Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I move as an amendment to the motion moved by the Leader of the House:

That all words after "considered" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words—

"at the next sitting".

I'll take the opportunity to explain to members of the House why I am moving this motion. The process that the government and the minister have followed in relation to the so-called closing loopholes bill has been utterly appalling. It has been a complete travesty of democratic process. This has been going on for some months. When the minister introduced the original bill in September last year—a bill that was hundreds of pages long—the minister wanted debate on that bill to start the very next day. That was before the shadow minister had even been fully briefed on the contents of the bill. So the minister at that time was wanting less than 24 hours for all members of parliament—opposition and crossbench—to consider a bill that was hundreds of pages long and that, of course, contained an extensive range of provisions that would completely transform and disrupt the way that workplaces across Australia—small, medium and large businesses—operate, impose extraordinary costs and remarkable inefficiencies, and generally do precisely the opposite of what Australia needs at a time when we know that we have a very serious productivity problem in our economy. The one thing we can be certain of is that these bills are a huge backward step for productivity in the Australian economy.

At the time, in my remarks I argued that the government's desperate attempts to ram through these dramatic industrial relations changes would have deeply adverse consequences across the economy. It is clear that a very wide range of Australians support that view and are alarmed and deeply concerned at what the minister is doing. We saw more of this when the House had the opportunity to consider in detail the closing loopholes bill. The government crunched down the time available for debate. Only 20 minutes of debate were allowed for each set of amendments.

You might think that that is all very bad—and it is very bad, and it is entirely at odds with what the minister at the table spent nine years fulminating about. I don't encourage people to read what he said, because that would be time you'd never recover. But let me assure you that he repeatedly told this House that it was an outrage—and he was right—that there was not a proper opportunity for this House to do its work, the work that members in this House are elected to do, the work that members in this House are sent here by the communities across Australia to do, which is to scrutinise legislation and form a considered view as to whether they ought to support, oppose or propose amendments to legislation.

What is it that has happened this morning, since this legislation was rammed through the Senate with extensive use of guillotine provisions? The amendments that have been received by the House—92 pages—have been available for less than two hours. I was advised over the weekend by the House of Representatives Table Office that as at the close of business on Friday they had not received the message from the Senate. So, members of this House are being asked to consider a wide range of amendments made in the Senate, many of which are highly detrimental to the objective of a more productive economy—an economy in which more people can be employed, an economy in which we are fighting and eliminating the scourge of inflation. Yet many of these amendments, which are responding to the agenda of the unions, who are the paymasters of Labor politicians, are going in precisely the opposite direction. And there has been very little time to study their impact, but I am sure that even in the limited time there are a number of provisions that coalition members and indeed crossbench members have identified that cause them concern and alarm.

For example, we know that, in the rush to get this bill through, the minister agreed to a set of changes proposed by the Greens party to establish a so-called right to disconnect. This is a very profound change to existing workplace arrangements. Already we have seen, quite rightly, businesses in Western Australia—which for much of the year is on a time zone that is three hours different to that of the rest of the country—asking how they are going to maintain normal communications with employees on the east coast when their west coast office is three hours behind the time zone on the east coast. That is one of many very good questions of detail that it's absolutely evident have not been considered for a second because of the rush to get this bill through and to jump to the tune of the union paymasters.

When you look at the criteria set out in clause 333M(3), as it presently stands, the factors to be taken into account as to whether the right to disconnect has been breached, there is no mention of the criticality to the business of the issue which is triggering an employer to attempt to speak to an employee. There was no mention of the importance to customers. This might well be an issue that is existential for a customer of a particular business. Yet this change would mean that employees who chose not to engage, leading to profound damage being done to the interests of a customer, would be under the provisions that have been rammed through the Senate, and employers could then find themselves unable to take any action to deal with the urgent issues that are facing them.

Let's just think about what we've seen in Australia in the last couple of years in terms of cyberattacks: Latitude Financial, Medibank Private, Optus and many others. How will this provision work if a cyberattack occurs during a time that is outside employees' normal working hours? Guess what: the Russian criminal gangs who do cyberattacks don't really care very much about working hours—and the minister giggles at this. Let me predict that, the next time there is such a cyberattack and customers are disadvantaged and inconvenienced and have their personal details attacked, there'll be no shortage of Labor MPs and Greens MPs saying, 'What was this company doing?'

Here they have recklessly introduced a change to the legislation without any consideration, without any committee process and without any exercise in consulting to understand what the implications of it would be. That is repeated across issue after issue after issue in this legislation. What we get from the other side is that they dismiss it. They laugh at it. Why do they do that? For a very simple reason: because they're not here to serve the interests of all Australians. They're not here to serve the interests of a productive, efficient Australian economy and in turn generate the prosperity on which our roads, our schools and our hospitals depend. What they are here to do is to jump to the tune of the union paymasters. That is exactly what this bill represents. One of the reasons the minister is rushing this through, in a piece of poor process which is absolutely scandalous in its implications for the work of the parliament in holding up legislation to scrutiny, is that he wants to minimise answering these awkward questions. But these are not only awkward questions but enormously important questions.

To propose that it be made an order of business for the next day—this is not a dramatic amount of time that we're seeking, but what we are seeking to do is to give the parliament and parliamentarians the opportunity to scrutinise, as they ought, changes which have been made which have been rushed through with a very poor process. It is, frankly, shocking that the government would not contemplate agreeing with it.

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