Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor opposes the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 in the strongest possible terms. It's bad law and it's bad policy. Despite its name, this legislation has nothing to do with integrity but everything to do with ideology, opportunism and this government's pathological hatred of unions and the workers they seek to represent and protect. It's an attack on the union movement, on union officials and on union volunteers. It's an attack on Australian workers and an attack on freedom of association and democracy itself.

And what will this bill ensure? It will ensure less safe workplaces. It will ensure more wage and superannuation theft. It will ensure a less effective union movement—more preoccupied with getting its paperwork right than doing the job which has delivered better wages and conditions for workers in Australia for over a century. I would like to refer to the following quote:

The Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 creates a number of sweeping powers for interference in trade union organisations, which are not only in violation of the principles of freedom of association, but are also highly likely to produce arbitrary and disproportionately punitive outcomes damaging to Australia's industrial relations system. Harmful to workers, undermining to trade union democracy, and of no tangible benefit to the promotion of harmonious industrial relations, these measures are … incompatible with Australia's commitments under the ILO's Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948 … and the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949.

These are not my words but those of the International Centre for Trade Union Rights, in their powerful submission to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, which conducted an inquiry into this legislation. I and my Labor colleagues, led by Senator Pratt, participated fully in that hearing and heard witness after witness give compelling evidence as to why this legislation was wrong, how it would damage the Australian union movement and, most importantly, how it would hurt Australian workers.

The ensuring integrity bill 2019 is the latest manifestation of the Liberal Party of Australia's long-held ideological obsession with and hatred of the union movement in this country, and it's happening at a time of unprecedented wage theft, insecure work and increasing casualisation and fragmentation of work—a time when we need a strong union movement more than ever.

We don't need to look back too far to see the Liberals' form on this. We only have to look back to John Howard's Work Choices—which I'm sure you remember very well, Mr President. Work Choices was an attack on employees' individual rights in the workplace and, as we all know, a policy that was comprehensively rejected by the Australian people in 2007 in the election where you came to this place, Mr President. After the 2007 election all we heard from the Liberals was 'Work Choices is dead'. They had listened and they had heard the message from working Australians who wanted their rights at work to be protected.

But what happens when the Liberals return to government? We get this bill, the ensuring integrity bill—because, after all, going after workers through Work Choices was ultimately unsuccessful. So let's go after the union movement itself—diminish its capacity to campaign and organise, tie up its officials in red tape and vexatious litigation and hope it won't have the resources or the people left to fight the kinds of challenges that I've outlined above.

This, of course, is their second run at it. The first ensuring integrity bill, from 2017, was rejected by the Senate, seen for what it was: a series of draconian and extreme measures intended to weaken the trade union movement. It was rejected but not thrown out by the Liberals; instead it was left on the shelf in case it could be useful again. When the government found themselves unexpectedly returned to government, without a policy agenda, with an emboldened conservative backbench calling for action on their pet subjects and with a union official in the media at the time for all the wrong reasons, they picked up the old bill and blew the dust off it. The new industrial relations minister, Christian Porter, gave it a bit of spit and polish to make it look like a new, improved version. And there we have it: the ensuring integrity bill 2019, the bill we're debating today.

'If this bill is just about ensuring integrity, why is the Labor Party so opposed to it? Don't companies have the same kinds of laws applied to them?' These are the kinds of things we hear from employer groups and construction peak bodies, many of whom are not themselves registered organisations and are therefore not subject to this regulation. One of the main objections to this bill is that it's simply unnecessary. There's already an effective and longstanding regime for the disqualification of union officers and the deregistration of unions. The act was amended as recently as 2017 to provide that a union official could be disqualified on the basis of any civil penalty breaches of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act. That appears in section 307A of that legislation. There are currently a range of offences which automatically disqualify a person from standing for or holding office, including fraud, dishonesty and the intentional use of violence or damage to property. A person who holds an office and is convicted of a proscribed offence must apply to a court for leave to hold office in any organisation. In other words, the mechanism is already there to deal with misbehaviour by union officials.

The current deregistration provisions allow the minister, or a person interested, to apply to deregister a union on a large number of grounds, including breaching the terms of award or actions that have a substantial adverse effect on the health and safety or the welfare of the community, or part of the community. I think it's important to note that there's no equivalent section or legislation for companies, and we've seen that this week with the developments at the Westpac bank. You would think this was a fairly serious legislative armoury for a government to have for dealing with alleged union breaches, but apparently it's not. Schedule 1 of the 2019 bill contains new and expanded grounds for disqualification. But, worse, the new grounds only require one or at most two instances of unlawful conduct for an application to be able to be made. It doesn't have to be repeated. It doesn't have to be serious or wilful misconduct.

In the bill in its current form, the minister or any person with sufficient interest, which could include employers or employer organisations, can apply to the courts for orders disqualifying a person from holding office in a union. This would include a technical breach, such as not giving the right notice when inspecting a dangerous worksite or investigating the rampant underpayment of workers. On the other hand, directors of companies that recklessly expose workers to risk of serious illness, injury or death, or who engage in systematic wage theft, are not exposed to disqualification.

Contrary to the government's claims, the requirements imposed by the bill go further than the requirements on corporations. In other words, there's no comparison between the additional obligations that this legislation imposes on unions and those obligations that are imposed on companies. In the bill, the grounds for disqualification from holding office in a registered organisation are broader than the grounds for disqualification of company directors. Again, in other words, there's no comparison between the penalties that apply to unions and those that apply to companies, under this legislation. The penalty for the offence of a disqualified person continuing to hold office or influence at a registered organisation is double that of the equivalent provision in the Corporations Act—double! So it is twice the penalty again. There is no comparison and no equivalence between what applies to companies and what, if this legislation gets through, will apply to unions. This bill also allows courts to disqualify union officers for conduct unrelated to their union role. There is no equivalent for the disqualification of a company director, so again there is no comparison between what applies to company directors and what this legislation is proposing to do to union officials.

Schedule 2 of the bill provides new and expanded grounds for deregistration. Again, the new grounds only require one or at most two instances of unlawful conduct for an application to be able to be made. It doesn't have to be repeated, serious or wilful misconduct. It can involve a single instance of unprotected industrial action. Yet there is no equivalent for companies to be deregistered if they breach industrial laws or work health and safety laws in this country. Again, there is no equivalence between the obligations that this legislation is going to apply to unions and what applies to corporations. In the bill as it stands, the minister or any person with sufficient interest can apply to the courts to deregister a union or for other extreme and intrusive orders. Again, no equivalent provisions exist for corporations or their directors. There are already a wide range of circumstances in which the court can order a union to be deregistered, but this bill significantly expands these.

Schedule 3 of the bill deals with the administration of so-called dysfunctional organisations. In the current bill, the minister or any person with sufficient interest is given standing to put a union into administration. Once again, there is no equivalent for companies. The existing act provides for the court to make remedial orders to reconstitute a union or a branch that has ceased to function effectively. Worse, despite claims that the bill is not retrospective and everyone starts with a so-called clean slate, the conduct of union officers and the union's records of compliance are grounds for applying for administration. In other words, there's no limit on retrospectivity. Past breaches are counted. The minister can apply to have a union completely restructured or have its rights limited—again, there's no equivalent for companies.

Finally, we have schedule 4 of the bill, originally drafted in 2017 to try to stop the merger of the CFMEU, the MUA and the TCFUA by introducing a so-called public interest test. The bill, in its current form, places a public interest test on mergers of organisations, taking away from members the right to choose. Under this measure, mergers could be blocked by the Fair Work Commission if this test is not met. The government, lobby groups and even big businesses themselves can seek to block a union merger, even if the union merger is freely supported by the union members.

There is no justification for preventing amalgamations. If the members of two unions vote to amalgamate then it's up to them. This goes to the heart of the democratic principle of freedom of association. This proposal is not a question about whether unions are representative but an attack on the unions themselves. It denies members free choice about who leads their organisation and how it's going to be run.

The minister and the employer groups try to claim that this is some sort of equivalence with the public interest test associated with company mergers. That is totally false, because there are no obligations whatsoever for two companies to notify their corporate regulator. Companies merge with and take over each other every day without any scrutiny by the regulator, ASIC. There's not even a mandatory notification scheme that requires mergers to be notified to ASIC. Companies can elect to notify, if they think there may be a question mark about whether the merger will substantially lessen competition. But, if ASIC decides that that could be the case, a public benefit test is applied to see whether there are overall benefits of the merger. Whether the company or its officers have a record of complying with the law or not is not considered as part of this test. In contrast, in the current version of the bill, the public interest test would be mandatory for all union amalgamations, and if they failed this test then they'd be unable to amalgamate. This so-called public interest test includes technical breaches of civil laws—for example: stopping work for a nurse-patient ratio; no 24-hour notice in sweatshops; dangerous worksites; and the list goes on.

As to the amendments circulated by the crossbenchers: to their credit, the crossbenchers have recognised that this is fundamentally a bad piece of legislation and a bad piece of public policy. I acknowledge that they've done their best to try to ameliorate some of the many dangerous and extreme elements of the bill.

Notwithstanding this effort on the part of the crossbenchers, Labor will oppose this bill in whatever form it takes. This bill has no redeeming features whatsoever and should be rejected in its entirety. No matter what assurances the government may have given to the crossbenchers to ensure their support, this legislation affects the day-to-day operation of every single union in this country. Unions, their members and the workers they represent will not thank the Senate for this legislation when they cannot access potentially unsafe workplaces or workers needing advocacy and protection or when the union is fearful that a breach under right of entry could lead to their disqualification or, worse, to the union being deregistered. The only people who may thank the crossbenchers for supporting this legislation are people like the Liberal Party donor and union hater Jerry Hanson, who wants to be able to run unsafe workplaces with impunity, engage in wage theft with impunity and simply pay fines for these offences—just another cost of doing business. Not only is this bill undemocratic and draconian; it's also unnecessary. I urge my fellow senators to oppose this legislation in its entirety.

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the Greens to speak to the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019. The Greens strongly oppose this bill. This bill is nothing but a politically motivated attack on unions. It's laughable that the words 'ensuring integrity' form part of the name of the bill when we know that there is not an ounce of integrity in this government and their intentions with this bill. There is not a skerrick of integrity in you lot, and you have proven that again today by disrupting the business of the Senate, and for what? Because you want to push your narrow agenda—an agenda which is antiworker, antiunion and antidemocratic. Shame on you!

When workers and unions build their collective voice and power they have the capacity to change the way this country is run for the better, for everyone who lives here. The government find this prospect really frightening. To prevent this, they are bringing in these laws which are incompatible with Australia's ILO commitments and will impose standards to which there is no corporate or political equivalent. According to the minister, the bill is responding to community concern and the recommendations of the final report of the royal commission into trade union governance and corruption. The gall of this government to come in here and say that they are responding to community concern! What community concern? What I hear on the ground from the community is concern about corporations ripping off working people and having exclusive access to this government. Instead of addressing that, this bill will do the exact opposite by eroding the rights of working people to organise.

Let's not forget: this is the same government that has allowed penalty rates to be cut. They're out to get workers. That's pretty clear. We know that the coalition is in here to represent big business and look after its mates at the big end of town—and, yes, I am not afraid to use that phrase. You only care about big corporations and the big end of town. You don't care about workers at all. This bill is nothing but a blatant attack on workers—an attack on their unions and a direct attack on the rights of workers to organise. In a nutshell, this bill will basically allow employers to dictate how unions run their business. Unions could be deregistered at a whim. If nurses go on strike for better working conditions or to improve patient-to-nurse ratios, that can be seen as going against the public interest and they could be in danger of being deregistered. The same applies to transport workers and many others who work in the public sector. This is an antiunion bill; this is an antiworker bill; this is an antidemocratic bill. We know you hate unions, and this is just another of your goes at union-busting. We know very well what this government is capable of when it comes to its agenda against workers. They will go to any length to limit workers' rights to organise and to stop them from demanding better working conditions.

Australian labour laws have been systematically attacked. They have been rewritten to restrict people's rights to collectively stand up for themselves. They have undermined and cut away at awards, and wages growth is restricted. They will say this bill is about putting unions on the same footing as corporations, but it's not. Wouldn't that be the day—when we see corporations publicly reporting all their accounts and when people in corporations can cast a vote on who will be their managing director. Imagine that day. Let's see legislation like that. It was only a few weeks ago that Woolworths admitted to underpaying workers to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Have you ever heard of an employer accidentally overpaying their workers by millions of dollars? I think not. Woolworths have admitted to underpaying nearly 6,000 employees over years, with the retail giant owing up to $300 million to its workers. Underpayment of staff has become endemic. It is a crisis. What's the government doing about that? I haven't heard much to date. It seems like there is a disclosure of underpayment every few weeks in big companies. The system is rigged against workers because the rewards of ripping off staff far outweigh the risks or any penalties the big corporations face over wage theft.

We know the Liberals are not in here to protect the rights of workers. They have been dragging their feet on any solid measures to prevent wage theft. This government is more interested in stopping our democratic rights to protest. They want to stop everyone from dissenting from their narrow, neoliberal, undemocratic agenda. They are more interested in supporting their mates in big corporations than the workers who are being screwed over by their friends.

It is internationally recognised that unions form an important part of any democracy and serve a vital function in fair and just societies, but this bill gives the government a free pass to interfere in their democratic workings. It completely overrides internationally accepted labour laws and human rights. While this government doesn't think twice about introducing legislation that breaches international law, the minimum wage has fallen to a point where it is no longer a guarantee of financial security. Big corporations are making record profits while the government helps employers use labour laws to cut wages, conditions and workplace rights.

I sat on the inquiry into this bill. A number of submissions to the inquiry pointed out the measures contained in the bill are significantly more onerous than anything that applies to corporations. The bill targets all unions. As the ACTU correctly points out in its submission:

Much of the commentary around the Bill suggests that the Bill only targets unions or union officers who repeatedly or deliberately act unlawfully, "where there is an ingrained culture of lawlessness".

And that commentary is completely unsubstantiated and not true. My union, the NTEU, say in their submission to the inquiry that the bill:

… could unintentionally provide employers with an incentive to formally prosecute technical breaches of the Fair Work Act as a pathway to disqualification of union officials that they consider difficult to deal with.

This means employers can target union representatives they don't like through these bills. How does that ensure integrity? It doesn't. But this bill is not about ensuring integrity, is it? This government doesn't have an ounce of integrity.

The International Centre for Trade Union rights says in its submission to the inquiry that there is:

… no precedent for the degree of state interference in the functioning and establishment of trade unions in comparable industrialised liberal democracies.

The ICTU is very clear about the aims of this bill, saying:

… the legislation is aimed at attacking and destroying particular organisations of workers.

Indeed, we know this bill is only about political gain and about one objective and one objective alone—excessive political, corporate and regulatory interference in the democratic functioning of unions. This is a tactic straight out of the conservative playbook.

Essentially what this bill is all about is preventing unions from doing their work, which is to represent workers and their interests in the face of giant corporations, in the face of precarious working conditions and in the face of declining wages. As a proud card-carrying and long-term union member, I can say from experience that unions are absolutely central to protecting the rights of workers, making sure they have fair and humane working conditions. With this government's continued war on workers, this bill sadly comes as no surprise. This is a government for the corporations, looking after the interests of big business, where workers rights are merely an inconvenience in that process and outcome. What is this government doing about the 23 million breaches by Westpac of anti-money-laundering laws? Why aren't you falling over yourselves to ensure integrity for banks? You resisted the Greens' and the community's calls for a royal commission for years before you were forced and dragged to the table.

The bill in front of us expands the grounds over which unions can be deregistered under the registered organisations act. This would essentially allow the government to seek the shutdown of any union on a whim. By expanding the grounds upon which unions can be deregistered or suspended, this bill seriously limits the right of freedom of association and the rights of workers to organise. The proposed disqualification scheme for union officials could disqualify a person from holding office in a registered organisation simply on the basis that they have organised industrial action.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights expressed serious concerns that provisions in this bill will impact on a number of human rights, such as the right to join trade unions, the right to freedom of association and the right to just and favourable conditions of work. These rights are protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, both of which have been ratified by Australia. The committee has also expressed concern that the proposed disqualification regime for union officials would limit the right of worker organisations to freely elect their own representatives. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights recommended that the bill be amended to make cancellation of registration a last-resort option, and the government has completely ignored the concerns raised by the committee. Even the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills raised multiple concerns about the bill, including pointing out that the proposed disqualification powers were insufficiently defined and there could be a reversal of the evidential burden of proof in some circumstances.

A number of submissions rightly point out that the measures contained in the bill would result in significantly more onerous and stringent laws applying to unions when compared to corporations. For example, the requirement for union amalgamations to be in the public interest is considerably more restrictive than the requirement for corporate mergers, which are not required to take into account the interests of workers or a broader public interest test. This is clearly an attack on unions.

The most appalling part of this whole debate is that this government is pretending that it is somehow all about integrity. If this government were serious about integrity, it would establish a national ICAC. In the New South Wales parliament, where I sat in the upper house for five years, we have seen how effective an anticorruption body can be. We have a laundry list of both Labor and Liberal politicians that have had to face corruption charges and have been prosecuted. Let's not forget this government voted against the Greens' bill to establish a national anticorruption body just a couple of months ago. One is compelled to question why it is refusing a national anticorruption body that looks into government conduct if there is nothing to hide. And then this government comes in here and talks about integrity. What a joke. What a complete farce this is. Not a week goes by in Australian politics without the case mounting further for a national anticorruption watchdog.

Allegations this week of potential interference in Australia's democracy is further evidence of this. Again, there was a long laundry list of issues highlighted just recently. The Crown casino scandal showed how corporate greed and politics can work hand in hand in Australia when it suits. We know our so-called donations systems are criminally broken when stories break about political parties accepting ALDI bags stuffed with cash and then feigning ignorance. Our Murray-Darling Basin and river system has been killed by political and corporate corruption. The revolving door between politics and lobby groups has got to be closed once and for all.

We know that the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Mr Angus Taylor, is now under investigation by the New South Wales police. We know this is in relation to attacks launched by Mr Taylor on the City of Sydney over the council's carbon footprint. Where was the integrity shown there? There wasn't any. There was 'no integrity' there. There is report after report of misconduct, of allegations and of revolving doors between ministers and lobbyists. Where is the integrity in all of that? What are you doing about that? This government should really hang its head in shame for it has not an ounce of integrity left in it. There is nothing even remotely in the vicinity of integrity in this anti-union, antiworker, antidemocratic bill.

The Greens have been introducing bills for a national ICAC for almost a decade. I want to commend and thank the former Greens senator for New South Wales, Lee Rhiannon, for her work, passion and commitment to democracy and for pushing so hard to establish a national ICAC.

Finally, this work came to bear fruit in September this year when the Greens bill passed this chamber. That bill would finally have introduced long-lasting reform to our laws to deal with corruption and integrity, but what did this government—a government that purports to have integrity—do? They blocked the bill from becoming law. That's the integrity that you have—none whatsoever.

During the debate on this bill, we actually have a chance to get a national ICAC. I will be moving Greens amendments to this bill. These amendments will have the effect that this bill cannot take effect until a national integrity commission has been established by this parliament. A federal ICAC is essential to restoring public faith in democracy. People who sit on the crossbench know that that is absolutely vital for our democracy. Our democracy belongs to the people of Australia, who desperately want us and our system to be transparent and accountable. I don't like this bill one bit. But if it is going to pass then it should not come into effect until parliament has also established a proper watchdog to oversee politicians and public officials. I will be moving an amendment to that effect, and I hope the crossbenchers and the Labor Party, who support a federal ICAC, can support that amendment.

The sad bit is that what we should be doing here today—if we really were interested in ensuring integrity and if we really were interested in a workplace—is reaffirming the right to be a member of a union. We should be reaffirming the right to collectively bargain. We should be reaffirming the right to collectively withhold labour and to collectively organise in the workplace to achieve a sustainable and democratic future for all of us. But here we are. The government are stopping all other business of the Senate to ram through a bill which does the exact opposite. Let's be clear: this is a rubbish bill, this is a rubbish government and they should both be put in the bin.

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Robert Menzies created the Liberal Party to stand for workers and to stand for the middle classes. Unlike the Labor Party, we are not run by vested interests. Every single day, we see the Labor Party run by the unions, whether it's on superannuation, whether it's on trade policy or whether it's on industrial relations. What a pathetic situation you find yourselves in!

We support workers. We're on the side of the workers. We are on the side of integrity. The problem we are trying to solve is lawlessness. The law is deficient. We have seen court fines of more than $16½ million issued to the CFMMEU. They have had no impact, because the union treats these fines like speeding tickets. We've seen the NUW spend $650,000 of members' money on tattoos, botox, cruises, divorce lawyers and weight-loss surgery—amazing.

