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

I rise to speak in the debate on the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2013. In March last year I spoke against the private senator's bill from Senator Abetz. It was almost a mirror proposal of the one before us today. In March last year I stressed that officers of registered organisations or anyone in a position of trust misusing the funds of members or acting inappropriately, taking benefits where they are not entitled, must never be condoned. In the HSU case that sparked this debate and reactionary bill, the Fair Work Commission collected evidence and the courts have made their verdict. These trials show that there is no need for this new commissioner, that the current system is working. This legislation will not stop people committing fraud, as Senator Back alleged earlier today. The current system has found these people guilty. This legislation is simply a witch hunt, simply another way to smear working people and their unions.

It is one thing for the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, as Senator Abetz was at the time, to propose a private senator's bill that no-one supports. He wanted to make a point. He wanted to propose an idea. But there is so little support for the idea and so little policy merit one has to wonder why it is being brought back here. On the whole, employer groups and trade unions do not support these reforms. It is an idealistic approach that actually defies their own deregulation ideals.

I am a former state secretary of a trade union: the Tasmanian branch of the AMWU. I am pleased to stand up here in this place and put on record my background as a union member, as an organiser and as secretary. I do so with a strong sense of purpose; I know where I came from and I know who I represented. I know the clear intent of this bill that we debate today is not to strengthen union governance. It is not to make unions more appealing to the community in an effective way to grow membership. No, the sole purpose of this bill is to strike at the heart of registered organisations and sever the ability of honest volunteers to play their part in the governance of their union or organisation. This bill wants to make volunteering on the decision-making body of a union or employer organisation so unappealing that no-one will do it. This bill wants to destroy one of the most basic principles of volunteer organisations. The bill wants to use the improper and fraudulent actions of a handful of officials to materially weaken trade unions into the future.

On this side we want to talk about fairness in employment and industrial relations. We want to spend time promoting positive reforms, not tarring over two million Australians and their families with a brush because they want to collectively organise and negotiate for decent conditions at work.

When I spoke on the bill last year I highlighted a story of the importance of a union and the importance of acceptance of unions for a group of female workers at a factory in George Town, Tasmania a number of years ago. It was such an important story that I felt I needed to share it again. It was a small fishery and processing facility. I as an organiser was approached by some of the staff to come along and speak to the whole team. When we in the old Food Preservers' Union approached the management to come along, they were very helpful. They invited us in, they got the workers together in the lunchroom and they made us feel welcome.

The workers at the processing facility were predominantly women, all of them employed on a casual basis. The few men around were all permanent. With permanency came security but also a sense of superiority. We spoke to the staff about joining the union, and people seemed positive. We left them some information and told them we would come back the next week to talk again to those who wanted to join.

We thought that we had had a good hearing and that we would be able to offer these people the support that they needed. Unfortunately, when we left, the boss got everyone in the lunchroom and said that, if they joined the union, they would lose their jobs. Plain and simple: they would lose their job. Two women who were silent members of the union called and told us what had happened. They were worried about their jobs. A week later we went back to the factory and talked to the people again. This time, publicly no-one was interested; however, the silent members called again and arranged for us to meet with a group of the workers, and we met with the women at one of their homes. They told us of the shenanigans that went on in their workplace—one-way shenanigans towards the female workers by the men and actions that many people might not think of as wrong but as larrikinism, but there were a lot of acts that any reasonable person would frame as assault and dangerous.

The workers would be hosing down at the end of the day. One day, one of the men was cleaning down in his underwear—I do not know why. He repeatedly turned the hose on the women, who were just going about their job, and sprayed them with a high-powered hose. It was harassment. It could be viewed as assault, but it was definitely dangerous. At the factory there were only shared toilets—that is, a number of cubicles in a room. On more than one occasion some of the men would force themselves into the bathroom cubicle while one of the women was in there. It was a sick and twisted game to intimidate the female workers.

One day, it got out of hand. One of the men forced his way into the cubicle, and the woman was able to fight him off but was injured with visible bruising on her arms. She told me that she spoke to her husband when she got home that night. His first reaction was: 'Who is this bloke? I'm going to go and rip his head off.' This was a desperate reaction from someone without the means to resolve disputes through negotiation. The second reaction was: 'But you have to go to work tomorrow because we need the money.' This woman, this family and all of their workers felt they had no choice but to put up with this behaviour. We asked them, 'Why didn't you raise these matters with the supervisor?' Their simple replies were, 'We couldn't; he was one of the men involved.'

