Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

I particularly want to focus on the non-answers provided by Senator Abetz in relation to two issues, which demonstrate yet again how the Howard government’s extreme workplace laws have been bad for working Australians and their families. The first issue which this government is extraordinarily embarrassed about is the enormous backlog in the processing of agreements under their so-called fairness test. From the government’s own figures, we see that over 100,000 Australian workplace agreements are waiting to be approved under the government’s new system. This is a complete bureaucratic bungle. This is a red-tape nightmare for working Australian families and also for employers who are party to those agreements.

There is a backlog of over 100,000 Australian workplace agreements awaiting approval. Guess how many, under the new system, the Howard government have managed to actually process since their much trumpeted and much advertised new industrial relations laws—the result of what Mr Textor told Mr Howard to do. They have managed to process just over 6,000. There is a backlog of over 100,000 and just over 6,000 have actually passed, and 42,000 agreements require more information to be provided. This demonstrates many things. The first thing it demonstrates is that when the government pushed through its extreme industrial relations laws, it did not have a plan other than to get through to the next election. We all know, everyone in this chamber knows—and if those on the other side were honest they would get up and acknowledge this—that the government’s so-called fairness test was nothing more than a fig leaf to get them through to the next election. Australian working families know that these Howard government laws are bad for working people. They are bad for their wages and conditions and for their job security. They know that. The government passed a set of laws that were nothing more than a fig leaf to get them through to the next election because their polling information was telling them that Australians knew what was happening. They knew that these laws were about stripping away hard-won entitlements such as penalty rates, overtime, shift allowances and so forth. The government have got a complete bureaucratic bungle here, with over 100,000 agreements just sitting there waiting to be processed, with 30,000 a month coming in. Even if this government were re-elected, how many months would it be before this backlog was processed?

I ask the Senate to consider one thing—and the minister refused to engage with this issue when asked the question: how many of those 100,000 agreements are in fact so unfair that they fail the fairness test? As a result of your bureaucratic bungle, how many Australian workers are working under agreements which would not pass your so-called fairness test and will continue to have to work under inferior wages and conditions and under agreements which strip away penalty rates, overtime and shift allowances? How many Australians are covered by those 100,000 agreements? How many Australians will be working under agreements which are actually unlawful? The fact is you do not know. You cannot give an answer. All you can say is, ‘We’ve managed to process just over 6,000, but we do have 100,000 outstanding.’ There may be 100,000 working Australians involved here, some of whom will be covered by an agreement which is so unfair it would fail the fairness test, but they will have no recourse for months under this government. They will continue to have to take home lower wages and experience inferior conditions because of your unfair laws and because the one change you put in place prior to the election has not been able to be implemented.

Finally, in relation to the revelations in the papers today about the way in which the government’s laws make it easier to sack people, yet again what we see from Senator Abetz is not a denial that these laws make it easier to sack people—he did not even deny it; we see him shooting the messenger, shooting the academic. We see the same thing over and over again from Senator Abetz in this place. He is not prepared to engage with the argument. All we get is a personal, smear attack. That is all he does. He attacks the individual. Come in here, Senator Abetz, during question time and answer the question, and explain to the Australian people why your laws make it easier for large employers to sack people. If you do not believe that that is the case, explain why it is not. What we saw again today is ducking and weaving, and another political attack on various individuals, but not dealing with the key issue. (Time expired)

Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We can see that Senator Wong is engaging in the politics of scaremongering. She has admitted that we do not know whether the number of agreements that she is talking about is fair or not. That is scaremongering. To make a statement and then admit that you do not know what the answer is is absolute scaremongering. The fact is that our workplace relations laws have been in place for less than two years. Yet more than 100,000 agreements are being reviewed and more than 1,000 new agreements are being lodged every day with the Workplace Authority, which is the independent umpire ensuring that the conditions of working Australians are being protected. It is this independent umpire that the Labor Party would scrap if it ever gets into government.