Unions occupy a privileged position in this nation. They have a monopoly on representation of workers in different sectors. There is no equivalence to corporations in many respects. We want to make sure that all these mergers are always in the national interest. We've seen union officials like John Setka go onto the street and threaten to go and get government officials. We've seen them go into the footy club or the shopping centre and attack people. That is an amazing standard that you want to defend. Of course, we've even seen senators in this place, like Senator Patrick, come into this place and say that they've been threatened by these unions, which is outrageous behaviour that you seek to defend. The cost to the community is a 30 per cent higher cost on building and construction. Who pays for this? Mums, dads and workers. They pay for the additional costs of construction.

You want to talk about banks? That's great. We've done a royal commission and put in place a bank levy and the Banking Executive Accountability Regime. The penalties the banks will face will be higher than the penalties that are contained in this bill. Whether it's in relation to financial penalties or jail time, we are throwing the book at the banks.

We write our own policies. You have no idea how to even write a policy. You ask the industry super funds to write your policies on super. The unions write your policies on industrial relations and trade policy. At the last election, you had the industry super funds write your retiree tax policy for you. How did that go? Not too good. We don't outsource policymaking; we do it ourselves. We're always trying to root out vested interests, and that's what this bill does. It attacks vested interests and it shows that we're on the side of the workers and the middle classes, just as we have been for the whole 75 years of our party's existence.

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

I'm not sure where to go after that! I rise to speak against this dangerous antiworker bill. This bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019, is a continuation of the Liberals' ideological attack on trade unions. It's merely a rehash of the bill that failed to pass this place in the 45th Parliament, with tokenistic changes the government believes will now make this bill more palatable. However, these changes are not substantive and simply do not address Labor's central concerns about this antiworker bill. It's clear the government has no plan but to attack workers and to attack the unions that stand up for them against dodgy, unscrupulous employers. We've seen these attacks in the previous parliament and the one before that. I'd like to remind members of the crossbench that it's unions that fought for and won penalty rates, sick leave, Medicare, the age pension and superannuation, which people that voted for you rely upon. By attacking unions, those opposite are attacking workers' rights and making Australia a smaller, meaner and less just society. They are attacking the voters that they claim to represent.

Something has gone seriously awry in this country, and those opposite are to blame. If you steal $8 million from hundreds of workers over many years, what do you get? You get a slap on the wrist. You'll get a fine—sorry, it's called a 'contrition payment'—worth around five per cent of what you stole. And what happens if a worker dies on a construction site? Maybe the company will get a fine. Never mind the fact that a family has lost a loving member—a mother or a father, a brother or a sister—and the children are often left without one parent. Time and time again we've seen companies exploit workers, not pay award wages, and put workers' lives at risk, and yet again those opposite come in to attack the unions.

What we don't see is this government going after wage thieves. After dozens of high-profile wage theft scandals on their watch, the Liberals still aren't doing enough to fix it. Nearly five years after the 7-Eleven scandal exposed the true extent of wage exploitation, the time for delay is over. We need tougher penalties now to deter and punish employers who do the wrong thing by their workers. Instead of spending our time here today debating how to fix wage theft, we're here again debating another bill that just attacks unions. Unions protect workers from wage theft, yet this government wants to go after the organisations that expose the crime instead of going after the criminals.

Recently we saw Woolworths steal $300 million from their employees. That's a pretty large amount of money. When the Woolworths scandal broke, the defence from the employer groups was that the award system is too complicated. How pathetic can you get? The award system is vastly simpler than it was a decade ago, and the majority of employers are able to do the right thing, so why is it that large companies like Woolworths—who are able to run complex operations across the country, including IT and financial systems and supply chain logistics—cannot read the awards? To suggest that paying their staff correctly is too complicated for them is an absolute cop-out. The fact is these employers simply do not pay enough attention to getting the wages right, because the penalties for underpaying their staff are not severe enough, and that's quite scandalous.

The government's also failing to make it easier for exploited workers to recover their stolen wages. Workers shouldn't be forced to wait years to be paid properly. Labor has proposed a small claims tribunal to ensure workers get their entitlements quickly, and we could be spending our time today debating that instead. However, for the last six years, this third-term Liberal government's workplace policies have focused exclusively on attacking unions. If the government really, really wanted to help combat wage theft, it would stop the attacks on workers. Instead of legislation to tackle stagnant wages, wage theft, worker exploitation, big banks that are laundering money or other dodgy behaviour, all we see is an attack on the unions.

If you're a big bank, you can seemingly get away with 23 million cases of money-laundering breaches, some of which are believed to have been used for child exploitation purposes. And while it's recently been announced that Westpac's chief executive, Brian Hartzer, will step down, and the bank's chairman, Lindsay Maxsted, is also retiring early in the first half of 2020, the government's desire to turn a blind eye is sickening—absolutely sickening. For those who are listening, I just want to point out that Mr Hartzer, Westpac's chief executive officer, is going to get $2.7 million in a payout after he resigns. So he resigns, and then he gets $2.7 million after presiding over 23 million cases of money laundering.

Labor wants to make sure that everyone who's done the wrong thing at Westpac is held accountable for the crimes. I understand that there's a legal process underway, and the Australian community expects it to take its course and for the banks to be held accountable. Given instances of bad behaviour in the banks continue to occur, we would expect the government to be acting quickly to enact the recommendations of the banking royal commission. This would be a far more productive use of the Senate's time. But is this happening? No. This government believes the best use of the time of this place is to attack unions for late paperwork.

This bill is purported to address misbehaviour within registered organisations but instead gives the government extraordinary powers to attack unions. We know that the Liberals have always hated unions, which is odd because, according to their own manifesto, they believe in 'the most basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy—the freedom of thought, worship, speech and association'. They believe in freedom of association, except when it means associating with your fellow employees to stop yourselves being exploited by your bosses. They simply hate the idea that workers would organise together and challenge the power of the Liberals' mates in big business. So, on behalf of their mates, those opposite have sought to break that power and drive down wages and working conditions so that the donors who fill their campaign coffers can make bigger profits.

Those opposite have a long history of attacking trade unions and undermining workers' rights. The worst antiworker legislation we saw was the Howard government's Work Choices—introduced when the Liberals had a majority in both houses—which appears to represent where the Liberals always wanted to go ideologically. But the Australian people overwhelmingly rejected Work Choices at the ballot box. The Liberals' workplace relations plans have not changed since Work Choices; all that's changed are their tactics. Instead of delivering their antiworker agenda in one hit like they did with Work Choices, they've chipped away at workers' rights and conditions over time, piece by piece. And rather than just going after workers' rights, they've focused their efforts on undermining the ability of trade unions to operate, organise and represent their members.

There have been a number of efforts by this government to attack trade unions. One case in point is the $80 million of taxpayers' money they wasted on the political witch-hunt that was the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption. It was exposed as a political witch-hunt when the commissioner they appointed accepted an invitation to speak at a Liberal Party fundraiser. Not only did the royal commission spend much of its time going after legitimate industrial activity; but the government, so embarrassed by the commission's failure, inflated its findings to suit their own political agenda. Despite all the evidence of the rorts and rip-offs in the banking and financial services industry, this government had to be dragged kicking and screaming by the weight of public opinion to call the banking royal commission after voting against it 26 times. Yet it barely blinked before spending millions in public resources on another royal commission to pursue their political enemies. This government has made an art form of using royal commissions not to pursue issues of grave importance in the public interest but as political tools.

Their attack on trade unions continued in the lead-up to the 2016 federal election with the government's two double dissolution triggers, the registered organisations and ABCC bills. The former was a bill designed to tie the unions up in red tape and stymie their ability to do their job effectively, and the latter was a bill which led to the return of a draconian body which until a couple of years ago was led by a hand-picked ideologue. This ideologue, Mr Nigel Hadgkiss, broke the law in pursuit of the government antiworker agenda. When Mr Hadgkiss deliberately provided misinformation about the laws in the construction industry, this government spent taxpayers' money defending his outrageous behaviour.

The next iteration in the government's antiworker agenda was the unlawful leak to the media from the office of the then workplace relations minister, Senator Cash, about the Federal Police raids on the offices of the Australian Workers Union. In October, Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg ruled there 'was not a reasonable ground to conduct the raid', but the minister continues to refuse to come clean about her involvement in the scandal, and the government keep protecting her.

Then there was the government's attempt to interfere in the governance of industry super funds and restrict the number of union representatives on their boards. This was attempted with no supporting evidence that members would benefit from such a change. How could this have been driven by anything other than ideology when industry superannuation funds are delivering the best returns to their members? Perhaps those opposite could have spent that time instead looking at the fee-gouging that was being practiced by some of the for-profit funds.

With this government's continued assaults on trade unions, the ability of those unions to represent their members and the ability of workers to collectively assert their rights, is it any surprise that wage growth has sunk to record lows? While the government pat themselves on the back about how they've done such a great job for their business mates, have they ever wondered who it is who spends the money that lines the pockets of big business? It's ordinary families paying their bills, doing their shopping, buying goods and services or enjoying a day out. As you grind down the wages of these people, they have less to spend and the economy suffers accordingly. It's pretty simple, really. Perhaps big business will rue these attacks on workers' rights and pay when their customers can no longer afford their products.

This government's priorities are wrong—all wrong. The truth is this government revels in the slightest rumour or allegation of bad behaviour within the union movement. They're like Pavlov's dog: they salivate with delight about it. It gives them a chance to wax lyrical, blow it way out of proportion and use it as an excuse to add a new layer of control or red tape to unions that are already overburdened. The truth is that the average union member is an early childhood educator such as I was, an aged-care worker, a nurse or a policeman and not the burly, thuggish stereotype that the government likes to project. As for actual misconduct, this is confined to a very few individuals and is not representative of or tolerated by the broader union movement. On the very few occasions when it does occur, it is effectively dealt with under existing provisions in the law.

Despite the efforts of this government to tar every union official with a dirty brush, millions of Australians remain members because they understand that the officials and staff in their unions are fighting hard for their interests. They remain members despite this government's constant efforts to make it more and more difficult for trade unions to do their job. We know that union staff and officials are genuinely concerned for their members because for decade after decade they've delivered results. They fought and won hard campaigns for better pay and conditions, worker safety and compensation, the right to collectively bargain and equal pay for equal work, just to name a few things. I'll just point out, to people that don't understand this, that there is no such thing as the employment fairy. The employment fairy does not come along and wave a wand to give you a pay rise or safe working conditions. It's all down to the trade unions. Under Liberal governments, this job has become even harder, as those opposite will look for any excuse to rewrite the rules in favour of big business.

We know that in defending this bill the government will engage in their usual tired old rhetoric. They'll reel off a number of instances of past behaviour of certain union officials. Then they'll present this bill as being the only antidote to this behaviour and then try and paint Labor as being, by opposing this bill, the protector and the servant of corrupt and militant union officials. It's a familiar tactic, it's a very repetitive tactic and it's one which I'm sure most Australians are starting to see through. What makes the government's rhetoric particularly hypocritical is that they continue to obsess about the so-called culture of lawlessness within the union movement when, for years, they turned a blind eye to issues such as foreign influence, wage theft and bank misconduct.

They claim this bill would subject registered organisations to the same requirements as those that apply to corporations. Well, there are two problems with that claim. Firstly, corporations and unions serve very different purposes. Unions represent and advance the rights of their members, whereas for-profit corporations exist to generate wealth and advance the financial interests of their shareholders. Secondly, it's just a false claim. Even if you accept that unions and corporations should be treated the same—and I'm by no means conceding that they should—if this bill passes, unions and union officials will be subjected to a higher standard of scrutiny than corporations and their directors.

We have, on the opposite side of this chamber, a party and a government that pride themselves on reducing red tape; yet they always seem to make an exception when it comes to registered organisations. When those opposite bleat about the burden of red tape stymieing the ability of business to do business, it speaks volumes about their motives in burying the union movement in red tape. Union members should decide what their unions look like and who their leaders are—not employers, and certainly not the government of the day. These laws will make it possible for government ministers, a rival in a leadership ballot, a business lobby group or disgruntled employers to shut down unions and deny working people their right to choose their own representatives.

It's important that people are free from government and employer interference so they can join unions and elect representatives who fight for pay rises and fight to protect jobs and workplace safety. It's actually a very democratic approach. This bill, though, is about silencing working people and making it harder for all workers to win pay rises. Giving the government the power to prevent amalgamations of unions is a clear attack on the freedom of association they claim to believe in. There is no justification for preventing amalgamations. If the members of two unions vote to amalgamate, then that should be up to the members of those two unions. This goes to the heart of the democratic principle of freedom of association. How can unions represent their membership effectively if the democratic control of unions is wrested from the members and given to the employers?

This bill is politically motivated—there's no two ways about it—and is a continuation of this government's ideological assault on trade unions. But, in attacking unions, this third-term Liberal government is not just targeting a few individuals; they're actually attacking millions of Australians. What this government needs to recognise is that trade unions are not just made up of a handful of staff and elected representatives. Unions do not simply represent the millions of Australians who choose to join them; they comprise these millions of Australians. The power of the union does not simply reside in the staff and officials; it is the collective voice of the members that gives unions their real power—and maybe that's what worries those on the other side. But when you attack trade unions, you attack their members. And, even worse, by undermining the ability of trade unions to further the rights of working Australians, you attack every Australian worker.

The OECD and the IMF have both warned that declining union density and collective bargaining are contributing to stagnant wages and growing inequality. Yet this government wants to further undermine the bargaining power of Australian workers by attacking and undermining the organisations that represent them. So, while the government may make this sound like some benign bureaucratic exercise and give it a nice little fancy name, the fact is that this bill that's currently before the Senate is an absolute assault on the ability of Australian workers and their representatives to effectively and collectively organise to fight for better wages and conditions.

These laws are fundamentally unfair. They would not and do not apply to business, they do not apply to banks, they do not apply to politicians—despite the serious unethical conduct of many of those. The PM actually runs a protection racket for those on his side, as we've seen again today—not even asking Mr Angus Taylor to stand aside; just running a protection racket. The only people who benefit from these laws are the Morrison government and unethical employers. The Morrison government has overseen raids on journalists and is now attacking working people's freedom to run their own unions. If these laws applied equally to corporations, we would see banks, multinational pizza chains and the restaurants of celebrity chefs close down for repeatedly breaking workplace laws and the top executives would be sacked. This is not being proposed, because it would be completely outrageous, and it's also outrageous for the unions. In closing, we will not support a bill that makes it harder for workers to get a fair pay rise and be represented. This bill represents a politically motivated attack on workers— (Time expired)

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the government's so-called 'ensuring integrity' bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019. Unfortunately, integrity is not a characteristic that could be attributed to the proponents of this bill or its odious contents. The legislation we are discussing today can be categorised only as a cynical and antidemocratic overreach by a government that has made plain its opposition to the rights of workers to organise in the pursuit of a fundamental yet basic concept: a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

We all know the real motivations behind the pursuit of this bill. The truth is that this legislation is a very deliberate and calculated attempt to weaken the power of Australian workers by attacking their fundamental democratic right to organise through their own trade union movement. It is designed solely to stymie the efforts of the trade union movement to democratically represent and use collective strength to advance the interests of working people. Australia's trade unions already face a rigorous compliance regime aimed at ensuring accountability and proper governance. Let us be clear: this bill is not about improving transparency, accountability or governance. The motivations and intent of this bill are partisan and political, and its effect will be to silence workers and reduce their power in the labour market. Over time, and quicker than many may realise, this will lead to lower pay and weaker conditions for the average Australian worker.

This bill essentially has the effect of making Australia a poorer country by further concentrating wealth and power in the hands of big business at the direct expense of the average Australian worker. Indeed, the bill will enshrine a regime of more onerous standards and processes being enforced on trade unions than anything equivalent being faced by corporations or, indeed, government. These double standards expose the politically-motivated attack inherent within this bill. This bill, as passed in the other place, would make it possible for the minister—indeed, anyone with a sufficient interest, such as disgruntled employers—to shut down unions and deny working people their right to choose their own representatives. It amounts to nothing more than a bold and brazen attack on democracy. It is up to this place to put a stop to that. If these laws were to apply equally to corporations, we would see banks, multinational pizza chains and the restaurants of celebrity chefs close down, as Senator Bilyk said in her contribution. But that is not what is being proposed here. Yet, despite the fact that we've seen countless examples of employers ripping off their workers in recent years, from 7-Eleven to Domino's Pizza, Michael Hill Jeweller and Woolworths, we don't see the government going after them. We don't see legislation to tackle stagnant wages or worker exploitation. The question must be asked: why isn't the government prepared to tackle the issue of wage theft with the same haste and determination?

Labor will not support a bill that makes it harder for workers to get a fair pay rise. We do not support a bill that could leave workers without the representatives that protect them from wage theft, superannuation theft and dangerous workplaces. Workers should get to choose who represents them, not Mr Scott Morrison or Mr Christian Porter.

The bill also seeks to prevent trade union amalgamation. There is no justification for preventing amalgamations. Union amalgamations are overseen by the Australian Electoral Commission. If the members of two unions vote to amalgamate, that is up to them. This goes to the very heart of the democratic principle of freedom of association. Such broad-ranging proposed powers to prevent amalgamation are a clear attack on freedom of association. The government will no doubt claim that this bill is needed to stop certain specific officials; that is just an excuse for this attack on all unions.

The average union member today is female and works in aged care. These are the kinds of workers, whether they are members of a union or not, who will be hurt by this legislation. As our shadow minister Mr Tony Burke has said, it will be workers who just want a decent pay rise, workers who want to be protected from wage theft, workers who want a safe workplace who are punished by these laws. If this bill passes, it will give the government and businesses unprecedented power to drown unions in red tape and legal action. That is ironic from a government that bleats about red-tape reduction—not that it has a real agenda to simplify or improve conditions for Australian small businesses. In fact, the only record this government has on red tape is increasing it, and that is exactly what the government wants. It is not about protecting workers; it is about attacking their political opponents.

This bill would also give more power to the Registered Organisations Commission, the ROC—the body thoroughly politicised and discredited over its role in the AWU raid scandal. Just weeks ago, the Federal Court ruled the AWU search invalid and that the ROC did not have reasonable grounds for conducting the search. And, as we have heard today, the Federal Court officially quashed the Registered Organisations Commission's investigation into the Australian Workers Union and instructed the Australian Federal Police to return all the documents they seized in the botched 2017 raids. That is what we found out today.

The ROC should be abolished. The ROC should not be given sweeping new powers to intervene in the affairs of workers. Labor maintains that allegations of serious breaches by officers of registered organisations, employers groups, and unions should be dealt with by ASIC. After all, if you believe that companies and registered organisations should be treated the same, then surely you should use the same regulator.

This bill also has implications for Australia's international reputation as a democratic and free society. The internationally recognised right to freedom of association and expression is, effectively, subject to antidemocratic veto under this bill. Indeed, the bill plainly violates the government's obligations under conventions 87 and 98 of the International Labour Organization, which go to these matters. For example, article 3 of convention 87 states:

Workers' and employers' organisations shall have the right to draw up their constitutions and rules, to elect their representatives in full freedom, to organise their administration and activities and to formulate their programmes.

The public authorities shall refrain from any interference which would restrict this right or impede the lawful exercise thereof.

It goes on to say, in article 4:

Workers' and employers' organisations shall not be liable to be dissolved or suspended by administrative authority.

Plainly, what this bill seeks to do is in direct contravention to these rights, rights enforced in law by conventions Australia has ratified. Indeed, the International Trade Union Confederation, representing 202 million workers in 163 countries, has gone so far as to say the bill represents 'unparalleled interference in trade union freedoms for a democratic country'. Labor will not support a bill that so clearly breaches our international treaty obligations. We will continue to stand up for the basic and fundamental democratic rights of workers, rights that we would hope in a free society like ours would not be subject to attack by a government hell-bent on weakening its opponents, even at the expense of the livelihoods of ordinary, working Australians.

We can see laid bare the priorities of the government when we compare their approach to undermining the rights and wages of Australian workers with their desire to tackle corruption and misconduct at the highest levels of power. This government, belatedly, but with much fanfare, promised to legislate for a national integrity commission. In fact, they promised it would be in place by now. Where is it? It isn't here. That's because it's not a priority for them. They claim to want to stamp out lawlessness and bad behaviour. What are they doing about corrupt conduct within government? What are they doing to tackle some of the outrageous behaviour that we have seen at the highest levels of corporate Australia? This is hypocrisy of the highest order, because there is no corporate equivalent here. Under the Liberal Party, it is one rule for corporate Australia and a completely different rule for the organisations that represent workers.

Under this bill, even with the amendments proposed, we are talking about the disqualification of union officials or the deregistration of entire organisations for nothing more than minor paperwork breaches. Let's be clear about the double standard here. The Prime Minister has said that, when one of our big four banks has been caught out breaking the law 23 million times, including in relation to serious crimes such as the enabling of money laundering, terrorism and child sex exploitation, it is simply a matter for the board. Well, that's nice! It's all tickety-boo, then! There's nothing to see here! But let's hang on. Just wait a minute. If a union representing and fighting for the rights, wages and conditions of Australian workers commits three paperwork breaches, the Prime Minister believes that should bring down the entire union without the members getting a say. That's members who have paid their dues and expect their right to democratic decision-making to be upheld.

