Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make my contribution to this piece of legislation. The reason that this legislation is so contested is that it will have a significant impact on the IR landscape in Australia—quite frankly, in a negative way. We have already had small businesses and medium-sized businesses saying that they've got unions on their doorstep and they're being threatened by the unions. This bill isn't about the workforce and workers in this country, as the Labor Party spin machine would have us all believe. It's a union life-support bill. It's about providing power back to the union movement. With private sector union membership sinking to somewhere around 10 per cent or less, unions are seeking a way back, and the government is providing it to them through this legislation.

Businesses are already telling me they're being threatened by unions and being told that this legislation gives the unions the opportunity to go after non-union workplaces. We know that—businesses that have been working cooperatively to create arrangements for their workforce and are seeking to expand their workforce. We all know that there's a workforce shortage in this country right now, and so the bargaining power actually is with workers. Businesses are seeking good workers, good employees, because that's important for their businesses. And we are seeing a growth in wages across this country because of the balance of the market in Australia. We are seeing a growth in wages. The Labor Party wants to dismiss that reality, that fact, but everywhere I go, in every workplace that I talk to, they are all looking for workers, and they're all willing to pay for workers who will work hard for them and provide strong productivity. But the non-union businesses are also telling me that the unions see this legislation as a ticket to come after them.

So don't be fooled by the rhetoric from Labor. This legislation is about reinvigorating union power. It's not about workforce. The objective is to drive up union membership by standing over workers in businesses and in industry—and driving up Labor Party revenues, quite frankly, through the union movement. How do we know that for sure? The CFMMEU have belled the cat. John Setka's out there, and he has said he looks forward to having the power to go after non-union sites. I can tell you that people I know in the building industry, including in the fit-out sector of the construction industry, are hearing that all over Australia.

During my time in the construction industry, I remember seeing the impact of pattern bargaining across that industry and understanding the impact that had on inflationary forces. Effectively, Labor are sending us back to those bad old days of the seventies and eighties, when the unions threatened subcontractors and disrupted building sites. So, when the Labor Party tell us about driving more affordable housing, they're kidding themselves. They're kidding themselves when you think about what the impacts of this legislation are going to be on the construction industry in this country.

Labor say that this legislation is about delivering an election commitment. The Labor Party did go to the election saying they wanted to get wages moving again. They did say that. But they didn't say that they were going to introduce legislation to bring unions back into businesses across the country and to give unions the opportunity to attack small business across the country and drag them into processes that they don't necessarily want to be a part of. No wonder Labor want to ram this legislation through the parliament with a truncated Senate committee process and deals on the side with the crossbench. They really don't want the scrutiny that they should have and that this legislation deserves, given the impact it will have on the Australian economy. They want to ram it through before Christmas so that their union mates can get straight into businesses across the country and so that they can deliver on their backdoor, secret deal with the union movement at the expense of Australian business and the Australian economy. So much for a fairer, kinder, more open parliament and process.

Obviously I'll allow that the Prime Minister sent out the memo. They didn't read it, and they're not living by it. In reality, though, there is one question that sits with this legislation: why would Australian workers trust Labor with their industrial relations? Labor make out that they are the party of the worker, but increasingly we're seeing that that's not the case.

Let's not forget that the legislation that this is amending and replacing is legislation that was brought into being by the Labor Party under former Prime Minister Julia Gillard when she was minister for industrial relations, to replace the legislation that was in place before that. That was after a period of time, I might add, when wages did see strong growth: during the Howard years. Go back and have a look at the numbers. You will see strong growth in wages in relation to the economy during the Howard years. You will see strong growth in the economy and good economic management from a coalition government, alongside strong growth in wages.

Workers in this country have been working to this framework since 2009, when the Labor Party's system came into place. From the Labor Party's legislation, Fair Work Australia have been oversighting the system with Labor's hand-picked people, who have been assessing wage claims and wage increases since that legislation came into place. All Labor's legislation, all Labor's hand-picked people, have been in place since 2009, and that process has driven the outcomes that we've seen over the last decade.

It was that process, every time the coalition sought to amend the Fair Work Act, even during COVID. The cry came from the other side, 'Here we go again with Work Choices.' They were not prepared to amend the legislation. They were not prepared to consider things that had even been agreed with workers, with unions and with employers. They were not prepared to agree to those things. They knocked them back.

Let's be really frank about this. The industrial relations framework that has been providing oversight to workers' wages over the last decade is Labor's. They want to blame the coalition for everything. That's their mantra: deflect any responsibility; blame somebody else. They do not stand up and take appropriate responsibility for their own actions. But let's be fair dinkum about this. This is Labor legislation, passed in 2009 and amended a couple of times, for a new modern award system. To quote the Prime Minister of the time:

The Fair Work Act delivers on the Rudd Government's promise for fair and balanced laws that will allow workplaces to become more productive and competitive without stripping away basic pay and conditions.

The Fair Work Act has enterprise bargaining, in good faith, at its heart. Enterprise level bargaining will be the primary means of driving future workplace improvements and productivity.

It goes on. The media release from the Hon. Julia Gillard MP on 1 July 2009 says:

The new workplace relations system is designed to balance the needs of employees and employers to ensure Australia is competitive and prosperous, without taking away basic employment rights and guaranteed minimum standards.

So, when the Labor Party says the workplace system is broken: who broke it? The legislation is effectively the same as they introduced and that came into effect in 2009. So, why would any worker in this country trust Labor now?

It's not about workers. This legislation is not about workers; it's about union power. We all know it. We understand it. And the unions know it, because—helpfully for us and unhelpfully for the government—John Setka belled the cat. This allows him and his mates to go after non-union sites. At the same time, the government are stripping away the ABCC, which provided some oversight to that. They say that it was all about stickers on hats and things of that nature, but we know and we've seen the outrageous, disgraceful things the CFMMEU have been penalised for, have been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for. You don't get fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for flags on cranes and stickers on hats. That is a complete and utter cop-out, and any person on the government side who tries to run that tripe should be ashamed of themselves.

We had a statement in the parliament this morning about the Jenkins review. Yet people on the other side stand up and try to make the claim that the ABCC is just about stickers on hats. Some of the disgraceful things, which I won't try to repeat in this place but have been debated in this place before, are the sorts of things the ABCC should be addressing. At the same time that they're letting the unions back in they're taking off the oversight and controls of some of the more-outrageous elements of the union movement. They should be ashamed.

The opposition will support fair and reasonable workplace relations. We want to see Australians earning a good living. We are concerned, as the Labor Party say they are, about the cost of living. We wanted to make some sensible changes to the Workplace Relations Act while we were in government, and Labor opposed it, with the Greens—not surprising. But here we are, a bit over a decade after the current act came into place, put in place by Labor, and Labor say we should trust them with the industrial relations system—their legislation, their hand-picked people in Fair work Australia, making the decisions about Australian workers' wages—and try to blame us for the impact on wages. It's all in their lap. Why should Australian workers trust them now?

As I said, we know this is about union power, and they're taking away other provisions of oversight of the union movement at the same time that they're doing this. At a time of high inflation we will see—because the businesses are already telling us—that the unions are tapping on the door, and we're going to see more disruption in workplaces, because the unions have more power, which has been provided to them by this legislation. And Labor will do what they've done before. They don't know how to manage money. They don't know how to manage the economy. And they will continue to contribute to the worsening situation in relation to inflation in this country. We've seen it before, unfortunately. I had to live through it during the seventies and the eighties in the building industry. And we're going to see it again.