We do not apologise for a small delay in processing agreements, because we want to make sure that people are paid properly. That is our top priority. To speed up the process, we want to encourage employers to pay the right money to begin with. The Workplace Authority has a pre-lodgement system for agreements to fast-track the process. Of the 12,749 agreements which have been fully assessed, only 1,070 did not initially pass. Under the proper procedure, the Workplace Authority has written to the employer and employee, requesting changes be made to the agreement—within 14 days—so that it passes the fairness test. This is our system and it works well. If the employer does not make the changes, the agreement ceases to operate and the employer will need to back pay. If they fail to do that, they will be referred to the Workplace Ombudsman.

This system works very well. A great deal of thought went into putting it into place initially, and our reforms of the workplace shift right away from the Labor Party system where the rights of employers and employees were controlled and could only be changed by industrial tribunals and unions. Our system, workplace relations, fits very well with the idea that individual employers and individual employees can come to an agreement about the working arrangements that suit their own personal circumstances, rather than being forced to work under the old, one-size-fits-all system.

I always used to think of the system before I came into parliament as having the needle pointing totally in favour of unions. All I ever wanted to see was the needle shift to neutral on a gauge, you might say, so that employees and employers had equal rights and, under a fair and balanced system, they could be worked out. The difference between Labor’s approach to industrial relations and the approach taken by the coalition is that the coalition recognise that all of the regulation in the world cannot create jobs. We recognise that providing an economic framework that creates more jobs and better-paid jobs is the system that we want to have.

What we have done has determined whether the jobs growth and the increase in wages over the last decade will continue. We have seen the unemployment rate in Australia fall to an over-30-year low of 4.3 per cent and we have seen growth by 417,900 jobs since March 2006. I need hardly remind the Senate that, under the old industrial relations system presided over by Labor, the unemployment rate peaked in 1992 at 10.9 per cent and almost one million Australians were without a job. We have moved to a single national workplace relations system.

Julia Gillard is on record in the Adelaide Advertiser of 17 February this year as saying that the current workplace system hinders industrial action with all sorts of legal red tape. The fact is that the previous industrial relations system worked under 4,000 separate awards—4,000. And, given the chance, Labor will fall into line with the demands of their union mates—(Time expired)

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The sad part about the industrial relations debate is the untruths being spread by the government side. I can say that in all honesty, Mr Deputy President, because, like you, I did represent workers before coming into this place. And, like you, Mr Deputy President, I have seen myriad unfair, unbalanced Australian workplace agreements. History will judge the Howard legacy, and no doubt the Howard legacy will have a large contingent of bitterness about industrial relations. This government won the last election; there is no doubt about that. Mr Howard had absolutely no mandate to tip the Australian industrial relations system on its head. But that is what Mr Howard did, with help from honourable senators opposite, back in, I think, November 2005, when the government guillotined debate on the Work Choices legislation and rammed it through this place.

I have the privilege of travelling around the great state of Western Australia, speaking to a lot of people from all walks of life—people who are employed under Australian workplace agreements and people who have children employed under Australian workplace agreements. There are two levels of Australian workplace agreements. Prime Minister Howard, Mr Hockey and the rest of the government love to flag workplace agreements in the highly paid mining and resources industry. They do not like to talk about those disgraceful Australian workplace agreements found in the retail, hospitality, transport and construction industries. The government never wheel those out, because they are so disgraceful that they are embarrassed. But that is what Mr Howard’s legacy will be. Honourable senators opposite, you are all guilty—you all supported the legislation. You could not wait to ram it through. You will live with this legislation, and you will live with the effects that this legislation will have on the next generation of workers.

Yes, we are in a mining boom. In my state of WA, more than in any other state, we really are witnessing the mining boom. I have the privilege of going through all of those north-western communities, none more so than Karratha. You can make two visits in Karratha and on the Dampier Peninsula. You can go out to Woodside or you can go out to the Burrup and look around. I know the Burrup very well because I was driving trucks and helping to create that LNG gas plant back in the eighties. I also know of the ballooning of the population in Karratha.

