Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2021 is an important piece of legislation in the life of this parliament. When we come to the topic of industrial relations it's an opportunity to hear about the parallel universes that exist around this chamber. We hear all sorts of smearing and basically the inference of corruption, which we heard from the Greens just then. That is such a degrading way to start a debate.

I understand that people have different views on these matters, but the reality is that these are important issues for working people and for Australians. The way that we calibrate our labour laws and the way that we set up our tax policies are very important to the lives of people who elect us to these chambers. I would like to think that we could have a more mature debate than have people come in here and read out talking points that haven't even been written in this building. It is quite clear that vested interests are writing these talking points for members and senators. I think they're just coming in here and reading them out.

When it comes down to the basic elements, we have a country that has been very successful. We're the 12th-largest economy on earth. We have a small domestic population. We have relied upon foreign capital and have relied upon trying to get good migrants. We've got an outward disposition. We have to be competitive because we're competing for investment. We haven't got enough capital to develop our own country. That is the Australian problem. Capital has been diverted to superannuation people and others, so we have a major issue with our competitive position. That is the starting point for me, because how competitive you are determines how much investment you will get and then how many jobs you'll be able to create on the back of that investment. It's pretty simple. So labour laws are critical. Labour laws have to be competitive. No-one owes this country a favour, so you have to be competitive. You have to create the conditions where organisations, people and businesses are going to invest in this country and create more jobs. When you look at the things that hold back the economy—and I accept that they're politically difficult to change—tax, the way you tax, tax rates and labour laws are really important things. So I welcome the fact that our government is pursuing these industrial relations changes. They have come out of a process held in good faith by our government and key stakeholders, employers, unions and third parties.

On this question of unions, a lot has been said. This side is not wanting to be hostile towards organised trade unions, but we are concerned about the tendency of organised trade unions to operate for the benefit of themselves and not for the benefit of their stated constituents, the workers. There has been a tradition of financial schemes, boondoggles, super funds, industry super funds—whatever—bringing together money taken from workers and spending it on themselves. That is a major concern. We want to see good trade unions representing the interests of workers.

We want to see the same thing on the business side. We want to see good, organised business operations representing the interests of business focused on the national interest. This is the challenge we have in this area. It's the same on labour laws and it's the same on superannuation. It's hard to find organisations that will argue what the best thing is for the nation right now. I'm not interested in trying to find the best thing for capital or labour; I'm interested in trying to find the best thing for the country as we come out of this economic shock. That is very important. So I wish that more would come with clean hands.

On the elements that have come out of this process, perhaps the major one deals with casuals. There has been enormous confusion after the Rossato case. A court decision said that casuals, paid a higher rate of pay, can effectively double dip and get the same protections as full-time workers. We have no problem with flexible work. We have no problem with full-time work. We have no problem with people having legal statutory protections. But we don't want to see double dipping. The implications for people coming into this place and arguing against these changes really are quite grave.

The way the Rossato case has been determined by the courts has meant there is $39 billion of liability sitting on the balance sheets of these organisations, businesses, in Australia, so we have to tidy this up. We have to give certainty about what a casual worker is. Australian Mines and Metals Association CEO Steve Knott, last year, said:

The precedent set by the Federal Court in both the Rossato and Skene decisions overturned decades of common understanding about casual employment and suggested casuals could have two bites of the cherry—higher hourly pay rates and entitlements reserved for permanent employees.

This is something we should fix, and this bill offers a pathway.

This bill gives casual workers a pathway to permanent employment. That's what it does. It clarifies exactly what a casual worker is and what a full-time worker is so that businesses can employ people knowing what the laws are. Quite an important precondition for investment is understanding the world in which you're entitled to make an investment. Labour costs, quite rightly, in many sectors are quite high. So clarifying this and giving a clear path to conversion is a welcome reform.

Award flexibility is another element. We want to see the extension of the coronavirus settings that allow workers and businesses to agree on more flexibility. This whole idea that we've got to be trapped and straddled to this Fair Work Commission archaeology forever is going to send Australia to the Dark Ages. I think the idea that workers and businesses are banned and can't actually agree on providing more flexibility which suits them is very, very troubling. You have to wonder: why would parties come into this place and want to deny individual workplace agency? Perhaps we'll find out. At the end of the day, we also want to improve underemployment by providing more avenues for people to get more work, which could be delivered through the question of more flexibility. Thirty per cent of retail workers say they want access to more work. Forty per cent of food and accommodation workers say they want access to more work. The flexibility proposed in this bill could deliver that.

