Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I begin my contribution, I will just foreshadow that at the end of the second reading debate I will be moving the amendment on sheet 1772. It will come as no surprise to those in the chamber and those listening that I do not support this bill. This bill, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill, simply put, is a union business model. That is what it is all about.

Before the election, what did the government say? Before the election, what was the current government's policy in this area? I'm sure Senator Scarr knows. They said that this sort of multi-business bargaining is 'not part of our policy'—not part of our policy. Then, gosh, at the Jobs and Skills Summit—most know it as the union summit, the union stitch-up—suddenly it appears, and suddenly the industrial relations policy of the seventies and eighties is back in the frame for our nation. Back to the future it is indeed, because what this government is delivering is not an update to our industrial relations systems. It's in fact not a way of delivering secure jobs and better pay. It's a way of delivering a union business model.

Now, Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, has argued that the bill will get wages moving. Well, wage growth has actually already commenced, on the back of a very high inflation number. Does the government actually support that? I don't think the government does, because the finance minister said in this place a few days ago:

… no-one is pretending that wages should be growing at the pace of inflation.

Listen to that. Think about it for a moment: 'No-one is pretending that wages should be growing at the pace of inflation.' Therefore, the finance minister was saying that wages shouldn't be growing at the pace of inflation. A decline in real wages is what this government is overseeing.

I just want to dispel one myth, because we've heard this from the other side quite a lot—that real wages didn't grow under the coalition government. In fact, real wages grew in 2013, in 2015, in 2016, in 2018 and in 2019. And guess what? They did go backwards in 2020 and 2021, and I think there may have been a reason that real wages went backwards in those years. Something happened in those years, Senator Scarr. What was it that happened in those years? Oh, that's right. There was a global pandemic that shut down the economy for a year and a half and, gosh, it had an impact on wages! Surprise, surprise. Does anybody find that even remotely surprising or something that should be driving a modern economy's wages policy today? This is a ludicrous proposition. There was no mandate for the changes contained in this bill. Senator Ayres described this as a 'simple' bill: 250 pages, a simple bill! We had a rushed inquiry, where business organisations—certainly small- and medium-sized businesses—had absolutely no chance of understanding the content of the legislation, let alone its impact on their businesses.

I did manage to sit in on the last day of the hearings into this bill. As I said, it was an extraordinarily rushed process. Senator O'Sullivan did an outstanding job on that inquiry and in the dissenting report by coalition members. But I managed to sit in on the last few hours of the hearing. It was very clear from the interrogation of the Fair Work Commission and the department that even if businesses had had the time to read this, and even if businesses had had the time to digest the 250 pages of legislation, plus the hundreds of pages of explanatory memorandum—even if they had had the time to work through all that—they still wouldn't know the answer to some really basic questions, such as, 'When are we going to be dragged into one of these multi-employer bargaining sessions that are the centrepiece of this bill?' This is how the government is promising they're going to get wages moving, by dragging businesses into these multi-employer arrangements.

But the department couldn't answer when businesses would be considered to be in the same sector, when they would be joined together to be part of these bargaining arrangements. The Fair Work Commission couldn't answer these questions either.