Even with the proposed amendments—those that have been circulated and those that have been whispered out through the media—the bill remains, and will remain, fundamentally unfair. It will still impose a new test on union amalgamations, despite the fact such proposed amalgamations are already heavily regulated and require the democratic approval of union members. It will still give even greater draconian powers to the Registered Organisations Commission, a thoroughly discredited and pointless body which should be abolished, not strengthened. If the government won't abolish ROC, they should probably legislate for a watchdog on the watchdog so that someone is monitoring the ROC's politically motivated activities. Isn't it interesting that the government's decision to release proposed amendments late on Friday afternoon when they hoped nobody would be looking seems as though it may have backfired? That's because not everyone on the crossbench is quick to rush into union-bashing for the sake of union-busting.

Let's take a look at some of those proposed amendments—in particular, the dodgy demerits deal. What we see here is, yet again, further entrenchment of double standards and hypocrisy, where one rule applies to the democratically elected representatives of workers and another to those responsible for serious breaches of corporate law, wage theft and exploitation. On the one hand, we know that the proposed demerit point system, if it had been applied, could have shut down the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union for its campaign to stand up for workers knowingly and, in many tragic cases, fatally exposed to asbestos. Yet, on the other hand, there are no proposals to introduce similar demerit point systems that might apply to dodgy employers who rip off workers and customers. It won't be applied to people like the Liberal Party benefactor and serial industrial law-breaking employer Mr Gerry Hanssen. If that seems wrong—if that seems contrary to public interest, fairness and justice—that's because it is.

Do you know what? Not everyone is buying into this sell-out of Australian workers. Indeed, the Australian people also see through this agenda. They get what this is really about. They understand that this is yet another in a long list of efforts by this government to undermine the work of unions in creating a fairer society in Australia so that ordinary working people, the vulnerable and the disadvantaged can attempt to get a fair go in life. This bill is about yet again swinging the pendulum further towards profit takers and away from wage earners. It's about attacking democracy and weakening rights. It's about undermining fairness in our society and deepening inequality. Indeed, the Centre for Future Work has said the Liberals' aggressive post-election workplace relations agenda could leave private sector workers $2,000 worse off over three years. Think about that—$2,000 worse off. This is no accident. An economy built on the back of low wages is in the DNA of the Liberal Party: grow profits by squeezing wages—that's all they know. Now we hear talk in the media from Liberal backbenchers about watering down other vital workplace protections, like the protection from unfair dismissal. The Prime Minister has failed to rule out pursuing such changes.

Let me turn to the impact this bill will have on my home state of Tasmania. Tasmania's workforce numbers around 250,000, and most union branches in my state are relatively small. Over half of the affiliates to the Tasmanian Trades and Labor Council would have fewer than half a dozen paid employees in Tasmania. Resources can be scarce, but they work hard and in close cooperation with their members to simultaneously meet all existing rigorous compliance requirements whilst also having multiple enterprise bargaining campaigns, supporting individual members who have been mistreated at work, and providing education and support to members. The smaller scale of operations means unions in Tasmania often rely on the involvement of members, effectively in a volunteer capacity, to assist in the important task of advancing the interests of all workers in Tasmania. But this bill would seek—some may say deliberately—to discourage ordinary union members from involving themselves in the administration of their union by imposing burdensome, onerous and unnecessary requirements upon them. We should be encouraging workers to be more involved in their union. That's how we ensure that unions continue to reflect the voice of ordinary working people.

Tasmania already has the lowest full-time adult average weekly earnings in the country. The average weekly wage for a Tasmanian worker before tax is just $1,420. Yet Tasmanian workers are facing rapidly rising costs of all the essentials and, in particular, housing. The squeeze on household budgets is now really starting to bite. The notion that Tasmania is a low-wage state because of its lower living costs must now surely be debunked. Now more than ever, Tasmanian workers need a pay raise. They need to see their living standards improve, not go backwards. They need wage theft to stop. They need strong unions to have resources and capacity to get wages moving again and win job security for Tasmanian families, who need a reliable source of income.

Australian workers need a government that is on their side. They need a government prepared to strengthen the rights and protections Australian workers are entitled to. Workers and families need better wages, secure jobs and safe workplaces. They don't need this attack on their rights and entitlements. They don't need to see the value of their take-home pay further eroded. They don't need to see living standards continue to decline. And they certainly don't need this bill. Labor will oppose this bill. We will not support this blatant effort to undermine the jobs, rights, wages and living standards of Australian workers. I ask the Senate to reject this bill in full.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Shame on this government for its overreach in attacking working Australians with this bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019, and for its interference in democratically run organisations that goes way beyond what we see in any other developed Western country. We in this nation already have some of the most restrictive industrial laws in the world, and this bill takes us further down that authoritarian path. Not since John Howard's Work Choices have we seen such an unprecedented attack on working people in this country. What we have here in this bill is the embodiment of Prime Minister Morrison and his Liberals' ideological opposition to unions—which has led to the introduction of this ensuring integrity bill to parliament. In doing so, it places workers' rights in jeopardy and puts workers' wages, their conditions and indeed their safety at risk.

The government failed in the last parliament in their attack on working people—foiled at that time by the good sense of the crossbench in recognising that they could do better for Australians than to stoop to the lows of this government. The last parliament rejected the previous iteration of this bill because it was extreme and dangerous, and it could not be adopted. What we have before us in this chamber is substantively the same, and, even with amendment, it must be rejected because it breaches deeply important principles for our democracy and the right to freedom of association in our nation. The concern about the erosion of the internationally recognised right of freedom of association is shared by unions from all sectors, academics, civil society, churches and the bipartisan Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights.

This bill is an attack on working people. It is based on the politicised findings of the royal commission into trade unions—its discredited findings. There is no policy justification for this bill, and the government has failed to outline a substantive policy justification for it. The recommendations of the royal commission do not support the amendments proposed to this legislation or what has been put forward in this bill. As can be seen, this bill goes far beyond the recommendations of the Heydon royal commission. We have here in this legislation an attack on the important role that unions play in our society. It has no corporate or political equivalent. We in this place have a responsibility to stand up for hardworking Australian people—retail workers, hospitality workers, cleaners, teachers, nurses and police officers; workers subjected to wage theft; and workers in dangerous workplaces.

It defies belief that the government, the Liberals and Nationals, want to continue their ideologically driven attack on working people on this country, when, after their first two terms with their hands on the economic levers of our country, our economy has almost ground to a halt, and their legacy is stagnant wage growth and underemployment. We have economic analysis from economists and economic institutions that has highlighted the important role of unions in tackling wage stagnation in our nation. But, instead of supporting unions in this role, you come after them. There is absolutely no mandate from the Australian people for the way this government has come after the democratically elected, democratic, strong and effective workplace representation that unions offer. At this time, when we're experiencing stagnant wage growth and a floundering economy, you decide that now is an appropriate time to impinge on the ability of employee representatives to effectively bargain for higher wages? You decide now is the right time to do that?

You've talked about bringing in legislation to tackle wage theft, but that's not what you've brought before this chamber. Instead, what you've brought before this chamber is an attack on the democratic unions that represent workers. At a time when it seems like every couple of weeks another company is discovered to have underpaid their workforce, what we have here is the ensuring integrity bill, which will lead to more wage theft, wrapping up unions in red tape and costly legal action when they should be spending their time fighting for workers.

We saw this very clearly in the evidence before the Senate inquiry, where unions very clearly talked about the tactics of employers, who are quite capable of putting forward spurious claims against unions so that unions have to occupy their time in addressing red tape and spurious claims against them, instead of being able to focus on the industrial campaigns that they're engaged in to bargain and to raise wages. So thousands of workers across the country in lower-paid jobs, who are time and time again victims of wage theft from large companies and small companies in industries like construction, will be compromised in having effective representation. Some of these people have already suffered cuts to their penalty rates under this government, and it's now becoming more and more clear that, while they're losing their penalty rates, in some cases they're losing their regular wages too. We don't see this government coming into this place with legislation to help deal with wage theft and worker exploitation. Instead what it does is prioritise this bill before us today. What we have here is nothing more than a harking back to the days of Work Choices under the Liberals and Nationals.

In the course of this debate, I didn't think I would find myself agreeing with the Attorney-General, Christian Porter, on much, but he has said:

The unions are a fundamental part of the architecture of the Australian industrial relations scheme, and in many instances they do fantastic work.

He said:

Unions do a good job in uncovering underpayment …

Thanks, Minister Porter, for that glowing assessment of the union movement in Australia. So why are you seeking to impede unions' ability to continue to fight for better outcomes for workers? Employee organisations and unions both do critical work in ensuring that workers are remunerated appropriately for the work they do, providing strong representation of employees in collective bargaining, holding employers to account when it comes to maintaining safe workplaces, and making sure that the right of a worker to go to work in the morning and come home unharmed at the end of the day is upheld.

It is unions that have fought and won, and have been in all the fights, on issues that affect all of us. A good example of this is where the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation in Victoria took industrial action that resulted in better nurse-to-patient ratios and, ultimately, better care for patients. That action was taken at great cost to the union, for the benefit of members and, most importantly, of patients. Under this legislation, the union could have faced deregistration for taking unprotected industrial action—just as the TWU could have been deregistered for actions to protect themselves and the public from armed hold-ups; just as the AWU could have been deregistered for taking action against James Hardie in their campaign to ensure compensation for victims of the scourge of asbestos. All these public goods are at risk in this legislation, because unions can be deregistered for taking unprotected industrial action. As Paul Bastian from the AMWU said in evidence to the Senate committee:

… after a concerted campaign, James Hardie finally reached the heads of agreement with the ACTU, Unions New South Wales, victims groups represented by the tireless Bernie Banton and the New South Wales government. We had secured an uncapped compensation for victims of asbestos diseases in Australia and a commitment to contribute up to an estimated $4.5 billion into a compensation fund that was originally only given $293 million. We achieved justice because unions and victims groups engaged in an escalating series of protests, work stoppages, work bans, boycotts, marches, investor activism and intensive political lobbying. It is beyond question that this campaign for sufferers of asbestos diseases made Australia a better, safer and more just place.

Many of the campaign activities which I have outlined to you today would now constitute illegal industrial activity. Under this legislation, those of us who organised this campaign—a campaign that secured justice for people suffering from horrific illness and untimely death—would be banned from leadership of our union. Under this legislation, our union, which stood up not just for our members but for their families and victims across Australia, would be at risk of deregistration.

I really want to call the Senate to account on these issues, because it disproves assertions from Centre Alliance that limiting in this bill the number of parties who can apply to take action against a union or official is sufficient to mitigate the disastrous consequences of this bill, should it become law. The grounds of possible action against a union official or a union are extraordinarily broad. They are unworkable, extending liabilities far beyond union officials to the members of unions themselves. We can certainly see how unprotected industrial action as grounds for triggering disqualification or deregistration will threaten both worker and public safety.

This strikes at the heart of Australian democracy. The provisions of this bill strip workers of their rights in the workplace—as if it wasn't enough that the government saw fit to strip some workers of their pay when they took away their Sunday penalty rates. As it stands currently in our nation, workers are able to organise and decide who represents their interests in the workplace and who leads their union. We have ballots in our nation that are run for unions by the Australian Electoral Commission. In the meantime what we have in this bill is an ideological attack on the rights of workers to organise and represent themselves in democratically-run unions.

It's no surprise to senators in this place that existing legislation already contains extensive grounds on which an officer holder in a registered organisation can be disqualified. What we see here is these grounds being substantially expanded—expanding the new mechanism for automatic disqualification, introducing a new concept of designated findings and designated laws which go well beyond existing grounds, introducing a new 'fit and proper person' test and widening the scope of interested parties that could apply for a disqualification order.

The Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills reported its concern to this chamber that there was incompatibility with the right to freedom of association. We know that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights also upheld its 2017 findings that the bill would limit the right to freedom of association, on the very conventions that Senator Brown mentioned in this place that Australia has ratified.

We have a bill that limits the right of workers organisations to freely elect their own representatives as well as introduces provisions that would disqualify a person from holding office in a registered organisation on the basis of even less serious contraventions of industrial law. We don't see similar provisions in Corporations Law that would have seen office holders in the banks who were exposed in the banking royal commission for ripping off their customers banned.

The government likes to talk about equivalence, saying that employer organisations are affected in the same way by this bill. But the simple fact is that employer organisations are not the ones at the bargaining table; it's their members that are. Employer organisations aren't affected by this legislation in the same way unions are, because they do very different business. There is no corporate equivalent for this legislation that would see office holders in the banks who were exposed during the banking royal commission for ripping off their customers banned. When we speak of office holders, we need to be clear that these are not just paid staff of registered organisations.

We heard during our Senate inquiry that unions have high numbers of volunteers among their office holders. For example, the National Tertiary Education Union, representing workers in tertiary education in public and private universities, have 28,000 members. Of those 28,000 members, 801 are democratically elected into various positions. Only 11 of those 801 are actually paid. Volunteers make up 98.7 per cent of the elected union officials for that union. What we have here are volunteers tied up with red tape. Minor and inadvertent breaches could result in major consequences for them and their union. We shouldn't be a parliament or a government that wants to make things more difficult for the lives of nurses, teachers and shop assistants who put up their hands to volunteer to make their colleagues' working lives better. The threat of disqualification is at such a low bar it will have a chilling effect on these volunteers.

Is it any wonder that two parliamentary committees and the International Centre for Trade Union Rights have raised serious concerns about the incompatibility of this bill and the right to freedom of association? In the current legislation, a court already has the power to cancel the registration of an organisation. But this bill significantly expands both the grounds upon which cancellation of registration could be ordered and those who can bring an application before the court. The grounds don't require unlawful conduct. They don't require a breach to be serious. In some cases, they do not require any unlawful conduct at all. This simply goes too far in impeding the right to freedom of association for workers, and it allows for political interference in the operation of a registered organisation. This interference is unprecedented, and it is a massive overreach on the part of this government.

In closing, this bill, at its heart, is an ideological attack on the union movement and an attack on Australians. This is a carryover of the 'dead, buried and cremated' Work Choices. Labor will not support any legislation that makes it harder for workers to get a fair pay rise. It is a pay rise that this nation desperately needs—a nation in which low wage growth is the new normal. We will not support a bill that could leave workers without the representatives that protect them from wage theft, superannuation theft and dangerous workplaces. I and Labor will continue to stand with Australian unions, which will rightly continue their campaign against this unjust bill.

Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019. This is a bill that is about nothing more than union bashing. This bill is antiworker. It is completely without merit and it should be blocked by this chamber. There is nothing salvageable about this bill. It is fundamentally flawed. The original version of this bill was dangerous and extreme, and that's why the 45th Parliament rejected it. But here we are again: another Liberal government and another antiunion, antiworker bill.

This bill will be used to weaken the organisations that fight for Australian workers to get a decent pay rise, fight against wage theft, fight against exploitation, fight to ensure safe workplaces and fight to represent working Australians more than this government have ever done. The government have no plan to kickstart our faltering economy. They have no plan to deal with low wages, no plan to deal with the rising cost of living and no plan at all for our country. It is a third-term government that are desperately trying to distract us from their own failings. First, they tried to distract us by going after vulnerable Australians with their nasty robodebt scheme. Then they went after social security recipients again, threatening to expand their demanding cashless debit cards and their invasive drug tests. Now they're going after working Australians and their unions with an attack that is absolutely politically motivated.

That is what this bill is: an attack on working Australians and an attack on their unions. Not only does this bill interfere with workers' ability to democratically run their own union and determine who leads their own union but it also imposes higher and harsher regulations on unions than it does on any other organisation or business. Unions are not the same as most other organisations. Unions are democratically run. They work for the interests of their members and they are accountable to their members. They're run by committees of volunteers. This bill allows businesses to interfere with the running of those member-led democratic unions. They could be businesses that a union is investigating for wage theft or businesses that unions are trying to negotiate wage rises with. Those businesses could apply for a union official to be disqualified from office. They could apply for the union to be placed in administration. They could even apply for the union to be deregistered and shut down, and that is completely perverse. It is ridiculous. It is outrageous. Whatever the government may say about their amendments, there is an extraordinarily wide range of grounds upon which a union official could be disqualified or a union could be deregistered. That a union official could be excluded from their role for a few minor technical breaches is absolutely absurd. It's especially absurd when there is no suggestion from the government that someone like George Calombaris, who we know stole over $7 million from his staff, should be barred from running a business. Do we want a situation where someone like George Calombaris could, after finding out that the union was investigating him for this wage theft, actually apply to have the union deregistered to interfere with and stop their work? That is what this bill will deliver.

We have seen countless examples of employers ripping off their workers in recent years, from 7-Eleven to Domino's to Calombaris to Rockpool, but we do not see this government going after those employers. We are still waiting for legislation that will deal with that worker exploitation. We're waiting for any plan from the government to tackle slow wage growth and to deal with the massive and pervasive problems that we have around wage theft today.

So now the Attorney-General is going to introduce a penalty-units scheme to the bill: 60 penalty units for paperwork breaches; three strikes, or 180 units, and you're out—a union official can be disqualified. Well, I am really looking forward to the government rolling out this new scheme to the big banks and businesses that break the law. How many penalty points should we attach to wage theft and doctoring pay records? How many penalty points should we attach to companies that endanger workplace health and safety? How many penalty points should we attach to a bank that sells dodgy insurance? And how many penalty points should we attach to a bank, a financial institution, that's in breach of money-laundering laws? How many penalty points is that going to count for? Last week, Westpac was accused of 23 million breaches of money-laundering law, and that would be 1,000,380,000 penalty points, if this legislation applied to them—which of course it doesn't, because there is one rule for the big banks and another rule for workers and their unions. What kind of punishment would that bring, if just 180 penalty points can get a union disqualified under this government?

It is an internationally recognised human right for people to be able to freely organise into unions. This bill, by allowing such interference in unions, contravenes those international human rights.

Recently, my union, United Voice, chose to merge with the National Union of Workers to form the new United Workers Union. This was democratically decided, with thousands of union members voting in support of this merger. In fact, 45,000 members chose to vote in this election. That is exactly as it should be—union members deciding the future of their own union. They talked about it in their workplaces. They debated it. They decided. They thought about the future that they wanted for themselves and they voted. But, under this bill, employers can apply to block union mergers that they don't like through their proposed public interest test. We should be clear that this is not a public interest test; it is a big business test. And I do not recall any union being asked whether they approved of the merger of two corporations. So the government may claim that this bill is bringing the regulation of trade unions in line with that of corporations, but that is just completely ridiculous. It could not be further from the truth. Unions cannot seek to have a company director disqualified when that company has been endangering people's workplace safety—endangering their lives—or stealing their wages. Unions cannot apply to have a corporation deregistered or wound up because they don't like the practices of that corporation.

This bill—make no mistake—is about union bashing, plain and simple. It's union bashing that won't get anyone a pay rise today. It's union bashing that will not help the workers who are stuck in gig jobs, in insecure jobs, in labour hire jobs, who desperately need security and certainty about their jobs and their lives. It will not help the workers in Australia today who need two, three or even four jobs, under this government, to make ends meet. It's union bashing that will not make our workplaces any safer. It will not win equal pay for women. It will not stop the exploitation of migrant workers in our country. And this union bashing will do nothing to stop the epidemic of wage theft that is sweeping through industries across Australia.

I also want to be clear that this bill has absolutely nothing to do with integrity. Let me tell you what integrity is. Integrity is the union members that I know, who devote their lives to their union, in their own time, without pay, because they believe in a better future for their workmates and a better deal for workers across the country. Integrity is the women and men who work in factories, childcare centres, schools and hospitals and then go to union meetings after hours to make sure that everyone can have a decent and secure job where they are respected and can earn a decent living wage. That is integrity. Integrity is the thousands of union officials across Australia who get up every day and go to work with the sole purpose of providing support and advice to working Australians when they need it most. That is integrity. This Prime Minister should ensure the integrity of his own government before going after organisations that are not even out for a personal benefit—organisations that are there to protect and improve the working conditions of their members: hardworking Australians, the same hardworking Australians that the Prime Minister claims that he's here for, that he stands up for, but he never does.

Unions are not the enemy. Unions are actually the members that they are made of. Unions are their hardworking members, nothing more and nothing less. Unions are dedicated to fighting for respect and good, secure jobs for all Australians. They provide a voice to people who otherwise wouldn't have one. Talk to any union member and they'll say the same thing.

Take Kylie, who's an early childhood educator in Melbourne. Kylie has been a union member her entire professional career. I spoke to her to get her views about this bill. She was one of the amazing union members who fought to introduce educator-to-child ratios and then fought again a few years ago against attempts to scrap them. Early childhood educators won that fight collectively in their union. Those ratios that were protected weren't just good for the educators; they were also good for the children that the educators are tasked with caring for, nurturing and educating. Kylie says:

Being a member has allowed us to stand up and use our voice. They should be supporting unions. We just need to look at all the cases recently about wage theft, about under payments in hospitality, in supermarkets, high profile chefs, companies forging documents to get away with it. Without union membership, the individual employee doesn't have the power to stand up against a big organisation or big business.

