Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Let us go back in history here. We have heard a lot this sitting week about how much stead the Labor Party puts in what is said before an election and what happens after an election. The year: 2007. The place: Australia. The speaker: Kevin Rudd. 'I am an economic conservative. We will maintain tight fiscal policy and commit to budget surpluses over the forward estimates.' 'This reckless spending must stop.' 'I am Howard lite.' 'We will maintain Australia's border integrity.' 'We will not change the right of entry provisions as they currently stand.' Honestly, the only thing he got a little bit right was the third one—the 'Howard lite' comment. He was so light he floated on helium and had the funny voice to go with it. Like a schooner glass full of froth, he had no substance.

The GFC hit Australia and Labor responded by pump-priming the economy with cash. Along the way, they rolled back the right-of-entry provisions for their union mates. So, while we had the advantage of cash in the bank and the best set of books any government in the Western world had to face such a challenge, Labor's actions slowed productivity on purpose by allowing the union movement almost unfettered access to work sites. I will always remember Marius Kloppers's words soon after Olympic Dam was put back on the shelf. He said at the time: 'Australia used to be a low-cost high-productivity place to do business. Today, Australia is a high-cost low-productivity place to do business.'

In my electorate, the issue is confidence. My people want to get and keep a good paying job. That is what all Australians want. That is what we are trying to fix here. Not all the problems we have at present can be laid at the feet of the union movement or the right of entry provisions. But, when we are seeing our manufacturing jobs move overseas, productivity must be addressed.

I think it was the Higgins review in 1908 or 1909 which made the decision for Australians that we would be a high-wage nation, regardless of the profitability of the employer. I have always been fine with us being a high-wage country if you are very productive and you have low input costs. If you remove, however, two of those, you have a recipe for unemployment. The current national rate is about 6.4 per cent and that should worry everyone in this place. In my electorate, it is worse than that, and particularly for those people who do not have much experience and for those who have loads of experience. The young and the old always cop it first when things start to go wrong, and this has been the same throughout history.

What we must do is work as hard as we can to instil the confidence to employ and hire. Being a government living within its means is a great start, but it is only a start. The major changes we hope to provide, from my perspective, are as follows. The coalition policy commitment will ensure that the Fair Work laws will provide a safety net for workers while helping business grow. This will help deliver that confidence to industry. That in turn will create new jobs and deliver real wage growth.

Changing the right of entry laws will allow employers to run a business without disruption while balancing the rights of employees at the same time. Please remember that 87 per cent of the workforce are not union members. The changes we are implementing will assist to stop union workplace harassment. Labor's own Fair Work Review Panel, when Labor were in power, noted that the Pluto LNG project received over 200 right of entry visits in just three months. BHP Billiton's Worsley Alumina plant received 180 visits in a single year. What do they have in common? They are remote places of work.

Our policy changes will mean that employers in remote area worksites do not have to pay for transport and accommodation for union officials to visit worksites. We have all heard the stories of unions taking advantage of this loophole, taking 'helicopter joy-rides', and an unnecessarily high number of visits to remote worksites, as previously stated.

A recent case featuring CFMEU National President Joe McDonald has underlined the urgent need for these reforms. In the most recent case, where Mr McDonald and the CFMEU were fined $193,600, he ignored constant requests to leave a site owned by Citic Pacific's Sino Iron Ore in Western Australia. When asked to leave the site because he didn't have a right-of-entry permit, Mr McDonald said:

I haven't had one for seven years, and that hasn't … stopped me.

We will also repeal the previous government's amendments, made in 2013, that expanded union right of entry even further by allowing for uninvited 'lunch room invasions'. Those amendments give unions the right to insist on addressing workers in their lunch rooms, even when the workers have not requested their presence and are not union members. This practice is just unfair and predatory. It is a shame that employees' rights to be fairly represented have turned into what looks like a case of union bullying and harassment in the workplace.

It is at the stage where the unions are now causing a slowdown on productivity across so many sectors in our economy. Again, we are facing international challenges for our jobs. Being productive must be the core element of all employment. Our changes will encourage business productivity and help to deliver our government's promise to create one million new jobs over the next five years. This will drive prosperity in a strong economy to provide more job security and ensure sustainable wage increases. Surely that is what a government must do. A government must set the stage for employers to employ and for employees to prosper through hard work.

