Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, I have to rise and speak on the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022. It's disappointing to have to do so, because all my life I've categorised the Labor Party as being the wreckers of the Australian workforce. I grew up listening to my father constantly telling me how the wharfies went on strike in World War II and wouldn't help our troops out and export our wool et cetera et cetera.

I don't really see this bill as being the final nail in the coffin for small industry and small business here in Australia—no, no, no. The Labor Party put the final nail in the coffin of small business a long time ago. I call this the grave digger's bill. Basically we're now chucking dirt on small business so that they'll be completely forgotten about and erased from history, six feet under, with this ridiculous idea that we can have multi-pattern bargaining.

That is Labor for you. They have to mandate everything. They just have to. There is no individual in the Labor Party's psyche. No, it's just communism: 'We're going to own all the property, we're going to have one set of rules.' We see that constantly. Everything the Labor Party does is all about centralisation, command and control. We saw it with superannuation in the early 1990s, where they slowly but surely raised the superannuation level from two per cent to 12 per cent. If they get their way and get a second term—they're already talking about it—they'll lift it to 15 per cent. Why don't you just take 100 per cent of it now? This is the Labor Party.

It's the same with child care. They want to tell parents that if you want any childcare support you have to give it to the childcare centre, because that way they get to unionise parenthood. This is actually why they push child care so high; without child care, the union movement, which is down to about 10 per cent of the workforce, would be much, much smaller. The only union that is rising in this country is United Workers Union, because of the subsidies going into the childcare sector. It goes on and on and on. We see it with the renewable energy target. It started off at five per cent, then it went to 23 per cent, then it's going to go to 43 per cent, and then it's going to be net zero. It will go on and on and on.

It's important to note just how much damage the Labor Party has done to industry and especially to small business. I want to reflect on the election last weekend. Of course Labor is gloating because they won. They won the election, that's right, but you know who lost: Victoria. Victoria didn't just lose out last weekend; they started to lose out 40 years ago when former Labor senator for Victoria John Button introduced the Button plan, which was the first step in the destruction of the manufacturing industry in Victoria. Victoria was once the jewel in the crown of the Liberal Party because of that strong manufacturing base that has had the guts ripped out of it. If they weren't forced to close down, they've gone offshore, because effectively we had this crazy neoliberal ideology that somehow we were going to compete against cheap Asian imports. It never happened. All that's done is destroy Victoria.

Combine the Button plan in 1985 with the Dawkins plan in 1990, where everyone got to go to university and get a degree. Because of that ridiculous policy that was introduced, another crazy Hawke-Keating policy, we've now got the situation where we have all of these students and Marxist academics controlling Victoria. A couple of years later, we got compulsory superannuation, which gave us another army of financial engineers in Victoria. Most of the industry super funds are centred in Victoria. These guys have well over $1 trillion and there's over $3 trillion and climbing in super. It is effectively going to be bigger than our GDP. This wealth is centralised in the hands of unelected board members.

I want to talk about democracy. We are not living in a democratic society in this country. When you have got trillions of dollars of wealth and our infrastructure controlled by unelected superannuation boards, both private and industry—I'm not taking sides when it comes to superannuation; the whole lot of it is communism and Marxism and fascism rolled into one, if you ask me. The fact that we then walked away from TAFE—the hands-on people that actually built things in this country—destroyed our manufacturing sector and destroyed our small businesses. We have now got more people on the teat of the nation, relying on government handouts through universities, through ever-increasing superannuation policy—academics, you name it. It has made our country very, very unproductive.

Then we move forward two generations. We had the introduction of the Fair Work Act. Of course, there is nothing fair about the Fair Work Act. Interestingly enough, the head of the Fair Work Commission was Iain Ross, who Paul Keating himself admitted was the architect of superannuation, along with himself and Bill Kelty. They must have been sitting back there in a room somewhere in the early nineties, thinking, 'How can we take over this country?' I have to hand it to the Labor Party, because when it comes to bringing in communism by stealth in this country, you guys have done a very, very good job of it. I can tell you that I've had over 30 years in finance and I've never seen freedom as a line item on the balance sheet; if you want to be free you have to be productive. Our freedom comes from affluence, which comes from productivity. We should never ever forget that. Indeed, Robert Menzies himself said that we should not go back to the old and selfish notions of laissez-faire. He also said that the rich and powerful should look after themselves.

While we were focusing on the so-called ideology of the free market, the left over there, the unions, were actually ripping out ever-increasing amounts of superannuation from workers' pay packets. I fail to see how they think we can live in a country with a free market when the government is taking a percentage of workers' wages. They never even asked them; there was never a referendum about superannuation in this country. New Zealand had a referendum about compulsory superannuation and they voted against it 92 per cent to eight per cent. But no, we weren't asked about that in this country. The Labor Party just decided to jack it up, and they're pinching money. This is super, right? This is what they do with superannuation—I'll tell you what that little ad where they do this with their hands is symbolic of. What happens then is that the industry funds take their fees and then Labor comes along and picks up the fees behind their backs, just like that. That's the way that the Labor Party works. This is another bit of compliance on small business. You have to fill out your superannuation forms and you have all these rules. It's more compliance for small business and it takes a lot of time. I've worked in public practices before and it's very time-consuming just to pay that extra nine going on 10½ per cent.

But this bill is riddled with so much conflict, complexity and uncertainty. Industry is extremely concerned; they don't want to be dragged into multi-enterprise bargaining. It's based on this very vague notion of a 'common interest'. Well, I can tell you that that common interest is doublespeak for communism. I can just see this ending up in court. Can you just imagine going to the Fair Work Commission with the words 'common interest'? Fair Work is stacked with Labor appointees and they're actually going to punish small business at every opportunity they get. It's going to make it very difficult. And this will actually punish the workers of this country, because small business just won't want to employ anybody when they can be held to ransom by such vague terms as 'common interest'.

I don't know about you, but all these vague notions do my head in. Coming from a background in mathematics I have to find out how all these warm and fuzzy terms that Labor use hide their communism, Marxism and all that sort of stuff—it's all very scary. But I can assure you that what this bill will do, apart from put people out of work, is increase the cost of living and, if it doesn't send businesses broke, it's going to send them offshore. It's certainly not going to attract other companies to come in and set up business here. Why would you, when you can be held to ransom by the Fair Work Act? It's a real concern, and it's not surprising because this is what Labor do. They aren't going to finish until there is no more private property left in this country and free thought is completely destroyed. 'No, no, we don't want private property in this country,' this is the way the Labor Party think: 'and we don't want businesses to be flexible, innovative and able to think for themselves. And we don't want the employee and the employer to build up a relationship between each other.' With enterprise bargaining you could trust the employer and the employee. We would actually let them negotiate the best terms and tailor those so that they suited them.

That's why I don't believe in any mandates; it's why I took a stand on vaccine mandates, because I think you've got to respect the individual. That is what this party should stand for—the dignity and worth of every individual. It's got to stand for the freedom of choice and the freedom of conscience. We've got to have flexibility and the ability to innovate. That sort of stuff is what creates enterprise and entrepreneurialship that will drive productivity in this country. With productivity comes affluence, and with affluence comes freedom and the ability not to have to rely on that—