Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This bill will remove the capacity for union officials to harass and disrupt businesses, by restricting eligibility for right of entry for discussion. As the minister stated:

A union will only be entitled to enter a workplace for discussion purposes if:

1. they are covered by an enterprise agreement, or

2. they have been invited by a member or employee they are entitled to represent.

The amendments in this bill allow for the Fair Work Commission to take into account the combined impact of visits by all unions to the workplace—a provision aimed at tackling the interruptions caused by excessive visits by multiple unions to a single workplace as they attempt to attract members.

More recent amendments to the Fair Work Act in 2013 by the previous government further increased the burden on employers by requiring them to pay the cost of transport and accommodation of union officials to remote sites, including to offshore projects. The bill will repeal this unnecessary burden and reinstate the previous approach, where union employees were responsible for travel and accommodation costs. That is particularly relevant in a big state like Western Australia, where travel to the north and to a lot of construction sites has an enormous cost. It is unfair that employers should have to pay for people to come to the site who are coming there not to assist the employer but to disrupt them.

Greenfields agreements can be vital to the commencement of major projects, and this bill will ensure that good-faith bargaining requirements are extended to the negotiation of greenfields agreements. The extension of good-faith bargaining requirements will curtail the ability of unions to demand inflated wages and end the effective veto power on agreements that unions have enjoyed since the introduction of the Fair Work Act in 2009. The previous government's fair work review panel noted that, under the current laws, union actions 'potentially threaten future investment in major projects in Australia'. Since 2009, the decline in standards of bargaining conduct and the disruptive tactics employed by unions have delayed the development of major resource projects. These actions deprive the Australian economy of investment and much-needed job creation. Amendments to the greenfields provisions will send a strong message to overseas investors that Australia is once again open for business.

This bill will also remedy the strike first, talk later loophole that emerged under the Fair Work Act—a loophole that Labor never sought to address, despite Kevin Rudd promising prior to the 2007 election that employees 'will not be able to strike unless there has been genuine good faith bargaining'. Working hours lost under the last six years of Labor government peaked in 2012 at 273,200 hours, highlighting the militant approach to the bargaining process employed by unions which was shamefully ignored by Labor.

The effects of unnecessary industrial action are widespread. The recent teachers' strike in Western Australia, a pre-election stunt attended by the opposition leader, did nothing to advance the cause of teachers within the state. Instead, it closed 102 schools for the day, depriving thousands of students—a number of whom reside in my electorate—of an entire day of learning. The presence of the opposition leader at this strike only further demonstrated Labor's acceptance of militant unionism and unnecessary industrial action, despite their negative impact on productivity, the community and the economy. By closing the loophole, the coalition government is taking steps to ensure that a balanced, harmonious and respectful approach is taken to enterprise bargaining.

Further measures in this bill we are discussing will work to provide clarity and certainty to employees around the use of individual flexibility arrangements and implement a number of the recommendations made by the Fair Work review panel that were overlooked by the previous government and the Leader of the Opposition, who was the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations at the time.

I am about to wrap up—and I am sure the new member for Griffith will be happy about that—but, first, I just want to go back to when I was working as an apprentice electrician and met a union shop steward on a building site in Bayswater, Victoria. He came in and asked to see my ticket. I did not have a ticket because apprentices do not have to have a ticket, but he insisted. He wanted to shut the site down. He was red-haired and Scottish, which is highly unusual for a shop steward in Victoria—or anywhere in Australia! He abused me for about 10 minutes because I was not a member of the union. He went to walk off after threatening to close the site down and I informed him that I was an apprentice. That took the wind out of his sails. He was very deflated because he was not able to shut the site down for having someone on the site without a union card. These were the types of tactics we saw back in the 1970s and they are still happening on sites in Western Australia. If you speak to any subcontractors or builders in Western Australia they will tell you that these threatening tactics of the unions are still operating. They are lawless. They are unfair to the people who actually provide the jobs for workers in Western Australia.

This bill will allow employees fair and equitable representation by a union without disadvantaging the employers who create jobs and strengthen our economy. Employers will be able to run their businesses without excessive and unnecessary union interruption. I commend the bill to the House.

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