Another important change to the legislation is the 'strike first, talk later' loophole. This poor piece of legislation allows unions and workers to strike before negotiations have even started. Labor refused to address this while they were in government, again pandering to the needs and wants of the union movement. Labor failed Australian business and they failed their members by not fighting to keep jobs here through being productive and proud of the work they were doing. Our changes will ensure protections are in place to avoid strike action unless negotiations have commenced.

One of the things that have always bugged the living daylights out of me is the greenfield agreements struck before any work can commence between aggressive unions and submissive employers. This bill will remove the veto power given to unions. Agreements can be delivered in good faith and in a reasonable time frame. Surely that is good for Australia. Employers will have the option of taking a proposed greenfield agreement to the Fair Work Commission after three months of negotiations if the agreement has not been reached. The former government's Fair Work review noted these practices 'potentially threaten future investment and major prospects in Australia'. Currently, billions of dollars' worth of new projects have been put on hold because of these provisions. I simply cannot understand a system where someone who wants to spend billions of dollars building something has to go cap in hand and negotiate with an organisation which has absolutely no skin in the game.

This bill sends a loud and clear message to the rest of the world that Australia is open for business. Is all of this just coalition rhetoric? I think not. Former Labor minister Martin Ferguson—a man who everyone in this place should respect—commented back in February this year that he backed these changes to Fair Work. Mr Ferguson said that 23 years of continual growth was threatened and that he was pleased that some of the modest changes were being introduced. I quote from The Ageon 27 February 2014, where he said:

High labour costs and low productivity are an unsustainable mix … therefore elements of Fair Work must be looked at.

Just to recap: in 2007, the Labor Party promised on multiple occasions that there would be no changes to the union right-of-entry laws. In a press conference on 28 August 2007, the deputy opposition leader, Julia Gillard, said:

We will make sure that current right of entry provisions stay. We understand that entering on the premises of an employer needs to happen in an orderly way. We will keep the right of entry provisions.

Under the current Fair Work provisions, unions have been able to gain entry to workplaces even if they are not a party to the award or agreement that applies to that business and where they have no members. Surely that is just wrong. Labor's changes gave unions privileged entry rights to any workplace as long they have 'potential members'. This is the case even where enterprise agreements are made with other unions and directly with employees. We are not trying to stop them having access. We just wanted to make it fair. There will be no requirement for an employee who has requested a union presence to even be identified. There will be measures to ensure that employees can remain anonymous if they wish. If a union is asked by an employer for proof of an invitation to the workplace and the employee wishes to remain anonymous a union will be able to apply to the Fair Work Commission for an invitation certificate. The Fair Work Commission must issue the certificate if it is satisfied that an employee who the union is entitled to represent has invited a union representative to his or her workplace for the purpose of holding discussions.

The amendment will provide that the Fair Work Commission will be required to take into account the combined impacts of visits by all unions to the workplace. This will ensure that employers have recourse in the event that combined impacts of visits by a number of unions is resulting in excessive disruptions.

These changes are about balance. This bill is about fairness, and it is all about ensuring that employers can go about their business without undue and unnecessary disruption, while retaining the capacity for employees to have representation in the workplace. We want the workplace to be a productive workplace.

I have worked in banking, debt collection, auctioneering, finance and real estate. All I ever wanted was to do my job, be proud of what I did, and get paid a fair wage for it. With that in mind, I support the individual flexibility agreements or IFAs. They were introduced by Labor with the intention of enabling workers and their employers to mutually agree on conditions that suit their needs. IFAs will be an important option to enable employees to manage their child care or other caring arrangements, or to spend time with their families or on other commitments. I am proud to be the member for Herbert in an Abbott government. We are a coalition looking to expand our workplaces and get jobs created by business.

There is much work to be done. I want the tender process worked on to ensure that taxpayers get real value for the work carried out, and not just inflated prices to cover things which produce no results. I want taxpayer funds expended in my seat and throughout my region to wash through our entire economy, and not just through a couple of firms lucky enough to win a government tender.

There is much work to be done here, and we had better get to it. My city of Townsville wants a bright future. We are a government which talks about developing the north, and that is a key ingredient in my city's future, but to make it happen we have to be as flexible as possible to ensure that we are able to work for a competitive price. We have to meet our markets; it is that simple.

I have said it before and I will say it again: I am always happy to have Australia as a high-wage nation. But to do that we—governments, business owners and employees—have to do everything in our power to ensure that our input costs are as low as possible and that we are as productive as possible. We can compete in the 21st century. We are open for business. In this government we just have to deliver for all Australians.

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