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

It is not unusual to find this government in breach of international laws that it has signed up to. We see it all the time when it comes to the treatment of people who come here seeking our help as refugees or asylum seekers. And we find it repeatedly in respect of industrial law as well. This government steps in and regulates the affairs of workers and their unions in a way that most other countries don't. And this government does not do that with companies either. We know why this government would want to do that. It is very obvious. It has been clear from the beginning that the government is engaged in a political battle with the opposition. And the government sees that the opposition gets a bit of a leg up from unions, so it uses its power to step in and say: 'We're going to see what we can do to fix that, to change the outcome of future elections by nobbling unions and stopping them from doing their job.' The government is pretty explicit about all that. But it then has the gall to come in here and say, 'We want to ensure integrity, and we're going to dress up our attack on the unions as being part of that.'

If the government really wanted to ensure integrity in Australia, we would have a federal anticorruption watchdog by now. People want it. The Greens have been pushing for it in this place for years. We don't have one because the government is not concern about ensuring integrity across the board. If it were, we would have rules in place that mean politicians and other elected officials such as judges, and high-ranking public servants, would all know that there was a watchdog looking over their behaviour. We could then keep a bit of a straight face when the government says it is concerned about ensuring integrity because the government would have ensured that, at least within the patch that it controlled directly, there was integrity. But we don't have that. Instead, we have allegations of taxpayers' money being misspent on water that wasn't there or billions of dollars being spent as we watch our rivers dry up or ministers seeking meetings and getting briefings about properties that they have an interest in. All of that happens time after time and the government does nothing about it. But, when it comes to working people coming together and organising, then the government jumps on that. It then says: 'No, it's okay; all we're trying to do is level the playing field. All we're trying to do is make sure that we treat unions in the same way that we treat corporations.'

There's a very big difference which the government doesn't seem to understand. For the government, everything is about being run for profit. Companies are run for profit and their directors are obliged by law to act in the best interests of their companies and maximise the amount of money that they make and comply with the law. That is what the Corporations Act requires them to do. Unions are run largely by volunteers because they are about workers coming together to advance their interests. If it were the case that there were somehow some equivalence between corporations and unions, corporations would be run on a not-for-profit basis largely by volunteers, right? That's point 1. Point 1 is to recognise that, when we talk about unions in this country, we are talking about organisations that are largely run—and should be run—by people who work in the industry affected, who've stuck their hands up and said, 'I want to spend my time looking after the people that I work alongside and to do things to advance their common interests, and we want to come together to do that.' That's who sits on union committees of management or boards around the country. Those are the people in the workplace who are sticking up their hands to say, 'Yes, I'll be a delegate,' or 'I'll be a shop steward.' Those are the people who are going to be targeted by this bill.

Again, if there were some equivalence between corporations and unions—which there's not, but let's say there were because that's the government's argument—then the government would be introducing legislation that mirrors this bill. The government would be introducing legislation that would give me, or any other citizen who doesn't like what a particular director is doing, the right to go and take them to court and apply to disqualify them because we have a sufficient interest in doing that, because we think that they are somehow in breach of the law. I tell you what: I look forward to the day when the government says, 'Corporations now have to be run in a way that allows every interested member of the public the right to start taking directors to court and seeking that they lose their jobs.' I'm not sure that the Business Council of Australia has twigged to that yet, if that's what the government has in mind.

But, of course, the government's not going to do that, because this isn't about equivalence. This is about a particular set of laws that are targeted at one side, not the other. If the government is serious about equivalence between corporations and unions, it may come as a shock to all of those proprietary limited companies around Australia that now they are going to be required to open their books and start publishing their accounts on the website in the way that unions have to and that all of that's now going to have to be made publicly available in a way it hasn't been before. But, best of all, if there is going to be equivalence, as the government has said, then all corporations are now going to be governed by committees of management where everyone can just go and join a corporation and then decide to run and vote for who gets to be in charge and who gets to be the managing director. Apparently, I can go and stand as the managing director of BHP. If the government is right that there's going to be an equivalence between corporations and unions, every interested member of the public can now go out and join a company, if it's in their area, start running for positions and be the director or the vice-president. It is going to be a very interesting world when the government legislates for unions and corporations to be exactly the same.

But, of course, that's not going to happen, because they are very different organisations. It's like saying a football club is the same as a company. It is not. They are groups of people who come together for very different purposes. One is about making a profit—because that's what the law says—and the other is about coming together to look after their interests. That's why there have been separate systems of regulation.

