Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement) Share this | Hansard source

There is no fabrication at all. Person after person after person experienced that outcome under Work Choices. The claim by the former workplace relations minister, the member for North Sydney, that members of the former Howard government cabinet did not understand this reality is simply not credible. There is certainly no doubt in my experience that the Prime Minister, at the time of the formulation of the Work Choices legislation, understood perfectly well what it was going to involve, as I had the opportunity to discuss it with him in my former role. There is no doubt that there was plenty of evidence of the disadvantage too, once the Work Choices legislation was introduced, from which members of the former Howard government could have learnt. There was evidence such as the experience of 17-year-old Renee Pitman, from Carseldine in Queensland, who was given an AWA individual contract that took away her penalty rates and overtime. She worked Anzac Day, Boxing Day and the Easter break at a flat rate. A woman from Coffs Harbour named Annette Harris, who worked at the time for Spotlight, lost penalty rates approximating earnings in the order of $90 a week in return for a 2c an hour increase. It is important to note, too, that following a lot of representation on behalf of the employees of Spotlight, Spotlight has now negotiated a collective agreement with the union on behalf of employees to remedy the shortfalls and the approach that they had previously taken using AWAs.

Although the impact of AWAs was felt by many groups across the workforce, the harshest impact—as usual with these things—was on the lowest paid, who are always the most vulnerable to such pressure in the workplace. Despite the perception that AWAs are most prevalent in the mining industry, in fact the majority of AWAs have been made within the areas of low-paid employment. Such people include many women, young people and workers of a non-English-speaking background, and this is the reason that AWAs have also had a negative impact on equal pay for women.

This bill is important in addressing the patent unfairness of the industrial relations system of the former Howard government. The bill amends the Workplace Relations Act 1996 to make a number of changes to the framework for workplace agreements and to enable the process of award modernisation to commence. The amendments will give effect to key government election commitments and begin the transition to a new workplace relations system. Some of the features of the bill include the prevention of the making of new AWAs from the date of commencement of the bill—AWAs made and lodged before the commencement date will continue to operate until terminated or replaced. The bill also will establish a new individual statutory agreement, called the individual transitional employment agreement, for limited use during the transition period only. The bill also implements a genuine no disadvantage test against the safety net for all workplace agreement making, preventing the rip-offs which were a feature of the Work Choices legislation. Importantly, rather than having only five minimum conditions as provided by Work Choices, the bill also provides that, if an existing AWA is terminated, an employee can be covered by a collective agreement at the workplace, if there is one, or alternatively by the relevant safety net award. Where a collective agreement is terminated the employees will be entitled to the award safety net. The bill also allows pre-Work Choices certified agreements to be varied and extended by agreement so the parties to those agreements can avoid any uncertainty created by a double transition to the new system that Labor will introduce. Importantly, the bill also establishes the award modernisation process to create new modern awards as a safety net by 31 December 2009.

The award modernisation process is extremely important and will get underway once the passage of this bill takes place. It will also take into account the responsibility that will have to be discharged by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and will have to take into account, in modernising awards, the new National Employment standards, because on and from 1 January 2010 Labor’s new National Employment Standards and modern, simple awards will be in operation and there will be not be, from that point in time, any need for individual statutory employment agreements.

The new National Employment Standards include hours of work and reasonable overtime; parental leave, with 12 months unpaid; flexible work for parents; annual leave of four weeks; personal, carers and compassionate leave totalling 10 days; community service leave; public holidays; information in the workplace with the fair work information statement; notice of termination and redundancy; and long service leave. And nothing will deter us from bringing this about. Lastly, the bill will amend the Skilling Australia’s Workforce Act to remove provisions which made funding to TAFE institutions conditional on offering AWAs—and that is a very important measure in the bill.

The changes to the industrial relations system that I have adverted to will not harm the economy. They will simply begin the process of ensuring that there is a fairer set of rights and responsibilities for employees and employers in the workplace. Indeed, there are two important economic reforms inherent in Labor’s policy. Firstly, there is the movement towards a national industrial relations system, which has become possible due to the judgement of the High Court in the Work Choices case. This judgement has extensively redefined the power of this parliament to directly legislate in relation to employment matters by enabling the parliament to rely upon the corporations head of power of the Constitution. Historically, of course, it had been believed that the parliament could only legislate in relation to industrial relations by relying upon the conciliation and arbitration power. This constitutional footing was the basis for a century of somewhat arcane procedures surrounding the making of awards and agreements in the federal system, such as the necessity to create paper based interstate industrial disputes with wide ambit, considerations about the genuineness of paper disputes and that matters contained in awards and agreements related to a strictly narrow definition of the employment relationship. As a former industrial advocate and practitioner, I am pleased that these artificial constraints have been jettisoned by the High Court.

The award modernisation process established by this bill means that awards will be able to operate in a manner akin to legislated minimum standards but will be able to be varied in a flexible way by the responsible authorities and they will bind constitutional employers and their employees. It is to be hoped, to achieve truly comprehensive reform, that the state governments which have not already done so will cooperate as closely as possible with the Rudd government to ensure that all private sector employment is regulated in a national system, because this would be a genuinely significant economic reform, vastly simplifying the multijurisdictional industrial relations environment we have had for the past 100 years.

The second key economic reform represented by this bill is its emphasis upon decentralised workplace collective bargaining. The experience from the decentralisation of the industrial relations system in 1993-94 enacted by the Keating government is that decentralised workplace bargaining, where it is collectively conducted at the workplace, is a key driver of productivity growth—and this country has experienced a decline in productivity growth, with virtually negligible growth in the last quarter of 2007. Continuing to focus the industrial relations system on decentralised workplace bargaining which is collectively conducted, which respects the legitimate rights of employees to sit at the table with their employer and which respects the legitimate commercial interests of employers in that bargaining process is fundamental to productivity growth in the future for this country.

The economic arguments which the coalition has attempted to mount against Labor’s industrial relations changes are nonsense. In a decentralised collective workplace bargaining system, one which respects the interests of employers and employees, we will see improved productivity. The changes will not lead to inflationary wage pressures, and in fact the arguments that have been mounted are somewhat nonsensical. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the member for Curtin, has argued that the reforms will drive up inflation by increasing union power—and we heard more about that a moment ago—making it easier for workers to secure big pay increases. That is drivel and nonsense, and that line of argument demonstrates a lack of understanding of the basic economic conditions in which the industrial relations system operates and the nature of workplace-level bargaining.

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