They had no recourse on their own, but they wanted to join the union. They wanted to join the union so that together they could make a change at their workplace. So we set up a picket outside the factory. We went to the Industrial Relations Commission, where we were able to run an argument for these women and lay down the facts. The commissioner found that there was clear evidence that the workers wanted to join a union, that they had been discriminated against and that they should be protected. The commissioner enforced a code of conduct for the factory management and gave the female workers in particular comfort that there were avenues for recourse if they needed to go down that path in the future.

Clearly, power structures exist across a range of situations, across a range of worksites and across a range of organisations. It was untrue in this situation in George Town that there was a mentality or a value set whereby anyone could walk into their boss's office, raise issues of concern and be treated fairly. And it is untrue for many millions of Australians today.

Unions are the staff; they are the workers joining together to give themselves some bargaining power to give themselves some cover. If there had been a union at this factory providing a mechanism for the workers to raise issues and to be listened to fairly, some of the incidents might not have happened the second, third or 10th time. In fact, they might not have happened at all.

So what will this bill do for these people? It will do nothing. It is not designed to help them. It is designed to demonise working Australians. It is designed to put doubt into the minds of non-union workers about joining a union. It is designed to continue the campaign of fear and misinformation. When workers like these women need a union and are faced with a power imbalance at work they should feel comfortable in approaching their respective union for assistance.

As coalition senators speak in favour of this bill they ignore these stories. They continue to carry the torch of yesteryear in their battle of employers versus unions. In seeking to stoke the fires of the past, the Liberal government does not seek a conciliatory outcome. The Liberal government does not seek a middle ground or their so-called sensible centre. The Liberal government does not even care about the collateral damage to their own side—that is, the potential fall in membership of employer groups—in their blind pursuit to rid the country of organised labour and to throw the corporate veil across every aspect of our lives.

There have always been different regulations and legislation for registered organisations and corporations to reflect the differences in purpose and motivation of unions, employer groups and corporations. The facts are that under Labor the financial accountability standards applied to registered organisations, trade unions and employer groups had never been higher. The powers of the Fair Work Commission had never been stronger, and penalties had never been tougher.

There are already requirements in the legislation governing registered organisations for officers to act with care and diligence, to act in good faith, not to improperly use their position and not to improperly use information they have obtained through acting as a member of an organisation. As I have mentioned, as the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Mr Shorten introduced significant reforms to the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act in 2012. These reforms tripled penalties for breaches of the legislation; required that the rules of all registered organisations deal with disclosure of remuneration and pecuniary and financial interests; required that education and training be provided to officials of registered organisations about their governance and accounting obligations; and enhanced the investigative powers available to Fair Work Australia.

Without allowing time to test their effectiveness, those opposite simply seek to create fear in the community. Instead of allowing time for these changes to be bedded down, those opposite have mounted a weak argument for further change. In reality, this bill is a cruel backhanded attack on Australia's workers' rights to organise and to collectively bargain. Importantly, many of the changes introduced by Labor's reforms in our last term of government only came into effect at the start of this year. So this Liberal government, who dedicated so much energy in opposition to attacking sensible regulations, who promised repeatedly to cut the waste and who, upon coming to government, dedicated a whole day in the House of Representatives to ridding the country of regulations from before any of us were born, actually want to significantly increase the regulatory burden, leading to alleged increased costs and poorer services to members of employer groups and trade unions.

I participated in the Senate Education and Employment References Committee inquiry into this bill. The references committee really scrutinised the bill after significant flaws were highlighted during the legislation committee's inquiry. Of course, the Liberal government opposed the inquiry, and I note with interest the final three sentences of their dissenting report. The first states:

Coalition Senators are not surprised that union and employer organisation bosses aren't emphatically in support of this legislation.

This sentence highlights and concedes that the majority of submissions from trade unions and employer groups do not support the bill. However, the second and third sentences highlight the true intent of the bill and the collateral damage to the coalition's own base—employer groups. The sentences state:

That said, it is very clear that this reform is in the national interest and in the interests of honest union members who want to ensure that their money is being spent properly.

The only people that have anything to fear from this legislation are dodgy union bosses who do the wrong thing.

It is quite remarkable really. It reads as though there are many, many unions acting improperly with members' funds, but not one employer group.

Debate interrupted.