Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1)

recalls and records the solemn commitment given by the Prime Minister to Alan Jones on Radio 2GB on 4 August 2005 that “I mean some people are going to have to work public holidays…it would be absurd and unfair and unreasonable if somebody has to work on a public holiday that that person isn’t compensated by being paid whatever it is, the double time or the time and a half…those arrangements are going to continue…”;

(2)

notes that appropriate compensation includes things like penalty rates and public holiday leave loadings;

(3)

notes that since the Government’s extreme industrial relations changes commenced on 27 March 2006, a single sentence in an Agreement can remove all entitlements to public holiday pay, penalty rates and overtime pay, and that the Government’s own statistics show:

(a)

64 per cent of assessed AWAs have removed penalty rates;

(b)

63 per cent have removed leave loadings;

(c)

52 per cent have removed shiftwork loadings; and

(d)

41 per cent did not contain gazetted public holidays;

(4)

affirms its support for the Prime Minister’s August 2005 commitment that employees should receive adequate compensation for working on public holidays; and

(5)

calls on the Government to immediately restore adequate compensation for Australian employees who work on public holidays, thereby holding the Prime Minister to his solemn promise to Alan Jones and the Australian people.

This will be the 21st time by motion, by censure motion and by MPI that this chamber will have debated issues relating to the industrial relations system introduced by the government, at the Prime Minister’s behest, in which the Prime Minister has not participated. He has squibbed every single debate in this chamber since this legislation was introduced. As the nation has had an opportunity to see the full impact of his handiwork, he has been unprepared in open debate in this chamber to explain himself and explain what he is up to. Quite frankly, for a major piece of legislation on the part of a government, I cannot recollect a set of circumstances where a Prime Minister has been so reluctant to debate its detail after its point of entry and implementation. Prime ministers have usually deigned to come into this chamber at least once or twice to defend the principal handiwork of their government. The Prime Minister has not chosen to do so and he is too cowardly to face us outside, so it needs to be comprehended thoroughly by all members of this chamber and all Australians.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Leader of the Opposition would help if he withdrew that accusation.

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw. The Prime Minister thinks so little of his legislation that he is unprepared to face me or, for that matter, anyone else in this place in debate. This motion goes to the heart of family life. It goes to the heart of what makes family life sustainable economically, spiritually and morally—the capacity for ordinary family members to enjoy each other’s company free of the burdens of work and other distractions on at least some occasions in the course of the year. This motion establishes clearly the right of people to enjoy Christmas holidays, Easter holidays, Australia Day and Anzac Day—the various public holidays of significance that have been designated by state and federal governments over the years. I challenge every member opposite to support this motion. They will be given the opportunity to do so. I want them to show to their constituents how seriously they regard their access to those holidays.

There are two ways in which the government legislation attacked the capacity of Australians to enjoy those holidays, some of which are of immense spiritual and moral significance to individual members of Australian society as well as to the decency of family life. The first was to create, in the general terms of their legislation, a condition which said that a worker needed a reason for a public holiday. He had to have a reason to take Christmas off, a reason to take Easter off and a reason to take off Anzac Day. Most Australians assume they have it as a right.

The second way the Prime Minister attacked this position was to remove from the legislation the certainty that, if you did work on those holidays, you would be able to access penalty rates to do so. There are two reasons for that. The first reason is that penalty rates exist for working on those holidays as a deterrent to employers to engage people needlessly over those periods. It puts a question mark in the mind of the employer. The second reason of course is that, for some period of family life, most people in society need the capacity to earn those penalty rates in order to be able to pay their mortgages and afford the other aspects of family life.

The position of this government attacks family life at its very core. The Prime Minister talks about barbecue stoppers, and there is no doubt his industrial legislation is that. But this is more than a barbecue stopper; this is an axe taken to the kitchen table of family life. That is what this is. We will continually oblige Liberal and National Party members to declare themselves in this place on those issues right up until the next election. So they might as well do it now.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The motion moved by the member for Brand needs to be totally rejected this afternoon. The Leader of the Opposition is asking this House to take note of what the Prime Minister has said recently on workplace relations. What we really should be doing is taking note of what the member for Brand and others opposite have said on industrial relations. For months the ALP has been saying that the Work Choices legislation is extreme and damaging to our nation. In fact, the only thing that has been extreme is the ALP’s language. We have had extreme language, similar to what has taken place and been stated in this chamber for the last 10 years, as to how this nation and the Australian workers will be disadvantaged as a result of our industrial relations policy changes.

