Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

Shame on this government for its overreach in attacking working Australians with this bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019, and for its interference in democratically run organisations that goes way beyond what we see in any other developed Western country. We in this nation already have some of the most restrictive industrial laws in the world, and this bill takes us further down that authoritarian path. Not since John Howard's Work Choices have we seen such an unprecedented attack on working people in this country. What we have here in this bill is the embodiment of Prime Minister Morrison and his Liberals' ideological opposition to unions—which has led to the introduction of this ensuring integrity bill to parliament. In doing so, it places workers' rights in jeopardy and puts workers' wages, their conditions and indeed their safety at risk.

The government failed in the last parliament in their attack on working people—foiled at that time by the good sense of the crossbench in recognising that they could do better for Australians than to stoop to the lows of this government. The last parliament rejected the previous iteration of this bill because it was extreme and dangerous, and it could not be adopted. What we have before us in this chamber is substantively the same, and, even with amendment, it must be rejected because it breaches deeply important principles for our democracy and the right to freedom of association in our nation. The concern about the erosion of the internationally recognised right of freedom of association is shared by unions from all sectors, academics, civil society, churches and the bipartisan Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights.

This bill is an attack on working people. It is based on the politicised findings of the royal commission into trade unions—its discredited findings. There is no policy justification for this bill, and the government has failed to outline a substantive policy justification for it. The recommendations of the royal commission do not support the amendments proposed to this legislation or what has been put forward in this bill. As can be seen, this bill goes far beyond the recommendations of the Heydon royal commission. We have here in this legislation an attack on the important role that unions play in our society. It has no corporate or political equivalent. We in this place have a responsibility to stand up for hardworking Australian people—retail workers, hospitality workers, cleaners, teachers, nurses and police officers; workers subjected to wage theft; and workers in dangerous workplaces.

It defies belief that the government, the Liberals and Nationals, want to continue their ideologically driven attack on working people on this country, when, after their first two terms with their hands on the economic levers of our country, our economy has almost ground to a halt, and their legacy is stagnant wage growth and underemployment. We have economic analysis from economists and economic institutions that has highlighted the important role of unions in tackling wage stagnation in our nation. But, instead of supporting unions in this role, you come after them. There is absolutely no mandate from the Australian people for the way this government has come after the democratically elected, democratic, strong and effective workplace representation that unions offer. At this time, when we're experiencing stagnant wage growth and a floundering economy, you decide that now is an appropriate time to impinge on the ability of employee representatives to effectively bargain for higher wages? You decide now is the right time to do that?

You've talked about bringing in legislation to tackle wage theft, but that's not what you've brought before this chamber. Instead, what you've brought before this chamber is an attack on the democratic unions that represent workers. At a time when it seems like every couple of weeks another company is discovered to have underpaid their workforce, what we have here is the ensuring integrity bill, which will lead to more wage theft, wrapping up unions in red tape and costly legal action when they should be spending their time fighting for workers.

We saw this very clearly in the evidence before the Senate inquiry, where unions very clearly talked about the tactics of employers, who are quite capable of putting forward spurious claims against unions so that unions have to occupy their time in addressing red tape and spurious claims against them, instead of being able to focus on the industrial campaigns that they're engaged in to bargain and to raise wages. So thousands of workers across the country in lower-paid jobs, who are time and time again victims of wage theft from large companies and small companies in industries like construction, will be compromised in having effective representation. Some of these people have already suffered cuts to their penalty rates under this government, and it's now becoming more and more clear that, while they're losing their penalty rates, in some cases they're losing their regular wages too. We don't see this government coming into this place with legislation to help deal with wage theft and worker exploitation. Instead what it does is prioritise this bill before us today. What we have here is nothing more than a harking back to the days of Work Choices under the Liberals and Nationals.

In the course of this debate, I didn't think I would find myself agreeing with the Attorney-General, Christian Porter, on much, but he has said:

The unions are a fundamental part of the architecture of the Australian industrial relations scheme, and in many instances they do fantastic work.

He said:

Unions do a good job in uncovering underpayment …

Thanks, Minister Porter, for that glowing assessment of the union movement in Australia. So why are you seeking to impede unions' ability to continue to fight for better outcomes for workers? Employee organisations and unions both do critical work in ensuring that workers are remunerated appropriately for the work they do, providing strong representation of employees in collective bargaining, holding employers to account when it comes to maintaining safe workplaces, and making sure that the right of a worker to go to work in the morning and come home unharmed at the end of the day is upheld.

It is unions that have fought and won, and have been in all the fights, on issues that affect all of us. A good example of this is where the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation in Victoria took industrial action that resulted in better nurse-to-patient ratios and, ultimately, better care for patients. That action was taken at great cost to the union, for the benefit of members and, most importantly, of patients. Under this legislation, the union could have faced deregistration for taking unprotected industrial action—just as the TWU could have been deregistered for actions to protect themselves and the public from armed hold-ups; just as the AWU could have been deregistered for taking action against James Hardie in their campaign to ensure compensation for victims of the scourge of asbestos. All these public goods are at risk in this legislation, because unions can be deregistered for taking unprotected industrial action. As Paul Bastian from the AMWU said in evidence to the Senate committee:

… after a concerted campaign, James Hardie finally reached the heads of agreement with the ACTU, Unions New South Wales, victims groups represented by the tireless Bernie Banton and the New South Wales government. We had secured an uncapped compensation for victims of asbestos diseases in Australia and a commitment to contribute up to an estimated $4.5 billion into a compensation fund that was originally only given $293 million. We achieved justice because unions and victims groups engaged in an escalating series of protests, work stoppages, work bans, boycotts, marches, investor activism and intensive political lobbying. It is beyond question that this campaign for sufferers of asbestos diseases made Australia a better, safer and more just place.