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator McGauran interjecting—

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to take the interjection from Senator McGauran, who would not know a worker if they walked up and headbutted him. He would not know a worker. When you are in Collins Street in Melbourne, stuck up on whatever floor you are on, Senator McGauran—through you, Mr Deputy President—do yourself a favour and get out there. Start talking to people who are employed under Australian workplace agreements who are not in the mining industry. Have a chat. Talk to those young kids in the retail industry.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Sterle, address your comments to the chair.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will go through the chair, Mr Deputy President. As I said, through you, Mr Deputy President, Senator McGauran should get out and talk to young people who are employed in the hospitality industry, the retail industry and in some of the transport and construction industries. Do you know what will come and bite this government in the backside, Mr Deputy President? It is the question: how dare you go out there and look the next generation of Australians in the eye and tell them that this is the best thing for them? Mr Howard and this government have chucked decency and fairness out the back door; let us not make any mistake about that.

Labor has a plan. It is not for the next six or seven weeks of the election period, like that of Mr Howard. Labor has a plan for the next 10 years. Labor will install decency and fairness back into the Australian industrial relations system—decency that will create well-paying jobs for the next generation of Australians, not the drive for the bottom and the lowest common denominator. Mr Deputy President, I am sure that in your great state of Queensland it is fantastic to have this mining boom. But what will happen when this boom subsides? What will happen when it slows down? We can go back to the days when employment was running a little bit higher than what it is. The government have overseen the greatest skills gap in history. They have sat on their hands for the last 11 years. They have done nothing about the skills dilemma that we face in this country. The voters of Australia will have the opportunity to decide. Do they want decency and fairness? Do they want balance in the workplace? Do they want the best for their children and their grandchildren? We will know very soon, as the voters of Australia will have the opportunity to say which way they want to take Australia’s industrial landscape into the future. Decency and fairness is something that has built this country over the past 106 years of Federation—(Time expired)

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have seen yet again today another desperate attempt by Senator Wong, Senator Sterle and others to reignite the scare campaign that Labor have been waging over a number of years now—the scare campaign that they hope will propel them into government, but the scare campaign that Australians should not be fooled by. Towards the end of his remarks in this debate, Senator Sterle spoke of balance. This government has been working hard to get the question of balance right. It is a question of getting the balance right between protecting people in employment and providing jobs, and the economic environment necessary to provide those jobs. No amount of regulation—no amount in the world—creates jobs. The right economic environment is what creates jobs. That is what this government has been focusing on, in tandem with ensuring that we have enough protection for workers.

The results clearly speak for themselves, with more than two million jobs created under this government and employment at a record 10½ million Australians enjoying jobs today. They are the figures that matter. They are the results that have been delivered—more than 400,000 jobs since Work Choices was introduced. Despite all the scaremongering we hear from the other side of this chamber, some 84 per cent, 350,000, of the new jobs that have been created since Work Choices was introduced have been full-time jobs. So we are not seeing the plethora of new part-time opportunities or the casualisation of the workforce that those on the other side of the chamber claimed would occur. Instead, we have seen sustained, strong growth in full-time employment opportunities, which is certainly the most important thing we can do to provide a sound foundation and a sound footing for Australians, going into the future.

My colleague Senator Troeth outlined that the spurious claims being made by the opposition about the new fairness test are unfounded. We have introduced the fairness test in our quest to get the balance right—the balance that I spoke of earlier, between protecting workers rights and having the right economic framework. We have a system which is ensuring that all the AWAs are checked by the new authority and that they are detailed. The overwhelming majority of those that have been checked have been accepted.

The system we have introduced has created jobs and certainty. Contrast it with the system that Labor seeks to take us back to. That is a system that would reintroduce unfair dismissal laws and abolish the flexibility that this government delivered into the workplace. We risk those changes. There would be a reintroduction of unfair dismissal laws at the cost of some billions of dollars to the Australian economy.

Senator Sterle spoke of mandates. The other side of the chamber, time and again, voted against the abolition of unfair dismissal laws, no matter how many times this government—

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Forty-two times!

