Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is such a gulf between the experience and attitudes of senators opposite and, if I might say so, the minister when setting out this legislation. There is a vast gulf between the workplaces of Australia, the industries of Australia, the workers of Australia, the people who on a day-to-day basis deal with the industrial relations system to try to advance the cause of workers—the people who are trying to lift productivity and skills in Australian workplaces—and members of the government here, who, I have to say, are illiterate in industrial relations terms.

I listened carefully to what the minister had to say. It was an artful outline of the belligerent approach that underlines the government's philosophy in industrial relations. I'll try to put this as a compliment. It was outlined in soporific, bureaucratese that reminded me of what a human relations director sounds like when they turn up at a regional bank to make people redundant or when they turn up to close a factory. In industrial relations terms, the only thing worse than that coming from a minister from the Commonwealth is having a Western Australian lawyer as the effective minister for industrial relations and workplace relations. This country has had too many overpaid Western Australian lawyers practising in industrial relations. The Western Australian disease of hypermilitancy, particularly from mining and building employers, influenced by the American approach, has had a profound negative effect on this country's industrial relations and on the way that the institutions respect each other. It has infected the HR Nicholls Society, the IPA and all these funny little groups and sloganeers on the conservative side. It has meant that all we're left with on the benches opposite is shallow people with shallow talking points who don't understand the issues that confront Australian workplaces, Australian industrial relations and Australian workers.

Industrial relations is not like the traffic act. It should not be a system that is designed to deal with breaches of the law, like breaking the speed limit when entering a small country town. It is about managing conflict. It should be about facilitating collective bargaining and extending collective bargaining. It should be about encouraging cooperation and mutual respect in Australian workplaces. It should be about dealing with exploitation. It should be about dealing with the crisis of wage theft that this government is overseeing. It should be about lifting the wages and living standards of Australian workers. It should be about dealing with the big challenges—falling productivity; the future of work in terms of the big technological changes that are coming; gender inequality at work; and the skills crisis in Australian workplaces. The current industrial relations system is capable of dealing with none of these issues. All of them will be made worse by the constant denigration of the industrial relations institutions and by hyperlegalising and binding up in red tape the institutions that are there to look after Australian workers and Australian workplaces.

Australian unions in the 1904 arbitration act submitted themselves to obligations and to registration. They submitted themselves to some limits on the right to strike after the bitter industrial struggles of the 1890s. The right to strike has been described by at the very least Alan Bogg, who is a very senior British academic, as the canary in the coalmine for democracies. It has never been legal in Australian industrial relations terms or in Australian law for workers to strike, but it has been a regular occurrence, it has facilitated our democracy, it has emboldened people to fight for better wages and it has been critical to the development of this country in economic and civic terms.

There is a creeping legalism, a tendency towards authoritarianism, that is a feature of this act and a feature of the government's overall approach to industrial relations and workplace relations. Industrial relations is really about balancing efficiency, equity and voice. It is not the Traffic Act, and I am disturbed by how far from literacy in these principles those opposite are. It is extraordinary to rely upon the royal commission that this government under Tony Abbott commissioned all that time ago. It was hopelessly politicised, hopelessly compromised. It had a commissioner who himself was hopelessly compromised and hopelessly politicised. The two things he did that year were hand down a decision of the royal commission and run Liberal Party fundraisers. We need an evidence based approach, not a student politicians approach. We need the adults in charge in industrial relations.

The truth is, if you look at the evidence, strong unions and collective bargaining rights mean higher employment, lower unemployment, higher productivity and higher wages. It is not the Fabian Society putting that position. It is not the Labor Party putting that position. It is not one of the Labor Party's think tanks putting that position. It is the IMF and the OECD. They call for sector-wide collective bargaining and stronger union rights in order to lift wages in Western economies, to lift productivity, to deal with unemployment and to kickstart these economies back into some semblance of economic growth, some semblance of decent shape and some capacity to compete in the years after the global financial crisis.

