Steve Gibbons (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In rising to speak to Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and cognate bills I want to take the opportunity to talk about productivity and the role trade unions could, and in some cases do, play in driving productivity gains, because there is nothing in the 2007 budget that will even slightly lift productivity in our workplaces. Last night the government guillotined an important debate on its Work Choices amendments, preventing most of the members from this side of the House from speaking. Obviously, the government is in full panic mode and, rather than face up to a full debate with all members participating, it chose the cowardly path and had its members slime into the chamber and close down the debate. This could have been a productive opportunity for all members to talk about how we might enhance opportunities to drive improvements in productivity. The Howard government has thrown in the towel on productivity and in typical fashion has reverted to the time-honoured Tory tradition of bagging trade unions and blaming the Labor states for its own shortcomings—lack of productivity gains included.

There are numerous acknowledged researchers and authors I could quote regarding the evidence about what is needed to drive productivity growth, not only in Australia but right across the globe. One in particular is Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, who is Professor of Organisational Behaviour in the Graduate School of Management at Stanford University. He is also a visiting professor at Harvard Business School, the London Business School and the Singapore Management School. He has studied business and organisational behaviour for 30 years. He is the author of 11 books on that subject and has taught at executive seminars in 28 countries, including Australia. Professor Pfeffer cites evidence from a five-year detailed study of companies from a diverse range of industries, which indicates consistent productivity gains in the order of 40 per cent by implementing what is known as high-management, high-performance or high-commitment management practices. I will quote what he has to say about trade unions. He says:

Contrary to what many people seem to believe, having a unionized workforce is not antithetical to the implementation of so-called high commitment or high performance work practices—things such as investment in training, working in self-managed teams, longer term time horizons for the employment relationship and more job security, information sharing, and so forth. Rather, the empirical evidence suggests that unionization is positively associated with the implementation of high performance work practices and makes changing to a “high road” management approach more likely and easier. At worst, unions have no effect on the implementation on these practices, but there is almost no evidence to suggest they have a negative effect.

Professor Pfeffer continues:

Thus, ironically unionization may actually lead to higher persistence of high commitment work arrangements because unions act as a countervailing force to short-term pressures from the financial markets and other sources to abandon such arrangements.

In some instances the implementation of aspects of high performance work arrangements may actually be enshrined in the contractual language jointly negotiated between companies and their unions. Donald Petersen, the now-retired CEO of Ford Motor Company who, during the 1980s, implemented total quality management and transformed the culture of Ford, resulting in much better business results, credits his ability to persevere with his change program even when there were setbacks and reversals to the presence of the United Auto Workers Union and to the fact that aspects of the change were embedded in the formal contract.

Professor Pfeffer also highlights the positive impact that nurses unions have on patient care in the United States:

Studies summarized by a report from the Institute of Medicine show that having fewer nurses per patient—a short-term cost cutting tactic embraced by many hospital administrators and political figures but vigorously opposed by nurses’ unions—is associated with higher rates of patient infection, pneumonia, cardiac arrest, and death.   “…. given the clear and well-established relationship between staffing ratios and patient outcomes, nurse organizations were instrumental in preserving practices that the evidence shows produce better patient care.

And there are some other effects of collective bargaining that are particularly important in affecting health care outcomes.  Collective bargaining often institutionalizes and to some extent compels more power sharing and communication between administrators and front-line staff.

…                …              …

These results held after controlling statistically for many other factors that might be associated with unionization. The authors concluded that it was probably the increased power the unionization provided to nurses as well as the increased level of joint decision-making that led to the better patient care results. That same study found that much of the gain disappears when union-management relations are adversarial.

Clearly, many internationally renowned experts have proven that driving down workers’ wages and conditions actually has a negative effect on productivity, yet the Howard government persists in implementing its misguided ideology, with its born-to-rule syndrome, by introducing the most draconian workplace relations system this nation has ever witnessed. The Howard government way is the lazy way. Professor Pfeffer is just one of many internationally renowned experts on workplace relations who have undertaken extensive studies on how workplaces can get significant productivity increases by putting in place innovation, by innovative and cooperative mechanisms through collective bargaining and by involving trade unions in a non-adversarial manner.

With the Work Choices bill and amendments, the Howard government has again proven that it is trapped in a time warp of traditional conservative attitudes to trade unions. It is locked into the lazy, miserable, mean-spirited, conservative philosophy of the born-to-rule elite, and this has the potential to not only severely restrict our growth as a nation but continue the ‘us against them’ dog-eat-dog attitude to workplace relations.

If anyone needs any further proof of this government’s misguided and distorted view of the world, they need look no further than its attitude to Australian trade unions. In the last 12 months, government spokespeople have used the term ‘union bosses’ in a derogatory manner on no fewer than 130 occasions in this parliament. This clearly demonstrates a level of paranoia unprecedented in Australian political history. To borrow a phrase from the Fawlty Towers series, there would be enough material on paranoia in those opposite to fully occupy a three-week psychiatric convention.

The Australian trade union movement has a proud and unprecedented track record of achievement in defending the wellbeing of working Australians. In fact, the Australian trade unions have done far more for Australia’s working families than any conservative government has ever done in our entire history. I am extremely proud of my involvement in and membership of Australia’s trade union movement.