She went on to tell me her views about this bill:

There is this misconception among some that union members are … thugs. That's not the case at all. We are the average Australian. We are the working people of Australia. How else are we going to have our voice unless we have the opportunity to come together?

Kylie, as a union member, gets it. She has seen firsthand what would happen if the union wasn't there to back her up and give her a voice.

Then there's Mo, an aviation security officer who has worked in the industry for the past 20 years. Mo, on a number of occasions, has chosen to bravely stand up and speak out about cutbacks and injustice at work. Every time he does that, he is targeted by his employer for speaking out, and every time he is targeted, the union is there to back him up. When I asked him about this bill, Mo said:

I absolutely believe that our government should be supporting the unions and I believe that the fact that our government has introduced this bill shows that they are not prepared to stand with workers.

He said:

Basically, our Liberal Government is prepared to look after the interests of employers first. It is a dangerous path to be weakening unions. Wage theft will increase, more staff will lose their jobs unfairly, more staff will be exploited.

The union is there to make sure that every worker … has the dignity and respect they deserve at their work place.

So Mo has a message for the Prime Minister:

I would say to the Prime Minister, if you really care about the workers of this country, if you really care and have respect for workers, then withdraw this union busting bill. Think about the workers, their rights and their dignity.

Kylie and Mo are two incredible union members who campaign hard to improve the workplace rights of all hardworking Australians. Does the Prime Minister think that Kylie and Mo are the problem? Are they union thugs? Are Kylie and Mo the problem that the Prime Minister is trying to solve with this bill? The Prime Minister needs to explain to them why he is going after their unions and why he isn't going after the wage thieves that Kylie talked about when we met. When we spoke to both Kylie and Mo, it was very clear that they strongly believe that this government has its priorities absolutely wrong. Here is a government that is going after workers and their unions. Kylie and Mo want to know why the government is not focusing on the real issues that are facing Australians today. Kylie had this to say to the Prime Minister:

I would say that perhaps he needs to wake up and see what the majority of this country is all about. This country is struggling, employees across the country struggle to live on the wage of one job. This should not be the case, where you're struggling to make ends meet, wondering where the next meal is coming from, how you are going to pay the bills. He needs to listen to the actual whole of Australia, not just the one percenters.

Kylie is absolutely right. Why isn't the Prime Minister and his government taking action on the real issues that are facing Australia right now? Every week there's a new story in the press about how gloomy the outlook is for the economy. Just last week it was retail figures—the worst in three decades, down 0.2 per cent over the year. That is the worst result since the 1990s recession, not to mention that the RBA again downgraded growth forecasts for the Australian economy. And we know that, for so long now, economists across the country have been screaming out about the state of our economy. Last month we had the IMF ringing the alarm bells again and downgrading their forecasts for Australia's economic growth. Business wants the government to act. But the government do not have a plan for our faltering economy, and they have their priorities all wrong. They are spending too much time dealing with this ridiculous union-busting bill, and they're doing it at a time when wage growth—the very thing that unions fight for and stand for—is a huge problem in our country. Not only does stagnant wage growth increase the pressure on households budgets; it means that people have less money to spend in the economy as a whole.

It is beyond belief that the government would be trying to weaken unions at the very time that unions need more resources and more tools to win wage growth in our country. We know that the best way for Australians to get a pay rise, the best way to get wages moving in this country, is for people to join their union. But this bill is all about the government's vendetta, its political attack, against trade unions. It is just another example of a government that is not looking out for Australians.

Let's look at their track record: a faltering economy, stagnant wage growth, out-of-control bills, increasing food insecurity, demonisation of social security recipients, the targeting of vulnerable Australians with robodebt and an NDIS that isn't able to meet the needs of people, because the government took funds from it to prop up their budget. These are the government's priorities. This is a government that will not stand up for working Australians. They will not stand up for low-income workers, they will not stand up for workers who are having their wages stolen, they will not stand up for Australians stuck in insecure jobs and they will not stand up for the right of all Australians to freely join their union.

So what is the point of this government? What is their plan for Australia? What is their vision for our country? Is it a country where people just go to work and never speak up? Is it a country where people just stay quiet, where people just put up with it? That is exactly what it looks like. This government wants to deliver a country where workers are on low wages as part of their economic plan and where those workers are too frightened to speak out and just have to cop it.

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill. This is a bad law that must be opposed in full. This morning I hosted a group of young workers who had come to parliament to talk to politicians about issues facing young people in workplaces all over Australia. Rosie, Rachel, James, Michael and Maryanne all talked about the hopelessness and powerlessness being felt by young workers around the country. The No. 1 issue they talked about was wage theft, and they rightly asked: why isn't the government taking any action on wage theft? How is it that employers can get away with not paying them thousands of dollars, but if they were to steal from their employer it would be a criminal offence? One employee who we spoke to today was owed $36,000 from her employer.

It reminded me of when I was a young worker. I started out in retail and hospitality jobs. I would take any job I could get, and the jobs you could do on nights and on weekends were even better. But at one of my first jobs I got handed in Australian workplace agreement under Howard's Work Choices laws. When the Howard government won the 2004 election, it also won a majority in the Senate. After the election, Prime Minister Howard told reporters:

… I want to assure the Australian people that the government will use its majority in the new Senate very carefully, very wisely and not provocatively.

And yet, just over a year later, on 10 November 2005, the Special Minister of State at the time, Senator Eric Abetz, introduced Work Choices into the Senate. The same Senate which Prime Minister Howard had told Australians would not be used provocatively had been used defiantly to push through laws destroying the rights of workers all across the country.

In 2005 the Senate allowed a law to be passed that made it easier to sack workers, that broke down our collective bargaining system and that stripped away the basic right of representation. It let down workers, especially young workers. I will never forget what it felt like to be handed an AWA, to be made to feel hopeless and powerless against my employer. We should never forget that the Morrison government, the Liberal and National parties, are the parties of Work Choices. That is why they are pushing through these laws today. It is about ideology, not policy. It is about attacking working people. It is about taking away the representation that stops workers from feeling hopeless and powerless. It is the start of the grand old march towards Work Choices 2.0 as the government unashamedly boasts about their plans to overhaul our award system.

Senators have the opportunity to right the wrong of Work Choices, to be the check and balance that Australia expects, to stop bad laws, to stop government overreach, to stop this government from hurting working Australians. Even with amendments, this bill allows the disqualification of union officials or the deregistration of entire unions for minor workplace breaches. The bill still allows the minister or anyone with sufficient interest to apply to deregister a union or disqualify a person from office, allowing unprecedented government overreach into a pillar of our democratic society. The bill still gives sweeping new powers to the politicised and discredited Registered Organisations Commission, which just a few weeks ago was found by the Federal Court to have acted unlawfully in its pursuit of a union. The bill still imposes a new test on union amalgamations, giving the government the power to override the democratic wishes of union members, even though amalgamations are already heavily regulated. And, still, many of these new standards and regulations being imposed on unions through the bill have no corporate equivalents. It sets up one rule for unions, which protect the interests of working people, and one rule for businesses that are guilty of gross misconduct or even criminality. This is what the bill does. No matter how much you amend it, no matter how much you argue for it, throwing out confected statistics or quotes from judgements by government appointed commissioners, it cannot make the effects of this bill any less unfair, unprecedented or unfounded.

But I also want to talk about what this bill won't do. The truth is that this bill won't create a single job in my home state of Queensland. It won't create any apprenticeships. It won't see wages rise for workers, who keep seeing profits going up but their wages staying the same. It won't stop further casualisation or automation of jobs—just ask BHP workers in Central Queensland. The bill won't make workplaces safer. It won't stop one death. The bill won't help workers in the hospitality industry get their penalty rates back. It will do nothing to help workers. It won't make the future more secure for Australia's young workers. It will put them on the other side of bargaining tables alone, unable to bargain, hopeless and powerless. The Senate cannot allow this to happen again.

I attended the hearings in Canberra and Brisbane that the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee held on this bill. I thank all of the witnesses who appeared and made submissions. At those hearings we heard from unions, workers and legal experts about the deficiencies of this bill. The dissenting report, which I have signed, set out those deficiencies and the evidence provided in some detail. One of the major concerns raised during the hearings on this bill was the chilling effect these laws would have on legitimate union activity. As Labor senators explained, the significantly expanded grounds and new standing provisions would ultimately weaken the power of working people. The bill would have a chilling effect on workplace bargaining and would see union resources diverted towards defending a union and its members rather than being used to advocate and bargain for better wages and conditions.

This chilling effect is the real purpose of this bill. But what will it look like in practice? What will it look like in workplaces all across the country? If the resources of unions are diverted, if the consequence of taking strike action could be disqualification of a member or even deregistration of a union, individual members and officials will be curtailed from performing their legal duties. Unions will not be able to perform the important role that they play on worksites all across the country. The most important part of that role for any union official is to ensure that workers come home safe at the end of each day, unharmed and alive. Union officials ensure that, when the workday stops, every father is returned home, every son walks through their door and no woman ever leaves a worksite worse off.

In the past year there have been 130 deaths at work. That figure is going up when it should be going down. In Far North Queensland we've had two significant workplace deaths that have left families and communities shattered. A worker died last night on the job in Central Queensland. Of all the statistics and numbers that senators opposite will quote during this debate, that should be the most important one. As our dissenting report sets out, this bill will further restrict the ability of unions to take collective action in circumstances where safety is in serious doubt. The threat of prosecution, disqualification of an office holder or deregistration of a union will create a situation where workers and their representatives might think twice before taking action. That is unacceptable in Australia.

I want to provide a real-life example of how this might play out. It shows the absurdity of these proposed laws and how they have the potential to put lives of workers at risk by stopping legitimate union behaviour. A few years ago, when I was just getting my start as a trainee lawyer, representing workers who had been unfairly dismissed at work or underpaid, I worked on a case that was being appealed by the Fair Work Commission. It has always stuck with me because I've always wondered what I would have felt like being one of the workers involved—what I would have done in the same situation.

The workers were working on a site in Central Queensland for Bechtel. A substance called perlite was being used on the site. It is described as a sand-like substance, and when it's heated up to a thousand degrees it's pushed through a funnel. It is classified as nontoxic, but it can also be an irritant. One day on site a soft, white dust filled the air. Some of the workers started experiencing side effects—itchy eyes and sore throats. They had to seek medical attention. The union delegates on site took the matter very seriously. The delegates on site knew from their union training and industry knowledge that dust was a serious issue and had deadly health consequences.

Each year in Australia between 700 and 800 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma, an asbestos related disease. In 2018, 699 people died from this rare and aggressive form of cancer. Most recently, a new epidemic has seen the rates of the lung disease silicosis, caused by breathing in dust containing crystalline silica, rise. Last year in Queensland, 98 people contracted the disease and 15 people died from it. It is incurable.

The delegates and workers on the site met, and they decided that they needed to stop work. They decided that there was an imminent risk to their health and safety. Whether it was protected or unprotected action would be determined by a legal definition about whether there was an imminent risk to their health and safety. The company applied to the Fair Work Commission to seek an order to stop that action and make the workers go back to work. A rushed hearing was held and there was no time for industrial officers representing unions to prepare evidence about safety concerns. When the hearing was held, the workers had already returned to work. The order prevented workers from engaging in industrial action and would stay in force for three months—this is, the order that the commission made against the workers. While the order was in place, no industrial action could be taken. A breach of that order would be a civil remedy provision breach. So, if the workers went back to site the next day and a cloud of dust filled the air again, they would not be able to stop work because of this order.

Under this bill that we are talking about today, that breach would be grounds for disqualification of a union official or a deregistration of a union. I've often wondered what I would have done if it were me watching my colleagues head off for medical treatment. What would we do in this place if white dust started filling the air? We would stop work. We would take action. Of course, those workers did exactly the same thing. Safety is serious and the stakes are very, very high. If the crossbench senators are looking to get the balance right when it comes to this legislation, they should consider that, when it comes to workers' safety, that balance should always be weighted in the favour of workers' safety. It should always come before profits or productivity. There is no 50-50 balance in this situation. Workers should always come first, and under this legislation they don't.

This legislation is an attack on working people, but there is no doubt that the government will not stop here. The next piece of legislation that they bring into this chamber to streamline our so-called complex awards, to do the bidding of the varied businesses that owe $500 million to Australian workers, will also be an attack on working people. This government is the political party of Work Choices. They are the same party as 'no cuts to the ABC' and 'no cuts to SBS'. They are the same party that let penalty rates of 700,000 workers get cut. They are the same party that won't take action on wage theft and won't take any action on the rot of labour hire in regional Queensland.

Liberal and National senators have done a lot of talking about unions in here and out there, calling nurses and teachers unions thugs. But here's the thing: Liberals talk about unionism as though they read about it in a textbook. They speak without any firsthand experience of the sweat on the brows; the long, hard fights; the despair of holding a parent who just lost their son on a worksite; or being told hundreds of your members have just been made redundant by text message. For all their talk about unions, they don't talk about how it feels to save someone's job or win a pay increase for the lowest paid workers or see the manufacturing sector return to regional towns, because they wouldn't know. They haven't won those fights, but the union movement has. The Liberals weren't there to protect minimum wages when unions were. The Liberals weren't there to fight for public holidays, but unions were there every step of the way. The Liberals weren't there to fight for Medicare, but unions were. The Liberals weren't there when unions were fighting for asbestos victims or for 7-Eleven workers or for women to get equal pay. The Liberals can't tell you what it feels like to fight for these things, because these are not the things that they fight for. This is the debate that they want to have: a fight against unions, against working people. Nothing has changed.

While these debates have always shown the true colours of the senators sitting opposite, they also bring out the best in the Labor Party. Labor is unashamedly a party of working people for working people. Labor's deep roots with the trade union movement aren't something that Liberals opposite could ever understand or ever be able to shame us into repenting or extinguishing. Our collectivism is a fire that they can't blow out, even as they huff and puff over there. They are full of wind without any spark. Labor stands with every apprentice, electrician, plumber, construction worker, teacher, nurse, ambo, scientist or fitter and turner who unashamedly calls themselves a union member.

During the third reading debate on the Work Choices bill, Labor Senator Chris Evans said this to the government. I want to repeat his words tonight. He said:

You will win the vote … but you won't win the argument … we will fight you all the way to the next election because you are wrong.

You're unfair and your bill is un-Australian.

We are proud of our relationship with the trade union movement. We are proud of defending workers and we will keep on doing it. You may think history is with you, but mark down 2 December 2005, because it is the beginning of the end of this government. All you have spoken about tonight is ideology. The date 2 December 2005 was the beginning of the end of the Howard government. Workers, including young workers, marched in the streets, some for the very first time, to fight for their rights at work. It was, for me, the very first time that I stood up and felt that collectivism. I marched in the streets, and that journey has led me here tonight, to fight for the next generation of workers and to fight against this rotten antiworker legislation.

I want to end this speech tonight by talking about the young workers that I met today and what they want from this government. We know that it is tough right now for young workers. Nationwide, since the Liberals were elected six years ago, Australia has 150,000 fewer apprentices and trainees. In regional Queensland we have lost 17,000 apprentices and trainees since 2013. Youth unemployment continues to skyrocket at 12.4 per cent. It is even higher if you live in regional or remote communities. The cost of living is higher, yet wages are staying the same. Seven hundred thousand workers in the hospitality and retail sector have had their Sunday and public holiday wages cut. Australians are currently owed $500 million due to underpayment, because wage theft is rife in our community. Five hundred million dollars is owed to workers, and this government is doing nothing about it.

The future for young people under this government is uncertain. Their pathway to a secure, full-time job is unknown. The government's anti-union bill won't create a single new job. They don't have a plan to fix youth unemployment or increase apprenticeships in regional Queensland, where we desperately need them. If this bill passes with the help of the crossbench, we should mark this day down—26 November 2019—as the day that the Senate turned its back on workers.

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great sorrow that I rise to make a contribution to this debate on the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019. I did hold out some hope that some of those on the crossbench might actually see the great folly of this piece of legislation the government is advancing and see through what the government is doing, but, sadly, we are not seeing that in the debate we are undertaking at this time.

I want to take this opportunity to put on the record my absolute opposition to what can only be described as a draconian bill. It's an outrageous bill. In fact, it could have been drafted by an authoritarian regime, it's so bad. It's undemocratic, it's unprecedented and it's un-Australian. It attacks the organisations that have been the backbone of Australia's democracy and economy since before Federation, and it attacks the democratic right of workers to associate freely in trade unions. It attacks fundamental liberties that we hold dear, including the right to free speech and the right to withhold your labour. These are not new concepts. They are realities that have been hard fought for. They are internationally accepted as basics in a democratic society. But that means nothing to this government filled with ideologues who, every day, advance an attack on Australian workers and on decent businesses that want to do the right thing and look after their workers because they know they are vital to the success of their businesses.

This bill looks like it will pass, and that will no doubt delight this government as it moves ever closer, incrementally, to achieving its goal of a weak and emaciated union movement. That's what it wants to see. I tell you: you may get this bill through, and it looks like you're going to get this bill through, but you will never ever take away the heart of the union movement. It might be severely impacted by this draconian piece of legislation, but you will not take us down. We will continue to stand and fight for the working people of this country.

The LNP want a union movement that is silent. The LNP want a union movement that is broken. The LNP want a union movement that is no longer able to stand up to this government's relentless attacks. But I'm a Labor senator and I'm proud to stand here in this chamber, with my Labor colleagues, against this legislation. With them and the broader labour movement, I will always—always—stand up for fairness, for workers' rights. We cannot and we would never ever, not in a million years, support anything like this bill.

A past version of this bill was rejected in the last parliament for being far too extreme. It was rejected then; it should be rejected now. This emboldened government is trying, as it does every time it gets the chance, to gut unions and to destroy the ability of working people to organise themselves and demand safe workplaces and fair and decent pay for their endeavours every day.

There are too many extraordinary measures in this bill to go through them one by one. But I will always remain impacted by the appalling and frightening evidence, frankly, that we received in the Education and Employment Legislation Committee inquiry with regard to the likely impact of the passage of this legislation. There is the impact on volunteers. The government are so removed from the reality of unions that they talk about unions as if they're an enormous workforce of highly paid people—because that's what the government experience in corporate life. They think that everybody experiences that. We have volunteers in every union across this country, including nurses, airline stewards and teachers—people who are just doing the right thing by standing up for somebody in their workplace. They're all going to be impacted by this very extreme bill.

In my view the critical issue in this bill is the ability of courts to deregister unions based on a vast array of grounds that should absolutely be considered unlawful but will be enabled if this legislation passes. The grounds for deregistration have no corporate equivalence. People know about the Hayne royal commission. They know that this government fought it tooth and nail. They know that the commission recommended that 76 important things should happen and that this government should move to enact those in legislation. But we're not here tonight sorting out the 76 recommendations of the Hayne royal commission, despite the appalling findings about the banks then and the reinvigoration of our understanding of how diabolically bad the action of the banks has been, given the 23 million instances of failure to abide by the law that have been documented this week in the public place with regard to Westpac. People know that's what the government should be doing; in fact, people are being hoodwinked into thinking that is what the government is doing. But, I tell you what, they're not doing that, Australia. They are not implementing the recommendations of the Hayne royal commission; instead they're here attacking the unions. That's what they're doing. That's their priority. Michele O'Neill of the ACTU said:

None of the grounds for disqualification or deregistration require the conduct to be serious, deliberate, knowing, wilful, repeated, persistent or systematic.

This set of laws, make no mistake, is a set of laws that demands an entirely different standard from volunteers who are just standing up for their workmates than it requires of those in corporate Australia.

I take this opportunity to thank all the unions for their care in their submissions and to thank all the volunteers working in unions who do their work every day to support their fellow workers, many of whom came to give evidence to us. I also acknowledge the incredible leadership of the two great Australian woman who have led the ACTU in its very careful, very considered, very well-informed critique of this bill throughout the entire inquiry. They are operating in a context in Australia where our unions are among the most heavily regulated in the world. No-one who is a decent Australian wants the measures that are in this bill. The only group of people to whom they appeal are far-Right think tanks, all the people sitting on that side of the chamber and the ones who sit on the crossbench who are going to make their way over and support this government with this legislation.

The bill reveals that Liberals and Nationals stand for one major thing—that is, attacking workers and their representatives, silencing political dissent and taking away basic rights in a democratic society. If passed, this bill will enable unprecedented political interference in the activities of unions. It's going to give more power to the Registered Organisations Commission, despite the disgraceful record that it has. People know about what happened with the AWU and the raids. That's who this government want to empower. Embedded in this bill is more power for the ROC. The bill will put onerous red-tape restrictions on already-stretched organisations. It will increase the power that people called 'interested persons' have to entangle unions in costly legal battles and it will drain already-strained resources that should be used for helping workers in their workplaces and enabling them to be better skilled, do a better job and come home safely at the end of the day. It is very likely that the legislation that looks set to pass this place will increase vexatious litigation. It will certainly tie up the unions and it will strain their resources and strain the capacity of the courts. There already exists myriad laws and regulations governing the conduct of unions, but this government wants to send a message to those who would dare to stand up for workers' rights, and the message is: Be silent. Don't stand up for one another. Just accept what you're given.

