Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I present the report of the Australian parliamentary delegation to the Republic of South Africa and the 114th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly in Nairobi, which took place from 28 April to 12 May 2006. I seek leave to move a motion in relation to the document.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I will speak very briefly to the motion because the report of the delegation and the bilateral visit to the Republic of South Africa and the 114th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly in Nairobi is a detailed and comprehensive one and speaks for itself. I just want to highlight a couple of the issues, the first one in relation to the South African bilateral visit where the delegation went to visit the BHP Billiton aluminium smelter site located the north of the Republic of South Africa in KwaZulu Natal in the town of Richards Bay.

As the delegation arrived at the airport we were met by a protest that had been organised by the local union movement in Richards Bay, protesting against the repressive and extreme industrial relations changes being initiated at the time in Australia by the Howard government. It took us somewhat by surprise that these laws had gained international attention, and the delegation—both members of the government and members of the opposition—had an opportunity to speak to the protesters. I was quite surprised at their knowledge of the industrial relations changes and the impact they would have.

As a much younger man I had been involved in opposing the apartheid regime in South Africa and I had also been involved with the union movement when the union movement in Australia took a very proactive and quite decisive role in many respects in opposing that abominable regime that was an affront to civilisation. South Africa is considered a developing country, but even as a developing country in the new post-apartheid regime they have laws that give people a fair go, that give rights to workers to collectively bargain and opportunities for workers to also share in the growing wealth of the Republic of South Africa where there is quite a substantial growth rate and, by all comparisons, a booming economy.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Abetz interjecting—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The sorts of extreme laws that this government is putting in place in a so-called developed country are making us international pariahs in respect of equality and fairness in industrial relations. They were aware that individual contracts do strip away the basic bargaining power or any semblance of equity of bargaining power for workers when negotiating with employers. It was somewhat amusing—Senator Abetz, you may be interested to hear this—that one of the government members of the delegation, whom I will not name, went to explain to the protesters that really nothing was going to change because the awards are still there and all those conditions are protected and that if the workers did not want to enter into any workplace agreements they would not have to. But on our return we have actually seen the initial impact of Australia’s extreme industrial relations laws and we have seen that there is no choice, no bargaining and no negotiation. Workers are simply given a contract in a take it or leave it approach. People at the lower end with the inability to negotiate or those whose skills are not in high demand or who do not have high education levels are simply in no position to bargain effectively and equitably with their employers.

On the Office of the Employment Advocate’s own figures, out of all the AWAs registered with it since the Work Choices legislation came into being, 100 per cent excluded at least one so-called protected award condition; 64 per cent removed so-called protected annual leave loadings; 63 per cent removed so-called protected penalty rates; 52 per cent removed so-called protected shiftwork loadings; 40 per cent of agreements would appear to have lost gazetted public holidays; and 16 per cent actually excluded all of the so-called protected award conditions. I found it somewhat amusing that even the government members at the time had no understanding of the impact of this legislation, and they now should. It would appear that unionists in South Africa had a better understanding of the legislation than the members of this government, who were voting for it. But it was good to see that there is some international solidarity and some genuine concern across the worldwide union movement against this extreme government.

But there is one other issue that I wish to talk about, and it is an issue that I took up with a number of politicians at the Inter-Parliamentary Union Conference in Nairobi. It is the case of Mr Crispin Beltran, a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines. He was the subject of a study in a report of the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians, which is a subcommittee of the IPU, and he is the subject of representations I made while I was at the IPU conference. It is worth detailing some of those issues for the public record here, and there are more details contained in the report being presented today. The report states:

On 25 February 2006, Mr. Crispin Beltran, a well-known and outspoken opposition member of the House of Representatives, “was invited” for questioning by police belonging to the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group …

At that interview:

... he was shown an arrest warrant on a rebellion charge dating back to 1985; although the police were told by his lawyer that the warrant, which stemmed from an inciting-to-rebellion case filed by the Marcos regime, has long been quashed, the police refused to release him; later that day, a case was filed against him for allegedly inciting to rebellion at a rally held on 24 February 2006 in commemoration of the ousting of the Marcos regime; counter-affidavits were issued stating that this was untrue and that Mr. Beltran had never given any such speech; on 27 February and 4 March 2006, two new charges of rebellion were brought against him, one of conspiring with an army officer involved in a coup d’etat attempt in 2003 and another one linking him with the Communist Party of the Philippines; on 23 March 2006, the Quezon City Metropolitan Court, which was handling the inciting-to-sedition case, ordered his release;

On 3 April 2006, Mr. Beltran and his counsel filed a motion for quashing the incitement to sedition charge, and the relevant hearing is reportedly set for 29 May 2006; with regard to the rebellion charges, in response to the judge’s decision to resolve within 30 days the motion for the judicial determination of probable cause and urgent motion to release Mr. Beltran or alternatively allow him to attend parliamentary sessions, Mr. Beltran and his counsel have filed a motion to set for hearing and/or resolve the pending urgent motion and to allow the accused to be transferred to a hospital with adequate facilities; however, no decision appears so far to have been taken in this respect and Mr. Beltran remains—

and it would appear from my best information that he remains today—

in detention without a valid arrest warrant.

Regarding the rights of parliamentarians across the world, it is of significant concern when parliamentarians promote significant opposition in their own country and then have the apparatus of the state used against them, in what appears to be purely an attempt to quash that opposition.

The IPU has expressed deep concern at the arrest and continuing detention of Mr Beltran and at the charges brought against him. It observes many points that I do not have time to go into, but it requests that the committee continue examining this case and report to its next session, to be held during the 115th assembly, in October 2006. I will certainly continue to make representations to the IPU on this matter until there is a successful outcome. I recommend the delegation report to the Senate.

Question agreed to.