When we turn to enterprise agreements, this has to be one of the biggest failings of the industrial architecture known as the Fair Work Commission framework. The whole idea is that you've got basic conditions guaranteed in law, the employment standards, and then you've got the award. That is supposed to be a baseline; that is supposed to provide Australian workers with certainty and protection. The whole system is premised on the basis that there would be enterprise bargaining, there would be the opportunity for workers, individually or represented by unions, to bargain with their workplaces, with their employers, to go above and beyond to get a better deal at the workplace level. That system is dead. Enterprise bargaining in Australia is dead. It has died and, if you don't believe me, I give you the view of a former Fair Work Commission senior deputy president, Peter Richards—it's had so many presidents, it's hard to keep up with all the presidents in this constitutional monarchy. He said:

Ironically, collective agreements have become bundles of individual contracts, and are simply too transaction-rich for employers to bother about.

But interestingly, we've got a view from the Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary, Sally McManus, who has quite rightly said in relation to the bargaining system:

We cannot allow workers' pay or conditions to go backwards through bargaining—

Agreed, because bargaining has got to be a better deal; it can't be a worse deal. Ms McManus went on to say:

We need to fix the bargaining system to give workers more power to win pay rises and improve conditions, not give employers even more options to cut wages—

Agreed, agreed, agreed. My former boss Jennifer Westcott has said that the BOOT and the enterprise bargaining system, which is dead, were 'a productivity killer'. So there you go: the ACTU and the Business Council of Australia are both saying this enterprise bargaining system is dead. That means that workers can't get a better deal.

Our bill puts forward a proposition that you can get enterprise agreements, EAs, done in 21 days, not three years or 14 decades, which this Fair Work Commission takes to deal with things. A less technical test would revise enterprise bargaining in Australia, and that would be a good thing for Australian workers. That would be a good thing for business, which ultimately provides 80 per cent or 90 per cent of the workforce in Australia. We can't all work for the government in this country; most people work in the real world and they want to get pay rises, they want to get a better deal than the awards. Enterprise bargaining being dead is hurting workers, so we need to bring enterprise bargaining back to life. This bill is the only option in town. This is the only chance to bring enterprise bargaining back from the dead, from the crypt. You can knock off an enterprise agreement in 21 days, if this bill were to pass. The Fair Work Commission thinks it has the powers of some sort of an emperor over the economy. I tell you what, no-one elected those people and we need to legislate to provide that the Fair Work Commission needs to deal with these things swiftly, and it needs to take a sensible approach, a principles based approach, in making its assessments about whether workers are better off or not. That's a pretty simple test. It will go to their pay and their conditions. It's a pretty simple test, but we need to clarify it because enterprise bargaining is dead and it is hurting workers.

This bill will also deal with longer-term agreements. It will provide that there can be eight-year greenfield agreements when the agreement exceeds an investment of $250 million. I remind the chamber that, yes, we have this problem in this country that we don't have enough money to fund our own projects and so we rely upon foreign investment. Actually having longer-term agreements means we might get more foreign investment and we might have more jobs. So that is another important reform. I would say to the Senate that there are serious projects which would benefit from having longer tenure. In my home state of New South Wales, we're currently building the second Sydney airport. I've got no doubt that projects associated with the aerotropolis, soon to be known as the suburb of Bradfield, named after the great engineer who designed the Harbour Bridge, would have benefited from these longer term agreements.

Finally, I come back to underpayments. This will turn on much stronger laws in Australia. You're looking at four years jail if you underpay your workers and a $1 million fine for individuals. So we are taking this very seriously. It actually addresses a lot of the issues that have been raised in the Senate inquiry conducted through the Senate references committee.

In summary, the whole point here is that we want workers to get a better deal and we want more investment in Australia. These are sensible, incremental changes which are not based on ideology. They are based on solving problems. They will mean that there will be more jobs as we recover from this pandemic. We will be a more attractive investment destination because people will have certainty that they can employ casual workers, they can have longer deals and they can get an enterprise bargaining agreement through our system. That is a good thing for Australian workers.