The bill sets out a very different standard for unions than it does for any corporation. We haven't seen anything like the restrictions in this bill ever being considered to be applied to CEOs like the bankers who stole from ordinary Australians. There are no laws proposed by this government to deal with the appalling cases of wage theft by 7-Eleven, Caltex, Domino's, Pizza Hut and the now infamous George Calombaris. The same scrutiny and legislative crackdowns are simply not being applied to them. I want to acknowledge the work of the unions in actually uncovering what was going on with wage theft in those institutions. I particularly want to acknowledge the SDA union and its leadership at the federal level by Gerard Dwyer and at the New South Wales level—the state for which I am very proud to be a senator—by Bernie Smith. Through their efforts as unionists they got together the stories of people who were being totally ripped off. They came together, they put together submissions and they participated in the democratic processes. They put submissions to committees that you and I, Deputy President, were on, and we heard those unions giving evidence in defence of hardworking, ordinary Australians. This bill will make it harder, so much harder, for the truth to be told about what's going on in our country.

Those who will vote for this legislation don't care about ensuring integrity in industry. They're solely focused on attacking workers' representatives that dare to advocate for wage increases, for safer worksites and for better deals for their members. I want to share some memorable insights from the previous hearings that clearly lay out the new landscape of industrial relations that will occur if this bill should pass.

In a Sydney hearing we heard from Nick McIntosh from the TWU, representing truck drivers with real safety concerns, because the men and women in that industry are 13 times more likely to die than in any other occupation. That means safety is a key priority for the union to look after its members, to literally keep them alive. Mr McIntosh said that a snap strike such as the one held regarding safety concerns the morning after a bus driver in Western Sydney was stabbed could now result in disqualification of a union official or even lead to the deregistration of a union. That is how extreme this bill is. The very real safety concerns that bus drivers had that morning would not be able to be acted upon. Instead of considering just the safety of the workforce, of those men and women, they would have to consider the threat of extremely punitive action that could be brought against them by any person of interest—that's what this bill allows.

In the Melbourne hearing I heard evidence from a union secretary about the two-sided nature of the right of entry. For the union there are already very tough penalties for violations of right of entry, yet many companies deny lawful right of entry and get off scot-free. In evidence received, we heard about the tragic deaths of many young workers. Mr McIntosh referred to Mr Ballantine, a 17-year-old man who, on his first job, died after falling 12 metres to his death while installing a glass ceiling. I can remember being in this chamber when families, seated in the two front rows in the gallery, came here to receive the report that we brought into this place regarding industrial deaths. These were the families that relied on unions to tell them about what was going on after the death of a loved one because the government agencies just didn't do it.

The Liberals have made a great song and dance about certain union officials, but they ignore the responsibilities of corporate Australia. Gerry Hanssen is a Liberal Party member with a blind hatred of unions who blocked the CFMMEU safety inspectors from his company's worksite. Union safety inspectors were illegally barred weeks before a young German national tragically fell 13 floors to her death on that site. Yet this industrial law-breaker's company was fined only $62,000 for these breaches—half as much money as he donated to the Liberal Party. It's telling that this government continues to bring legislation in here that is much more interested in attacking the work safety of workers and attacking work safety inspectors than in criminalising industrial manslaughter and ensuring that building sites are safe.

This government's driven by a blind hatred for unions. It has one law for its Liberal donors and another for the workers' representatives. What appalling moral blindness. What disgraceful priorities. How dare the government claim to speak for workers when it restricts the ability to be safe, when it penalises those who dare to be sure that they get home to their families safely? Death after death occurs on construction sites across our nation—yet limiting the capacity to provide safe workplaces is what this government strives to do with this legislation.

We heard evidence from Lisa Fitzpatrick of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation of the chilling effect this bill will have on necessary unprotected industrial action in the health sector. If you as an Australian are listening to this debate and think this doesn't matter to you, let me tell you that, if you have somebody you love in aged care or in a hospital and nurses or workers in that institution think something unsafe is going on and they want to take unprotected action to provide for safety, they will be severely limited in being able to do that going forward. This is about safety for workers but also for the people they serve and look after. Ms Fitzpatrick knows this only too well. She spoke at the campaign to enshrine nurse-patient ratios in law and about how, due to the nature of ratios, they cannot be provided in an enterprise agreement and therefore are unlawful. This shows the current restrictive and downright arcane situation of regulatory hoops that unions are going to have to jump through to get better deals for their workers. But this bill will make it more difficult to ensure that the punishment for a minor transgression of that union can be overcome. Ms Fitzpatrick also brought up the retrospective nature of this bill which undermines the fundamental principle of law that laws should not be retrospective. How can union officials take any action now, knowing that this bill is before parliament and that any action they take could be prosecuted by laws in a form they are still unaware of? The future of every union is in jeopardy every single time they seek to act if this law is passed.

In Brisbane, Professor Anthony Forsyth gave evidence that he believes that the three bills passed since the Heydon royal commission sufficiently address issues of union corruption and that this bill is overreach and unnecessary. He clearly outlined current remedies that exist in the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act for the alleged behaviour of some unions. He said what everyone in this chamber knows, even the government—that this bill is entirely and utterly unnecessary. It is a tool for the government to silence dissent, it's undemocratic and it will severely limit the liberties of Australian workers.

The public interest test is of concern. The civil penalty contraventions outlined are also appalling. For unlawful industrial action, pickets or coercion, there could be fines of $210,000—enough to bankrupt many small unions. For a paperwork failure to remove non-financial members from a register of membership, there will be fines of $63,000. That's $63,000 for a minor clerical error. Fines of $7,200 can be levied on the hapless clerk who makes that tiny error. For failure to undertake training in relation to financial duties, there's a fine of $105,000. I'd love to see inflicted on Westpac a fine of $105,000 for each one of the 23 million infractions that have been declared this week as part of their business model.

This bill is a sham; it is a disgrace—from a government that has no plan for Medicare and no plan for the economy. It has no plan other than to destroy the voice of workers. The bill doesn't ensure integrity; it ensures a terrible legacy from this government. (Time expired)

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under the Morrison government, the soap opera of politics never ends. I think we are entitled to ask why the government has introduced this bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019, and I think we are entitled to ask what its real purpose is. We are entitled to ask: where are the wage pressures supposedly emerging that are disrupting the economy? We are entitled to ask: just how many days have actually been lost through strikes? For the record, Australia today has seen only two or three days lost in strikes per 1,000 employees. That compares with 17 days per thousand employees under the Howard government in 2004. So this country is hardly a hotbed of industrial unrest, despite the government's hype about this bill and what it suggests.

Workplace productivity is up. It has risen by 1.1 per cent over the last five years. But very little of that is actually going to workers. In the year to the end of September, wages had risen by 2.2 per cent, which is barely keeping pace with inflation. This is a 15-month low. And the Reserve Bank now tell us that, despite their very best efforts, this is what is going to be the new norm, and, because of the enterprise agreements that are being set at the moment, we are going to lock in low wages for the foreseeable future for most workers in this country. In the biggest employment sectors—construction, manufacturing and retail—wages growth is less than two per cent. The incomes of workers in those sectors are falling in real terms. Unemployment remains stubbornly stuck at around five per cent of the workforce and underemployment is at more than eight per cent. Workers who are in debt are being faced with the prospect of having to delay their retirement.

The long-term indicators of the health of the economy are sounding alarm bells. Most crucially, investment in research and development has fallen ever since this coalition came to office in 2013. During the life of this government, there has been a 10 per cent decline in real terms in the spending on science, research and innovation. At the same time, business expenditure on research and development has fallen 12 per cent. That's what is happening in the real economy, and that is what this government should be really concerned about—because a nation that does not invest in research and development is not investing in the future.

But this bill is not about the real economy. It is not about what real people are facing. It is not about what real people are experiencing. This is a product of the self-indulgent fantasy world of conservative politics. After seven years, the coalition is stuck in this groove. The bill reflects the government's sandpit style of industrial relations. It is a political view of industrial relations which reflects no understanding of the actual relationship between workers and management, no understanding of how enterprises are actually built and no understanding of the relationships that firms have with their workforces or with their contractors. This is the sort of bill that will get the editorial support of TheAustralian Financial Review and The Australian. It will probably even be applauded by some of the sections of the employer associations. But most employers will see through this government. That's why this government complains so bitterly that it can't get employers on side. This is a government so intent on demonising the union movement that it has failed to recognise that, of the 1.5 million union members in Australia, many actually vote Liberal.

The government treats politics like a game, and it is now trying to treat the workplace like a game, but it shows no understanding of how the world of work is changing for many people. It has no understanding of their anxieties about wage stagnation and no understanding of the increasing insecurity of employment—about the new wave of automation transforming workplaces throughout the industrialised world. Instead of increased responses to of all that, the government has given us not an understanding of what is actually going on in the economy but this bill.

It is a bill that is characterised by nitpicking, viciousness and double standards. It is a bill driven by a desire to persecute and to hound, a desire to essentially seek to applaud those sections of its own reactionary right wing. It will not deal with the real problems facing Australians or the Australian economy in 2019. It is a bill that cannot hide this government's real intention. It is a bill that has nothing to do with promoting the good conduct of registered organisations, of trade unions. It certainly is not a bill that, as the government pretends, makes unions subject to the same rules as corporations. Despite all the hype, it is not aimed—even specifically, as it often says—at the CFMEU in Victoria. It will affect all unions. Because of its petty mindedness, it will seek to put in jeopardy the future of all trade unionists.

Australia already has the most restrictive industrial laws of any OECD country—probably the most restrictive industrial laws of any advanced industrial economy. This bill will impose on unions an even harsher set of legal obligations. It is intended to make it even more difficult for unions to get on with their jobs. It will make it even harder for them to fight for better wages and conditions for their members.

Senator Cormann, as he so notoriously admitted in an unguarded moment, made the point that low wages growth is part of this government's policy. The government knows that, when unions are strong, they set the pace for wages and for wages growth in the economy. The government's fear of the union movement is remarkable. Every indicator points to the fact that the government has already achieved the low wages growth it is so desperately seeking, yet the government still fears the bogeyman it has imagined the trade union movement to be. It wants to make sure that there will be no prospect of the revival of trade union activity in Australian workplaces, because it knows that the very trends over which it has presided are likely to do exactly that. Wage stagnation and increasingly insecure employment are making workers and their families angry, making them anxious and making them feel alienated. The government does not want that anger to flow into industrial action—action that might restore wage justice and may change the balance of power in the workplace.

The government's corporate allies have shown the same fear. A report published in The Australianjust yesterdaysuggested that fear is making some corporate executives lose touch with reality. Very few working days are actually lost to strikes in Australia, yet The Australianof course makes no recognition of that. It cites instead a survey of 375 senior executives at firms with more than a thousand employees, which was conducted by the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills. The respondents to the survey apparently feared that workplace activities could cost the companies up to 25 per cent in annual revenue. No evidence is given to that calculation, not least in The Australian's report of the survey, but the executives were not reluctant to give reasons for the new wave of worker activism that they so desperately fear. More than half of the executive surveyed said that the gap between the executive and employee pay 'fuelled by years of stagnant wages' would be the trigger for activism. There is no indication in the report that the executives think it might be reasonable for employees to resent the growth in management salary packages while other wages are stagnating. There is even a sense that they somehow think it's improper for workers to be concerned about such things. Mr Anthony Longland, a partner in Herbert Smith Freehills, is reported as saying that employees are 'becoming increasingly agitated about issues that went beyond pay and workplace culture'. He said:

Our research suggests that employees are willing to voice opinions about topics ranging from strategic corporate decisions to ethical business conduct.

It is as if 'ethical business conduct' is somehow separate from wages policies pursued by companies.

This is at a time when the system of wage setting in this country is so ramshackle that wage theft has become rife. The accounting firm PwC has estimated that in Australia at the present time companies are pocketing $1.35 billion a year that could be paid to their employees. That's $1.35 billion a year that they're legally supposed to pay. It doesn't include the amount of money that they are able to secure by forcing down wages because of their bargaining power. It is surprising that people have allowed this to happen for fear of a new round of activism even though the data indicates that's not actually happening. This is once again a case of guilty consciences in the business world, perhaps. It is not surprising that this government, with its sandpit view of industrial relations, should be afraid of a new round of industrial action.

So we have this bill before us. In the amendments to this bill that the government has announced it will be moving in the committee stages, there are some changes intended to make the bill align more closely with the Corporations Act, but no-one will be fooled by this. The difference between the government's attitude to unions and its attitude to corporations is plain for all to see. If we compare this bill with the Prime Minister's comments last week after the extraordinary revelations about the banks, we can note just how strong that discrepancy is. The regulators in AUSTRAC found that a bank, as other speakers have already indicated, failed on 23 million occasions to prevent money laundering, including possible terrorism transactions. Many of these transactions, we are told, involve child exploitation material. Under these circumstances, the Prime Minister says: 'Well, that's simply a matter for the companies concerned. It's a matter for the boards'. So we have financial institutions in the country that facilitate the abuse of children and it's a matter for the boards, but when this bill comes to law, when a union organised to defend its members is brought before a court, it will be determined whether it is run by a fit and proper person.

The contrast could not be sharper. Even a failure to submit paperwork on time could lead to a union leader being dismissed and the union being deregistered. So the government's highest priority now would seem to be the capacity to pick up union officials who might be tardy in delivering paperwork, but it's done nothing to deal with the malfeasance in corporate Australia. Just remember how hard it was to get them to understand the need for a royal commission into the banking sector and to get them to enforce proper ethical conduct in the corporate sector. But they now have a highly politicised body, namely ROC—a thoroughly discredited body which, the courts themselves have demonstrated, has acted illegally and totally inappropriately in regard to the AWU.

We've had a highly politicised royal commission into trade unions, in an attempt to destroy Labor figures. We're being told now that that's to be the treatment of the labour movement in this country but that the treatment of corporate executives is to be entirely different. This is a government that has deference to sections of corporate Australia while demonstrating, day in day out, hostility to trade unions. So it's laughable to suggest, as Mr Morrison and Mr Porter try to, that this bill treats unions and corporations in the same way. There is no equivalence in the way unions and corporations are treated—in law, in fact, or in terms of the balance of power in this country.

The original version of this bill in 2017 was rejected by this parliament—and so it should have been. The government is now trying to reintroduce it in a more docile Senate. Of course it's up to the crossbenchers to make their calls on these matters. There is no action by this government to end wage stagnation. There is no action by this government to deal with the issue of wage theft. There is no action by this government in terms of the exploitation of Australian workers. On this government's watch, there has been revelation after revelation of companies ripping off their workers, and we've seen examples from the Domino's pizza chain, to Michael Hill jewellers, to the restaurants of George Calombaris, to Woolworths. We've seen wage theft and exploitation—which will not be stopped by this bill. In fact, it will make those practices so much easier.

This bill is politically motivated. It's an attack on the ability of trade unions to organise and to represent the working people of this country and on the ability of workers to run their own unions and to choose who leads them. So I urge the crossbenchers: you ought to look very carefully at the consequences of moving against the trade union movement in this country—against those who actually fight to protect against superannuation theft and dangerous workplaces. You ought to look very carefully at the coalition's onslaught on trade unions and the industrial rights of working people in this country.

You ought to look carefully at the watering down, as this government has already talked about, of unfair dismissal laws, at the scrapping of the better off overall test, and at a government that openly says that the industrial relations system, the award system, is too complex—'It's so complex!' But ministers in this government never ever point out the fact that companies never seem to have any problem when it comes to the overpayment of wages! They don't overpay people; they don't overpay their taxation. It's not too complex to underpay them! We now have a situation where there are 122 awards. This is down from 1,500 when the Howard government were in office. Companies have managed to cope with income tax law that ran to 11 volumes and more than 5,000 pages. Yet the Prime Minister seems to think that the award system is beyond the companies' ability to understand!

In terms of our international obligations as to the rights of people to organise and as to freedom of association—the basic democratic rights—why is the Liberal Party in this country so determined to undermine those actions and undermine those basic freedoms, and to place every obstacle that it can in the path of workers to choose their right to organise and bargain collectively? Why is it that, under this government, when unions seek to amalgamate so as to be a better and stronger force in the workplace, every obstacle is placed in their way? Yet, when companies seek to merge and to act in that way, there is of course every opportunity taken for this government to claim that this is consistent with market forces, and that to act otherwise is somehow an unnatural act. Workers, when they choose to amalgamate their unions, will be subject to restraints. And the government of course has dreamt up every possibility of imposing restrictions on workers and on their capacity to defend their living standards and improve their opportunities in life. Yet this government does everything it can to protect the rights of business to organise and improve their position in terms of profit at the expense of their workforce and at the expense of the Australian people. This is a clear case where the government has one rule for people who work in industry and another rule for those who own industry.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019. Here we are again. It is history repeating itself from those opposite. At every opportunity, the Morrison government is willing to unleash dread on those who protect not only thousands of Australian workers but some of Australia's lowest paid workers. Those opposite don't believe in fairness at work; they don't believe in fair pay and conditions for Australian workers. They don't believe in weekend rates, paid sick leave, annual leave, penalty rates, superannuation, Medicare, an eight-hour day, maternity leave, health and safety in the workplace, long-service leave, redundancy pay, awards, rostered days off, shift allowances, union allowances, uniform allowances, meal breaks and rest breaks at work, the right to organise and collectively bargain, workers compensation or unfair dismissal protection. Yes, that is those opposite. That is the Morrison Liberal government and every Liberal government before them. Those opposite hate the union movement despite the inescapable fact that the union movement has fought for the rights of all Australian workers to have a safe and secure job that they can count on.

In the interests of context, if you contrast that with the private sector, those opposite do not want to hear about it. They hold their hands up to their ears like temperamental teenagers because they believe corporate Australia to be the bastion of morality and goodwill. I ask those opposite, those on the government benches: why won't you hold corporate Australia to the same standards? Why won't you view the union movement and the corporate sector impartially? Look at them from the same starting point instead of being a self-righteous, domineering and draconian government. Right now in this country we have a bank, Westpac, that has been accused of the biggest breach of money laundering and terrorism financing laws in Australia's history, including failure to detect payments that may have been used to facilitate child exploitation. They are very, very serious breaches of Australian law. What does this government do? Attack the union movement.

Westpac has been accused of systematically breaching money-laundering laws more than 23 million times—not 23 times but 23 million times—and failing to report more than $11 billion in international transfers. We're not talking about a minor breach of the rules of AUSTRAC, which keeps a tally on these things and has now brought it to light so that the Australian public and the government are made fully aware of what they have actually done with these breaches—23 million times. I note the allegations dwarf the Commonwealth Bank of Australia's 53,000 infractions, which led to a record $700 million fine and the departure of the chief executive officer. But those opposite don't want to talk about white-collar crime. They don't want to talk about serious allegations against the private sector—or themselves, for that matter. Three words: Minister Angus Taylor. He is a minister of the Crown, a minister of the Commonwealth of Australia, who is now being investigated by the New South Wales police. Consequently, you would expect the Prime Minister and the executive of those opposite to uphold the ministerial code of conduct and ask the minister to step aside. But, Madam Deputy President, you and I know that's not likely to happen with those opposite. Clause 7.1 of the ministerial code of conduct states:

… a Minister should stand aside if that Minister becomes the subject of an official investigation of alleged illegal or improper conduct.

It is a very clear clause; no ifs, no buts. But those opposite don't believe in the rule of law when it comes to their own. They don't believe corporate Australia or their own minister have to follow the law. But when it comes to the union movement they will do anything—and I mean anything—to tear them down. The issue of Minister Taylor is a serious one, and those opposite should hold their own minister to the same standards as every other minister of the Commonwealth of Australia. It is one rule for them, and stuff the rest of us. That's their mantra.

The New South Wales Police Financial Crimes Squad is investigating the potential doctoring of documents used by Energy Minister Angus Taylor to accuse Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore of excessive travel expenditure, but those opposite want to actually ignore that. To me that seems like double standards. I don't know about the rest of my colleagues here, but I think it's pretty much the standard course of behaviour of those opposite. You would think the Prime Minister would step in front of this and take some leadership, but no; he said in question time that he was not aware of the details and would take advice from the New South Wales police. Is this incompetent and illegal? To be honest with you, it's what we've come to expect from Liberals in this country and from this government.

In September, if you recall, Mr Taylor accused Councillor Moore of excessive travel expenditure, citing what appeared to be an annual report from her council body, but now he has gone quiet because he knows he did the wrong thing. I believe that the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, will do anything to avoid scrutiny. Today the shutting down of the debate in the parliament about the embattled Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction just highlighted the lack of respect this Prime Minister has. The Prime Minister may not want scrutiny from the parliament, from the crossbench or from the media when he refuses to answer questions, but he can't avoid scrutiny by the New South Wales Police Force with their strike force that has now been launched.