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Forty-two times, I am told, they voted against changing the unfair dismissal laws, no matter how many times this side took that issue to the people. We know that the Labor Party will strip those laws back. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition, whom they keep in hiding—Julia Gillard—has described the laws as fundamentally bad policy, short-sighted and ridiculous. These laws cost an estimated $1.3 billion a year for Australian small business and kept a cap on job creation. Since they have been lifted we have seen growth go through the roof, with some 400,000 jobs being created in that period of time. Instead, Labor and their union mates want to abolish that and take us back to the past.

Senator Sterle spoke about a plan for the future. In fact, Labor’s plan is one for the past. It is a plan to take us back to laws that gave us high unemployment, higher industrial disputation and lower growth in real wages. That is the world they want to take us back to—all to keep their union mates, who have tipped more than $50 million into the ALP’s war chest over the last decades, happy and to deliver for them the power that they so need. (Time expired)

Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think it is interesting that we are here today discussing the government’s workplace relations policy, Work Choices, because I understand that at this very moment there is a discussion going on within the government ranks about whether the Prime Minister is going to keep his job or whether he will be removed for ‘operational reasons’. Will he be fairly or unfairly dismissed? I do not think it matters. I think that on the other side of the chamber they are trying to figure out how they can get rid of the Prime Minister, because he has become a substantial liability to them. He has become a liability because it is his ideological obsession with deregulating Australia’s system of fairness and wage justice that has brought the government to the situation they find themselves in today. It is a situation where the Australian public are making it very clear they have had enough of Work Choices and enough of AWAs, and they want to see a return to fairness and justice in the Australian industrial relations system.

We should remember that it was Mr Howard who, back in 1996, said that he wanted Australians to feel ‘relaxed and comfortable’. I have never forgotten that. I can tell you that a lot of Australians today do not feel relaxed and comfortable. Senator Ursula Stephens, during question time today, pointed out that every week record numbers of people in New South Wales are losing their homes because they cannot meet their mortgage payments. The government waxes on about the low interest rates. The fact of the matter is that today a much greater percentage of household income is spent on mortgages than ever before. That is why people have been losing their homes—as interest rates have gone up on five consecutive occasions.

Mr Howard also told us that no Australians would be worse off under his government. Well, after 10 years many, many Australian families are worse off. A lot of Australians are worse off, particularly those that have been forced onto Australian workplace agreements as a result of this government’s policies. But Mr Howard tells us that Australians have never been better off. What an absolute load of rot that is.

I recall over the past 10 or 11 years of this government the various debates that went on in this parliament as the government sought to whittle away and to undermine our system of industrial relations fairness and wage justice. They presided over an ever-increasing gulf between, on the one hand, a reduction in the protections for ordinary workers who relied upon industrial awards and the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and, on the other hand, executive salaries, which have skyrocketed. You now pick up a copy of the Financial Review any day and see the levels of bonus payments, levels of directors’ fees and salaries that are paid to senior executives, and there is absolutely no cap or control on them. The government have used the corporations power to extend their reach into industrial relations, but they have only used it for the weakest—the people who have the least bargaining power when it comes to their employment. They have not once considered the use of the corporations power to try and rein in the growth of executive salaries in this country.

When the government gained absolute control of the Senate after the last election, it proceeded apace to basically rip up the entire system of industrial protection in this country to give effect to the Prime Minister’s long-held ideological obsession. Suddenly the definition of a small business went from 20 or 25 employees, as we all understood it was, to 100, so that any person employed in a business of fewer than 100 employees lost their rights to pursue an unfair dismissal claim. We just heard from Senator Birmingham about how many times we voted against the government’s changes. I am proud of the 42 times I voted against them, because what you were voting for, what you were putting through as legislation, was taking away the fundamental right of a worker to sue—to take action legally—if they believe they have been unfairly dismissed.

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not true!

Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is exactly true. Of course, we now have the situation where many, many standard conditions of employment are no longer included in awards. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.