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

I'm not sure where to go after that! I rise to speak against this dangerous antiworker bill. This bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019, is a continuation of the Liberals' ideological attack on trade unions. It's merely a rehash of the bill that failed to pass this place in the 45th Parliament, with tokenistic changes the government believes will now make this bill more palatable. However, these changes are not substantive and simply do not address Labor's central concerns about this antiworker bill. It's clear the government has no plan but to attack workers and to attack the unions that stand up for them against dodgy, unscrupulous employers. We've seen these attacks in the previous parliament and the one before that. I'd like to remind members of the crossbench that it's unions that fought for and won penalty rates, sick leave, Medicare, the age pension and superannuation, which people that voted for you rely upon. By attacking unions, those opposite are attacking workers' rights and making Australia a smaller, meaner and less just society. They are attacking the voters that they claim to represent.

Something has gone seriously awry in this country, and those opposite are to blame. If you steal $8 million from hundreds of workers over many years, what do you get? You get a slap on the wrist. You'll get a fine—sorry, it's called a 'contrition payment'—worth around five per cent of what you stole. And what happens if a worker dies on a construction site? Maybe the company will get a fine. Never mind the fact that a family has lost a loving member—a mother or a father, a brother or a sister—and the children are often left without one parent. Time and time again we've seen companies exploit workers, not pay award wages, and put workers' lives at risk, and yet again those opposite come in to attack the unions.

What we don't see is this government going after wage thieves. After dozens of high-profile wage theft scandals on their watch, the Liberals still aren't doing enough to fix it. Nearly five years after the 7-Eleven scandal exposed the true extent of wage exploitation, the time for delay is over. We need tougher penalties now to deter and punish employers who do the wrong thing by their workers. Instead of spending our time here today debating how to fix wage theft, we're here again debating another bill that just attacks unions. Unions protect workers from wage theft, yet this government wants to go after the organisations that expose the crime instead of going after the criminals.

Recently we saw Woolworths steal $300 million from their employees. That's a pretty large amount of money. When the Woolworths scandal broke, the defence from the employer groups was that the award system is too complicated. How pathetic can you get? The award system is vastly simpler than it was a decade ago, and the majority of employers are able to do the right thing, so why is it that large companies like Woolworths—who are able to run complex operations across the country, including IT and financial systems and supply chain logistics—cannot read the awards? To suggest that paying their staff correctly is too complicated for them is an absolute cop-out. The fact is these employers simply do not pay enough attention to getting the wages right, because the penalties for underpaying their staff are not severe enough, and that's quite scandalous.

The government's also failing to make it easier for exploited workers to recover their stolen wages. Workers shouldn't be forced to wait years to be paid properly. Labor has proposed a small claims tribunal to ensure workers get their entitlements quickly, and we could be spending our time today debating that instead. However, for the last six years, this third-term Liberal government's workplace policies have focused exclusively on attacking unions. If the government really, really wanted to help combat wage theft, it would stop the attacks on workers. Instead of legislation to tackle stagnant wages, wage theft, worker exploitation, big banks that are laundering money or other dodgy behaviour, all we see is an attack on the unions.

If you're a big bank, you can seemingly get away with 23 million cases of money-laundering breaches, some of which are believed to have been used for child exploitation purposes. And while it's recently been announced that Westpac's chief executive, Brian Hartzer, will step down, and the bank's chairman, Lindsay Maxsted, is also retiring early in the first half of 2020, the government's desire to turn a blind eye is sickening—absolutely sickening. For those who are listening, I just want to point out that Mr Hartzer, Westpac's chief executive officer, is going to get $2.7 million in a payout after he resigns. So he resigns, and then he gets $2.7 million after presiding over 23 million cases of money laundering.

Labor wants to make sure that everyone who's done the wrong thing at Westpac is held accountable for the crimes. I understand that there's a legal process underway, and the Australian community expects it to take its course and for the banks to be held accountable. Given instances of bad behaviour in the banks continue to occur, we would expect the government to be acting quickly to enact the recommendations of the banking royal commission. This would be a far more productive use of the Senate's time. But is this happening? No. This government believes the best use of the time of this place is to attack unions for late paperwork.

This bill is purported to address misbehaviour within registered organisations but instead gives the government extraordinary powers to attack unions. We know that the Liberals have always hated unions, which is odd because, according to their own manifesto, they believe in 'the most basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy—the freedom of thought, worship, speech and association'. They believe in freedom of association, except when it means associating with your fellow employees to stop yourselves being exploited by your bosses. They simply hate the idea that workers would organise together and challenge the power of the Liberals' mates in big business. So, on behalf of their mates, those opposite have sought to break that power and drive down wages and working conditions so that the donors who fill their campaign coffers can make bigger profits.