The member for Brand beats his chest and tells the Australian people, ‘I will rip up these laws.’ We heard him say this. But what we have not heard the Leader of the Opposition tell us is what he is offering as an alternative—until, of course, the other day. Then out of the blue, without any consultation with his own backbench and his own shadow ministers, he said: ‘My alternative is that we are going to return to the bad old days. We are going to return to the days of a regulated labour market. We are going to return to the days when awards regulated every minute of every worker’s day. We are going to return to the days when individual aspiration was stifled.’ The member for Brand stands up at various opportunities and says that our policies and AWAs stifle the aspirational voters of this country. The only thing that will stifle aspiration is a return to those days when we had a regulated labour market. If the member for Brand has any doubt about this, he only has to go down to the Fremantle docks in the electorate of Fremantle. I know it quite well; I grew up there. All he has to do is go down to Austal and see the opportunities that are being created in those dockyards and the various employment growths that have taken place. Westpoll itself has said that the people of Western Australia recognise that AWAs have been good for the state, and, in fact, during the time of this government being in power we have seen the unemployment rate of WA go down into figures which have been absolutely unheard of—below the four per cent mark.

What we are seeing, through the member for Brand’s claims that he will rip up AWAs, is a Labor Party that wants to return this country to record unemployment. We see a Labor Party that wants us to return to massive interest rates and a recession. The only way that the member for Brand can guarantee through legislation that no worker will be worse off if he rips up AWAs is if there is a massive increase in unemployment. There will be job losses as a result of what he is trying to do. There are people out there who have signed agreements to suit their individual circumstances.

The member for Brand’s position will be to return to the days when the economy of this country goes down the gurgler once again with record unemployment and, with it, increasing interest rates. We need to ask ourselves: why is the member for Brand asking us to return to an outdated era? Is it that he simply wants to secure his own employment? That is about the only job that is going to be secured through his policy change—his own position. As the Australian newspaper claimed on Friday last week, Labor’s prime interest is to promote collective bargaining in the workplace in which unions would have bargaining rights.

I say to all the small business people out there: if you have any concerns about the industrial relations system through the Work Choices legislation we have introduced, think about what the ALP’s alternative position is. They are basically saying that, through law, they will be guaranteeing that every union official will come into your building and be able to negotiate on behalf of the workforce, whether or not they are unionised. That is what a return to collective bargaining means. There is this whole concept of good faith bargaining. It is a great little term that is being used. We are going to have a highly regulated labour force. (Time expired)

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pity that the Prime Minister is not in the chamber to defend the policies which have wreaked havoc on ordinary working people and the policies which are in breach of commitments that the Prime Minister has made. It is a pity he is not here, because I want to refer to some of those commitments that are on the public record. I quote from the transcript of an interview with the Prime Minister on the Alan Jones show back in August last year. It is true that this interview occurred before the details of the legislation were introduced, but there is no doubt in my mind—and there should not be any doubt in the minds of the members opposite—about what the words mean. The Prime Minister often claims that his word is his bond; let us listen to what he said. In answer to a question from Alan Jones about whether overtime was going to be absorbed into ordinary rates of pay, he said:

... this Government is not going to introduce any policy that is going to result in a cut in the take-home pay or living standards of the Australian workforce.

Mr Jones said:

My point to you is this, and I’m trusting you understand this, that if that overtime were to become ordinary time, take-home pay could fall dramatically.

The Prime Minister answered:

But I think people should wait until the legislation comes out. I think people should wait until the legislation is in operation and they will find that so many of these allegations are wrong.

Mr Jones then went on to talk about the impact of individual contracts. He said:

Now they are saying, the critics, the conditions therefore of the five—

minimum standards—

don’t include public holidays or meal breaks, so they are going to be negotiable. One union says the changes would make working on public holidays and through lunchbreaks open to bargaining between workers and bosses.