This minister should not and cannot survive today. He shouldn't survive. The Prime Minister should stand him down and make him step aside. The born-to-rule mentality of those opposite is on display for all of us to see. Those opposite think they can get away with it. They think they can get away with anything. They think they are actually above Australians. They truly believe that. They believe they can defend the indefensible. But we on this side of the chamber say they must be held accountable. The Morrison government has to be held accountable. This minister should be stood aside and be held accountable in the best interests of all Australians. But we've seen many times before that this Prime Minister will stand behind incompetent ministers. We know, as we advance to the Christmas period, that those opposite say, 'Thank God, Christmas is coming; we'll just stave it all off, and people will forget about it over Christmas.' If he really thinks he can avoid scrutiny of his minister because Christmas is around the corner, he is sadly mistaken.

The bill before us is just another bitter and resentful Liberal attack on Australian workers and their representatives. The government won't hold themselves to account, but they are willing to hold a torch to the union movement. A similar bill to this was rejected by the 45th Parliament because it would have eroded the rights of workers and undermined the obligations of employers. But when the government have an opportunity you see what they really stand for and what they are really about, and I can assure you that the Australian people are seeing them for who they really are. They have Senator Pauline Hanson in their pocket again. As the old saying goes, when you roll around with dogs, you will catch flees—but the government do not care. They are willing to do whatever it takes to undermine the Australian workforce, everyday Australian workers, in the interests of their billionaire mates and billion dollar profits.

As I said before, the union movement is there to represent their membership, and many of them are some of the lowest paid Australian workers. Every time the Liberals get a bit of power they come after workers and unions. There's nothing new in this; this is what the Liberals do. They do it time and time again. And the crossbench are willing to do the same. That is where my real disappointment is—with the crossbench, who are having the wool pulled over their eyes.

We were told that this bill and other similar legislation would not be used for political purposes and yet similar laws have been. The first opportunity the government got they took the low road. Like a dictatorship ordering law enforcement, they sent in 30-plus police to two locations to raid the offices of the oldest union in Australia, the Australian Workers Union. That is the Morrison government's form, and why would they change such behaviour when it is in their DNA—they won't change. Their DNA dictates to tear down the union movement and to attack workers. It is part of their DNA. It's who they are.

In recent times we've seen countless examples of wage theft in this country, with employers ripping off their workers from the hospitality industry. We have seen this with some of Australia's most renowned chefs: George Calombaris and Neil Perry, front and centre, stealing—that's what it is; it is stealing—the wages of workers to the tune of millions of dollars. We've also seen it with 7-Eleven, Domino's pizza, Michael Hill jewellers and Woolworths. Wage theft is real—cheating workers out of their overtime pay and making them work to the bone. This is real and this is happening in Australia. Those opposite, the Liberal Party and National Party, want this to continue, by undermining the rights of workers and their representatives to protect their economic interests.

The fact is we never see from those opposite public policy to strengthen the rights of the Australian workforce. We never see those opposite legislating to protect employees. That's because those opposite do not support legislation to tackle stagnant wages, wage theft or worker exploitation. The federal opposition—Labor senators and the Labor Party—will never support a bill that makes it harder for workers to get a fair pay rise. Labor will never support a bill that could leave workers without representatives to protect them from wage theft, superannuation theft and dangerous workplaces—never! This should be universal across the parliament. There should be bipartisan support against the illegal activity of stealing from workers, but those opposite will not agree to that.

As it stands, this bill represents a politically motivated attack on workers' ability to organise and represent other workers, run their own unions and determine who leads them. That is their right. It is a democratic right, and it is one Labor will always stand up and support. Workers should get a choice who represents them, not Mr Morrison or a minister hell-bent on destroying the livelihoods of Australians.

The government is claiming that the bill has been revised to more closely align these reforms with corporate equivalence—but don't be fooled. You can't believe them. The bill is far more extensive and extreme in its regulation of unions than what exists for businesses or, indeed, politicians. This bill is not fair. It does not negotiate or cooperate. It does not come to the table and agree to shared values. These laws will in fact make it possible for the government, ministers and disgruntled employers to shut down unions and deny workers their right to choose their own representatives. That is what's hidden in this bill.

You would have thought that the Liberal Party would believe in freedom. The federal opposition believes in the fundamental principle of self-determination. It is fundamental to our democracy, like all other Western democracies, that people are free from government and employer interference so that they can join unions and elect representatives who will fight for pay rises and to protect their jobs and workplace safety if they choose to do so. But this bill is in fact about taking rights away from people. This bill is about silencing workers and making it harder for all workers to win pay rises. These laws are fundamentally unfair. They will not apply to businesses, banks or politicians, despite their serious and alleged unlawful and unethical conduct. The only people who will benefit from these laws are the Morrison government and unethical employers.

The Morrison government has overseen raids on journalists and is now attacking workers' freedom to run their own unions. Yes, we are living through these times. That is the kind of government we have in Australia right now. I ask those opposite to think outside the square for a moment and to lift the veil on their one-eyed mentality. Let me be absolutely clear: if these laws applied equally to corporations, we would see banks, multinational pizza chains and the restaurants of celebrity chefs closed down for repeatedly breaking laws, and their top executives would be sacked. This is not being proposed by those opposite. Why? Because it would be, rightly, outrageous. It is also outrageous for unions. But those opposite do not apply the same logic, because they are not only politically biased; they are immoral. They are willing to undermine the Australian workforce for their own selfish and unbridled political advantage. There is no justification for preventing amalgamations of unions. If the members of two unions vote to amalgamate, that's up to the members and executives of those unions. This goes to the heart of the democratic principle of freedom of association.

Those opposite don't mind associating with the Alan Joneses and Andrew Bolts of this world, but they don't want unions to associate with one another. They don't want a unified and strong Australian workforce looking after their own economic interests. No, they want a market that exploits workers for billions of dollars of profit and prioritises that over individual rights. Giving the government the power to prevent amalgamations is a clear attack on freedom of association. This government does not believe in protecting workers. Its sole purpose is to attack its political enemies. This government is void of public policy and it is void of any vision. It is a purely politically driven, sloganeering, self-promoting propaganda machine. That's what this Morrison government will be remembered for.

It's important that people are free from government and employer interference so they can join unions and elect representatives who fight for pay rises and fight to protect their jobs and provide a safe work environment. What we should be doing is supporting Australian workers, particularly the most vulnerable. We on this side of the chamber will continually stand up for workers' rights. We believe in the right to have union representation, if you choose to become a member. We will stand united with our Australian workers each and every time. (Time expired)

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to oppose the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019. This bill has 'integrity' in its name, but for me it has 'no integrity' at all. It is a blatant attack on workers in Australia and on trade unions. It's a feeble attempt to try to reduce what those opposite perceive as fake union power in this country. Through the changes that they've made since they first came into office six years ago, they have already drastically reduced the power of unions. If it's their intent to wipe out unions in this country, it's not going to happen. It won't happen. Unions will be here longer than the Morrison government. They've stood the test of time. Remember back to John Howard. In fact, when he took on the unions, what happened to him? He lost his seat—a very safe Liberal seat—and he lost the government, and it was because of his disgraceful, antiworker, anti-union Work Choices bill.

I stand here tonight as a proud union member. I've been working in unions for most of my working life, and I get what it's like. I've stood with workers in the rain on picket lines. I've been with workers as they've cried because they haven't been able to get something at the workplace. I've celebrated with workers when we've been victorious and had a win against the boss. In all that time, I have seen genuine Australians, even quiet Australians, who are proud members of their unions, take on bosses over and over and over again—a lot of the time losing but living to fight another day as proud members of their union.

I'm a member of the United Workers Union, one of the latest amalgamations of trade unions in this country. Goodness knows how they would've fared under this new ''no integrity'' bill! That's an amalgamation of United Voice, which in and of itself has a really interesting history. It started out in Western Australia, where I'm from, with a bunch of caretakers on the waterfront. No-one wanted them, so they joined up with the Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union, a union of New South Wales, and started that branch in Western Australia, with cleaners on the waterfront. It grew in strength through a series of amalgamations, and it's got a really proud history of struggle and fight—winning and losing, but nevertheless a proud history. And now the new United Workers Union will continue that proud history.

The other union that has come into that amalgamation is the National Union of Workers. The synergies between United Voice and the National Workers Union are loud and clear—low-paid workers, process workers, workers on the supply chain, cleaners, security officers, early childhood educators, aged-care workers, hospital workers, hospitality workers—on and on it goes. They are the low-paid workers of the Australian workforce, workers whose jobs are not going to go offshore. They are proud workers who do a very honest day's work, in most circumstances for very low pay.

These are the people that the Prime Minister and the government are seeking to hurt. These are the people they are trying to tell, 'Your union, if it fails to put in three bits of paper, could be deregistered.' These are the people. I challenge those opposite to walk a day in their shoes—aged-care workers on $25 an hour, and hospitality workers, if they're lucky enough not to be casual, on about $21 an hour. What's the Morrison government done to those workers? Oh, let me think. It's ripped away their weekend penalties. These are part-time, low-paid workers who've lost their penalty rates.

I heard Mr Porter just last week say that he's going to review the hospitality award because it's too complex. I know those department officials sitting over there know in their heart of hearts that the hospitality and restaurant awards are not complex awards. We've done that. Remember: we did the whole simplification agenda. Those awards now are very, very simple. The wage rip-offs that we have seen in the hospitality industry are due to greed—nothing more, nothing less. It's a business model.

I lived through Work Choices as a union official. I saw the damage that that did to workers. I saw in Western Australia, first of all, the harsh industrial relations reforms of the Court government. It's always the Liberals that damage workers in this country. What Premier Court did, for the first time in our history, was to allow employers to bargain under the award. We've always seen awards in this country as the bottom line. For the first time ever, he allowed employers to make their own cushy little unfair arrangements with their staff. So what did we see? The first attack came on contract cleaners. Guess what? Eighty per cent of their costs are wages. Remember: cleaners are on about $21 an hour. Let's be very clear here: they're part-time, and they're often casual, but they're low-wage employees. We saw one big contract cleaning company in Western Australia suddenly reduce their rate of pay in order to compete, as contract cleaners do—perfectly legal under the Liberals in Western Australia. Very soon, even the reputable cleaning companies could no longer compete. Everyone had to go to the new floor, which was about $2 or $3 below the award. Suddenly, we saw cleaners working two-hour shifts for $18 an hour. That's what we saw under the Liberals in Western Australia.

This is what you never read in the journals and the academic papers and what you'll never hear from those opposite. Why, you ask yourself, are women's wages so low in Western Australia? It's historical, sure, but it's also because of the sort of unfair legislation that Richard Court, a Liberal, brought in in Western Australia. It allowed employers to contract outside of the award, and we've never seen women's wages catch up in WA. They remain, stubbornly, subject to the biggest gap in the country. You'll hear the Morrison government say, 'It's all about the mining boom.' A little bit might be, but, fundamentally, it's about unfair legislation—the sort of legislation that we see in front of us right now.

I have a lot of experience of standing alongside low-paid workers and fighting with them for wage justice. What have we seen in this country? Low wages and no wage growth. Two weeks ago, I had the honour of standing on the lawn outside Crown casino on Melbourne Cup day as those workers bravely walked off the job. Do you know what Crown—a hugely profitable company that runs casinos here and all over the world—offered as the first wage increase? Zero per cent. So, in order to get a fair deal, those workers took industrial action and lost pay to move the boss from zero per cent. On Melbourne Cup day—the most profitable day of the year for the casino—they walked out. Who did they rely on to make those profits? Let me think. I think it's their staff, because, when we go into those hospitality venues, we don't see the boss in the back room; we see the staff. Whether we have a good experience or not depends on how well we are greeted by those staff—those very staff to whom Crown offered a zero per cent increase. Now, do not try to pretend to yourself, 'Oh, that's just one employer.' Many employers are now offering zero per cent. And what do you reckon will happen if the Morrison government's bill, this ''no integrity'' bill, gets up? It will weaken the bargaining power of these low-paid workers. It will weaken it.

If this bill gets up, a union can be deregistered for three paper breaches. This bill is attacking members of trade unions at a time of record low or no wage growth. This bill comes after the Morrison government stood by and did nothing when penalty rates were slashed. This bill comes at a time of slow or no economic growth. This bill comes at a time of record high youth unemployment. This bill came at the same time as the first wage theft cases started to hit the headlines. George Calombaris and Neil Perry—between them, it was millions and millions of dollars. And, remember, those are low-paid hospitality workers, not people on $40, $50 or $60 an hour; they are people on $21 or $22 an hour, and they are part-time, so that is very big wage theft. This bill comes on top of the staggering admission by Woolworths that their wage theft bill could go to $8 million. Again, Woolworths staff are low-paid workers—between $21 and $25 an hour. This bill is coming on top of that.

This bill comes as Westpac made the gobsmacking admission—there is no other way to describe it—that it has broken the law; it has contravened the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act over 23 million times. It has broken terrorism laws 23 million times—laws about which those opposite, the Morrison government, claim, 'Oh, terrorism is so important. We're right on top that!' And what do we hear from the Prime Minister on how to deal with that? 'Leave it to the board.' After huge public pressure, the CEO has now stood down, and they are going to forgo their massive bonuses for just a short time—not for the long term, but these are people already earning millions of dollars. Yet the Morrison government stands by and somehow says, 'Oh, it is not about us! Let the board decide.' I do not think we should allow a board to allow 23 million breaches. I cannot imagine how big that is. It is huge, yet there is silence from the Prime Minister on that. Some of that goes to the very heart of child exploitation, which Westpac knowingly allowed to happen. The board should be sacked, and that is what our Prime Minister should be calling for—not saying, 'Oh, leave it to the board.' That is clearly an abrogation of his responsibility as our Prime Minister. He is showing no leadership. In the George Calombaris example, with millions and millions of dollars owed to low-paid workers, there was a $200,000 fine. Please! The fines for unions are greater than that.

This bill comes at a time when the PM, as I said, has left it to the board to decide what should happen to the CEO. Public pressure has brought his resignation forward. This bill comes on top of the fact that the Prime Minister voted 26 times against a royal commission into the banks. At one time, he described the need for a royal commission as 'a populist whinge'. This bill comes as the Federal Court orders the government's watchdog, the Registered Organisations Commission, to quash its investigation into the Australian Workers Union—a political put-up by Senator Cash and others to go after the AWU. Well, guess what—the Federal Court has thrown that out, where it belongs, and has ordered all of the documents to be returned to the AWU. We have said from day one that they were trumped up charges against the AWU. And yet this ''no integrity' bill', if it's passed, will give the ROC, which is a flawed and biased organisation, unprecedented power over unions. As we on this side have said in here today, with three paperwork breaches a union could be deregistered—a union like mine, which I'm a proud member of. The United Workers Union could be deregistered over such a frivolous breach, and yet we allow full-scale wage theft to carry on and we allow our banks to act against the law, with 23 million breaches, and that goes unchallenged.

This bill comes at a time when Prime Minister Morrison stands by his man. We heard today that, despite a New South Wales police investigation into Minister Taylor's activity, the PM—who's personally responsible for ensuring ministerial integrity and says he takes it very seriously—allows that minister to continue to operate. He takes no action against Mr Taylor. Once again, he demonstrates that the Morrison government is acting with ''no integrity''. We've seen gags on Mr Taylor, refusal to answer questions in the parliament, refusal to answer questions by journalists, and a department that's backing him in by refusing FOI requests. We see this bill brought forward at a time when the government walks away from any notion of a federal type ICAC. There were big promises before the election: 'Oh, yes, we're going to do that. Yes, we'll have a federal ICAC organisation set up.' What we did see were weasel words from the Attorney-General that would protect corrupt politicians, and now we see nothing. It just does not exist. It's gone.

Many in this place, including in the Labor Party, want to see a real integrity bill in place. It would get support, but the government is too busy protecting its own. Make no mistake: this bill will attack nurses, teachers, flight attendants, hospitality workers, security officers and cleaners. It will attack all Australian workers. Yesterday, some of those workers were here. I met flight attendants. If there is one group of workers the Morrison government does interact with its flight attendants. It probably doesn't know about many other workers, but it does know about them because they serve us on the planes as we fly back and forth from our home states. When flight attendants and nurses attended question time yesterday and the Prime Minister was asked questions about the integrity bill, he accused people of being arm-breakers. Flight attendants, nurses, teachers and members of my own union were there. That's what he said to them: 'We have to have this legislation because there are arm-breakers out there.' Who was he calling arm-breakers? The people watching from the gallery? They were disgusted. It's a good thing when ordinary workers come to this place, because it opens their eyes about the behaviour of our Prime Minister and the Morrison government—how antiworker they are and how they really don't care.

This fraudulent bill, falsely dressed up as 'integrity', is nothing more than an attack on workers. I heard the Morrison government say today, 'We are protecting people.' No, you're not. We called out wage theft. We called out no wage increases. We called out the likes of Crown casino, which has a zero per cent wage increase for their staff. We called out Westpac. We called out about the banking royal commission. We called out about the federal ICAC. So it's not this side of the parliament, the Labor Party, that lacks integrity. Yes, we'll call out the bad behaviour of union officials when and where it occurs, but let's have a level playing field. This bill is nothing more than an attack on workers. It will not kill off trade unions. They will live to fight another day and see the end of this government.

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak against this appalling bill brought before us under the guise of ensuring integrity, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019. There is ''no integrity'' about this bill or the government bringing it before us. This government has little regard for ensuring integrity, workplace safety, protecting the rights of workers or the devastating consequences that this bill will have for Australian workers—particularly those most vulnerable in insecure, low-paid employment—if it ends up becoming law. I want to take this opportunity to call on those sitting on the crossbench to protect and uphold the rights of Australian workers by rejecting this legislation. This bill represents yet another politicised attack on working people and the role of unions by this coalition government.

I have a long and proud attachment to the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the union movement in Tasmania. My involvement with the union began back in 1979, when I worked at Simplot in Ulverstone, in their vegetable-processing factory. In 2004 I was elected as the first female state secretary of the AMWU in Australia. After serving in my union for almost 30 years, I was elected to this place, where I now have the great privilege of holding those opposite me to account when they try to attack the rights of every working person in this country.

As I said earlier, in 1979 I commenced work at the Edgell-Birds Eye factory at Ulverstone, now Simplot. I worked afternoon shifts so my husband, Graham, could care for our four-year-old twins after his day at work. After a time I was encouraged to become a union delegate for the Food Preservers Union. That was the union at the time. Ten years later I became an organiser with that union, which later amalgamated to become the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, or AMWU. You see, in those days union amalgamations were regular occurrences. In the early 1990s, they were even encouraged by government. Now there is a pervasive and inaccurate conservative fear campaign about the insidious creation of super-unions. There is no justification for preventing amalgamations. If the members of two unions vote to amalgamate, that's up to them. This goes to the heart of the democratic principle of freedom of association. In many cases, it also goes to the matter of creating a more efficient administration that can deal with the increasingly onerous burden of reporting and red tape constantly being dumped on them by this government so that they can continue to represent their members.

For many years, I worked to represent food workers, metalworkers, print workers, vehicle workers and technical workers. I regularly clocked up over 50,000 kilometres a year. I became the first female state secretary of the AMWU in 2004 and held that position until 2010. I loved my job—really, it was a way of life. The AMWU has a strong history of representing the rights of its members and of setting the progressive agenda for all workers as a driver of innovation. It was one of the first unions to develop a plan for low-emissions industry and technology development in Australia. During my years in the trade union movement, there was a huge change in workplace culture in many areas of the Australian manufacturing industry. We worked hard to get permanent positions for women, who had traditionally never been given permanent jobs. I worked with an amazing bunch of delegates to see workers' skills formally recognised so that they were transferable and to develop fair and humane drug and alcohol policies that were based on work health and safety and wellbeing principles. I worked with those delegates who campaigned hard for improvements to health and safety, which has seen a reduction in injury rates. We supported women who worked and wanted to work in areas that were traditionally male dominated, like forklift driving, and we fought hard for equal pay, not pay based on gender.

Nationally, we began a huge battle to have the harm done by asbestos to the lives of tens of thousands of Australians recognised and compensated. And, on a nationwide scale, we campaigned with hundreds of thousands of Australians to see the end of the disgraceful Work Choices legislation that was introduced by the Howard Liberal government in 2005. This legislation was specifically designed to make it harder and harder for unions to represent their members and negotiate decent wages and improvements in safety and conditions. Work Choices was also designed to ultimately dismantle and rip away the award safety net—that's Australia's industrial awards system. I take this opportunity to remind those opposite and the crossbench of the fact that tens of thousands of Australians and their unions worked so hard to fight Work Choices and bring down the government that introduced it. Without their efforts, we would not have the awards system that we have today that sets the minimum wages and conditions in this country. Without that battle, wage theft would now be the absolute norm in Australia because the safety net would be gone. Workers would have nowhere to go to find the minimum rates and conditions for their industry, and employers would have free rein to exploit. And out there right now, tens of thousands of union members, delegates, organisers and officials continue to work harder for better workplaces, harder for safer workplaces, harder for sustainable jobs, harder for fair pay rises, harder for job security and against the exploitation of vulnerable workers.

