Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Removal of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements and National Governance Protocols Requirements and Other Matters) Bill 2008. This bill removes section 33-17 from the Higher Education Support Act 2003. The section required higher education providers to meet higher education workplace relations requirements and national governance protocols imposed by the previous government under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. If they did not, those providers had imposed on them a reduction in scheme funding for Commonwealth supported places. Under section 33-17, a provider would have its funding reduced by 7.5 per cent if the minister could not be satisfied the provider had complied with both the requirements and the protocols as of 31 August each year.

The previous, coalition government’s requirements consisted of five elements in this section: a requirement to offer Australian workplace agreements to all employees of providers of higher education; the prohibition of automatic third-party representatives; alleged workplace flexibility; productivity and performance; and freedom of association. The requirements formed part of the Howard government’s now discredited Work Choices scheme. Work Choices stripped away hard-won terms and conditions of employment, affecting families and individuals, including my constituency in Blair. Undoubtedly, it was the most important vote-changing issue in my electorate in the 2007 federal election.

How did Work Choices come upon us? It came upon us in this way: no mandate was sought in 2004; no public consultation ever took place before it was imposed upon us; no consensus in the community was formed before Work Choices was thrust upon us; and no amount of taxpayer funded advertising could convince the Australian public that Work Choices was a good thing.

The Rudd Labor government supports a fair, simple and flexible industrial relations system. We believe that the telephone book known as Work Choices should be replaced and we should have National Employment Standards—and I am pleased that they were released in the form of an exposure draft on 14 February which is open to submissions. We believe in award modernisation. Modernisation of awards is important to providing a fair and relevant safety net, and it is a key objective of Forward with Fairness. It is important that people understand that we in the Rudd Labor government are not against flexible work arrangements. The protocols of the previous government talked about the size and composition of governing bodies of providers and the duties of governing body members. The Rudd Labor government will continue to ask providers to provide good governance. The Rudd government wants universities to be efficient administrators and effective educators of our people. The Rudd government does not want employers and employees and universities generally to be uncertain about funding and workplace agreements.

The removal of that conditions of funding under section 33-17 means that universities will not be coerced into offering AWAs to employees. I really wonder: if the Howard government was so convinced of the worth and desirability of AWAs, why did it make offering them a financially coercive measure and why was it necessary to promote AWAs in this way to the higher education sector? Surely AWAs would have stood on their own merits, and people would have flocked to them, signing up to them everywhere! During my election campaign, I found no-one who welcomed this sort of conditional funding and this big-fisted type of intervention in the higher education sector. I really do wonder: if AWAs were so attractive, so beneficial, so advantageous, why the coercion? Why the big-stick approach? Why the bullying? We know what the higher education sector believed about it all. The Vice-Chancellors Committee and its successor, Universities Australia, opposed this aspect of the draconian Work Choices legislation.

The removal of that requirement as a condition of funding means that the higher education sector need no longer offer mandatory statutory contracts to its employees. The higher education sector will now come under the Rudd government’s transitional industrial relations arrangements. Unlike the previous, coalition government, we do not distrust the higher education sector. The Rudd government’s new workplace relations scheme offers employers and employees flexibility to negotiate in the workplace. The Rudd government will streamline the awards and bring in new, simple national standards, which will be fully operational by 1 January 2010. In the interim a genuine, not a fake, no disadvantage test will be there—not a dodgy one like the one the previous, coalition government put in.

We will ensure that employees in my constituency of Blair will not be worse off. We will not sacrifice employees’ terms and conditions on the altar of ideological zealotry. We heard a lot about ideology from those opposite. I have listened intently to the speeches of those opposite. They talk about ideology but fail to recognise the ideology in the Work Choices legislation. The Rudd Labor government has consulted with businesses, unions and community groups to ensure that there is balance in the industrial relations system. Contrast that with 2004 and the Work Choices experience under the Howard government. In opposition, we told the Australian people our policies, unlike Mr Howard in 2004.

The high priests of Work Choices opposite should be ashamed of themselves. They should tell the higher education sector and the Australian public, once and for all, just where they stand on Work Choices. As its architects, they should say what a future coalition government would do in relation to individual statutory agreements. They warn of woe, and we have heard speeches which say that the whole country is going to rack and ruin. They also said that when we released our Forward with Fairness industrial relations policies in 2007. If they had the courage of their convictions, they would stand up for AWAs and Work Choices. They would not have sat there, and we would not have seen the spectacle we saw earlier this year in this parliament.

What are their policies now? I have listened to the speeches, and I just cannot work out where they stand. What will it be at the next election? These are all questions which have been left unanswered by the Liberal Party. They are all over the place on Work Choices. One minute they are devoted to it; the next minute they are denying it. Then they are denigrating it; then they are dealing with it; then they are dodging it. We are never quite sure where the Liberals stand. And yet not a sign of contrition have we seen from those opposite. They could have done it all in March 2008; they could have done a mea culpa and said, ‘We got it wrong.’ But we have not seen that. They had their chance for redemption, forgiveness and a new start, and they have blown it. They have refused to support the government’s motion to rule out individual statutory contracts once and for all.

The apostles of Work Choices are all publicly agnostics now. We really do not know what they believe, and I do not know that they believe themselves. They have secretly never renounced their faith in Work Choices. They are the true believers—the true believers in Work Choices. They campaigned for Work Choices, they are committed to Work Choices and they are converted to it. But they dare not speak its name. You do not hear it mentioned in speeches in this House. It reminds me of Harry Potter and JK Rowling. Remember Lord Voldemort? Lord Voldemort was talked about by everyone. Harry was the only person who was able to say his name. Everyone talked about ‘the Prince of Darkness’ and ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’. Work Choices is the Lord Voldemort of Australian politics now.

