Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You can continue this dialogue across the chamber, Member for Hughes. You can, too, Minister, because I welcome any contribution you would like to make to this debate.

Let us think about the record at large of this government on industrial relations. Members on this side remember that just before Christmas the government announced terms of reference for the Productivity Commission to have a look at Fair Work. These terms of reference, again, go to the very heart of the debate about how we ensure our progress towards more equal workplaces or hold it back. It is about our progress towards a more equal society or a less equal society—matters clearly of no interest to any of the government members here. The mere mention of Work Choices still sends shivers down the spines of government members. This is why they look for cover, such as from the Productivity Commission. We have seen a set of terms of reference that are so wide that everything that might matter to anyone who works for a living is under threat.

This review is absolutely critical to the coalition's plan to remake Australia's social compact and take us to a society much less like the Australia most of us accept and much more like that of the United States. We on this side of the House remember that it has been long established—indeed, it is conceded often by government members—that we have an industrial relations system that promotes collective over individual bargaining, consistent with a range of international obligations we have entered into.

We have also committed ourselves to freedom of association, a value which is under threat in the consistent attack and the constant demonisation of trade unions and trade unionists. Conservatives have done nothing in the world of industrial relations over the last 20 years, save try to reduce all collective institutions and reduce the way in which unions can support vulnerable workers in their workplaces, undermine collective bargaining and erode all sense of fundamental rebalances of power away from those who have the capacity to exploit often very vulnerable workers.

While this Productivity Commission reference is underway, we also have a royal commission which is entirely consistent with the views that have been expressed by government members in this chamber. It is all about character assassination at great expense. We see witch hunts when we should see serious work done on meeting these policy challenges. But that is not a priority for this government. This government is concerned with undertaking a sustained attack on Australian workers. Undermining the role of unions through this bill and many of the nine other bills that have been presented is a key part of that agenda.

This is a government that is committed to removing effective unionism for Australian workplaces. It wants to destroy the capacity of working people to come together and work together to bargain fairly and support the fabric of Australian workplaces and the Australian way of life. This is in the context of a government which is unconcerned that the minimum wage has dropped to such a low level. This is a government that is unconcerned about how important penalty rates are to so many Australian workers. So many government backbenchers have belled the cat on this issue. Again, while the government pushes down wages and tries to deny people access to penalty rates, we still hear the minister speak of a wages explosion. He could not be more out of touch.

Again, why would the government have asked the Productivity Commission to look at wage growth if it was not minded to push wages down? It is absolutely clear that that fundamental issue of a fair day's pay in return for a fair day's work is totally up for grabs. We have seen the minister, Senator Abetz, continue to make clear that, in his world, penalty rates are up for grabs. They are so important to so many workers, so many of the people I represent and so many of the people the member for Throsby represents. Yet this government, which effectively promised not to interfere with this fundamental aspect of how wages will be set, is committed to putting so many more people under deeper pressure.

The previous speaker, the member for Bass, in his wide-ranging contribution talked about what people on this side of the House stand for. The Chief Government Whip, who spoke before him, also put this at issue when he said that opposition members endorse unions. Let me be clear in responding to the Whip: of course we endorse unions and the vital role they play in reshaping power relationships in workplaces. We stand for effective, decent trade unionism. We stand for workplaces that are fair. We stand for a system of workplace relations that does secure fairness at work, substantively, in terms of securing rights, setting down minimum standards that we know promote decency and dignity for all, and enabling people to effectively come together to bargain on just terms.

On this side of the House more broadly, we take the debate about workplace relations seriously. It is not a matter of witch-hunts; it is not a matter of politicking. It is a fundamental challenge. We are deeply interested in how the world of work in Australia is changing. We are committed to the challenge of building more cooperative, more productive workplaces. We understand that that is a process that has to be taken through effective partnership building between employers and workers coming together in trade unions, recognising the shared challenges that we face, recognising the inequities in bargaining power and recognising that this is not a debate that can be won through prejudice, that it is not a debate that can be resolved through the rants of government members; it is a debate that must be built around values, and the key value here is fairness at work.

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