Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

This motion to disallow the Workplace Relations Amendment Regulations 2007 (No. 4) and the Workplace Relations (Registration and Accountability of Organisations) Amendment Regulations 2007 (No. 1) is an ugly example of the payback for which the Labor Party is renowned. The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Deputy Prime Minister threatened business last year with injury if they dared enter into the industrial relations debate. Retribution and payback is the mantra of the Labor Party and the mantra of the unions. Why would a government seek at this time in the national debates on the national issues to make as a priority of government business the removal of the right of a branch of a national union to be registered in its own right because that is what its individual members wanted? Why would a government take away the right and the choice of an organisation to be registered federally? What would possess a government to make this a priority? This disallowance motion is a striking example of how the Rudd government will continue to be the quiet deceivers. The minister pretends to consult with business and the broader community, but her modus operandi is straight from the Graham Richardson play book Whatever it Takes: whatever it takes to give the unions the payback that they seek for funding the Labor Party’s election in the last election. They provided $30 million of funding to get the Rudd government elected—and it is payback time. The union bosses want to see some value for their money, so the first people they pick on happen to be a branch of a union that sought federal registration. What a crime! Fancy wanting to act in accordance with the wishes of your members!

The Labor Party claim today to be a party of fairness and choice and freedom of association, and that they are going to stand up to union control. That is not the Labor Party. They do not believe in those words; they only adopted those words because they were the words of the Liberal Party. They knew those words were popular with the Australian public. They knew that they represented the aspirations and hopes of the Australian people, so they adopted that rhetoric. The defining characteristic of the Rudd Labor government will be the fact that they do not believe in the words and the rhetoric they now espouse. Their lack of belief will be their defining characteristic and Labor will revert to type.

In today’s example of the Australian Nursing Federation, Industrial Union of Workers Perth, an organisation sought to strike out on an independent course. They wanted to break free from the iron grip of the faceless union bosses on the east coast. Western Australian nurses were unhappy with the heavy-handed tactics of the head office of the nurses federation. They were particularly unhappy in relation to the campaign against Australian workplace agreements. The Australian Financial Review at the time pointed out the view of the Western Australian branch. The chief executive, Mr Olson, said the new regulations—that is, the ability to be registered federally:

... removed an insurmountable hurdle for us to try to achieve federal registration.

He said:

We want to have the autonomy to represent our members’ interests.

And that is what the Labor Party is denying them today. It is denying the Western Australian branch the autonomy to represent their members’ interests. As the Financial Review pointed out:

The move is a blow to the union movement, because the WA branch opposed the use of members’ funds for advertising supporting Labor’s plan to scrap Work Choices.

So as soon as somebody speaks out against the Labor and union campaign, it is payback time. It is retribution. It is the old mantra: retribution and payback.

The Western Australian branch of the federation is in fact one of the few unions—probably the only union—in the country to actually increase its membership. Members might not be aware of the extent of the decline in union membership in this country. It is at an all-time low, with only 15 per cent of the private sector workforce being union members—fewer than four out of five workers in the private sector choose to join a union. In fact, in the period August 2005 to August 2006 there was a decrease of over 125,900 members in unions across Australia. In just one 12-month period there was a decrease of 125,900 union members. But, of course, the number of employees in Australia increased over the same period—there was an increase of 250,300 employees. So, while there are more employees in the workplace than ever before, the number of union members is decreasing. Between August 2005 and August 2006 union density—the number of union members—decreased amongst both males and females; decreased in both the public sector and the private sector—in the public sector down from 47 per cent to 42 per cent, in the private sector from 16.7 per cent to 15.5 per cent; decreased amongst both workers with leave entitlements and workers without leave entitlements; decreased amongst both full-time workers and part-time workers; and decreased in every state and territory except Tasmania and the Northern Territory. The absolute number of union members decreased in every cohort, with Tasmania and the Northern Territory being the only exceptions.

So you have a union branch—the Nursing Federation of Western Australia—actually increasing its membership, obviously due to the fact that they were providing members with the services they wanted. They were listening to their members and acting in accordance with their members’ wishes, and their members did not want their membership fees going to fund the misleading Your Rights at Work campaign. They did not want to spend that money that way. They, in fact, supported Australian workplace agreements, as is their right, and yet now they are being punished for going against the union heavies.

