Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

If this government were serious about ensuring integrity, as it professes to be by bringing forward a bill with this name—the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2017—we would have a national independent commission against corruption that would be able to look without fear or favour at wrongdoing by companies, including some of the biggest companies in Australia, by unions, by public servants and by politicians. If the government were serious about it, they would give an organisation that had the confidence of the Australian people the legislation and the power and the resources it needed to go and look behind every closed door and to lift up every rock to see what was lurking there. If the government were prepared to do that, you might have some faith that, when they bring legislation forward that they say is about accountability, they might mean it.

If ever you want to know why we need a national independent commission against corruption that can look without fear or favour, you only need to look at allegations that were made a little while ago but that were aired again today in question time that we had a former minister in this place taking up a job as the head of a lobby group while he was still sitting here drawing a parliamentary salary and then going out and lobbying to defeat one of the government's bills. If that doesn't raise question marks for people in this place, then I don't know what does, because it raises question marks for the public.

When you look at what a corruption commission has done in places like New South Wales, where people on the Labor and Liberal sides of the political fence have been held to account and prosecuted and sentenced where they have done the wrong thing, you can see the effectiveness of it and why people want it. You ask yourself: is it really the case that there's nothing going on at the national level, or is it the case that we just haven't had a watchdog that's been able to come in and find out whether it is going on? So, if the government wants to ensure integrity, come and talk to the Greens about establishing a national independent commission against corruption, a national watchdog, and we'll have that conversation. We have a bill in parliament that we've prosecuted over many years, and so far it's failed to get support from either Labor or Liberal. If there is this great new-found concern about integrity, let's make sure everyone across the board—whether a union or an employer, whether a politician or a judge—is able to be held to account. But, of course, the government is not interested in that. So they bring forward a bill that they call one thing but that is really about doing another thing. You only have to listen to all the speeches from the government and their continued references to the Leader of the Opposition to understand that this is just a nakedly political attack. This is about Liberal beating up on Labor rather than about doing anything to improve democracy in Australia or to improve integrity or accountability.

When you delve into the detail of some of the provisions in this bill, you understand just how scary it is. For example, imagine if, in your workplace, you thought that someone got sacked because they were standing up for people's rights, or maybe you thought they got sacked because they were a woman and you had a discriminatory boss. Let's say everyone in the workplace then decided: 'We're not going to stand for this. We're going outside and we're not coming back in until this issue is resolved.' Those kinds of disputes happen every day in Australia. We've got the Fair Work Commission and the Industrial Relations Commission, which are meant to be charged with resolving those disputes. They might say, 'No, you can't walk out,' or, 'Yes, something's happened that's bad there,' and they are meant to be able to fix it. They don't have the powers they need to have, but let's put that to one side. Under the bill that's being put forward, if you've done that then your union can be deregistered, can be wound up, can be liquidated. If you take industrial action that's not sanctioned under this bill by law—if you stage a walkout because you are worried about someone being sacked or you want to improve conditions at work, and you are back in again the next day when a deal is done—within a very narrow period of time, you expose your union to being deregistered.

This is an attack on people's right to come together and organise in a way that they see fit. We already have bodies that regulate what happens if someone takes so-called unlawful industrial action, bearing in mind that Australia's laws have been criticised many times by the International Labour Organization for putting restrictions on people's right to bargain. It's much, much harder in Australia to exercise your right to bargain than it is in many other countries. But putting that all aside, we already have a body that deals with all of that. And now, under this bill, if you do something like that—bang!—your whole union could be gone. Then the government says, 'No, there are other things in this bill that are important. We want to stop mergers between unions.' Well, why is it this government's job—why is it any government's job—to say that people aren't allowed to organise and choose what union they want to represent them? If they want their union to merge with another union—perhaps because their industry is changing, there is technological change, or they understand it is better to work together—why on earth shouldn't they be allowed to do it? Again, when you look into the provisions in this bill, you understand why.

What the government is saying is, 'Actually, one of the things that has to be taken into account now is what the employer wants—what the employers in the industry want and whether or not it's going to be good for them.' If you just think about that for a moment, that's the equivalent of a company being able to say, 'No, I don't want my workers to be able to join the union they want because then they might come and ask for a pay rise and it will affect my economic interests.' Well, under this legislation, affecting the economic interests of your employer by asking for a pay rise becomes a reason to say that two unions can't join together if they want to. This is not at all about doing anything to do with integrity; it's about increasing the imbalance of power that currently exists and making it even harder for people to stand up for their rights at work.