What will this new law mean for those people, for those largely volunteers, who come together to form unions to act in their own interests? It will mean that—unlike with corporations—a minister or, as I said, a person with sufficient interest, can now say, 'I don't think you're complying with the law; I'm going to go to court to make you prove that you're entitled to be there.' This, as the previous speaker said, is something that can now be incredibly easily weaponised. It means that, if someone comes into a workplace and says, 'I think you're underpaying; I want to come in and check whether or not you are paying people properly', there's nothing stopping that employer from saying: 'That person is being a bit too pesky and is asking to see my wage records. I reckon they might have fallen foul of this legislation, so I'm going to bring a case that they're no longer entitled to be a union official and I'll tie them up in court. I have more resources than them so I'll take them to court.' That's how this could be weaponised.

For people who choose to be union officials or union employees, the threshold as to whether they can keep their job is now going to be very different to what it is for company directors. One of the provisions, for example, relates to people who've fallen foul of offences where is there is a penalty of five years or more. They don't have to have spent five years in jail; that's just what has to be what goes along with the offence. So if you've driven without a licence or been involved in a car accident or infringed some part of some rule that means that you are now exposed to that—it could have absolutely nothing to do with your ability to be a good union official, and it may be that the magistrate or the judge in that case didn't impose a custodial sentence on you—you'd still find yourself falling foul of this law. That doesn't happen for company directors. That's just going to happen for people who are in unions.

It's also been said, 'This is going to ensure compliance with our industrial laws; it's going to ensure that people comply with them.' At the start, I mentioned international law. Australia has been routinely singled out by the UN's International Labour Organization for having laws about industrial action and about bargaining that do not comply with international laws. What does that mean? It means that, if you are a worker in this country and you want to take action to increase your wages, you have to jump through a series of hoops here and fill out forms and potentially go to the Fair Work Commission in a way that you don't have to in other places; in a way that has been described by the UN's body as being unduly restrictive and impinging on international conventions—and it does. We do things that other countries don't ask people to do.

If there's an issue that arises at work—like someone's just got sacked because they spoke up and asked for higher wages or there's an issue where you think, 'Something's just not right and I'm not coming back into the workplace until it's fixed'—and you walk out or half-a-dozen nurses say, 'I'm sorry; we're walking off the job until this problem is fixed,' that is potentially unlawful industrial action. If you've taken industrial action and you've filed the paperwork and it turns out that there is an error in your paperwork, that is potentially unlawful industrial action. Also, under this legislation, all of that could now be the grounds for getting rid of the union itself, for cancelling the registration of the union itself.

The legislation has words in it that, on some reading, might—if you're not familiar with this area—seem to be reasonable. On page 19 of the bill, proposed section 28G subsection (ii) says—and I am paraphrasing: 'This subsection covers industrial action other than protected industrial action that had or is likely to have a substantial adverse effect on the welfare of the community or part of the community.' You might think, 'Well, what could be objectionable about that?' If you go back and read the decisions of how words like this have been interpreted by the Fair Work Commission, a bunch of bus drivers went on strike and it was found that their action impacted on the welfare of the community because people couldn't catch buses. That is how low the threshold is now for this kind of provision.

You could have a situation where people are just taking legitimate industrial action that in most other countries would be protected in their law and that is protected in international law just because they're after a pay rise or because they're wanting to improve a condition at work. That is now, under this, potential grounds not just for making sure that someone, an official, can't be there anymore but for deregistering the union.

These are massive, broad powers being given not just to the Fair Work Commission but to the minister and interested parties to be able to bring cases to jump over a very low bar that has massive consequences, and that is why there is a great deal of concern about this legislation. The government dresses it up by using Orwellian language about ensuring integrity. They ignore underpayments, they ignore wage theft when it happens elsewhere and they ignore a lack of integrity amongst their own ministers; they ignore all of that. They're interested in only one particular side of the political fence and they're interested only in coming after workers. They're not going to touch employers or politicians who do all of those things, so they leave all of that alone.

But when you delve into the detail of this bill, behind this name, which sounds like it might be alright 'ensuring integrity', if you know a little about this area of the law, this bill will mean that people who are doing nothing more than going about their job will now be at risk of having cases brought against them. Whole unions could face deregistration for actions that in most other countries would be legal and that should be legal under Australian law except that this government has made them illegal. For that reason this bill cannot be supported.

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