Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This is the Fair Work Australia general manager's report into the extent to which individual flexibility arrangements are agreed to and the content of those arrangements. The coalition welcomes this report. The coalition has been supportive of the concept of individual flexibility agreements.

It will be recalled that the Labor government developed a policy called Forward with Fairness in which they initially simply ruled out Australian workplace agreements. Because of the reaction from the community the Labor Party at that time came back with a remodelled and refocused Forward with Fairness document promising individual flexibility agreements.

We believe that is a very important part of the makeup of any modern workplace relations system: that there be the opportunity for workers and their employers to get together and work out relevant individual flexibility arrangements that suit both their needs. It is common sense and it is indicative of the different nature of family responsibilities these days and also the needs of various workplaces.

It would be fair to say that the government has not necessarily been as embracing of individual flexibility arrangements as they should be. They did not include it in their first version of Forward with Fairness and they reluctantly put it into their second version and then designed a system that we believe was basically designed to fail.

In relation to individual flexibility agreements it will be recalled that they can be unilaterally terminated on either party giving 28 days notice. So, if a female employee, for example, seeks to have a flexibility arrangement to cater for her child-care needs, the boss, with 28 days notice, can simply cancel the agreement. Good luck to the lady employee seeking to get alternative child care arrangements in place within 28 days. Indeed, the example given in the explanatory memorandum to the bill was that of Josh, a gym instructor, who might want to coach his son's soccer team. Well, the soccer season goes for longer than 28 days. Therefore, if Josh did want to coach his son's soccer team and get involved in an individual flexibility agreement, there would be no guarantee for Josh that he could see out the soccer season. As a result, he could not make that commitment.

The highly skewed terms of reference and the mates who were appointed to the review of the Fair Work Act were mugged by the reality that this 28-day period of notice for unilateral termination was inappropriate, and they recommended a 90-day period. Mr Shorten has that report; the government has that report. They have already introduced the first tranche of amendments to the Fair Work Act pursuant to the review. The simplest amendment they could make is to delete 28 and insert 90 to require an employer or employee to give 90 days notice, thus providing greater certainty. But Mr Shorten is unwilling to make that amendment and one has to ask why. The reason is that they were never committed to individual flexibility agreements in the first place. They wanted them to fail. They basically have failed. They have not been taken up as they should have been, and the reason is that the termination period, especially, is so short and limited that it does not make it worthwhile.

Further, the individual flexibility arrangements are not well known. Indeed, most workers find out through their boss or they hey find out through the public. But, regrettably, they have not known about it through their union bosses, which is something I would encourage union bosses to do in the future. (Time expired)

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak on this document. I heard Senator Abetz waxing lyrical about individual flexibility agreements, and I could not help myself but come and present some balance to the argument that the coalition put every time they talk about flexibility.

Workers around the country know that when the coalition talk about flexibility they mean giving more power to the employer. They mean taking rights away from ordinary workers and providing the boss with even more control over the lives of ordinary workers. That cannot be denied, because the coalition are not only on the record on this issue but also have actually practised their ideology on workers. Their ideology is to say to a worker, 'You will go to work, you will be scared of your employer, you will do what your employer tells you to do, and if the employer wants flexibility that is what you will give them.' That is what Work Choices was all about. Whenever you hear Senator Abetz talking about flexibility, don't listen to the code; listen to exactly what it means. It actually means that they want to go back to what their DNA is all about, and that is ripping away at the rights of workers in this country.

There is no doubt that flexibility is the thin end of the wedge for Senator Abetz and his team to move back to Work Choices. Let's make no bones about it. Work Choices is what Senator Abetz is about when he talks about flexibility. I happened to have been a union official during the Work Choices era and I know what Work Choices was about. I know what individual flexibility was about. It was pitting an individual worker against an employer. Some employers were small and some were big, but it does not matter to an individual worker, because whether you work for a small employer or a big employer the power relationship lies clearly with the employer.

When you talk about a worker having the right to give 28 days notice to get out of some kind of flexibility agreement, that takes a great deal of courage if the employer says, 'I don't want you out of that flexibility agreement; come into my office and sit down with me and we'll talk about it.' This could be a migrant female worker having to sit down with a tertiary educated employer to try and negotiate a flexibility agreement. You know what that means. The power relationship between that migrant female worker and the tertiary educated employer results in that worker getting the rough end of the pineapple. They get the problems to deal with.