Labor have cautiously welcomed the tax cuts announced in the 2007 budget, but we point out that they were delivered as a result of the Howard government’s status as the highest taxing federal government in Australia’s history. With access to a budget surplus in excess of $15 billion, the Treasurer has finally provided much needed relief for Australia’s low- to middle-income earners. The tax cuts for low- to middle-income earners are most welcome but long overdue. However, the Treasurer’s 12th budget reflects a panic-stricken government desperately trying to bribe its way back into power at the elections later this year. This was a vintage Costello budget containing the usual array of one-off payments specifically targeted and designed to buy votes. But, as always, the value of these payments will be quickly eroded over the coming year by higher prices. The Howard government’s tax take has dramatically increased by almost 40 per cent since the introduction of the GST, resulting in voters now being bribed with their own money.

The announcement of a $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund is also most welcome, especially after the massive cuts in higher education that the Howard government has presided over during its first terms in office. Labor welcome many of the new initiatives—including the solar energy initiatives, the increase in special and intermediate rate war veteran entitlements—but we point out that these are a direct steal from Labor policies that opposition leader Kevin Rudd had already announced.

I want to talk about dental care. There were 6,564 patients from central Victoria who were waiting for public dental treatment in the year 2005-06, with some patients waiting over three years. These are the statistics that apply to all public dental clinics that service the Bendigo federal electorate. State governments have increased spending on public dental services, but the demand has consistently increased since 1996, when the Howard government abolished the former federal Labor government’s Commonwealth dental plan. Despite these appalling figures, the Minister for Health and Ageing, Tony Abbott, has constantly said that the Howard government will not reintroduce a Commonwealth dental scheme. The increase for funding for dental care announced in the budget only provides for people with chronic illnesses as a result of poor dental health.

Labor leader Kevin Rudd has committed Labor to re-establishing a Commonwealth dental scheme similar to the Hawke-Keating government scheme abolished by the Howard government in 1996. Our 2004 election commitment for establishing a Commonwealth dental program was costed at around $300 million over four years. Now with this new commitment it is expected to cost well in excess of the 2004 figure and will target low-income and working Australians by cooperating with the state governments.

Instead of following Labor’s lead in re-establishing this fund, the Howard government has chosen only to treat those who have chronic illnesses as a result of their dental problems. Labor’s approach will be to treat people’s dental problems before they suffer chronic illnesses. Health minister Tony Abbott continues to blame the state governments by deliberately stating that the states have reduced expenditure on dental services, when the truth is that they have actually increased expenditure from $327 million per year in 2004 to $503 million in 2005.Victoria spends the second highest amount on public dental services of all Australian states, running a close second to Queensland.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report released in March 2007 by health minister Tony Abbott shows that one in five Australians are forgoing recommended dental treatment because they are unable to afford it. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report also shows the government’s failure to ensure that all Australians have access to high-quality dental care. The report stated that 20.6 per cent of the Australian population aged 15 years or more had forgone recommended dental treatment due to the cost in the last 12 months. The report notes that this indicates the likelihood of ongoing dental damage caused by untreated disease due to financial barriers to accessing dental care. Over 40 per cent of the Australian population aged 15 or over had not visited a dentist in the last 12 months, 11.8 per cent of Australian adults over 15 had not visited a dentist within the last five years and 17.4 per cent of the Australian population aged 15 or more had avoided certain foods because of problems with their teeth during the last 12 months.

Uninsured people are 1.6 times more likely to have untreated dental decay than insured people and they are three times more likely to have not visited their dentist in the last five years. Among those in the 25 to 34 age group the proportion with dental insurance reduced by 10 percentage points between 1987-88 and 2004-06, and for adults in the 35 to 44 age group coverage has reduced by eight percentage points.

I will go through the actual list of waiting times for dental clinic services in the electorate of Bendigo. For example, in Bendigo in the year 2005 there were 1,946 people waiting up to three years for general care and there were 413 people waiting for denture care. In Hepburn-Creswick, which services my electorate, there were 224 people waiting for general care and 59 for denture care. In the Daylesford area there were 640 people waiting for general care and 73 waiting for denture care. In Maryborough 517 people have been waiting up to three years for general care and 157 for dentures. Of course in Sunbury, which services the Kyneton part of my electorate, there were 2,316 people waiting up to three years for general care and 219 waiting for dentures.

The 2007 budget so-called new assistance package for child care was in fact announced prior to the 2004 election, and many Australian families have been struggling while being forced to wait for the approach of yet another federal election for this promise to be delivered.

New data released by the Department of Health and Ageing shows health costs continue to rise dramatically under the Howard government, and the average out-of-pocket cost of a visit to a GP has increased by 12 per cent since the December quarter last year, from $16.98 to $18.99. The average cost of a visit to a specialist has increased by 20 per cent, from $33.56 to $40.10, and the average cost of obstetric services has increased by a massive 27.5 per cent, from $62.34 to $79.51. The cost of visiting the doctor has more than doubled during the life of the Howard government, as a graph that I have seen recently illustrated. The Howard government is failing to control spiralling health costs, and with the cost of living rising, working families are getting hit for six from every direction.

There are some good measures in this budget, which I have acknowledged, but we do see it as a wasted opportunity to deal with things like how we go about increasing productivity and a whole range of other measures. This budget could have presented a great opportunity to do something very worthwhile for this nation but, unfortunately, the government has chosen to play the political game and introduce a budget which is designed to do nothing more than try and get it re-elected. I think it should be condemned for that.

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