I have two university campuses in my electorate of Blair: one in Ipswich—the University of Queensland Ipswich Campus; and one in Gatton—the University of Queensland Gatton Campus. I have met with the higher education sector, and I have talked to the employees, the unions and the vice-chancellor. I have sat down and talked to them about this issue. I did that before the election, and I have done it since. During the campaign and in my discussions, not one of the staff said to me, ‘You know, we need to cut funding to the higher education sector and we need AWAs to meet the challenges of the higher education sector.’ No-one said that to me. But we know the higher education sector knew the wrath of the coalition, and they have felt it.

I will tell you where the people in my electorate stand. I campaigned from Kalbar to Karalee, from Ropeley to Ripley and from Booval to Boonah, and no-one said that they absolutely had to have Work Choices in the higher education sector. It never happened. On the contrary, I had conservative voters come up to me everywhere telling me they were going to vote Labor, sometimes for the first time. I remember meeting one woman, who was in her 60s, at the markets at Boonah. She came up to me and said, ‘Shayne, I do not know why Mr Howard has done this to me.’ I asked her what it was, and she could not quite get the terminology straight, but it seemed that she was put on an AWA and she lost her terms and conditions which she had taken for granted. She told me she had been a coalition voter all her life and never voted anything other than coalition. I met a woman who had changed jobs, only to have an AWA put in front of her at the end of a week in a training section. Her employer said, ‘If you don’t sign it, you lose your job.’ And do you know what that AWA said? It said that if you were five minutes late then you could be sacked. That is what happened. She had to take the job because she had two kids at home to look after. People hated the deception. They knew about the ideology, and the Australian public voted against ideology on 24 November 2007.

What is the legacy of Work Choices? Higher interest rates, almost zero productivity growth, infrastructure deficiencies, skills shortages, terms and conditions stripped away from working Australians, and higher education the least affordable in memory. The Work Choices legislation was fundamentally flawed because it assumed equality in the bargaining between employers and employees. There simply is not. Employers decided the terms and conditions of employment and the way they were done. Despite the rhetoric we heard about flexibility in the workplace, it was wilfully misleading. Very rarely was there any real negotiation with employees, and very often signing AWAs was the condition of employment, promotion, transfer or wage increase. All too often, women and those in low-paid jobs—for example, in the retail and cleaning sectors—suffered. The evidence is in. It eroded standards of living and left workers worse off, and it really was an offence to the traditional Australian values of decency and fairness. The notion of a fair go was undermined, and the fairness test was a joke. The government’s introduction of a real fairness test is about fixing the fairness problems, not about fixing the next election as happened in May 2007.

During the 2004 election John Howard promised Australian working families that he would keep interest rates at a record low. There was absolutely no mention of his extreme workplace relations system. On the day that Work Choices became law, John Howard breached his contract with the Australian people, forcing his extreme laws through. It was an assault on the people in my constituency and not once did my opponent mention Work Choices when he criticised me for campaigning on issues. Work Choices was egregious, extreme and unfair, and that is why the voters in my electorate ousted the incumbent. How could members opposite not know what Work Choices would do to people? How could you possibly believe the member for North Sydney on the Four Corners program when he said he did not know and the members in the cabinet did not know what Work Choices would do to people?

Section 33-17 says everything about the coalition’s attitude to university education, to academia and to the sector generally. It is emblematic of the previous government’s attitude to the higher education sector. Replacing that section of the act makes it crystal clear to the higher education sector that the days of conditional funding based on workplace agreements are over. Removal of the guidelines contrary to the prescriptive elements of the requirements and protocols is the right thing to do by the sector and by the working families and individuals whose members work as lecturers, as tutors and in administrative capacities.

The other important aspect of this bill is technical. It deals with the Commonwealth being allowed to designate bodies to perform auditing re higher education providers and to set requirements that must be met. It is anticipated that state and territory accreditation authorities and not just the Australian Universities Quality Agency would be involved. Two states—Queensland and Victoria—had a trial of this process. It is expected that audits and the accreditation process can be done contemporaneously to reduce time and bring about efficiencies. This is likely to reduce costs, red tape and the administrative burden for all concerned.

The Rudd Labor government is serious about good governance. Witness the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Bill, which was passed earlier this year. That was about transparency, accountability and good governance in relation to companies and directors and bringing these in line with the Corporations Law. The higher education sector has taken steps to ensure compliance with National Governance Protocols, and all the requisite state and territory legislation amendments necessary in this regard have been enacted. The Rudd government will encourage good governance in the higher education sector also. However, relations between universities and the previous coalition government were distrustful and antagonistic. The Work Choices requirements imposed by the Howard government on universities were about financially punishing universities if they did not become paid-up members of the Work Choices party.

Relations between the higher education sector and any government will not always be easy. Like any sector of the country, the higher education sector will have its barrows to push and its interests to protect, and no doubt it will let the Rudd government know what its position is. But relations must be based on respect, trust and cooperation. Dictating is not the way to go and it is not the Australian way.

The bill before the House is about securing a Work Choices-free higher education sector. It is about protecting working families and individuals involved in our universities. It is about ensuring that employers and employees cooperate in the workplaces of our universities. Our universities must be places of learning, life skilling and vocational preparation, not battlegrounds for the proponents and ideologues of Work Choices. I know that my constituents and those in the higher education sector in Blair will welcome this bill, and I do also. I commend the bill to the House.

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