The economy in Australia is stagnant, productivity is declining, real wages are falling—falling dramatically for many workers in the economy—and the wage share of national income continues to fall. We should be strengthening collective bargaining, strengthening collective bargaining institutions and dealing with a system that actually manages conflict and leads unions and employer organisations, employers and workers to step up and deal with the challenges.

Even the BCA, normally more empathetic to your show over there, is out there calling for a more national approach and more institutional cooperation. As I said, this is a government that does not realise the challenges that are in front of us and is in a single-minded way, while the economy is falling down around its ears, obsessed with bashing unions and with getting stuck into their ideological opposition, rather than managing the economy for all Australians and doing things institutionally that are required to lift up Australians rather than push them down. It is lazy, it is complacent and it is shonky. It is a government that has no plan, is loose with the truth and has an incapacity to act in the national interest.

I want to know how the fit and proper test will apply to some of the significant developments in our economy and our society that have occurred over the last century. If this bill had applied, what would it have meant for those builders labourers who went on strike, who picketed and boycotted, who marched and rallied, who occupied buildings in the green bans in the 1970s in Sydney? What would it have meant for workers and for unions who defied Robert Menzies, the hero of those people opposite, in trying to send pig iron to Japan—unionists, steelworkers, waterfront workers in the Illawarra? What would it have meant for those workers and their capacity to take democratic industrial action? What about the pickets and strikes and protests that workers engaged in in the anti-apartheid struggles? What about the boycotts of Dutch companies on the waterfront in order to support the Indonesian Republican movement, which was critical in the foundation of the Republic of Indonesia? It would all be illegal industrial action, all absolutely within the parameters of what the minister's set out. What does that mean for the democratic rights of Australian workers into the future and whether we can again do those things that are necessary to protect our democracy and to advance the rights of people here and overseas?

I myself was engaged in boycott and strike and picket action around many of these issues. In particular, during the East Timor crisis, airline workers boycotted particular airlines in order to support the people of East Timor in the struggles that they were going through. It was deliberate. It was planned. We didn't hide it. I announced it at a press conference. It was absolutely contrary to the legislation at the time. I want to know whether Australian workers in the airline industry or on the waterfront would be able to do the same thing again.

What about those people who fought so hard during the James Hardie dispute? We just need to get a picture of the morality that drove the people who ran CSR and James Hardie. A personnel manager wrote a memo in the 1970s which said, 'Even if the workers die like flies, they will never be able to pin anything on CSR.' The predecessor of the minister opposite acted for James Hardie and CSR. She was famous for trying to delay the deathbed hearings of workers afflicted by asbestos and mesothelioma. She regularly made applications to defer hearings, demanding to know why the fact that a worker was sick meant that they could jump the queue. In contrast, the unions were engaged in legal action, political lobbying, but, yes, strikes and protests. I want to know whether those kinds of deliberate political strike actions, boycott actions, are going to put Australian workers in the firing line and make it less likely that people will participate in democratic action.

There is a big contrast here. Westpac bank: 23 million breaches—we're now told maybe 29 million, maybe 30 million—of Australian money-laundering legislation, some of it to facilitate child sex exploitation in the Philippines. Why is the government obsessed with taking action on union officials, members and delegates and not able to deal effectively with regulation in the banking sector? Why is there a double standard? Why are the directors of James Hardie still present and active in Australian corporate life, still regarded as leaders and directors of boards in Australian corporate life? The directors of Rockpool; the Calombaris empire's restaurants; 7-Eleven; Domino's; Michael Hill jewellers; all of the shonky building subcontractors; all of the people who run the shonky labour hire companies in the agriculture sector who have been pinged recently, who've been prosecuted effectively recently over wage theft—why are those people being treated differently to union officials and to union members?

Minister, is it not correct that this bill allows for union officers to be disqualified on application by the minister or any person with sufficient interest, such as employers or employer organisations, but that applications to disqualify company directors can only be brought on by the regulator? I have quite some experience in dealing with the regulators in administrations and corporate insolvency events where people rip off workers' money, and I've never seen a more pea-hearted, soft, ineffective capacity to recover workers' money. I'd have no confidence in their capacity to deal effectively with company directors. (Time expired)