Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I support the amendment moved by the member for Wills to the Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2005. In this debate I want to refer to a slightly different matter in addition to those matters raised by the member for Wills which I just heard so ably outlined by the member for Gorton. What I want to refer to more is the monumental double standard reflected in this bill whereby the government is applying one rule for itself and one rule for others in Australia. I do accept and support the thrust of the amendment of the member for Wills and the comments that have been made in support of it about the appalling standard of performance by many ministers. I want to, in endorsing those remarks, point to it in a slightly different context. It is the standard argument of this government, when it relates to the incomes of every other person who works for a living in this country, that salary increases without productivity increases are inflationary. The government applies that rule to everybody else but not to itself.

More particularly, I want to refer to the double standard of how this increase has been agreed. I agree with the process, but I think it is shameful that we here are almost the only people to whom this process now applies—that is, we get an independent tribunal to award a salary increase to us but ordinary Australian workers will no longer be eligible to have that happen to them. We have passed a law that says, ‘What occurs for all of us cannot apply to any of you’. We can have an increase awarded annually as determined to be fair by an independent tribunal—and I reinforce that I support the bill because, for ministers, that is the proper process—but nobody else in Australia can have that. Obviously it will be argued in response that this is a special case, and it is, but it is preposterous to suggest that it is the only special case in Australia. The Workplace Relations Act no longer allows special cases to apply to other Australians, only to us here and, in particular in this bill, to ministers, including to the minister who came in here and said that tribunals should not be allowed to set the wages of other Australians.

It is the most monumental double standard. I would use a stronger word, but I understand the precedents with regard to propriety in language in this place, so I will not say what is the obvious word. I will simply say that it is applying one standard to itself and a different standard to other people. It is a double standard because, if there is a special case that says you cannot expect ministers to have individual contracts based on the quality of their performance and their value to the agency for which they work and therefore we need to have a special tribunal, we could at least make an equally powerful special case for firefighters, for police officers and for emergency workers. We do not want them negotiating individual contracts when the central element of what the community wants is for them to work together as a team. We do not want them engaging in the normal industrial relations hassle because we want them available, when the emergencies arise, to assist us. And we want them to be well paid because we want them to continue to provide the indispensable services they provide. But they do not constitute a special case under the Workplace Relations Act—only ministers of this government do.

Then we get to the other element of the double standard, which is that this is a collective agreement, common to every minister in exactly the same terms. Some of the terms, I suspect, determined by the tribunal—not covered by this act but determined by the tribunal—would actually not be allowable matters for any other worker to have in their agreement. But let us put that to one side. I suspect the minister would probably intervene to prevent agreements that would include some of these matters. But, dealing with the things that are explicitly covered by this bill, we are saying that it is okay for every member of parliament—and in relation to this bill every minister in this government—to have common terms and conditions to their employment so they all get paid exactly the same and get exactly the same conditions in every way but that it is not okay for ordinary Australian workers to have that. They have to have individual contracts which they negotiate with their employers.

I would like to suggest that maybe the ministers who thought that was such a terrific policy when they all sat around the cabinet table and voted for it should have to front up to the Prime Minister and ask, ‘Who’s prepared to do the most for the least?’ We all know they do not want to do that, because we all know that the member for Wentworth would outbid them all—he would probably pay to do the job, and not everybody could afford to compete with him. But that is what is being asked of every other Australian worker. They have to front up and negotiate how much they are prepared—

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