I made my first speech in this chamber in 2011, and in it I said:

The term 'union boss' is flung around by parts of the media and those on the opposite benches as some sort of a negative . Well, I am proud to have been a union boss. It is a job that is hard work, but it is also extremely satisfying. I have spent many bitterly cold Tasmanian mornings and late nights at work sites, providing information to members, listening to their concerns and then bargaining on their behalf. I have held positions on both the ACTU and Unions Tasmania executives, as well as on Tasmanian industry councils. In these roles my focus was always on protecting and strengthening workers’ rights and long-term jobs growth for our future. I am and will always remain a proud member of the AMWU.

What have I witnessed since 2011? I've witnessed an increasing attack from the conservatives opposite and an increasing demonisation in the conservative press of the very idea of unions—the idea of people working together to improve their lot in life and democratically electing people to help organise and advance those interests.

After a momentary retreat post the end of the Howard government, we have seen this creeping anti-union agenda pick up again. We have witnessed waves of attacks on workers' rights and on the union movement. We've seen attempts to tie unions up in huge amounts of red tape, to deny them even basic access to their members and to demand far, far higher standards of governance from unions than are expected of many companies and in the big banks. And all that time Australian unions have continued to play a pivotal role in workplaces across the country, ensuring that employees receive their fair wages and entitlements, despite these attacks and despite a government intent on making it harder for them to do their jobs.

On top of that work, unions have worked nationally for the benefit of all Australians, union members or not, for the introduction of necessary progressive reforms such as a national paid parental leave scheme, domestic violence leave and mental health awareness, and for the prevention of work related cancers, to name just a few campaigns. We have seen, time and time again, in this year alone, millions upon millions of dollars in wages stolen from workers by their employers. Who was it who stepped in to ensure that those workers got their wages? Was it this government? No, of course it wasn't. It was their unions.

It is the unions that have been at the forefront of making workplaces in this country safer. This bill seeks to undermine that, at the expense of workers' physical, mental and psychological safety. The damages and actions taken against James Hardie that finally secured compensation for asbestos victims would be considered unlawful under this bill, and the AMWU and others would be likely subject to deregistration, so the actions of an employer that ultimately caused the death of hundreds if not thousands of Australians—and is still causing deaths—would have gone unpunished under this bill. How can any member of this chamber sit there and say that this bill isn't political, that it is about the economy and improving economic conditions? We all know the truth. This legislation is purely political. It is a further attack on alternative voices and views.

We've already seen Attorney-General and industrial relations minister Mr Christian Porter intervene and appeal to the High Court to overturn a landmark legal decision by the full Federal Court which granted shiftworkers an appropriate amount of sick leave. Workers at the Cadbury factory in Tasmania, who I once represented, legitimately won the right to receive 12 hours of pay for every sick day—the same number of hours that they were rostered on for, for each shift, instead of the 7.6 hours per sick day that they were being paid by their employer, Mondelez International. The Morrison government intervened to support this company's case against its employees and in support of cutting personal leave entitlements for shiftworkers. Cadbury employees work ordinary hours of 12-hour days, which means they should have access to 120 hours of paid personal leave per year to cover the hours of 10 work days. The company argued that workers should receive only 76 hours of personal leave under the NES, based on 10 days of 7.6 hours work each. This was an appalling attempt by a very, very profitable multinational company, supported by the Morrison government, to rob its workers of the leave that they were entitled to.

I have looked far and wide at this government's legislative agenda, but no; that is going too far. You need to look far and wide because there is nothing far and wide about it. It is dismal and thin. In fact, I go further: it is narrow, stagnant and blinkered, stuck in the past. There is a paucity of any kind of vision or plan. There is no plan to tackle stagnant wages or wage theft or worker exploitation. The only sign, the only faint flicker of a plan, is the constant resuscitation of a sad and worn-out union-bashing mantra written on the back of a dog-eared program from the HR Nicholls Society conference in 1992. And I note that Tasmanian Senator Abetz delivered the keynote address to that conference in 1992, where he chuckled gleefully that the newly elected Liberal government of Tasmania had managed to slither through the campaign with no apparent industrial relations policy, and so, in his words, had 'demonstrated brilliant "political speak"', leaving the door open for the major attack on the rights of working Tasmanians, their pay and conditions, and unions, as their representatives, that occurred in the 1990s. Now here we are with a Prime Minister who is a master of 'political speak' to the extreme; an ad man who writes off legitimate questions as gossip and who grins and goofily avoids questions on his government's apparently primal need to shut down alternative views and voices.

As the ACTU president put it: 'If unions are shut down or silenced, who will stand up to the powerful, make sure workers get their rights and fight to improve workers' rights?' The Morrison government has overseen raids on journalists and is now attacking working people's freedom to run their own unions. Regardless of any tweaking that has gone on, this bill represents a politically motivated attack on workers' ability to organise and be represented, to run their own unions and to determine who leads them. Working Australians should get to choose who represents them—not Mr Scott Morrison, not Senator Abetz and not any of their union bashing, intellectually stale cronies.

Labor will not support a bill that makes it harder for workers to get a fair pay rise. We will not support a bill that could leave workers without the representatives that protect them from wage theft, superannuation theft and dangerous workplaces. The purely political nature of this bill is demonstrated by the fact that it is far more extensive and extreme in the regulation of unions than what exists for businesses or politicians. This is about silencing working people and making it harder for all workers to win pay rises. These laws are fundamentally unfair. If they applied equally to corporations, we would see banks, multinational pizza chains and the restaurants of celebrity chefs closed down for repeatedly breaking workplace laws and we would see their top executives sacked. That is not being proposed, because it would be outrageous. It is also outrageous for unions. The bill has been amended since it was first introduced in the last parliament, but those changes are not substantive and simply do not address Labor's central concerns with this anti-worker bill.

Let's also have a look at the potential economic impact of this bill. This bill seeks to further limit the rights of Australian workers to collectively organise and bargain with employers and will undoubtedly have an adverse impact on the country's economy. At a time when wage growth has stalled, jobs growth is stagnant and wage theft is at an all-time high, this government must keep its promise to Australian workers when it insisted, in yet another example of Senator Abetz's political-speak during the election campaign, that it had no plans to reduce workers' rights. We now see this was simply another untruth. Instead of focusing on attacking working people, this government should be acting to tackle low wage growth and penalty rates being further whittled away.

By restricting and interfering with union activity, this bill will accelerate income inequality and insecure employment. Opposition to this bill because of its effects on the economy is widespread and not limited to only the Labor Party; community groups, academics, churches and religious organisations, and the bipartisan Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights all oppose this bill because of its inhumane consequences for workers and the devastating effects it will have on the Australian economy. Dr Jim Stanford, Director of the Centre for Future Work, an independent economist with over 25 years of economic policy experience, summed up the effects of this bill best when he stated:

I cannot possibly see a circumstance in which any of these amendments would have any measurable economic and labour market impact: whether on productivity, on wage determination, or on employment. At best, these proposals constitute a distraction from those more urgent labour policy matters.

After all these years and all these relentless waves of attacks on unions and the work they do, I am now of the view that it is time to step back from this old, charred, shot-out and splintered barricade. It's time for our politicians, most particularly those on the crossbench here, to go out and spend a few days with a hardworking union official or two, to understand the complexity of the task, to attend a fiery delegates meeting where union delegates, who are volunteers in their workplace, give up hours of their time to engage in a battle of ideas, and to work to try to find a way through to a position that improves the lot of them and their co-workers without jeopardising the viability of the enterprise they work for.

Unions are part of the heart of our community. They are grassroots democracy in action. Without them we are poorer, not just in money terms but in our spirit—our ability to interact with our country, find our voices, express our views and be the country of the fair go. Our democracy is fundamentally eroded if the union voice is diminished to a whisper. I urge my fellow senators to say no to this bill. Step away from this rickety old barricade and look to the future—a good future. (Time expired)

Malarndirri McCarthy (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill is draconian, it's antidemocratic and it really is a reflection of the form of this government. How is it that you cannot have a good look at what you're doing here to Australian families right across this country? How is it that you cannot equate the care of an employee on a construction site—that they are able to go home to their family at night instead of being injured or killed on a site? How is it that you cannot care about workers who are bullied in the workplace when they cannot sit across from their employer and argue for a fair wage and fair conditions? They need to be able to go home to their families, have a good night's sleep, look after their families and pay for the goods and services that their families require, like any other Australian family.

That is what you are attacking tonight. That is what you are attacking at the heart of this country. That is what you are doing. You hide behind your computers. You hide behind your books. You sit in your glorious offices. You sit there and you discuss, supposedly, and debate amongst yourselves, but all you're doing is convincing yourselves that this is the way to keep Australians disempowered, this is the way to keep Australians down, and this is the way to not encourage productivity and not encourage the best in an individual or a family or an organisation in this country. This is how you keep the workers down: through fear and through draconian laws that disable the opportunity for leadership in places to assist those who cannot stand up for themselves. That is what your attack is about tonight: it goes to the heart of this country's democracy, the heart of a fair go and the heart of every single Australian who wants to do good and do well for themselves, their families and their community.

When I started in the workforce, I started as a journalist. I was a very proud union member of the then Australian Journalists Association. It was the AJA, which then became the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the MEAA, which fights for the rights of journalists, producers and editors. The CPSU fought for the camera operators, editors and production teams to ensure that the people in those industries, in those careers, could achieve the highest level with fair wages and conditions. What you're doing here tonight impacts on every union member in this country, but that's the whole purpose of it, isn't it? It's about keeping the workers down. That's what you're about. This bill erodes the rights of workers and will erode the rights of those who are most vulnerable.

I'm also a member of the First Nations Workers Alliance in this country and am enormously proud of the union movement—in particular, the Northern Territory unions, who fight fiercely for the many different workers in hundreds of different occupations, including health workers, nurses, teachers, construction workers, electricians and boilermakers. I'm enormously proud of our union movement. The First Nations Workers Alliance is an organisation that has campaigned and fought for the rights of First Nations workers, especially those caught up in the Community Development Program—ah, yes, the CDP. It's interesting that not a word has been said about that, yet there are 33,000 Australians in this country who are forced to work for $11 an hour. Shame on you—$11 an hour! And you wonder why we stand up here and fight this bill.

The First Nations Workers Alliance was established by the ACTU to provide CDP workers a collective voice to campaign for fair wages and employment conditions. There are more than 30,000 people who are covered by the CDP. Most of those are First Nations people. They are workers and they turn up to do a job under the CDP. But, in return, they do not get fair wages and they do not get fair conditions. Under the CDP the government has basically created a pool of free labour for employers to access. But those employers have none of the responsibilities that we should expect in this country. CDP workers don't have any annual leave or sick leave, and they are also specifically excluded from things like federal occupational health and safety and workers compensation legislation.

The First Nations Workers Alliance was formed to be a collective voice for the workers in this scheme. The breaches under the CDP scheme are just incredible to think about. I will share some with the Senate. A lot of the workers on CDP are breached because they cannot make the journeys of hundreds or thousands of kilometres to particular locations in these regional and remote areas. In terms of their ability to get to these areas, there are flooding concerns; there's certainly a lack in the IT network; there's sorry business; there's caring for a child. There are legitimate reasons that CDP workers cannot get to specific events or appointments, but they are breached. And they are not just breached for one day; they are breached for eight weeks. How would any of us feel having no income, even if it is $11 an hour, for eight weeks? How do you pay your bills? How do you pay your electricity bills? How do you keep up with the rent? What about food and clothing and the basic necessities that are so desperately required? This entrenches poverty.

Unemployed people in remote areas must take part in this troubled Community Development Program to receive welfare payments, and can be docked about $50 per day for missing activities. The Work for the Dole participants in one remote community were slapped with infringements an estimated 15 times on average—worth at least $650 per person, or six per cent of their annual income. Most participants in the federal government's mainstream Work for the Dole scheme, jobactive, were not slapped with penalties.

The damage caused by the CDP is immense. The reports from participants about what has happened to them under the scheme are really quite heartbreaking. Jawoyn man Jamie Ahfat said that being on CDP at Barunga in the Northern Territory—just south-east of Katherine—was 'like being a slave'. After being breached up to three times a week and once being cut off payments for eight weeks, he could not pay the rent and he did not have money to buy food during the eight weeks he was breached. This program is supposedly an employment program, but it is actually a program driving people further into poverty. Where would they be without their union? It is the union movement that has brought this absolutely devastating, discriminatory program to the fore here in Australia, making sure that all Australians are aware of it.

Former Liberal deputy leader Fred Chaney said that the $1.5 billion initiative had seriously disadvantaged vulnerable people. Mr Chaney said that the CDP has caused pain and hunger and imprisoned people in a system of immense complexity which is causing immense hardship through breaching. The First Nations Workers Alliance has fought the unfair and discriminatory CDP for the past two years—and, do not worry, we will continue to fight it. It is down largely to the hard work of the FNWA that the government was forced to bring in reforms to the CDP. The CDP is still a terrible, terrible scheme that is causing far greater hardship and not leading to the creation of any meaningful employment or economic development. But I know that, without the First Nations Workers Alliance, without the ACTU, it would be far worse. I am enormously grateful that we have the union movement there that is backing up the most vulnerable people in this country, and in particular those who are on this terrible, discriminatory scheme. That is what unions do. Unions get out there and back up and support the people who require it.

This government has form in picking on certain examples. Sure, what organisation does not have its problems? But, just like you did to the Northern Territory by intervening completely in 2007 based on one or two points or facts—or what you thought were facts—you have basically destroyed the livelihood of thousands and thousands of people. That has taken 12 years—even now you want to introduce the cashless debit card on top of the BasicsCard, because your sole agenda is to completely keep people disempowered and entrenched in poverty. 'Do not let those Australians who are not as fortunate as you try to rise up the ladder; it is best to keep them down.' That is the only way that we can view this legislation. It is not about a fair go; it is about keeping you mob up there and the rest of the country down there.

This bill wants to silence the voices of the people represented by unions. It will ensure less safe workplaces. It will ensure more wage and superannuation theft. It will ensure a less effective union movement that is more preoccupied with getting its paperwork right than with doing the job which has delivered better wages and conditions for workers in Australia for over a century. This bill will not ensure wage growth for Australian workers, will do nothing good for the economy and will certainly do nothing to stimulate growth, jobs and development in remote Australia. You already have a record that shows that you entrench people in poverty, and that is where this bill will keep them.

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise today to join my Labor colleagues in placing on the record my opposition to the bill that we are debating tonight, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019. We have always known that, despite all the shouting from the rooftops of it being 'dead, buried and cremated', Work Choices has never stopped lurking in the shadows of coalition industrial relations policy. Despite all the claims that they have listened and had heard loud and clear the rumbling of hundreds of thousands of Australian workers marching for their rights at work in 2007, we knew then and we know today that they have not listened. We knew that when they said Work Choices was gone they really meant that it had been quietly tucked away in a drawer somewhere, just waiting for the right moment to re-emerge. Today, I'm sure, is the start of many bills to come.

We know this because attacking the rights of workers and their democratically elected representatives is in the coalition's DNA. Think back to the Fraser government's use of sections 45D and 45E of the Trade Practices Act, the forerunner of the Competition and Consumer Act. Remember how they used that legislation to pile on fines for unions taking industrial action to support workers and their members in industries and workplaces. What the Fraser government did then is what the Morrison government is doing now: stifling many of these actions. The conservatives' long obsession with undermining organised labour in favour of the employer has never ceased.

When Work Choices was introduced—and let's not forget it was around 1,500 pages long—it was done without a mandate and without genuine consultation, just like this bill before the Senate today. Work Choices introduced the making of Australian workplace agreements. It failed the fairness test. It gave too much power to the employers, creating an imbalance in the bargaining relationship. It wasn't simple; in fact it created a more complex system, one that Labor eventually replaced. It also failed the productivity test. Work Choices made the fundamental error of returning our economy to a framework of conflict. Not surprisingly, the result was a policy that was never accepted by the Australian workers, despite an unprecedented advertising barrage to convince them that they would be better off.

The conservatives are determined to ignore the lessons of the past and frame a workplace relations system that does not gain broad acceptance and support through consultation. A system based on trust, certainty and fairness is essential if we're going to remain a nation of innovation and rising prosperity. In this bill that we are debating, we have the latest re-emergence of the coalition's vendetta against organised labour, a greatest hits album of the Work Choices of old. Now, I must say that this CD is a little worse for wear. The cover's so dusty you can actually write your name on it. The insert is long since lost and the back is all scratched up. But don't worry; it's all here: the attacks on workers' rights to organise and on their delegates and their representatives, the gross disparity in governance rules between unions and corporates, and the draconian penalties, described by one organisation as characteristic of some authoritarian regimes that you see in many countries across the world.

Under this bill, normal industrial activity would become criminal activity. Advancing the wages, working conditions and overall welfare of workers are some of the basic rights that unions and employees should be able to negotiate without any fear. Unions would be tied up with vexatious litigation, forced to fight costly legal battles using their own members' money instead of protecting their members and Australian workers. This bill would hinder the rights of unions and their members to merge, to an extent that no corporation is even close to being subject to. The bill would make it possible for the government and disgruntled employers to shut down democratically elected unions and deny working people their right to choose their own representatives. It would make it far simpler to deregister unions and to disqualify their officials. It would make it harder for organisers to fulfil their health and safety duties. According to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee dissenting report into this bill:

The bill … would erode the confidence and empowerment that union organisers, delegates and workplace health and safety representatives should feel they have in relation to organising, collectively bargaining and in maintaining safe workplaces.

In many instances, workplaces are also public places, meaning unsafe workplaces can be unsafe public places. The shops that retail workers, who I used to represent, work in are Australian public shops. The cafes and restaurants where chefs and waiters work are the cafes and restaurants that Australians frequent. If those workplaces are not safe then that poses a direct risk to the public. Worryingly, the Senate committee heard from the Tasmanian branch of the nurses' union that, if this bill were passed, it would limit their organisation's ability to provide support to members and to advocate for the best interests of their patients and that this would eventually lead to poorer outcomes and degradation of both private and public health services.

But the impact is not only felt by unions. The Senate committee, when considering the bill, heard from stakeholders who raised serious concerns about the impact that this bill will have on the Australian economy as well. Professor Jim Stanford, from the Centre for Future Work, outlined the dynamics in our current economic climate in his submission to the committee inquiry: stagnant wages that can barely keep pace with the cost of living, and weak consumer spending and economic growth driven by a range of conditions, including low wages growth and a shrinking labour share of total GDP, contrasted with growth in GDP share for corporations and financial investors—surely an indicator of growing inequality. Contrary to the claims of employee groups and those opposite who like to say that the deregulation in industrial relations will have a positive impact on our economy, Professor Stanford—an accomplished economist, I should add—went to lengths to outline how the current arrangements, which are highly restrictive when compared internationally, are already having a negative effect on the economy. He submitted that he could find no evidence that the measures contained in this bill would have a positive impact on the economy. He wrote:

At best, these proposals constitute a distraction from those more urgent labour policy matters. At worst, they would achieve an incremental worsening of the deeper problems and imbalances which are contributing to Australia's generally poor labour market performance.

It's important that we're honest about what the so-called ensuring integrity bill is, because there is very little integrity to this proposed piece of legislation. It is a politically motivated attack on effective, law-abiding unions and organisers who seek better pay and conditions for their members and help keep employees safe at work. Rather than ensuring integrity, this bill is the latest in a long Australian history of silencing the voices of workers and preventing their attempts to stand on equal ground with their employers.

This bill hearkens back to an Australia of nearly 200 years ago. James Straighter, a convict shepherd, was punished with 500 lashes, one month in confinement and five years penal servitude for gathering together with his fellow workers to demand better pay and conditions from their employer. The ensuring integrity bill may not be imposing thrashings on delegates or sending workers into confinement, but it directly interferes in the arrangements of unions—democratic organisations—and the capacity of workers to gather together to demand better pay and conditions.

The Masters and Servants Act 1828 imposed severe penalties on workers who behaved poorly and minimal penalties on employers who mistreated their employees. It provided that servants could be imprisoned and have their wages forfeited for refusal to work or for destruction of property and that masters found guilty of ill usage should be liable to pay damages of up to six months of wages. Under that legislation, a worker who was absent for just one hour could be imprisoned, yet employers who did not treat their servants well faced minimal repercussions.

The parallels between that act and the current arrangements around wage theft are quite clear: there is one rule for workers and another rule for employers. Today we are again seeing a situation where a worker who steals from the till can face prison time but an employer who steals hundreds of thousands of dollars from its workers faces minimal repercussions. In the bill before us, the penalties imposed upon union officials are considerable—more than the penalties imposed on businesses. The grounds for disqualification from holding office in a registered organisation in the bill are broader than the grounds for disqualification of company directors in Australia.

As we remember the examples from around 200 years ago, let's also get back to more recent history. Work Choices abolished minimum workplace standards and left workers without the most basic protections for wages and conditions. It divided workers and pitted them against one another in individually negotiated contracts designed to erode workplace standards. Together, the labour movement defeated Work Choices. Ordinary Australians took to the streets, demanding the right to negotiate a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. The coalition lost government in 2007, and the Prime Minister at the time suffered the indignity of being the second prime minister, after Stanley Bruce, to lose his own seat in the other place.

