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

One Nation supports the general thrust of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Withdrawal from Amalgamations) Bill 2020 because it upholds the principle of freedom of association by enabling constituent parts of registered organisations that have amalgamated with other organisations to apply to the Fair Work Commission to hold a ballot of their members on whether to withdraw from the amalgamated organisation outside the current limited period of five years post amalgamation in specified circumstances. We agree with the principle of freedom of association and the right of people to withdraw from an entity. However, we want to note that, while the Labor Party and the Liberal Party have joined to push this through, we are not supportive of the abuse of parliamentary process, because we haven't had time to even look at this bill properly. We don't know if there are any hairs hidden in it or any hidden traps in it. So we would request that we be given more time to assess important bills like this.

We know that this is directly in response to the CFMMEU's dysfunctional mess, as its own leaders have called the CFMMEU at the moment, with, in the press, accusations of bullying by senior members of the CFMMEU. We understand this is done to enable those people to de-amalgamate, but we need more time to assess such bills. Why was it held up until today? This does not augur well for the major bills that we hope to see pretty soon and that we need to give proper consideration—bills that would talk about casuals, about compliance issues, about enterprise agreements and awards, and about greenfields agreements. This is not the way this parliament should be addressing serious matters. This is just rushing through, bulldozing through. So we want it noted that we do not like this process. While I've seen a summary of the bill, we haven't seen the details. We understand there are some safeguards, but we can't understand why the government would dump something like this on us and give us just five minutes to go through the whole bill.

We understand that the other bill has 111 pages and that its explanatory memorandum is up to 221 pages. I'm very concerned that the industrial relations club, which runs this country's industrial relations situation and creates problems for it to solve and perpetuate its own work, is going to further complicate the current complex, fractured, broken industrial relations regime in this country. The government has consulted on this further bill behind closed doors—a process that has not been public—and we are afraid, with good reason, that the people of Australia will be let down, that honest workers and honest employers will be let down. Small business is currently being smashed by the industrial relations club. All that is shown by pushing this bill through so quickly is that the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the National Party are together again as the Liberal-Labor duopoly. That is not good enough for the workers of this country, honest workers who are getting screwed, and honest small businesses who cannot compete because they're lumbered. They don't have the hundreds of lawyers at their disposal. They can't afford that. Small business is being cruelled in this country by an industrial relations club: the lawyers, the courts, the Fair Work Commission, the union bosses of some of the large companies, the employer associations. They make it so complex that they create problems they can rush in as white knights and solve. This has got to stop. We have got to simplify industrial relations.

The government is telling us we need to pass the next bill quickly, as well. We understand the government wants to send it to committee, which is good, but the bill has not had due process in its construction, in its drafting. That and the bill before us show that the government and the Labor Party do not respect the parliamentary process. We should be scrutinising this bill to see its effect on everyday Australians, and especially on small business. We need to simplify industrial relations, to get it back to the basics. Industrial relations is, essentially, a relationship between employees and employers. That's what it is. It's about relations at work, relations in industry. What the IR club has done in this country is fracture that relationship, so employees go to union bosses or lawyers and employers are forced to go to courts and lawyers. That doesn't make a relationship. It separates and destroys a relationship. That's the fundamental thing that's wrong with industrial relations in this country. Managers can't manage, employees can't work and there are restrictions galore. We're coming out of a COVID crisis, supposedly, and the government's own restrictions, with this around our necks. When are people going to wake up in this country? Fundamentally, industrial relations is about a relationship between an employer and their employee. That's it.

If this is the process on this bill, we will be abstaining. We know that Labor and Liberal and the Nationals are going to get together again. We do make note that we support the de-amalgamation provisions, but we want to see the details, and we give warning that we will be scrutinising the larger bill that is coming, because if this is the way the government does its industrial relations—without adequate consultation—then all we can see is we're terrified of increased complexity which will destroy small business, destroy employees and destroy employment.