Those opposite have a long history of attacking trade unions and undermining workers' rights. The worst antiworker legislation we saw was the Howard government's Work Choices—introduced when the Liberals had a majority in both houses—which appears to represent where the Liberals always wanted to go ideologically. But the Australian people overwhelmingly rejected Work Choices at the ballot box. The Liberals' workplace relations plans have not changed since Work Choices; all that's changed are their tactics. Instead of delivering their antiworker agenda in one hit like they did with Work Choices, they've chipped away at workers' rights and conditions over time, piece by piece. And rather than just going after workers' rights, they've focused their efforts on undermining the ability of trade unions to operate, organise and represent their members.

There have been a number of efforts by this government to attack trade unions. One case in point is the $80 million of taxpayers' money they wasted on the political witch-hunt that was the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption. It was exposed as a political witch-hunt when the commissioner they appointed accepted an invitation to speak at a Liberal Party fundraiser. Not only did the royal commission spend much of its time going after legitimate industrial activity; but the government, so embarrassed by the commission's failure, inflated its findings to suit their own political agenda. Despite all the evidence of the rorts and rip-offs in the banking and financial services industry, this government had to be dragged kicking and screaming by the weight of public opinion to call the banking royal commission after voting against it 26 times. Yet it barely blinked before spending millions in public resources on another royal commission to pursue their political enemies. This government has made an art form of using royal commissions not to pursue issues of grave importance in the public interest but as political tools.

Their attack on trade unions continued in the lead-up to the 2016 federal election with the government's two double dissolution triggers, the registered organisations and ABCC bills. The former was a bill designed to tie the unions up in red tape and stymie their ability to do their job effectively, and the latter was a bill which led to the return of a draconian body which until a couple of years ago was led by a hand-picked ideologue. This ideologue, Mr Nigel Hadgkiss, broke the law in pursuit of the government antiworker agenda. When Mr Hadgkiss deliberately provided misinformation about the laws in the construction industry, this government spent taxpayers' money defending his outrageous behaviour.

The next iteration in the government's antiworker agenda was the unlawful leak to the media from the office of the then workplace relations minister, Senator Cash, about the Federal Police raids on the offices of the Australian Workers Union. In October, Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg ruled there 'was not a reasonable ground to conduct the raid', but the minister continues to refuse to come clean about her involvement in the scandal, and the government keep protecting her.

Then there was the government's attempt to interfere in the governance of industry super funds and restrict the number of union representatives on their boards. This was attempted with no supporting evidence that members would benefit from such a change. How could this have been driven by anything other than ideology when industry superannuation funds are delivering the best returns to their members? Perhaps those opposite could have spent that time instead looking at the fee-gouging that was being practiced by some of the for-profit funds.

With this government's continued assaults on trade unions, the ability of those unions to represent their members and the ability of workers to collectively assert their rights, is it any surprise that wage growth has sunk to record lows? While the government pat themselves on the back about how they've done such a great job for their business mates, have they ever wondered who it is who spends the money that lines the pockets of big business? It's ordinary families paying their bills, doing their shopping, buying goods and services or enjoying a day out. As you grind down the wages of these people, they have less to spend and the economy suffers accordingly. It's pretty simple, really. Perhaps big business will rue these attacks on workers' rights and pay when their customers can no longer afford their products.

This government's priorities are wrong—all wrong. The truth is this government revels in the slightest rumour or allegation of bad behaviour within the union movement. They're like Pavlov's dog: they salivate with delight about it. It gives them a chance to wax lyrical, blow it way out of proportion and use it as an excuse to add a new layer of control or red tape to unions that are already overburdened. The truth is that the average union member is an early childhood educator such as I was, an aged-care worker, a nurse or a policeman and not the burly, thuggish stereotype that the government likes to project. As for actual misconduct, this is confined to a very few individuals and is not representative of or tolerated by the broader union movement. On the very few occasions when it does occur, it is effectively dealt with under existing provisions in the law.

