Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of Senator Marshall, the Chair of the Education and Employment References Committee, I present the report on the government's workplace bargaining policy together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I seek leave to continue my remarks unless Senator Marshall wants to say anything.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will speak to that motion to take note of the report. It was an amazing experience to conduct our inquiry into the APS bargaining situation. We have called it Siege of attrition, which I think is very fitting given the government's APS bargaining policy. We heard from our public servants how they have been frustrated in the bargaining process by an unrealistic bargaining policy that is being enforced and imposed upon all government departments by the Australian Public Service Commissioner, Mr John Lloyd and by the minister for industrial relations, Senator Michaelia Cash.

This has led to enormous frustration by public servants. It has led to a devaluing of the work that they do for us, for our communities and for our country. It has been incredibly disrespectful of the work that they do and to their ability to have some say and some influence and some control in their workplace on decisions that directly affect them.

It is not only a concern to members who are often under-resourced and work at a very high level in front-line situations where there is often a lot of aggression and hostility, because people are often quite angry by the time they get to our front-line public servants—because they have not had their calls answered, the call centres are too busy or the public servants are understaffed—but also a lot of these people are not highly paid. While sometimes there is a view that public servants across the board are very highly paid and very well-remunerated, for the vast majority of public servants that is simply not the case. They feel, through this process going for more than two years without any wage increase or realistic bargaining happening, that their work, their commitment to their jobs, providing services for our communities, is seriously undervalued.

Part of the problem is that this round of bargaining has had a cap applied, with no provision for any back pay. If you have not had an agreement for the last 2½ years you are unable to negotiate any back pay for that. So you, effectively, have a wage freeze. There is also a process being implemented that is a stripping of terms and conditions. Terms and conditions that are already in your enterprise bargaining agreements have to be stripped away as part of government policy. We think that is a most unfair, uncaring and ideological position being pursued by this government. That sends people backwards. In fact, if you tried to roll over the existing agreements none of them would pass the test that this government has applied. What they are doing is saying you must negotiate for less. You must strip away your conditions if you want to have an agreement in the Australian public sector.

That is why agreement after agreement is being voted down across the public sector. Management strategy for this is to simply, maybe, tinker with a couple of clauses and put the proposed agreement back up for a vote, to have it voted down again. And we have seen some departments now vote down agreements for the third time. Some of them decrease the margins slightly, but mostly the margins have no increases. The few agreements that have been voted up have been voted up by very slim margins.

Our public servants are being treated appallingly by this government, and it is being led by Mr John Lloyd. While I do not like to get very personal in this place, it is worth noting that Mr Lloyd as the Australian Public Service Commissioner was a former commissioner of the Australian Building and Construction Commission or its predecessor. So here we have a government that wants to treat its own workforce the same ideological way it treats the construction industry. It is not about having any real justification for doing things, it is just that they have an ideological wish to strip away as many conditions as they can—these existing conditions—and ensure they have very low and miserable pay rises and there is no ability for back pay.

The siege of attrition is the title—and it is very fitting, because they just want to keep putting the same agreement up, to be voted down and down again, on the basis that 'Until you agree with what we put before you'—a take-it or leave-it situation—'you will not get a pay increase.' That is an appalling way to treat your employees. I am not the only one who thinks so.

Mr Rod Simms, the chairman of the ACCC, made a video to send out to the public servants of his department. I note yesterday's The Canberra Timesstates Mr Simms:

… has pleaded with the 800 public servants in his agencies to forget about the unfair treatment they have received—

This is the head of the department acknowledging up-front that this is unfair treatment—

and agree to accept the pay proposal they have been offered.

In an 'unprecedented' video address to his workers, Mr Simms spoke of his confrontation with the government's workplace enforcer, the Australian Public Service Commission—

That is, Commissioner John Lloyd—

and with the office of Employment Minister Michaelia Cash.

…   …   …

In his video address, Mr Simms told his public servants that when he tried to raise the question of back pay with the APSC, he was not allowed to finish his sentence.

'We're faced at the moment with a very unusual situation, we've never had this type of bargaining policy we have now from the government,' Mr Simms said.

'That amount of time without a payrise is unfair so you need that payrise and you need it now.

I tried with the Public Service Commission to push back pay, to be honest I never got to finish the sentence.'

The chairman said he:

worked very hard with the APSC and the bargaining representatives to get 'the guts' of the ACCC terms and conditions, which the government wanted stripped-out—

There are existing conditions the government wanted stripped out, and you have the head of the ACCC saying he worked very hard to get at least the guts of that agreement to remain—

back ino the enterprise agreement and urged his workers to vote yes when a new ballot opens.

He said this:

The last two-and-half years have been extremely unfortunate.

You have every reason to feel aggrieved, I understand that.

So here we have the head of the ACCC agreeing with everything I have just told you and agreeing with all the recommendations in our report.

I urge senators to read this report and understand what your government policy is doing to the Australian Public Service. It is devaluing their work. It is stripping away their existing terms and conditions. You are effectively giving them wage decreases by not allowing them to get any back pay for the two to three years that they have not had agreements. The longer they stay without agreements, without the ability to get back pay, the more their wages, in real terms, are going backwards.

This is a direct result of this government's bargaining policy. It is an unfair policy, and in this report we mount the arguments for why the government should back away from it and start bargaining with its own people in good faith. Start bargaining with our public servants in good faith. Treat them with the respect that they deserve as valued employees of the Commonwealth and not as ideological fodder for people like Mr John Lloyd, the Australian Public Service Commissioner, to simply strip away their terms and conditions and give them wage freezes.

People ought to take heed of this, because I think we are on the verge of losing the goodwill of these public servants. At the moment, they are angry and they are frustrated, but every day they still come to work and they work their guts out for us in sometimes the most incredibly difficult situations. They are not all high paid, and we owe them bargaining in good faith and proper pay increases.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.