Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Those opposite may be interested in this: the Hawke-Keating era is notable because it demonstrated that governments are most effective when they are prepared to take on elements of their own constituency. This government is instead handing over the reins to the unions. It is capitulating. It is abolishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission, a recipe for chaos and costly delays in the building sector. It is expanding multi-employer bargaining, including the single interest stream, by allowing Fair Work Commission to authorise workers with common interests to bargain together where it is in the public interest for them to do so. The common interest definition is so broad as to be laughable: their commonality could just be trading in the same shopping centre.

Business groups are united in their condemnation of this aspect of the legislation. Those opposite are gifting unions the power to compel employers to bargain together if the move has the support of the majority of employees. This is backed by the right to strike. Small businesses could be coerced into bargaining based on some vague common interest, which is fundamentally unfair. In time, these multi-employer agreements will be the new form of a centralised wage fixing system, where the wage will be fixed by a union or the commission. We are going back to the bad old days. By retaining the ability of employees to take industrial action at the same time as allowing a broader range of employees to be compelled to bargain together, the bill significantly increases the risk of multisector industrial action, and strikes will be the norm rather than the exception.

Understandably, businesses, including businesses in my electorate, are worried about a future that can force them to negotiate with the unions and enter arbitration, rather than dealing directly with their own workers.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chief Executive, Andrew McKellar, has warned that compulsory multi-employer bargaining is 'a seismic shift to Australia's workplace relations system, reversing decades of tripartite consensus that would result in more strikes, fewer jobs, centralised decision-making and less trust within our enterprises.' Innes Willox from the Australian Industry Group said:

The legislation is fundamentally flawed and needs to be rethought and reworked. Given its implications for our economy, employers and workers …

Business Council of Australia Chief Executive Jennifer Westacott said, 'We want wages to go up but that won't be achieved by creating more complexity, more strikes and higher unemployment.'

We all want wages to go up, but this is not necessary reform to encourage proportionate and productive growth in wages. It is reform aimed at restoring the relevance of unions and ceding to them the power to return to the bullyboy tactics of the past. It's a recipe for chaos and disruption. For the businesses in my electorate, there will be no dividend. They will face higher costs, lower productivity and an increased threat of industrial disputes. It will require small business owners with more than 14 employees to spend a significant amount of time away from their work, negotiating a joint bargaining position with other employees and then negotiating with unions and their employees. The bargaining process will be a multi-employer agreement that will inevitably lead to clauses that are not relevant to the requirements of the business and will cause operational difficulties.

Here's just one example: disputes over flexible work arrangement requests will be dealt with by the Fair Work Commission, which can move them to arbitration. A single employee can go to the commission, and it can decide on the flexible work request, which is unprecedented in Australian workplace relations history. It effectively takes away the employer's right to manage their business. This so-called plan for higher wages will threaten the viability of businesses and cost jobs, and you can't earn higher wages if you don't have a job because the person running the business has gone out of business.

The Productivity Commission has warned that any changes to the Fair Work Act to increase the use of multi-employer and industry sector-wide bargaining are likely to have uncertain implications for productivity and should be undertaken with caution and subject to detailed, rigorous and transparent analysis. That's not what we are getting as both houses of parliament move through looking at this bill. The crossbench have made that very point. The changes that Labor now proposes to make enterprise agreements easier and sunset zombie agreements could have been passed 18 months ago, but Labor opposed them. Rather than agreements locking in terms for the life of the agreement that might be developed by businesses and employees, terms can be subject to continuous challenge or scrutiny if there is a prospect of employees being worse off under the agreement when compared to the modern award, so it will lead to more confusion and more uncertainty for businesses that employ people and pay wages.

If this government wants to help workers and raise their standard of living, it should be tackling the cost-of-living crisis and not adding to inflationary pressures. It should be tackling affordable energy, but instead this government is driving up gas and electricity prices with flawed policy. This is a bad bill. It's bad policy and I cannot support it.

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