David Van (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by ministers to questions without notice today.

I look around and I see an Australia that's getting smarter and smarter, an Australian that's getting tired of getting talked down to and controlled. Why is this? Union membership is heading to an all-time low. According to ABS statistics, just 14 per cent of employees were trade union members, and we're well down on the 40 per cent of employees who were trade union members back in the 1990s. Although those opposite want to take our industrial relations laws back to the Hawke Keating years, we do not live in the Hawke-Keating years, Senator Ayres. Despite this, the Labor Party is intent on pursuing an industrial relations policy that lives in a fantasy land where everyone is beholden to a union, and that's what those opposite want. They want to take Australia backwards.

Don't get me wrong, we on this side of the chamber want changes to Australia's industrial relations system. To quote the Leader of the Opposition in parliament:

We all have a genuine desire to improve our industrial relations system. What we don't want is a system of control that those opposite want—a system that wants to control workers, to control where they can work, control what they can earn, control their lives inside and outside the workplace.

The industrial relations legislation that the Labor government has been trying to pass is some of the most radical in decades. If this government gets what it wants—or should I say, what its union masters want—small business and the economy will suffer. Like most legislation from the Labor Party, it's small business that gets hit hardest because under Labor governments small businesses are on their own.

One of the most dangerous parts of Labor's new industrial relations bill is the prospect of multi-employer bargaining. If it goes ahead, small business will face bargaining costs of $14,638. Don't take my word for it: this is according to the department's regulatory impact statement to the bill. Medium businesses would face costs of $75,148 and large businesses $94,311. Unlike Labor and the union hacks who have never run a business in their life, I've actually run a business, and businesses know that they're hurting under this government.