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

My chief concern is that this bill is going to drive up costs for the small businesses which can least afford it. There's been no meaningful consultation with the small business sector. At a briefing on the bill last week, I was provided with a lot of detail about extensive consultations with at least 50 unions and a handful of large employer groups, like the Minerals Council. There were about 50 conversations with the unions—probably in total with about eight to 10 different union groups. Who knows? It might have been more. But the unions got through the Fair Work Commission's door rather than small business or even big business, so it was high on their agenda to hear what they had to say.

When I asked the Fair Work Commission about which small businesses they had met with, they couldn't answer me. They couldn't give me the names of them. I even asked the general manager—and everyone on the board—if they'd ever run a small business or worked in one. His answer was that he had always been a public servant—in other words, no, he had never run a business, never employed staff and had no idea what it was like.

I have run my own small businesses—plumbing, farming, food processing and, of course, my fish-and-chip shop, for 10 years, as a single parent. I also grew up in a small business for the first 16 years of my life. So small business has been part of my life for most of my life. Most of the people in this place have never run a small business or employed staff, so the fact is: you have no idea the impact that you're going to have on businesses out there. It's a two-way street, whether you're an employee or an employer. They go hand in hand.

In speaking to small businesses over the past few months, it's very clear they're struggling with the consequences of inflation as much as, if not more than, Australian households are. They are experiencing big increases in operating costs, insurance premiums, rents and government taxes or rates. So many of these small businesses have been established by owners with capital raised from credit or from mortgaging their homes, so they too are feeling the bite of rising interest rates.

This is what people have to consider. They all go out there and think, 'We should have part of the profits.' You know what? If you want part of the profits, then go and take out a loan, put yourself in mortgage up to the hilt, mortgage your home, and you can run your own small business as much as you want to, and you can get the profits. We don't live in a communist country. We live in a democratic society. This bill is just dictating what the workers should have. That's communism. That's socialism. That's what this is about. You think that one business over another business—you're tying it all in. If it's a like-minded business—and you haven't really explained that in itself. What's a like-minded business? You're saying enterprise bargaining.

If you really are serious about this, then you should look at the state and federal awards. That's what you should do. Raise the state and federal awards. You don't tell businesses, private enterprise, that they must bargain as far as everything else. It's plus, plus, plus. No-one has bothered to actually ask the question: can businesses afford it? You have never asked that question. Can businesses afford it? I'm all for the worker and the inflation rights and looking after the worker—a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. But you are pushing it from one side. This is the unions. This is about unionisation. It's about the unions getting into businesses and it's about the unions signing up more people, because you've only got about 13 or 14 per cent of Australians who are part of the unions. So that's what this is all about—nothing more than that.

The businesses are having difficulties sourcing skilled Australian workers, and their productivity is falling as a result. They're also now required to pay out up to 10 days of domestic violence leave, thanks to this government—another added cost of business. This bill does nothing about these issues and in fact places yet more costs on small businesses, which are ultimately being passed on to the consumers. We should not be pushing small businesses to take on more costs to fund enterprise bargaining. This increases inflation, not wages, and threatens jobs rather than makes them more secure.

Also missing from this debate is the fact that, if higher wages are forced upon small businesses, they will face increased payroll tax from greedy state governments. Have you considered that? Have you considered that, if you're going to increase wages on small businesses, then their payroll tax is going to go up? For what? If you had any common sense, that's what you would address. You'd actually work with the state governments to get rid of payroll tax so that the employers could employ more people without being fined with a tax. For what? Because they employ people? What a stupid tax it is. You've done absolutely nothing about that. If you had any common sense you'd deal with the payroll tax before you start telling businesses what to do. This bill should never have been introduced without a serious discussion with the states about reducing payroll tax.

One Nation cannot and will not support this bill. And why I ask the bureaucrats—wonderful bureaucrats, know everything, read it in the textbooks, learnt it from universities—come in here and start telling the ministers, who don't even know their own jobs and then start going along with everything the bureaucrats say. What should have happened with this whole thing is a sensible debate and a consultation process to understand it, because you have not proven to me that there is going to be an increase in wages. You have not proven your point here. And that's what it's all about. The mining industry should never have been tied up in this. Most of the mining industry pay above the award wages with anyone to do with this Fair Work. It's ill thought out.

You've got a rookie senator who's going to go along with you, who doesn't understand, who was not part of the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, which One Nation was. For three months we debated this. In the consultation that went on we investigated, we spoke to businesses and we spoke to unions. We spoke to everyone. And now with the ABCC being abolished, the thuggery that goes on in these construction industries due to the unions. Small businesses were going under because if they didn't join the union and pay their $5,000 fee they couldn't unload the concrete and it hardened and they lost a truckload of concrete. Unions go in and commit thuggery. These building construction sites faced increased costs of about 30 per cent because of the union thuggery that was going on. That stopped under the ABCC, so it's going to be quite interesting what happens in Australia when this passes under Labor. And I wonder if some people are going to say whether they got it right or whether they got it wrong.

It frustrates me no end that the Labor Party relies on the unions for its funding and for its donations. And have a look at who's on your benches—all union reps. Most of you are from the unions. You have been part of the unions and you move up through the ranks of the unions and you all end up here in parliament. It's a great pathway for people from unions to end up in this place! It's not the union members I'm having a go at. I'm having a go at the union bosses. You're pushing this bill because of your own self-interest and your own self-gains to end up on the benches here in this place. What frustrates me is that the general populous are going to be the ones who will suffer because of this ill-thought-out bill brought before this parliament.

One Nation calls for sensible measures to address the rising costs of living and the rising costs of doing business, such as tax reform, welfare reform and especially immigration reform. We call for this legislation to be thrown out into the rubbish bin where it belongs.