in 2009 was his most noble and conciliatory action to date. It was the Labor government in 2009 who appointed all of the fair work commissioners who ruled on penalty rates, and it saddens me to think that Mr Shorten, who was once committed to giving Australians a fair go, has come to this. Mr Shorten used to support measures designed to grow the pie of the Australian economy, but surely this is not the case anymore. Mr Shorten is now firmly in lock step with militant trade unions and their desire to engage in futile and divisive class warfare. Mr Shorten, who was once the champion of lower penalty rates and flexible workplace agreements, has now committed to doing little more than punishing small businesses. Mr Shorten was once a supporter of lower company tax rates. He's on the record as saying so. These lower company tax rates are so vital for the millions of businesses in Australia to grow, but now he has committed the Labor Party to one of the most redistributionist agendas that we have seen since Arthur Calwell. Gone are those days of the economic rationalists of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. This is not a progressive Labor Party. This is an economic nationalist and reactionary Labor Party that most Australians had thought to be consigned to the pages of history. Well, it has been resurrected again by Mr Shorten.

The best way to protect and grow Australian jobs is not to adopt the politics of fear and division but to take a sensible, policy-minded approach which is grounded in economics and not the politics of populism. This bill is thoroughly grounded in independent policy analysis. It has been designed to cut through the day-to-day politics and the regulatory burdens to allow employees, employers and the Australian economy to go forward on a more stable footing.

It is imperative that the Senate pass this legislation, that all of us in this chamber come together to support this bill and discard the hollow rhetoric of fairness and inequality for the sake of efficiency and productivity. We must all be committed to providing Australians with an enhanced framework of workplace law. The government have introduced these measures to do exactly that. We, the Turnbull government, are committed to delivering a prudent workplace framework, we are committed to delivering an efficient workplace system and we are committed to guaranteeing that all Australians are given a fair go. I thank the chamber for its time.