What did the PM say then? He said:

... I have said that the existing arrangements concerning meal breaks and public holidays will continue.

…            …            …

And it would be absurd and unfair and unreasonable if somebody has to work on a public holiday that that person isn’t compensated by being paid whatever it is, the double time or the time and a half.

…            …            …

I just want to make the general comment that those arrangements are going to continue.

That gives you the flavour of the interview and of the kinds of commitments that were made in principle, in good faith one would have assumed, to the listening audience of the Alan Jones program in August last year.

We all know the reality is totally different, and official figures put the lie to the Prime Minister’s claims. We know for a fact, from an analysis of 250 AWAs lodged with the Office of the Employment Advocate, that nearly one in five AWAs excluded all award conditions and replaced them with the barest of the five minimum legislated standards. We know that two-thirds of them scrapped leave loadings and penalty rates. We know that more than half removed shift allowances and around one-third modified overtime loadings and rest breaks. Forty per cent had dropped gazetted public holidays in face of the fact that in my state of New South Wales public holidays have been legislated in an act since 1912. So Alan Jones was absolutely right in pressing the Prime Minister on the impact of AWAs on the wages and conditions of workers. Take-home pay is being cut, and the government’s own official statistics show that. And where is the Prime Minister to defend the previously made commitments on these issues?

Let me take his commitment that existing arrangements concerning meal breaks and public holidays would continue. The Leader of the Opposition has pointed out the importance that is attached to public holidays by the Australian community. We know for a fact that current arrangements are not continuing. Look at the Spotlight AWA, about which there has been considerable publicity. What does it show? It shows no penalty rates for Saturday or Sunday work and no penalty rates for public holidays; so, currently, if a worker on the Spotlight AWA works on a public holiday, they get $14.30 an hour compared to the award of $35.70 an hour. It is an absolute shame, and the only compensation is a day off in lieu at ordinary rates. There is no overtime, no paid rest breaks, no annual leave loading and no meal, uniform or first aid allowances. And members opposite want to try and claim that the wages and conditions of workers are not being affected by this regressive and unfair industrial relations legislation. (Time expired)

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week we have seen that the opposition claims on Spotlight and on Esselte have not stacked up, but let us recap some of the other claims made by the Leader of the Opposition about the government’s workplace relations reforms. The Leader of the Opposition has said that under these reforms there will be more divorce. He has said that the weekend barbecue is about to become a thing of the past. He has said that neighbour will be set against neighbour in a dog-eat-dog world. These claims are not credible. They belong in the rubbish bin along with the claims made by the member for Perth back in 1995. They have not eventuated.

The topic of today’s motion is looking at a sample of four per cent of AWAs which were lodged with the Office of the Employment Advocate, but the Leader of the Opposition has quoted selectively from these. He has failed to say that 84 per cent of the agreements in the sample had a greater rate of pay than under the award. What are Australian workplace agreements? They are agreements between employee and employer. They are selective to the enterprise and to the business. They must meet minimum standards—the Australian Fair Pay and Condition standard. No employee can be forced to sign an AWA; no employee can be terminated for refusing to sign an AWA. The most recent ABS survey showed that employees on AWAs earn, on average, 13 per cent more than employees covered by certified agreements and 100 per cent more than those on award rates.

The opposition fails to recognise the important changes that have occurred in the Australian workplace over the last 20 years. Whereas in the mid-1980s half of workers were members of trade unions, now just 22.4 per cent of the workplace are members of unions. In the private sector, only 16.8 per cent of people are members of unions. In the years from 1998 to 2004, the number of self-employed persons grew by a quarter of a million and trade union membership declined by 200,000 persons. There are now more independent contractors than union members.

When we look at the performance of the Australian economy under the government’s initial workplace relations reforms, we now see in the employment figures for May that the unemployment rate has fallen below five per cent for the first time since November 1976. But, at the same time, the participation rate rose. That means that more people were looking for work. The number of people employed increased by 56,000—all full-time jobs—and 38,000 of those were women; 1.8 million new jobs have been created since March 1996; and real wages are up by 16.8 per cent.