It is absolutely clear that the coalition are on the move again to run up Work Choices. They will change the name; they will try and say it is fairer; they will tell us they have learnt their lessons; they will tell us it is dead and buried—but it is only the name that is dead and buried. Work Choices underpins exactly what the coalition want to do. If they ever get the opportunity again to have control of the Senate, that is what we will have. All the denials in the world will mean nothing. They will rip away at workers' penalty rates; they will rip away at shift allowances; they will rip away at leave entitlements—and it will all be under the guise of flexibility. So don't come here and parade your flexibility promises, because flexibility is bad news for workers in the context of coalition policies.

We are about building a smart industry, not an industry where, in the guise of flexibility, workers are under the thumb of the boss. Flexibility is simply shorthand for Work Choices and ripping rights away from workers.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have been waiting for the opportunity to follow ex-union boss Senator Doug Cameron in a debate such as this. I want to refer to an article in the Australian Financial Review of 16 November 2012. I notice Senator Cameron is leaving the chamber. I say to Senator Cameron in his absence: it is probably appropriate that you do leave, because you would not like what Grace Collier, the chief executive of Australian Dismissal Services, said in this article in the Australian Financial Review that I refer to tonight. She said:

After … 20 years' experience working in unions and as an industrial relations consultant, I feel well placed to make observations about the union movement.

Being employed in the union movement isn’t like working in a company. It can be a bit like working for a cult. All unions are different, but union officials … see themselves as soldiers in the war of labour versus capital, and to fight a war you need resources. In this environment, the group think is this: anything improper can be justified as proper when it is for "the good". Union troops know that breaking the law is sometimes required because when a law is "unjust" you have a "duty" to ignore it. Civil disobedience is okay if the end justifies the means.

I do not have a great deal of time today, and I do want to hear my leader speak on other matters related to this very important topic, but this is a great article. It goes through some of the ways the union movement operates. I do not want to involve you in this, Mr Acting Deputy President Bishop, but I see in the newspaper that you are running afoul of the union movement at the present time. Senator Kim Carr, who is in the chamber, well knows about this, because there is a man embedded in the union. You only have to look at Mr Craig Thomson to understand what unionists think: if you have to break the law, it is all good for the ultimate goal. If you look at what Mr Thomson did in relation to—or, sorry, is alleged to have done, I should say—

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, they were findings by Fair Work Australia.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Abetz: they were findings by Fair Work Australia—and who could argue with that august body! They found that Mr Thomson grossly misused union funds. I say to you, Mr Acting Deputy President, that I am absolutely certain that Mr Craig Thomson was not the only union leader ever involved in that sort of activity.

This article from Grace Collier makes very good reading, from what I would call an insider in the union movement. She went on to say:

In the 1990s, the aura around Bruce Wilson of the Australian Workers Union was such that he was touted as a future prime minister.

You will remember that Mr Bruce Wilson, whom I am talking about, is the guy involved in the slush fund affair which has engulfed Ms Gillard. The article continued:

Our Prime Minister made a decision to begin a relationship with him. Partners of law firms don't recommend having relationships with people who work in their clients' businesses. It is not considered appropriate to put yourself in a potentially compromising position. The worst can happen, and for our Prime Minister it did. Now we find ourselves in the position we are in today.

This was at the height of the Gillard-Wilson scandal over Slater and Gordon and the slush fund. Ms Collier went on to say:

Over the past 11 years, I have been called upon to investigate many people for workplace misconduct. The hardest people to investigate are high-achieving, high-profile women executives. Their starting position is always a haughty refusal to answer questions or participate in investigations they consider beneath them.

I might say that I am quoting from a woman journalist who is an insider in the union movement. She continued:

Next they attempt to retain control by trying to impose their conditions and time frames on the investigation. (Time expired)

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I cannot allow the comments of Senator Cameron in this place this evening to go unchallenged. It is disappointing that a person who comes into this place and represents the people of Australia has got such a jaundiced and narrow view of the relationships between employers and employees.