Imagine if you had two environment groups in this country saying, 'Well, we actually think we're going to be better able to tackle pollution if we join up together and work together.' It's the equivalent of saying, 'No, you can't go and do it unless you ask a coal company first.' That's what this law is saying. This law is saying that in civil society in Australia groups can't work together and join together unless the people on the other side of the fence approve it first. That is astounding. Imagine if it was the other way around. Imagine if two companies couldn't merge, or one company couldn't sell themselves to the other company without the union agreeing. Imagine if that was the case. The government would have kittens! The government would tell us it's the worst thing they've ever seen. But they're prepared to do it the other way around because it's not about evenhandedness and integrity; it's about tipping the playing field in favour of one side over the other.

Then the government comes along and says that this is partly about putting unions on the same footing as corporations. I tell you what: when it comes to the day that every corporation has to publish its full accounts on websites, including private corporations, when it comes to the day that people are able to front up and say, 'I want to join that particular corporation and have a vote as to who the managing director should be,' maybe the government might have something going for it. But the government isn't interested in giving people more control over corporations and democratising corporations. No; it's about putting further red tape on people who choose to come together and form unions. There's no public interest or fit-and-proper-person test existing for corporations in the same way as proposed in this bill; it's much, much harsher.

Unfortunately, this probably isn't going to be the last of these bills that the government will drag up, because the government is behind in the polls and has been consistently for some time. It's no surprise, when they preside over a rise in pollution, when they're happy to preside over an economy where wages growth is stagnating and, in some instances, going backwards and when they double wholesale power prices by making sure that no-one understands what the heck is going on in the energy system, they're on the nose. It's no wonder they're on the nose, and what do you do when you're on the nose? You do the favourite thing that conservatives always do, which is to find people to beat up. They've done their best to try to beat up refugees, and they'll continue to do that. They are still saying they want to beat up on people who can't speak English and change the citizenship test. They are on a hiding to nothing with that. What else do they do? We will beat up on unions and beat up on people who are trying to organise at work.

I expect we will probably see a bill like this every week from now until the election, because the government's got nothing better to talk about. At the same time as the Reserve Bank governor says, 'We have a problem, which is that wages aren't growing fast enough in this country,' and at the same time that we hear about how much power bills are going up because the government doesn't have the guts to step in and re-regulate power prices, they are wanting to make it harder for people to organise to exercise their rights at work. If this bill passes, aside from the assault on democracy that it is, it is not going to lift wages; it is going to decrease wages because people will have less bargaining power. They will have less rights at work to negotiate for higher pay or for better wages and conditions, and it will lead to people feeling more insecure.

At the moment, we have a massive problem with rising job insecurity in this country, as well as the declining wages, and people are worried that we are at a tipping point where we are going to leave the country worse off for the next generation than the country that we inherited. For the first time in a very, very long time, we run the risk of leaving the country worse off for young people who are following us than when we inherited it. What is the government's response? It is not to come in and say, 'Let's invest more in education, let's build renewable energy and let's find ways of bringing people together so we can cooperate to make our country better.' No. It is just to pull out the conservative playbook and beat up on refugees, beat up on welfare recipients and now beat up on unions as well.

The Greens won't be having a bar of it. This is a very, very bad bill that is just out-and-out politically motivated. And the government speakers in favour of this bill don't even pretend that it's to do with anything other than beating up on the Leader of the Opposition. You would have thought they might have their speaking notes in order and talk hand on heart about how we need reform in the area. Instead, they all get up one after the other and say it is all about so-and-so getting campaign donations. If you want to fix that, let's reform campaign laws. Right? Let's reform campaign donations. Do you have an appetite for that, government? Do you have an appetite for a national ICAC? Do you have an appetite for getting the money out of politics, full stop? No. Absolutely not. Of course not, because that is not the motivation. They probably would have done better to have gotten their speaking notes in line before they got up on their tirades. But they have. They have belled the cat and made clear that this is all about politics and nothing to do with transparency or integrity. For that reason, this bill should be opposed.

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