What has happened over the last 10 years is that a strong economy has led to shortages of skilled and unskilled labour. This means that workers are now in a very strong bargaining position. Workplace relations reform to introduce flexibility into the workplace so that we could get improvements in the economy was something that was always too hard for the Australian Labor Party. That is understandable. It is their history. It is their background. It is their training. The trade union movement has this vicelike grip on the Australian Labor Party. We have exhibit A, the member for Hotham, and exhibit B, the member for Throsby, the previous speaker. The problem is that there are now almost a million people on AWAs.

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are not; that is not true.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is—almost a million people on AWAs. There is no greater authority on this than the Leader of the Opposition, who said, ‘There will be a million AWAs in place when we come into office and you can’t wander around cancelling contracts.’ Exactly! This is a promise that the Labor Party is unable to deliver on. We have seen workers in Western Australia and in Queensland in a whole range of industries who like their AWAs and who want to stay on their AWAs. If we look at my own state of South Australia, we find there are 2,000 people on AWAs at Olympic Dam. Roxby Downs has one of the highest income rates of any postcode in South Australia. There are over 9,000 people on AWAs in the electorate of Boothby. I think this is a big mistake by the Labor Party. This is a mistake akin to the ‘troops home by Christmas’ promise by Mark Latham.

The problem here is that the government has a very different vision of Australia from that of the opposition. We have an optimistic view of employers and employees and the way they can work cooperatively for mutual benefit. That is a view shared by the vast majority of aspirational Australians. It is a view shared by the vast majority of workers. We believe that workers should have choice, that they should have freedom to choose. AWAs are a very important strand of the workplace arrangements in this country, which will lead to further improvements in the economy.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I honestly wish that government members would come into this place and make it quite clear what the agenda of this Work Choices legislation is, because they skip around and contradict themselves constantly. Indeed, so does the Prime Minister, so it is little wonder that he does not want to have a direct debate on the issue.

The reality is that the government tell us over and over again that for the last 10 years everything has been just great. They talk about the unemployment rate and they talk about the growth in, and strength of, the economy. Then, in complete contradiction to their own case, they tell us that, therefore, there is a need for radical change to take away all of the protections and opportunities that gave the Australian population of workers an opportunity to enjoy and participate in the fruits of that economic growth. For families the reality is that this bill will pose a situation—

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Bill? What bill?

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take the correction from the member. This legislation and its impacts will directly affect the capacity of families to meet their obligations to each other, not just their obligations to the workforce. I come from a long family line of coalminers, and there are still many working in the coalmining industry. I have to say at this point that they were still all on enterprise agreements when I last spoke to them, but they are very well paid and doing very well, given the growth in the mining and minerals sectors in recent years. When I speak to them, these are the sorts of comments I get. Firstly, most of them have wives doing part-time work, often in the retail or hospitality industries. They are concerned about the capacity of their wives to continue earning an income without being required to be available at any time that suits the employer. The reality for many women in the workplace, particularly in the retail and hospitality industries, is that they do work part-time hours. They manage that work in combination with their commitments to their families by relying on having regular and notified working hours.

Since this legislation came into practice we are seeing women being asked to sign on to AWAs where they must be available for the entire operating hours of the business. The reality for those women is that they cannot then meet the commitments they have to their families and they have to choose—this is where the real choice is in that legislation—between working and not working. If you talk to women in the retail and hospitality industries you will find ample evidence that that is exactly what they are facing.

They also have teenage or young adult children. I do not know what world the members opposite live in, but I have a 17-year-old and a 22-year-old and I regularly speak to people in those age groups. Their experiences in the workforce in the last 10 years, in their initial attempts to get work, have not been good. There was already a great deal of exploitation of young workers under the previous changes that took place.