Cognisant of the failure of the union head office to deliver for the nurses across Australia, the Western Australian branch sought federal registration so they could be an entity in their own right, and this was granted in September last year. The 15,000 members of the Western Australian branch of the Nursing Federation did not want to be subject to the dictates of head office, forced to pay fees for campaigns that they did not believe in and that they did not support. The Western Australian nurses did not support the misleading union scare campaign against Howard government workplace reforms, so should they now be denied the right to say where their membership fees will go? Are they to be denied the right to have their own voice, denied the right to speak up and oppose what they do not believe in?

The Western Australian nurses, like many other Western Australians, understood the many benefits that had come from industrial relations reforms. Those members, like other Western Australians, remembered the bad old days when the unions were in charge of workplaces in Western Australia. Those nurses, like other Western Australians, remembered the bad old days when unions would bring workplaces to their knees. They remember the seventies and eighties in the Pilbara, when there was a strike every three days. One iron ore site had a strike every three days—over 157 strikes in one year at one site. The mining industry was almost brought to its knees in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s by the actions of the unions, and the Western Australian nurses remember how industrial relations reforms, including the right to enter into an individual statutory agreement, kept the unions at bay. Whether they used AWAs or did not use AWAs, the mere presence of them kept the unions at bay. If the unions made extreme demands, an employer could say, ‘We have an option to put people on individual statutory agreements,’ and all of a sudden the unions would back off. They would start talking about productivity and how they could work with the employers, and employees could go through a period of industrial harmony. In fact, in Western Australia we have had one of the longest periods of industrial harmony in the state’s history. Australia has now experienced one of the longest periods of industrial harmony in over a hundred years.

Why would the Western Australian nurses want to be part of a campaign that rolled back the kinds of reforms that have enabled Western Australia to be a booming economy, taking advantage of the extraordinary growth in the mining sector? If we had not had workplace reforms in Western Australia, the mining boom would have passed us by, because our workplaces would not have been able to guarantee supply of product and guarantee labour supply to the emerging markets of China and India. The Rudd government dismisses the mining boom as just a happy coincidence, but had we not had in place a deregulated workplace and the kind of industrial relations reforms that we have witnessed over the last decade the mining boom would have passed us by. There would have been other markets in which Chinese, Indian and Japanese buyers could seek their products.

The nurses in Western Australia see the benefit of industrial harmony and they chose not to be part of a misleading advertising campaign. They are now being punished for that. This motion to disallow Workplace Relations Amendment Regulations 2007 (No. 4) and Workplace Relations (Registration and Accountability of Organisations) Amendment Regulations 2007 (No. 1) is tragic not only for individual nurses in Western Australia but for unions and union membership across the country. At a time when state registered unions in Australia are attempting to maintain their relevance and when they should be trying to improve their services and their capacity to effectively represent their members, we have got the Deputy Prime Minister seeking to block the path for state registered unions to be part of the government’s new workplace relations system. They are trying to block out unions who do not toe the Labor Party line. The Western Australian nurses union, on any measure, could only be described as a highly effective union which, over the years, has represented its members and its members’ interests—and it wanted to continue to do that unfettered by the ‘command central’ tactics of federal union control.

Today’s efforts by the Deputy Prime Minister to disallow these regulations have placed an insurmountable hurdle in front of state registered unions wanting to achieve federal registration. Labor is, in effect, locking out state unions from the new workplace relations system and blocking them from representing their membership. This is a taste of what is to come: unions dictating Labor Party policy, unions thumbing their noses at calls for wage restraint, unions thumbing their noses at basic freedoms and a right to choose—and all channelled through the Labor Party as government policy. The Labor Party should be condemned for this disallowance motion. It is taking away the right of a state based entity to register federally and be part of the new workplace relations system and taking away the right of a union to effectively represent its members. Shame on the Labor Party. It is a tragic day for unions, employees and employers across this country.

Question put:

That the motion (Ms Gillard’s) be agreed to.

See this speech in context