Many of the campaign activities which I have outlined to you today would now constitute illegal industrial activity. Under this legislation, those of us who organised this campaign—a campaign that secured justice for people suffering from horrific illness and untimely death—would be banned from leadership of our union. Under this legislation, our union, which stood up not just for our members but for their families and victims across Australia, would be at risk of deregistration.

I really want to call the Senate to account on these issues, because it disproves assertions from Centre Alliance that limiting in this bill the number of parties who can apply to take action against a union or official is sufficient to mitigate the disastrous consequences of this bill, should it become law. The grounds of possible action against a union official or a union are extraordinarily broad. They are unworkable, extending liabilities far beyond union officials to the members of unions themselves. We can certainly see how unprotected industrial action as grounds for triggering disqualification or deregistration will threaten both worker and public safety.

This strikes at the heart of Australian democracy. The provisions of this bill strip workers of their rights in the workplace—as if it wasn't enough that the government saw fit to strip some workers of their pay when they took away their Sunday penalty rates. As it stands currently in our nation, workers are able to organise and decide who represents their interests in the workplace and who leads their union. We have ballots in our nation that are run for unions by the Australian Electoral Commission. In the meantime what we have in this bill is an ideological attack on the rights of workers to organise and represent themselves in democratically-run unions.

It's no surprise to senators in this place that existing legislation already contains extensive grounds on which an officer holder in a registered organisation can be disqualified. What we see here is these grounds being substantially expanded—expanding the new mechanism for automatic disqualification, introducing a new concept of designated findings and designated laws which go well beyond existing grounds, introducing a new 'fit and proper person' test and widening the scope of interested parties that could apply for a disqualification order.

The Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills reported its concern to this chamber that there was incompatibility with the right to freedom of association. We know that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights also upheld its 2017 findings that the bill would limit the right to freedom of association, on the very conventions that Senator Brown mentioned in this place that Australia has ratified.

We have a bill that limits the right of workers organisations to freely elect their own representatives as well as introduces provisions that would disqualify a person from holding office in a registered organisation on the basis of even less serious contraventions of industrial law. We don't see similar provisions in Corporations Law that would have seen office holders in the banks who were exposed in the banking royal commission for ripping off their customers banned.

The government likes to talk about equivalence, saying that employer organisations are affected in the same way by this bill. But the simple fact is that employer organisations are not the ones at the bargaining table; it's their members that are. Employer organisations aren't affected by this legislation in the same way unions are, because they do very different business. There is no corporate equivalent for this legislation that would see office holders in the banks who were exposed during the banking royal commission for ripping off their customers banned. When we speak of office holders, we need to be clear that these are not just paid staff of registered organisations.

We heard during our Senate inquiry that unions have high numbers of volunteers among their office holders. For example, the National Tertiary Education Union, representing workers in tertiary education in public and private universities, have 28,000 members. Of those 28,000 members, 801 are democratically elected into various positions. Only 11 of those 801 are actually paid. Volunteers make up 98.7 per cent of the elected union officials for that union. What we have here are volunteers tied up with red tape. Minor and inadvertent breaches could result in major consequences for them and their union. We shouldn't be a parliament or a government that wants to make things more difficult for the lives of nurses, teachers and shop assistants who put up their hands to volunteer to make their colleagues' working lives better. The threat of disqualification is at such a low bar it will have a chilling effect on these volunteers.

Is it any wonder that two parliamentary committees and the International Centre for Trade Union Rights have raised serious concerns about the incompatibility of this bill and the right to freedom of association? In the current legislation, a court already has the power to cancel the registration of an organisation. But this bill significantly expands both the grounds upon which cancellation of registration could be ordered and those who can bring an application before the court. The grounds don't require unlawful conduct. They don't require a breach to be serious. In some cases, they do not require any unlawful conduct at all. This simply goes too far in impeding the right to freedom of association for workers, and it allows for political interference in the operation of a registered organisation. This interference is unprecedented, and it is a massive overreach on the part of this government.

In closing, this bill, at its heart, is an ideological attack on the union movement and an attack on Australians. This is a carryover of the 'dead, buried and cremated' Work Choices. Labor will not support any legislation that makes it harder for workers to get a fair pay rise. It is a pay rise that this nation desperately needs—a nation in which low wage growth is the new normal. We will not support a bill that could leave workers without the representatives that protect them from wage theft, superannuation theft and dangerous workplaces. I and Labor will continue to stand with Australian unions, which will rightly continue their campaign against this unjust bill.