Since then, we know the coalition has long harboured ambitions to return to Work Choices. They have already enacted cuts to penalty rates, with barely an increase in employment hours or an improvement in economic measures. Last week, the current Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, flagged so-called simplifications to the award system, while the Attorney-General singled out awards in the retail and hospitality sectors as being too complex. For six years, the Liberal-National government have been unable to move for fear of stirring the same uprising against them as they saw when Work Choices was enacted. So this is their approach: decimate the union movement in 2019 and decimate workers' rights in 2020.

The union movement in Australia has a long and very proud history of achievement for Australian workers. The movement brought us eight hours of work, eight hours of recreation and eight hours of rest. It brought us annual leave, maternity leave, superannuation and the opportunity for a comfortable retirement. The movement brought us sick leave, redundancy pay, protection from unfair dismissal and the right to have a meal break. How many of us today take a simple break to eat for granted? It is unions that work every day to win pay rises for Australian workers, to assist them when they're unfairly dismissed, to provide simple workplace relations advice, to protect them from bullying and harassment in the workplace and to make sure that they get home safe.

This bill comes at a time when bad behaviour from big corporates—including, as we've heard today, from the big banks—is rife, and in these times unions are needed as much as ever to protect workers against the excesses of some bosses. Let us be clear that, if this bill does pass, it is ordinary workers who will suffer. They are the ones who are punished, not the big corporates who seek to underpay them of wages and to rip their hard-fought-for and hard-earned conditions away. I've seen what workplaces can become when unions are undermined and locked out.

Prior to my time in this place, as an official for the SDA union in Victoria, I represented some of the lowest-paid workers in Australia. I was there when we supported workers at 7-Eleven who were subject to mass exploitation, driven primarily by a severe power imbalance in the relationship between a worker and an employer. These workers were paid between $8 and $10 an hour, and in one instance I met a young foreign student who was making as little as $5 an hour. These workers came to Australia to get an education and improve their future but were instead too scared to speak up or not aware of their workplace rights. I can't fathom the fear that these workers would have felt studying, struggling to make ends meet and feeling powerless in the face of employers who were determined to rip them off, because their boss had all the power and they had none.

When we undermine the strength of organisations such as unions, we undermine the welfare of our entire worker base. When I took my seat in this place earlier this year, it was with the intention of keeping the best interests of Australians and Australian workers at heart. And, as I said in my first speech here, I've seen firsthand what happens when employees have no power and there are systematic patterns of stolen wages, exploitation and abuse. I also said that I have always believed in hard work and in the dignity of work and that I have always believed in a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. I will never vote for any measure that will put that at risk, and like my Labor colleagues I will not be voting for this bill when we end up coming to that point during the week.

Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If only we saw a bit more Christmas spirit to the workers of Australia from those opposite like we just witnessed in the chamber earlier! But it is indeed a pleasure to follow on from Senator Ciccone, who gave a very thorough example of the work of unions, not only currently but also historically, and indeed his proud record as an official for the SDA, which was actually the first union I joined as a 15-year-old when I was working casually whilst at high school. From a young age, not only the value of being a union member but also the historical significance of it and the contribution they've been able to make to Australia and society over such a long period of time was instilled in me, and I will come to some of the issues.

What I wanted to do was put in context some of the issues that we're confronting with this bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019. What I want to talk about is a consideration of the economic circumstances that we find ourselves in, the conditions that workplaces find themselves in, what a union is and the role that they play in society, what the motivation is of those opposite in pursuing this legislation, and the consequences of this legislation, because they are far-reaching and they will have massive ramifications for the Australian people.

Let's consider what is currently confronting Australians with the state of the Australian economy. We know we have the slowest economic growth in a decade, the worst retail result since the 1990s recession, interest rates at record lows, the worst wages growth on record, record levels of household debt and almost two million Australians unemployed or underemployed. These are the economic circumstances that are confronting the Australian people at this time.

Then let's consider the scene at Australian workplaces at this time. Across Australia, we see workplace deaths—incidents that result in 200 Australians losing their lives each year. We see increasing casualisation. We see increasing labour hire. We see wage theft that is rampant. We saw BHP announce last week that they are automating 300 jobs at their Goonyella mine in Central Queensland. Many workplaces are bleak places at the moment. You've got wage stagnation. It's hard for workers to get a promotion, and there are plenty worried about their future; they really wonder how, if they were to lose their job, they would get back into the workforce. That is particularly evident around places in regional Queensland where there are a lot of people who have been laid off in recent times and really are pessimistic about their future and what that looks like. So this is the reality of workplaces that is confronting the Australian people.

But let's consider what a union is. It's the members. It's quite clear on that. It's the workers of Australia: the orderlies, the nurses, the council workers, the teachers, the cleaners. Unions are democratic, member based organisations. And if any people in Australia should understand democratic, member based organisations, it's the people who get elected to parliament from political parties, because that is exactly how we operate and what we are used to. All political parties operate in a similar way, with leaders elected by members. Unions are no different in terms of how they elect their leaders and conduct union affairs and union business. This is what a union is, always has been and always will be: it's made up by the strength of its members. That was the foundational principle of how unions were formed, and it continues to be the case today. Members understand that a union is only as strong as all of its members put together, and that is actually how they have achieved so much of what they have achieved historically.

Let's now consider what the motivation of this government is. They've got no agenda, post the election. We know they are beset by hubris, just conducting a victory lap around the country. We know they're rife with internal divisions. An election win didn't do that—we saw it for six years before the election, and we've seen it in the six months since. They've got no plan for the economy. They've got no plan for the big issues that the country faces, whether it be energy, where they haven't been able to settle on a policy, or taking real action on climate change for the Australian people.

It's actually a dangerous time for Australians. It's a dangerous time for workers and it's a dangerous time for vulnerable Australians as well. What we see with this bill is that it's all ideological, and that is what we are seeing with other pieces of legislation that the government is pursuing. But there are consequences to this. We know that the thing the Libs and Nats need to keep them functioning is some sort of direction and that the direction they are going to pursue is attacking workers and attacking vulnerable people. This legislation has consequences, and other legislation they are pursuing has consequences.

Think about the history of what unions have achieved—and these are just some of the things that unions have achieved. I think back to the shearers' strike in Queensland and what that led to in Queensland—significant change, let alone the formation of the Labor Party. I think of what they did, standing up for those workers who were being so mistreated by the government and those people who controlled labour in that state at that time. The role of unions in safety at work, in occupational health and safety, is such a fundamental thing for today. There is the eight-hour day. There is their stance on social issues. We're a week away from celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Goss government. Think about Queensland in the seventies and eighties and the role that unions played in standing up to the Bjelke-Petersen government, the role that they played with street marches, which were illegal at the time, and the role they played in fighting apartheid. This is the role that unions have played, not only in looking after workers but also in ensuring that we have a better society here in Australia and that those in other countries are able to live in a better society as well, let alone in Medicare and superannuation—and the list obviously goes on.

Only those opposite, only the conservatives, would see such a list and go: 'How can we make life tougher for unions? How can we make it harder for those things to be achieved into the future? How can we make it harder for workers to achieve progress?' But this is what those opposite do. Without an agenda, without a reason for governing, without anything positive to do, all they want to do is set out to make it tougher for working people and those who represent them to do their job. But this does lead to consequences.

It's clear that this bill will ensure more dangerous workplaces; it will ensure more wage and super theft from workers; and it will ensure that, while unions are preoccupied with filling out paperwork, they are unable to fight for workers. Australia's growth has been because of strong union representation over a century delivering good wages, and secure jobs and conditions for Australians. We know that this bill will certainly not ensure wage growth, it will not better conditions and it will not create one single, secure job. Further limiting the rights of workers to collectively organise, advocate and bargain with employers would have a damaging impact on the Australian economy at a time when wage growth has already stalled and when the theft of wages and superannuation is being uncovered in many industries.

You only have to think about Queensland, where there will be consequences as well. Regional communities are already being destroyed by casualisation. People doing the same job are being forced onto insecure contracts, with no security and lower wages. Queensland parliament's 2018 wage theft inquiry found that wage theft is endemic across Queensland and Australian workplaces, affecting around 437,000 workers in Queensland each year—that's approximately one in five workers—and that wage theft costs Queensland workers approximately $1.22 billion per year, with an additional $1.12 billion in unpaid superannuation. This is in addition to the Fair Work Ombudsman showing that over 40 per cent of employers in regional Queensland were not complying with their legal obligations, including one in three that were underpaying their workers, and that repeated noncompliance was prevalent.

When you look at how this law will be administered, particularly today of all days, when we are having this debate in this chamber, you see that the ROC can go back over 10 years to hunt for suspected union breaches, but they won't be doing that around wage theft. You only have to look at the role they played in the raid on the AWU in 2017. Today the Federal Court ordered that the union watchdog quash its investigation into the Australian Workers Union and return all funds it seized during that controversial police raid. So, of all days for that to be declared, today is the day. That goes to the true motivation of the Registered Organisations Commission but also to the motivation of this government and the role it played in that raid. There is no justification for this. There is no corporate equivalence.

Schedule 3 of the bill deals with administration of so-called dysfunctional organisations. In the new bill the minister or any person with sufficient interest, which could include employers and employer organisations, is given standing to put a union into administration. There is no equivalent of this for companies. If these kinds of laws were to be applied to companies, they'd be outraged, but there is no corporate equivalence.

One of the main objections to this bill is that it is unnecessary. There is already an effective and longstanding regime for the disqualification of union officers and deregistration of unions. The Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act was amended as recently as 2017 to provide that a union official could be disqualified on the basis of any civil penalty breaches of the act. There are currently a range of offences that automatically disqualify a person from standing for or holding office, including fraud, dishonesty, the intentional use of violence and damage to property. The current deregistration provisions allow the minister or a person interested to apply to deregister a union on a large number of grounds, including breaching the terms of the award, agreement or orders of the commission; taking industrial action that has hindered an employer or the provision of public services by the states or Commonwealth; and taking action that has had a substantial adverse effect on the health and safety or welfare of the community or part of the community. There is no equivalence for companies, once again.

Unions have been at the forefront of making workplaces safer in Australia and have a proud history of taking action in the interests of keeping workers and the public safe. This bill will further restrict the ability of unions to take collective action in circumstances where worker safety is in serious doubt. Just overnight in Central Queensland a worker lost their life whilst at work. Every worker should have the right to expect to be able to return home safe after a day at work.

The bill creates what is known as a 'chilling effect' on the work of unions and their officials, which could lead to the erosion of the good safety culture developed through the efforts of unions to hold employers accountable on worksites around the country. The chilling effect would erode the confidence and empowerment that union organisers, delegates and workplace health and safety representatives should feel they have in relation to organising, collectively bargaining and maintaining safe workplaces. This is something that Queenslanders are well aware of, especially given the prevalence of work in dangerous industries in our state. There have been some tragic historic circumstances around workplace accidents in Queensland and across Australia. Anything the bill does to diminish the role that unions can play in pursuing objectives in this regard is not worthy of being supported by this place.

The other thing that this bill will not do is help regional Queenslanders who are crying out for more jobs: It won't help the 500 fewer people in Hinkler trying to get a trade or the 1,440 in Flynn, the 1,000 in Groom and the 2,603 in Brisbane who just want to get the skills to help them find a job. The government is too busy short-changing TAFE and training. The bill won't help the unemployment rates throughout Queensland either. It is 6.4 per cent in Queensland compared to 5.3 per cent nationally. It's worse in places like Wide Bay, where it's 7.3 per cent; in Townsville it's 8.3 per cent; and it's 7.2 per cent in Central Queensland.

Young people in Queensland are also facing record high unemployment under the LNP government. They've nearly doubled the youth unemployment rate in Central Queensland, which is at 22.5 per cent. In outback Queensland it is 27 per cent, in Mackay it's 15 per cent, in Wide Bay it's 20 per cent and in Townsville it's 17 per cent. These are the economic conditions that young Queenslanders are facing, yet this government proposes only an attack on workers and an attack on their representatives through this bill.

There's no doubt that this bill is a political attack on working people, based on a politicised royal commission. We know that the Australian people want the government to focus on delivering wages growth and creating secure jobs. There is no policy justification for this bill. The amendments proposed for the bill go far beyond the recommendations of the Heydon royal commission. It is an attack on the important role that unions play in our society, and there is no corporate or political equivalent. The people who share the government's obsessive hatred of unions will love this legislation. They will weaponise it and use it to keep unions quiet and keep their hands tied, too frightened of breaching these laws to be able to operate. Not only is it undemocratic and draconian but it is simply unnecessary. I urge fellow senators to oppose this legislation.

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019. Every day, millions of Australians struggle to make ends meet as they front up to one job, maybe two jobs or maybe three jobs. A quarter of Australians feel uncertain about the future of their current job and they feel uncertain about whether they'd be able to get another job if the one they're in right now finished. Housing is ever more expensive and households are loaded up with debt. But, instead of addressing the many issues that are facing our economy and holding us back, the government have decided to pursue an ideological agenda—an ideological attack against working people and their unions, not grounded in good policy but grounded in blind hatred. These laws are fundamentally unfair. They would not apply to business. They would certainly not apply to the big banks, whose ethical misconduct has been on display this week. The Morrison government are pursuing these laws because they lack an agenda, but, even worse, they're pursuing them because they lack a heart.

In a recent survey, more than half of young workers were victims of wage theft. It is a shocking figure and it is a national crisis. Today I met with a group of young workers—young men and women on the front line—who are dealing with the bald-faced, shameless behaviour of employers who are willing to steal wages from young people whose only desire is to use their talents to contribute to our community.

One woman spoke to us today about the sense of worthlessness, and her voice wavered as she told her story. She talked about working for a small family enterprise. She talked about what it meant to give everything to that enterprise and then turn up to find that, without warning, her shift had been cancelled and she was no longer required. She talked about how that made her feel. She said, 'It made me feel without value.'

Another woman told her story about how her employer, a food manufacturer, short-changed her $15,000 in just two years. Incredibly, she was not so concerned about herself. Her main concern was the other workers—her co-workers who, with limited English and a limited ability to understand their rights, were exploited even more cruelly by this employer. This young woman, owed $15,000 by her employer, was thinking about others; she was not thinking about herself but thinking about the people she worked with and how she could help them.

The third was a young man from the hospitality sector who said that people often ask: 'When did you find out you were being underpaid?' He said, 'I knew from the first day. I knew from the day I started in that job that I was being underpaid, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had no hope that there was any part of this system that could fix this problem.' But then he lifted a little and said, 'But I found hope. I found hope when I met the union organiser. They explained to me that, in other industries where the union is present, where people are allowed to organise, they have better conditions. They have better wages, they have better job security and they have safer workplaces. I realised that was a path that I could follow, where I could be a leader in my workplace. I could show my colleagues how we were going to change the circumstance that we were in.'

I wish that the government would sit down and meet with these young people. They are so out of touch that it would not hurt them to spend just a little bit of time with some of the people actually experiencing life in the economy that, day after day, Senator Cormann instructs this chamber is going so well. It would not hurt them to listen, but that would be a triumph of hope over experience, because this government is not actually interested in listening to the experiences of ordinary people.

This bill is emblematic of everything that is wrong with this government. Bereft of a plan, bereft of an agenda, bereft even of a unifying ideology that could explain what being a coalition government is for, this government resorts to union bashing. It is the only thing that unifies them. The only thing that can bring that crowd together is a project that is about destroying the ability of working people to organise for themselves, to have a say in their own destiny, to argue for dignity in their own workplaces. And why is that? Well, you have to conclude that it is because the idea of ordinary people, working people, organising their own affairs is an affront to their sense of entitlement. When you look at the provisions of this bill, it points to exactly this, because this bill is designed to frustrate the ordinary business of trade unions. It is designed to frustrate the ordinary processes of working people organising together. It is designed to obstruct the human right of people to associate with one another and to choose their own representatives.

This bill is not supported by policy; it is a political attack by the Australian government on workers and their representatives. There is no policy justification for this bill. No independent research or inquiry recommended these amendments. The royal commission set up to attack trade unions didn't make recommendations for these amendments; this is something the government came up with all by themselves. They certainly didn't consult with anybody. They didn't consult with the Australian union movement, despite the fact that the International Labour Organization recommends that governments meaningfully consult with unions on legislation that directly affects them. And why not? Because that is a group of people who basically believe that unions have no place in the Australian society we live in and no place in Australia's future. They spend all of their working days attacking the union movement instead of trying to better the conditions of ordinary Australians.

It is not just unions that are concerned about this bill; from all sectors—academics, civil society groups, churches, not to mention the bipartisan Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights—there has been concern. The amendments go far beyond anything proposed by the Heydon royal commission. The truth is that there is an existing effective scheme that requires unions to act democratically and transparently, and in our very long history it has proven more than adequate to resolve the issues in the past.

The government claims that this bill will apply the same regulatory standards to industrial organisations as apply to corporations. That's not right. It's either a naive thing to say or a deliberately misleading and untruthful thing to say. This bill will work by subjecting tens of thousands of union volunteers to stricter and more punitive regulations than the CEOs of the companies they work for. Because this crowd don't know very much about workplaces where people work hard, they don't know very much about how unions actually work. The truth is that unions rely on people who are not paid, people who stand up, like the young man I referred to earlier, and say, 'I am going to be a leader in my workplace.' When the government talks about, disparages and derides unionists they're actually disparaging principled, honourable men and women who simply wish to represent their colleagues in difficult questions about their rights and entitlements.

It is not fun to stand up to an employer and say, 'You're underpaying me.' I've done it. It was something that happened to me very early in my working life. I was working for a university. When I looked at it, it became obvious to me that the many, many hours of additional work that full-time workers are required to perform over the enrolment period weren't being paid properly. I went to my union and said, 'Listen, I think we have a problem.' They said, 'Does anyone else in your workplace think it's a problem?' I said, 'I could talk to them about it,' and I did. I had a conversation with the other people—there were probably only 15 or 18 of us, all women—and said, 'Listen, I know this is going to be hard, but I think we should raise this; I think they owe us quite a lot of money.' The truth is we did it together. We had advice from our union. They took us through the enterprise agreement and showed us what we were entitled to have, but we had to go and say to management, 'This is what we're owed.' They weren't happy; they were pretty annoyed with us, actually, and it's not pleasant to be in that kind of conflict. But it's not fair to expect an entire workplace of women to subsidise your business operation by underpaying them. That wasn't fair in the mid-nineties, which is when that story dates from, and it's not fair now.

As far as I can see, this problem about underpayment is growing in size. Every week we see another employer fess up about underpayment. Who will stand in their way? Who will assist employees to get the money that they are owed—the money that's been stolen from them? The only credible answer to that question is the union movement. A serious government would be focused on that question. A serious government in receipt of advice from the RBA and from a whole lot of market economists about the problems in terms of slow wage growth would be asking: is underpayment contributing to flatlining demand in the Australian economy? Is underpayment contributing to the lack of consumer confidence? Is underpayment contributing to some of the worst retail sales performance that we've had in decades? They would be important questions to ask if you were a government that was serious about economic management—if you were a government that a plan for the future. But that's not what we get; we get this bill, a piece of nonsense designed to crush the only institutions that stand in the way of this criminal and negligent behaviour by a handful of employers—some of them very big employers.

This bill will make it possible for third parties to get involved. It will make it possible for government ministers or disgruntled employers to shut down unions for minor civil infractions, like submitting paperwork late or holding a stop-work meeting without an employer's permission. If Scott Morrison submits a form late, he doesn't face a fine—and I should call him Mr Morrison; my apologies. If Alan Joyce submits a form late, he doesn't face a fine. But the same mistake would see a union shut down or a union volunteer disqualified from being elected to represent members. How is that fair? How is that reasonable? How is that consistent with a commitment to civic participation? Unions are not corporations; they are fundamentally different. They are built on the labour of volunteers. They are not profit-making firms; they are industrial organisations, with standing, that represent working people to ensure fair pay and fair working conditions.

This bill is profoundly antidemocratic. It's inconsistent with international human rights law. It would allow the government to interfere with democratically-run organisations. We already have some of the most restrictive laws in the world, and this bill goes well beyond the laws of other comparable countries. Schedule 1 of the bill, as I mentioned earlier, significantly extends the grounds on which an office holder in a registered organisation can be disqualified. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights reported that these disqualification provisions would likely be incompatible with the right of freedom of association.

There are a number of heroic individuals on the other side and in the other place who have been pretty excited in the last few weeks to stand up and fly the flag for the civil liberties and the democratic rights of the protestors in Hong Kong—and I salute them for that. But I ask this question: where are you when the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights says that provisions in this bill would likely be incompatible with the right of freedom of association? What kind of Liberals are you that you stay silent? In fact, it's worse: you're not silent; you're baying for blood, baying to shut down organisations which simply represent that most basic of democratic rights—to associate with one another and express a political view or an industrial view.

Debate interrupted.

Senate adjourned at 21:00