David Fawcett (Wakefield, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I would like to rebut a couple of points that have been made and which are central to this motion. Fees for interviews? I do not think so. Purely the purview of large business? I do not think so. How about teachers applying for a job in the state school systems who have to pay for their own first aid certificates for their own mandatory notification and qualification courses? It is a common thing across most workplaces in Australia.

The line that is often put forward is that there is no choice—just do not take the job if you do not like the conditions. How about someone who rocks up to a place that is employing on awards or one that has enterprise bargaining agreements? If you do not like the terms of that, you do not get any choice. You have to walk away or take what is offered. It is a really shallow argument that is being put forward because it is not being applied evenly to both sides of the discussion.

The main thing I would like to address, though, is the underlying concept of the argument that is put forward and this false claim that the agenda of this government is to drive down wages and conditions. Why would we want to do that? The people we are talking about are our neighbours, friends and families. In case you had not noticed, we also happen to live in a democracy. The argument is that this government supports business and the ALP supports the worker. Excuse me, but big business does not vote; people vote. If this government deliberately sets out to disadvantage people it would be the equivalent of committing political suicide. Why would a government do that?

The claim is that the sky is going to fall in without the unions in place to protect people. Hello: only 17 per cent of the private sector workforce belongs to a union, so the great advances that have taken place in terms of employer-employee relations over the last decade have occurred with 83 per cent of the workforce dealing directly with their employers—without unions. So the argument that all of a sudden life as we know it will cease is completely false.

I understand the concern for a fair go. I recognise that many people, both private citizens and those who are members of a union, are genuinely concerned. But the evidence also goes to show that they are operating on false premises. The best example of this is a discussion I had with an education union official who was protesting in Wakefield at one point in time. He was arguing vehemently and passionately to my face that the reason he opposed the Australian technical colleges was that they mandated that every worker had to be on an AWA. When I told him this was not correct, he said, ‘It is correct and this is why I oppose it.’ He believed it firmly.

I thought that perhaps, given I was involved in the system, I was privy to some information that he was not. So I went and checked the public website. I looked at the section called ‘Frequently asked questions’. Sure enough, there was the question, ‘How will people be employed?’ It actually states quite clearly that to attract and retain high-quality staff, Australian technical colleges will offer the option of an Australian workplace agreement. Yet again, we see that, even in a small but significant area, people are jumping to conclusions and not understanding the facts. The ALP and the unions are building on the ease of selling fear and misinforming people so that people get passionate, worked up and unnecessarily afraid when the reality is quite different.

Just take the cases that have been presented here in the parliament—for example, that of the Lufthansa subsidiary. The claim was that this AWA reduces penalty rates. But they did not disclose the fact that it also offers a really good bonus scheme and the workers stood to get a 13 per cent increase in their pay. What is more, that bonus scheme was of the same model that the CFMEU had negotiated for members of Dunlop Bedding in 2005. And if the workers did not like it, they had the choice to remain on their collective agreement. So the facts were not presented, which is why people are being misled.

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