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Barresi interjecting

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Dr Southcott interjecting

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members opposite might want to interject, but I suggest that they get out and talk to some young people about the fairly disgraceful practices that have occurred. I can tell members opposite that the practice—

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At least they’ve got a job.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At least they’ve got a job! You run that in your electorate. I dare you to run that in your electorate when you have a young person in a family who goes to work for a business for two weeks and is then told: ‘That’s work experience and it won’t be paid. Thanks very much but we’ve decided you’re not suitable; see you later, we’ll get somebody else in,’ to do two weeks work for no pay. And then you have the young person who genuinely thinks they have been signed up for a traineeship or an apprenticeship and then discovers that in fact there is no paperwork and after working the month over Christmas is told, ‘We no longer think you’ve got enough experience to be an apprentice, see you later.’ These are examples I have had in my electorate office. You talk to families whose kids are going through those experiences and you tell them, ‘Any job’s better than no job.’ I tell you what: you will get a pretty rude and abrupt response to that. The reality of Work Choices is that it works fine if you have power. If you do not, you will find yourself well and truly exploited.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Dr Southcott interjecting

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I ask the honourable member for Boothby to bring himself to some sense of decorum in the House.

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Howard government I am pleased to speak to the motion before the House. The member for Cunningham asked what our agenda was. Let me tell her, on behalf of the government: our agenda is about national prosperity. Our agenda is about creating jobs for Australians. Our agenda is about giving opportunities to young people throughout the length and breadth of this great country. It is about creating opportunities for all Australians to maximise their talents so that they can provide better opportunities for their families. I am pleased to be able to speak to this motion and put it where it belongs—in the bottom drawer.

This motion reflects the verbosity of the Leader of the Opposition—a lot of hot air and bluster. It is important that we come to the facts. What are the facts? The level of unemployment is at 4.9 per cent, a 30-year historic low. This is in a climate where participation rates are increasing. Since the Howard government came to office, 1.8 million new jobs have been created, real wages have increased by some 16.8 per cent over a decade and 56,000 Australian jobs have been created in one month alone. We have nil national government debt, amounting to savings of $8 billion-plus in interest rates alone. We have had 15 years of uninterrupted economic growth. That is what this government stands for. That is what the Howard government’s agenda is all about.

By contrast, let us look at the record of the Leader of the Opposition. We all know the important position he held when he was in the Keating government; he was finance minister. During Labor’s 13-year term in office, inflation was at 5.52 per cent, interest rates peaked at 17 per cent and the unemployment rate peaked at 11 per cent. One million Australians were out of a job during Labor’s tenure of office. I say to anybody listening to this debate in the parliament today, to the young Australians here, to the school children visiting our parliament: think about your future and the one million people who were out of a job during the Hawke-Keating years. That is something Australians should never forget. Certainly the people of the electorate of Ryan will be reminded time and time again by me, as their federal member, that if they want job security, if they want permanency of employment, the last thing they want is a Labor government. The very last thing they want is a Beazley Labor government, because with that they will get record levels of unemployment again.

The Beazley leadership group is trying to scare the Australian people again. We saw that with the debates in previous years. The most prominent was the tax reform debate, when the Labor Party used all its muscle to scare the Australian people. We all know how important the tax reforms have turned out to be, how significant they have been in stimulating economic activity and producing very low levels of unemployment in this country.

In terms of the statement by the Leader of the Opposition about getting rid of AWAs, there was an own goal on the weekend when a very prominent Labor Party union official, Mr Joe de Bruyn, expressed his great reservations when he said:

There’s certainly been a lot of liberties with the facts.

I say ‘Hear, hear!’ to Joe de Bruyn—someone highly respected in the labour movement and the union movement. It was very much an own goal on the part of the federal opposition. What is this motion all about? It is trying to scare the Australian people. Let me turn to some of the significant comments coming from the business community. I refer to none other than the Business Council of Australia’s President, Mr Michael Chaney, someone who is highly respected, with a track record of credibility and probity in the business community, someone who knows what he is talking about. I would rather back Mr Chaney’s comments and views than those of the federal Labor leader. Mr Chaney says:

The existence of AWAs has created a more innovative environment to progress agreements more generally in the workplace. The fact is that independent research shows that workplace reform, including the introduction of AWAs, has delivered significant opportunities for Australians.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allocated for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.