Senator Carol Brown interjecting—

Acting Deputy President Bishop, I have been an employer for 35 years or so in both the private and the public sectors, and I can assure you—and I can assure Senator Brown through you—that very rarely are the interests of the employee and the interests of the employer not closely aligned, because if they are not closely aligned it comes at the demise of everybody in the organisation.

I would say with some pride that I have been successfully negotiating agreements in both public and private sector organisations. In the case of the public sector, the emergency services organisation of which I was the CEO and had great pride in administering was an organisation of great complexity, an organisation involving staff at very different levels in the city, in the regions and in different sectors of the emergency services. As a result of good negotiation, as a result of consultation, as the result of mature communication, we were successful in arranging that agreement. It stood for some years and it stood very successfully. I will not sit here and listen to Senator Cameron going on in this jaundiced way as if every relationship between every employer and every employee in some way or other reflects his view of the world.

The second case that I wish to refer to was when I had the pleasure of operating a fuel distributorship in the state of Tasmania. I was successful, after some period of time, in negotiating an agreement with all of my fuel drivers. I believe that at that time it was the first agreement of its type that was actually negotiated in Australia. It ended up tremendously to the benefit of those drivers. It also, incidentally, ended up tremendously beneficial to my company, and we had to fight the TWU right through to the Industrial Relations Court in Hobart before common sense prevailed, because the alternative, unfortunately, was not a good option for either me, my company or indeed the drivers themselves. It led to tremendous flexibility for the drivers. It led to me investing several million dollars in a new trucking fleet. It led to a revolution in not only the way in which fuel was distributed in Tasmania but also the safety of the vehicles and of course, therefore, the safety of the wider community.

I do not intend to go on much longer. I was not intending to speak. But this is the Senate of Australia. This is the place in which we have robust debate, and this should be the place in which we have reasoned discussion in which we can share views and come to some commonality. While Senator Cameron comes into this place again and again and preaches the bile that he does, we are never going to receive that particular unanimity.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the same matter, I am very disappointed that Senator Back seems to think that a senator who has a long history of working and protecting workers' rights somehow has a view that is jaundiced. The opposition completely miss the mark when it comes to workplace relations. They do so because they themselves come from a position that is jaundiced—that is, first of all, they forget that Work Choices was voted out. There was a reason for that. That reason was that it was demonstrably unfair to workers. It shifted the balance in the workplace. There was no balance. It all went to employers.

Nobody in this chamber would suggest that all employers would be doing the wrong thing. Nobody would suggest that. Senator Cameron was merely pointing out—and it is of course a fact that he has a long history of protecting workers and looking after and advocating for workers' rights and conditions—the unfair relationship between an employer and an employee. I heard what Senator Back had to say. He was himself an employer, and I am sure he was a very fair one. He believes that to be so and I will take him on that. But he is not the only one who has an intimate knowledge about employers. I myself come from a position where I have an intimate knowledge of the employment relationship from the other side.

There is no way in most cases that there is a balanced relationship between employers and employees, and Work Choices shifted that relationship. The Australian public did not agree with the coalition on Work Choices. It stripped away wages, it stripped away entitlements, it stripped away conditions of ordinary working Australians, and it was voted out. The coalition was voted out. There was an overwhelming mandate for the Australian Labor Party to abolish Work Choices. This is what we are talking about here. This is what Senator Back was talking about.

So I suggest that when people want to come in here and talk about their position and debate in an argument, that is fine. But one of the things that you should not do is something Senator Macdonald is a master at. He is always playing the person, playing the senator, and it is always some personal diatribe that comes out against people. But it should be about the debate and it should be about the facts that we put forward here. I was a bit taken aback because Senator Back does not normally come out and try to strip pieces off individual senator; he does not normally play that game. But Senator Cameron and many other senators in this place have long and proud histories of working for unions and they have worked to protect workers, and they are proud of it. I am very proud of the strong trade union movement that we have here in Australia.

I am a member of the union. I have never been a union official, but I am a member of the union, and I am very proud of it. I was very supportive of the Work Choices campaign that was undertaken to see the defeat of the coalition and the abolition of Work Choices. That is what the Australian public wanted, that is what they voted for, and that is what the Labor government gave them. In finishing up, I would just suggest that when we do have these debates we try to keep to the facts of the matter, and the facts are that Work Choices was comprehensively bundled out. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.