House debates

Monday, 21 November 2022

Private Members' Business

Workplace Relations

5:51 pm

Photo of James StevensJames Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In rising to speak on this motion, the first thing I'd say is that it's really important in the social compact that we have in this country that there is a share in the growth of our wealth between profit and wages. It's very important that, if the economy's growing, investors and their capital get a fair return, and, equally, as the economy's growing, that wages are increasing in real terms. The devastating reality right now is that wages are going backwards at the worst rate they have this millennium, effectively. With inflation at 7.3 per cent and the latest wage growth figure at 3.1 per cent, we've never seen wages going backwards as much as they are right now.

What's worse, the budget that Labor handed down a few weeks ago says inflation is going to increase to eight per cent. So, unless wage growth is dramatically growing from its current 3.1 per cent, in real terms, workers will go backwards under Labor to the tune of about five per cent, which is absolutely devastating for them. It's an urgent crisis that needs to be addressed. Frankly, it shouldn't be addressed by increasing wages by eight per cent; we have to get inflation down from eight per cent.

If wages are outstripping inflation at that rate, we will have the terrible circumstances that we have seen before, particularly in the 1970s. This is why it's so regrettable that, in the spectre of that horrendous impact on some of the most vulnerable, lowest-earning people in our economy, we have a government that wants to take the industrial relations system back to the era that destroyed their wages in that way by having inflation and wages chase each other into the double digits. It's a frightening time for Australian workers, with that prospect looking at them straight down the barrel.

We in the opposition are desperately hoping that some sense will be seen when it comes to the risk and what it will mean to working people in this country if we take the industrial relations system back to the 1970s. People like Paul Keating know this all too well. He would be privately—and maybe not so privately, at times—despairing at the attitude in the government to effectively take us back to a situation where, instead of having the enterprise bargaining apparatus that he established, which was working very well, we have the Gillard-Rudd system that was put in place, which effectively destroyed enterprise bargaining. We know that from the data and statistics. That industrial relations apparatus that Labor themselves put in place is the one that they're now criticising and attacking. It has led to a decade of the Fair Work Act, or 13 years in fact, given that the Fair Work Act was legislated in 2009. I don't mind accepting it hasn't been successful. It was Labor's concoction. But, in terms of the solution that they're proposing, I think the medicine will be even worse than the shortcomings of the system that they put in place. If they have failed and if the Fair Work Act of the Gillard-Rudd era has been a failure, what we should be doing is improving it, but what is being proposed is nothing like that whatsoever.

We have a large crossbench in the parliament, so at times they can be an interesting barometer. There is slim support from the crossbench. The Greens are on board. That says it all: the Greens are on board. You've got the Greens and the Labor Party. Whenever the Greens are in favour of something, be very, very wary. There were some in the Labor Party who used to know to be very wary when the Greens are liking what you're looking to do. People like Paul Keating who designed a modern system that we should be returning to—we should be improving the BOOT test and improving the ability at the enterprise level to negotiate agreements and have, at the core of that, business productivity that is shared between profit and wage growth. That's the kind of system that we could be embarking on to fix all the problems in the Gillard-Rudd workplace relations system that we currently operate under.

That is not what's being proposed, regrettably. As inflation is heading towards eight per cent and wages growth is at 3.1 per cent—so wages are, under Labor, deteriorating in real terms by about five per cent—now is the time to very seriously reconsider where you're heading, focus on getting inflation down and focus on real wages growth driven at the enterprise level between businesses and employees.

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