Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

Those women, yes. Another small business owner: 'The rush of this bill is extremely concerning. At present, every business is short staffed and facing difficult circumstances. We're all trying to find our feet after COVID, and to rush through a bill without adequate understanding from the business community is unreasonable. This is another issue where employers will be forced to enter into a new agreement within 12 months, creating disharmony, hardship, costs and upheaval at a time when that is the last thing that is needed.'

These proposed workplace changes represent the most radical shake-up of Australia's industrial relations system in decades. Labor has made it clear they want to hand over workplaces to the unions. This is a breach of faith with the Australian voter and Australian businesses large and small who took the Treasurer at his word when he said last year that industrywide bargaining was not part of Labor's policy—and at a time when businesses are doing it tough.

They're struggling. They're struggling with staff shortages and rapidly increasing power costs, and union masters will not make it better. I know that in Townsville alone the number of small businesses that are closing or are up for sale is increasing every month. I had my hair cut the other day, and the hairdresser said she no longer employs anybody. She doesn't even have an apprentice. After the last dispute she had with an employee, it cost her $50,000 in legal fees for it to be thrown out of the court. This small-business owner has all of her savings gone because we are not a country that values employers anymore. We don't value the people who take out the mortgage and stress over how they're going to make ends meet, because we've got those on the other side calling late payment of superannuation 'wages theft'. What would they know about struggling to make cashflow stretch?

Unfortunately, the minor amendments between Senator Pocock and Labor do nothing to allay the concerns of small and family businesses across Australia. These businesses will still be forced to bargain against their will as part of the supported bargaining stream. Businesses with more than 20 staff will still be able to be dragged into multi-employer agreements with their much larger competitors. We've seen the modelling: the regulatory impact statement reveals how much that bargaining costs will impose on small and medium and large businesses.

This bill will lead to more strikes, more job losses and more uncertainty. This is a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. This is nothing about productivity. This legislation does not mention productivity. All it mentions is wages growth, without an understanding that somebody has to pay the bill. And I don't see anybody on the other side with any understanding of the stress of paying the bill. How much fairness is there in it for the people who take the risks, who mortgage their homes, who employ people and create these jobs? How much fairness is in it for them—for people who rely on the structure of awards, who rely on the structure of predictability? Because you're right: there's not an HR department for a business of 20 people. There's probably not an HR department for a business of 100 people with a three per cent margin that is struggling every week to pay the ever-increasing bills.

Not only is this attacking medium business and small business; guess what? We're going to take on the very businesses that pay the royalties and taxes and the incredibly highly paid wages in mining. It is mining who is going to have to pick up the pieces. It is always mining that Labor turns to for more taxes, risking up to 33,000 jobs. Remember, mining jobs are, on average, double the average Australian salary. The average Australian salary is $90,000, and for mining jobs it is double that. The administration clerks in mining companies are on double that. Truck drivers are on double that. Yet they're the jobs that this is going to risk—140 projects worth $77 billion at risk. Of these projects, 46 are critical minerals. Apparently we need critical minerals. But not under this government, because they say one thing to industry and another thing to suit the unions.

This will cost not just the business owner; this will cost the taxpayer, because for every week of strikes and lockdowns it is hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties, in company taxes, in PAYG salaries for these workers. In the last 20 years employment in mining has tripled. Wages have doubled, benefitting hundreds of thousands of Australians, especially in regional areas. Mining companies themselves are saying that these changes will slow down Australia's energy transformation and that while we need more lithium for batteries, more copper for solar panels and more cobalt for electric vehicles we do not need more uncertainty and risk that will chase away investment.

Simon Trott of Rio Tinto said:

I do have concerns, serious concerns about the legislation as it's currently drafted. It will be a handbrake on economic growth. It'll be a handbrake on productivity and ultimately a handbrake on wages in the rest of the economy.

Hancock Prospecting Chief Executive Garry Korte said a six-week period of strike action at Port Hedland would cost $9 billion in lost iron ore export revenue and an estimated $551 million in lost mining royalties to the Western Australian government. That is a six-week strike period. He said:

If the Bill were to pass in its current form it would open the door to a confrontational industrial relations system that could cripple our industry and result in poorer wage outcomes for our workers.

Finally, from BHP—and I know those on the other side don't like hearing from these big employers, who employ thousands of Australians and pay them more than double the average wage, who pay the royalties and the company taxes that allow us to have roads and schools and hospitals, but I'm still going to quote them—Mike Henry says:

There simply is no case for multi-employer bargaining in the mining industry. This is an industry where the current approach has been working well, wages have been on the move.

He went on to say:

We are a business that competes globally.

It's just so essential that Australia remain competitive and any aspects of the legislation that run the risk of reducing flexibility, giving rise to increased industrial action and so on, that's all going to harm Australian competitiveness in our sector.

If this was truly, as Labor likes to say, about the feminised workforce, if this was truly about low-paid workers in our society, if this was truly about allowing more people more flexibility to get their kids to school and care for people, this would not be the way they'd go about it. This is the way that you will threaten the jobs of thousands of Australians as small business owners shut their doors, saying: 'Enough. We cannot keep paying for the social demands of this Labor government. We cannot keep paying for the union demands, the union payoffs of this Labor government.' As Senator Brockman said, every job that is lost, every small or medium business that closes its door, every mining company that doesn't reinvest in this country and goes offshore, and every electricity transmission project that does not proceed because of this legislation, along with the millions and billions of royalties that are lost because of this legislation, is on this government's head.