Despite the efforts of this government to tar every union official with a dirty brush, millions of Australians remain members because they understand that the officials and staff in their unions are fighting hard for their interests. They remain members despite this government's constant efforts to make it more and more difficult for trade unions to do their job. We know that union staff and officials are genuinely concerned for their members because for decade after decade they've delivered results. They fought and won hard campaigns for better pay and conditions, worker safety and compensation, the right to collectively bargain and equal pay for equal work, just to name a few things. I'll just point out, to people that don't understand this, that there is no such thing as the employment fairy. The employment fairy does not come along and wave a wand to give you a pay rise or safe working conditions. It's all down to the trade unions. Under Liberal governments, this job has become even harder, as those opposite will look for any excuse to rewrite the rules in favour of big business.

We know that in defending this bill the government will engage in their usual tired old rhetoric. They'll reel off a number of instances of past behaviour of certain union officials. Then they'll present this bill as being the only antidote to this behaviour and then try and paint Labor as being, by opposing this bill, the protector and the servant of corrupt and militant union officials. It's a familiar tactic, it's a very repetitive tactic and it's one which I'm sure most Australians are starting to see through. What makes the government's rhetoric particularly hypocritical is that they continue to obsess about the so-called culture of lawlessness within the union movement when, for years, they turned a blind eye to issues such as foreign influence, wage theft and bank misconduct.

They claim this bill would subject registered organisations to the same requirements as those that apply to corporations. Well, there are two problems with that claim. Firstly, corporations and unions serve very different purposes. Unions represent and advance the rights of their members, whereas for-profit corporations exist to generate wealth and advance the financial interests of their shareholders. Secondly, it's just a false claim. Even if you accept that unions and corporations should be treated the same—and I'm by no means conceding that they should—if this bill passes, unions and union officials will be subjected to a higher standard of scrutiny than corporations and their directors.

We have, on the opposite side of this chamber, a party and a government that pride themselves on reducing red tape; yet they always seem to make an exception when it comes to registered organisations. When those opposite bleat about the burden of red tape stymieing the ability of business to do business, it speaks volumes about their motives in burying the union movement in red tape. Union members should decide what their unions look like and who their leaders are—not employers, and certainly not the government of the day. These laws will make it possible for government ministers, a rival in a leadership ballot, a business lobby group or disgruntled employers to shut down unions and deny working people their right to choose their own representatives.

It's important that people are free from government and employer interference so they can join unions and elect representatives who fight for pay rises and fight to protect jobs and workplace safety. It's actually a very democratic approach. This bill, though, is about silencing working people and making it harder for all workers to win pay rises. Giving the government the power to prevent amalgamations of unions is a clear attack on the freedom of association they claim to believe in. There is no justification for preventing amalgamations. If the members of two unions vote to amalgamate, then that should be up to the members of those two unions. This goes to the heart of the democratic principle of freedom of association. How can unions represent their membership effectively if the democratic control of unions is wrested from the members and given to the employers?

This bill is politically motivated—there's no two ways about it—and is a continuation of this government's ideological assault on trade unions. But, in attacking unions, this third-term Liberal government is not just targeting a few individuals; they're actually attacking millions of Australians. What this government needs to recognise is that trade unions are not just made up of a handful of staff and elected representatives. Unions do not simply represent the millions of Australians who choose to join them; they comprise these millions of Australians. The power of the union does not simply reside in the staff and officials; it is the collective voice of the members that gives unions their real power—and maybe that's what worries those on the other side. But when you attack trade unions, you attack their members. And, even worse, by undermining the ability of trade unions to further the rights of working Australians, you attack every Australian worker.

The OECD and the IMF have both warned that declining union density and collective bargaining are contributing to stagnant wages and growing inequality. Yet this government wants to further undermine the bargaining power of Australian workers by attacking and undermining the organisations that represent them. So, while the government may make this sound like some benign bureaucratic exercise and give it a nice little fancy name, the fact is that this bill that's currently before the Senate is an absolute assault on the ability of Australian workers and their representatives to effectively and collectively organise to fight for better wages and conditions.

These laws are fundamentally unfair. They would not and do not apply to business, they do not apply to banks, they do not apply to politicians—despite the serious unethical conduct of many of those. The PM actually runs a protection racket for those on his side, as we've seen again today—not even asking Mr Angus Taylor to stand aside; just running a protection racket. The only people who benefit from these laws are the Morrison government and unethical employers. The Morrison government has overseen raids on journalists and is now attacking working people's freedom to run their own unions. If these laws applied equally to corporations, we would see banks, multinational pizza chains and the restaurants of celebrity chefs close down for repeatedly breaking workplace laws and the top executives would be sacked. This is not being proposed, because it would be completely outrageous, and it's also outrageous for the unions. In closing, we will not support a bill that makes it harder for workers to get a fair pay rise and be represented. This bill represents a politically motivated attack on workers— (Time expired)