Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think every member in this place will have a community club, or a number of them, that they support in their own electorates. There is no doubt that one of the great challenges for these not-for-profit enterprises is to be able to continue to offer brilliant, high-quality service to local people and, at the same time, stable employment to their staff. This issue came to a head over the last week with a disagreement between the unions and sporting club in my electorate over the wage agreement that they were implementing. The club that I am referring to is a not-for-profit community club. It is important to note that it is not a multinational corporation or a for-profit entity. So one would expect that they would be assiduous in applying the rules and the laws of the land in a wage agreement, and I am pleased to say that they have done just that. This club exists solely to serve its members, and that would be echoed all around this country.

In this case, our sporting club in the suburb of Capalaba reinvests about $3 million each year into the region, obviously through a combination of letting out the venue, pokies, meals and bar takings. The club has about 60 staff, around 38 of whom are involved in the food, beverage and gaming area, and they are all local people. I think anyone who is elected to the federal parliament, a state parliament or even a council should do absolutely everything they can to either support a community club or bend over backwards to find an expeditious resolution when there is some sort of disagreement. Sadly, that is not what happened here. The people of Capalaba ended up with a unionist, a state Labor MP, who thought it would be a great thing to engage this club head-on when one staff member out of the 38 was unhappy with the wage agreement.

I will never traduce or impugn the motives of any employee; where a person is unhappy with a wage agreement I am sure there are extremely good grounds for that. It is not for me, another MP, a councillor or a mayor to adjudicate on these matters. We have a Fair Work Commission, legislated by the Labor Party in 2009 and further legislation in 2012. We have commissioners at the Fair Work Commission appointed mostly by the Labor Party. In fact, the commissioner who considered this very wage agreement at the Capalaba Sports Club was none other than a New South Wales union representative appointed to the commission by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. If anyone could give fair and unfettered consideration to a wage agreement for the workers you would think it would be the New South Wales union nominee to the Fair Work Commission who considered and approved that wage agreement.

Any community club that innocently takes on a fully approved Fair Work Commission agreement would expect and anticipate that it had been through extensive assessment and that, looking at a number of case studies, no employee could possibly be any worse off under that agreement. That is the point of an agreement; and you take it to the commission and get it approved to ensure that workers would not be any worse off than if they had worked the award wages. That is specifically what occurred in late 2014 when the HospitalityX agreement was considered and passed. These community clubs do not have a huge and elaborate byzantine organisation to run them being paid large amounts of money. No, they are run by a very small and dedicated staff. They do not have a full-time human resources person working out whether the minutes went out before midnight on a particular date. But they do adhere to the law and, when it comes to wage agreements, they seek a legal opinion.

What I have here is extraordinary correspondence and legal advice that goes to the nature of the HospitalityX agreement. It says:

I have now had an opportunity to review the decision of FWC in approving the agreement.

I note the approval application came before a senior member of the Fair Work Commission.

In reading the approval decision the member of the Fair Work Commission did not express a concern with making the decision. Equally, it is my experience that if a member of the Commission had a concern this concern would be raised and need to be dealt with before a decision—

an approval—

is issued.

On this basis, this legal view had 'no trouble in recommending the authenticity and legitimacy of this agreement'. What more can you expect of a community club other than to abide by the Labor Party law of the day, legislated established, staffed and appointed by the Labor Party? What more can a club do? They get a second legal opinion, like you imagine they would. A second law firm looking at this agreement was approved, in November 2014, to cover HospitalityX and any of its employees whose work would otherwise have been covered under that relevant award in 2010.

The agreement allows for employees to nominate a spread of hours, on a range of days, in which they are willing to work. This means that the employee can elect to perform work in non-standard times, like evenings, weekends and public holidays, in lieu of higher payments that render them no worse overall. Most of us have been in this situation. For an individual staff member, I have the utmost sympathy if they are not convinced that they may be not better off overall. It is only fair to read some of those concerns in a de-identified manner. The concerns are, effectively, based on the amount of time given to consider the deal.

While memos were going out to staff on a regular basis for two meetings, a week apart, there is no guarantee that every one of those meetings was noted. There is no guarantee, necessarily, that there was an agenda typed out and, apparently, at the meeting there may not have been satisfactory minutes taken. It should be of the gravest concern for members, here, that minutes were not taken at every meeting. There was some confusion about the operation of a series of clauses, which I will not bother people with right now, but, most concerning, is the sense that there might have been some undue influence or coercion.

The sense was that as time was ticking and there was an effort to get this new wage agreement in place there was inadequate time for this one staff member, out of 38, to fully contemplate the ramifications. Every staff member deserves that time. In the end, what it broke down to was a last-minute letter—at close of business, Friday—being sent out, saying: 'I am assuming I will be working on Monday but am still not completely sure. I want a written response. Otherwise, I will be turning up on Monday and anticipating that I will be coming to work.'

As I understand it, they did not come to work on that day. I have the utmost sympathy but it will not always be possible to please everyone—not even in this chamber, if that is possible. In the end we have something called a commission. The commission steps back and says, 'Look at it from the point of view of the worker and the point of view of the employer,' and we can have confidence in that that commission. A great thing about that is that as a parliamentarian we can support the law, but if you do not like the law you can go and change it, in this place. You call up the commission and you attempt to appeal or you revisit.

These are all options available the unions. But no, what we have had is trucks with billboards running up and down my electorate saying I have my hands on the penalty rates. As I pointed out to the Labor unions, the deal was approved by the Unions New South Wales nominee to the commission appointed by the Rudd government, under a commission that was established by the Labor government. I do not mind being mistaken for a New South Welshman; I can live with that. But I am certainly not Labor and I am no friend of Kevin Rudd, politically, so thank you for the flattery but you have the wrong guy.

What we need, in the end, is the ability as MPs to work within the law. We are actually employed to change the law if we do think the law is right. But, as a state Labor MP, you are not paid by public resources to go around the law. If you do not like the law you can change it. It is an option that has not been taken up by my state Labor colleague who thought it would be a fine idea to put on a rally—picket; call it what you want—outside the community sporting club. He brought all of his friends from all over Queensland. All of the unionites came and gathered around the club on the day we had our city's festival. If there were to be any TV coverage, it is was all of Don's mates, wasn't it? They were from all over Queensland, doing the union thing, while the other 37 staff just tried to get on and run a community club for our people.

In the end, there has been appalling harassment of staff in uniform. I would never say that that was the fault of an individual MP, but just remember that it is one thing to kick the can along the road but another to say you do not intend to wake up the dogs. You need to think about the implications of your actions, stand behind a community club and appreciate the importance of looking after an employee. Above all, understand that the rule of law, the presence of a commission—that we established as the Fair Pay Commission, renamed, rebadged, reconfigured—is the law of the land. If you have a problem with that there is no point in pointing at the Liberal Party; you need to go and talk to the commission. If you are confused by the laws, you can talk to an ombudsman. You stick within the law as a state MP. If you have a problem with that, the last thing you do is go around it.