Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

My questions to the Minister for Industrial Relations relate to the industrial relations working group and any processes and legislation that may arise from that. From the moment that this government was elected, despite not mentioning it during the election campaign and seeking a mandate for it, the Prime Minister has been rabbiting on about industrial relations reform. In a speech to the Western Australian Chamber of Commence in June last year, the Prime Minister talked about unleashing the so-called 'animal spirits' in the economy and trying to find 'impediments to shared gains for employers and employees'. To anyone who is familiar with a Liberal government, when they start talking about these things it is code for one thing, and that is a tax on the rights of the workers and their pay and conditions—and it is usually backed by some employer groups that are keen on ideological lists of reforms.

In that same speech the Prime Minister announced the Porter review. This was a review with no terms of reference, no start date and no reporting date—in other words, no transparency and integrity. Up until the time that it was discarded a year later, the Porter review consisted of or achieved a series of discussion papers drafted by the minister's department in consultation with unknown sources, but certainly not in consultation with any workers or their representatives. The only other action that he took was to dust off a couple of failed pieces of legislation, the Ensuring Integrity Bill and the worker benefit bill. Both of these bills have one aim, and that is to attack the rights of workers in the workplace.

The government says it is all about ensuring integrity for unions, that we are going to smarten up the union movement. But the one thing that they forget is that the average union member in Australia at the moment is typically a female, working in the public sector in a service profession—much like my wife, who is a nurse that works in a public hospital and is a member of the New South Wales Nurses Federation. Those bills were about making it harder for workers like that to get representation in their workplaces and to join unions. So you are making it harder for teachers, for early childhood educators, for public servants and for hospitality and retail workers. These are the workers in Australia that this government was attacking with those two pieces of legislation.

We all know that they have form when it comes to the rights of workers in those industries. We saw what they did with WorkChoices, where people were forced onto individual contracts so that they took home less pay to their families each week. We know that this government supported the cutting of penalty rates. Workers in the hospitality and retail industries take home less pay to their families each week because of this government's support for cuts to penalty rates.

They often go around saying how they support coalminers and that they are all about the coal industry. What are they doing with the WorkPac case that is before the High Court at the moment? The government have actively intervened in that case to try and stop coal workers being able to work on a permanent basis and get access to family leave, to sick leave and to holiday leave, which other workers working beside them actively get. No, they want to make sure that those workers are classified as casuals in a contracting-out sham. The government have intervened against those coal workers. Yet, they have the hide to come into this place and say that they are all about supporting coal workers. It is an absolute disgrace.

It should have been a lesson for the minister when those pieces of legislation failed the first time. But the minister tried again. He rammed a slightly amended version of the bill through the House of Representatives without allowing the shadow minister or other MPs the opportunity to speak on it. And then COVID hit, presenting many challenges for employers whose businesses have been shut down. When Labor suggested a wage subsidy, the government initially resisted, but eventually they got there and they adopted Labor's proposal for a subsidy. So we've got JobKeeper and JobKeeper flexibility provisions that employers, amongst other things, can use to reduce conditions. Then we have had a series of other calls for the industrial working group process to work through some of these issues.

There's been a total lack of support for issues that really are at the heart of what is going on in the labour movement—lack of wages growth, low productivity and low business investment. It is all about trying to cut pay and conditions for workers. So my question to the minister is: can he guarantee that no worker will be worse off as a result of the outcomes of either Porter review or the working group process?

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