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

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and let me congratulate you on your election to that role. I have enormous faith in you.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There have been suggestions from my left about sending flowers instead of congratulating me. I would be a bit suspicious if you had done that on Valentine’s Day!

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I do have another Valentine in my life.

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I feel I am now losing control of the House! The member will get to his question.

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

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister. How important to fairness in the workplace is a safety net that cannot be stripped away?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lyons for his very well put question and the associated remarks. Can I join with the Prime Minister in indicating that the government today has taken another important step forward in the delivery of fairness and balance in Australian workplaces. We have released an exposure draft of our 10 new National Employment Standards. Under Labor’s industrial relations system, these will be protections that every working Australian can rely on—protections about hours of work, annual leave, public holidays, personal leave, long service leave and a new category of community service leave. There will be rights to parental leave, including a new right—

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Hockey interjecting

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for North Sydney will cease interjecting. The Deputy Prime Minister should ignore these interjections.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Once again, the former Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations is showing his complete ignorance. There will be a right to parental leave, including a new right to sequencing leave, so that the mother and father of a child, if they choose, can sequence their unpaid maternity and paternity leave so that they can have the first two years of a child’s life with a parent at home. It includes a new right to request flexible and part-time work, a right to have information about employment law, and a right to notice of termination and redundancy pay.

These provisions have been produced as an exposure draft to enable public commentary. We will not make the same error made by the Howard government when it put out its Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard, which it did without adequate consultation, and it had to issue version after version with increased complexity and red tape for Australian businesses. We care about making these provisions work. That is why an exposure draft is here, with a public commentary period. This is one part of Labor’s safety net for working Australians.

The second part of Labor’s safety net is a modern, simple award system for employees who earn $100,000 or less. That modern, simple award system will be created by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. The modernisation request was contained in the explanatory memorandum to our Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill, which was presented to the House yesterday.

What is very important about this safety net under Labor is that, under Labor’s workplace relations system, the safety net can never be stripped away. Never again will an Australian walk into a workplace not knowing if that is the day that they will have an Australian workplace agreement thrust into their hands which strips away aspects of the safety net. We will not allow that to occur in Labor’s system. There will be no Australian workplace agreements and no individual statutory employment agreements. This is in stark contrast to Work Choices and the industrial relations extremism of the Liberal Party. What they gave us was Australian workplace agreements that can strip the safety net away—including, today, stripping away redundancy pay and basic protections like a notice of change of shift.

It is important for this House and the Australian people to note that, when the Leader of the Opposition said to them that Work Choices is dead, he did not tell them the truth. Today in the Senate the Liberal Party has voted to keep Work Choices going. Today we asked the Liberal Party to process our transition bill, which will mean there will be no more new Australian workplace agreements. We asked them to process that bill in exactly the same time frame that the parliament processed the last industrial relations changes of the Howard government. That is, we asked the Liberal Party to apply their own standards to themselves. Faced with that proposition of applying their own standards to themselves—something that they must agree is fair, something that they must agree is proper, given that it was brought into the parliament by the former Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, who is now their guardian of parliamentary practice as the Manager of Opposition Business—they must concede that that is a fair time frame in which to process legislation. The only reason they did not agree to it is that they want Work Choices to continue as long as possible. Notwithstanding the words of the Leader of the Opposition, they believe in Work Choices and they believe in industrial relations extremism. Any Australian who has put into their hands in this time period an Australian workplace agreement that takes away a basic condition that they rely on should look at that Australian workplace agreement and say to themselves, ‘This agreement is in my hands because the Leader of the Opposition is not a truthful man, and the Liberal Party believe in Work Choices and industrial relations extremism.’

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Minister for Education and Minister for Social Inclusion. Will the minister guarantee that her preferred workplace agreement—union negotiated collective agreements—do not take away award conditions such as penalty rates and leave loading?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was waiting for page 2, but page 2 did not come. For a former minister of the Howard government who claimed to care so much about literacy, it would be really useful if the Deputy Leader of the Opposition read Labor’s policy. If she is in any doubt about how to find it, it is on the internet. We campaigned on it for all of 2007. I will send it to her. The policy contains the answer, and I will give it to you now. The policy is Forward with Fairness. You should read it. And if you did read it, you would know that we do not have a preferred industrial instrument in Forward with Fairness; we talk about creating a fair and balanced system in which people have choice. People have choice, if they want to, to negotiate a collective agreement. They can do that with or without the assistance of a trade union. That is a matter for them, because that is a basic freedom of association matter. Alternatively, they can choose to not collectively bargain; they can choose to have individual agreements. The important thing about those individual agreements is that they stand on top of the safety net. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition and her party today voted for a continuation of Work Choices—

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The question was simple: will she guarantee—

Bob Debus (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On what grounds?

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Relevance! Will she guarantee that union negotiated collective agreements will not take away award conditions, including penalty rates and leave loadings? Will she guarantee? Yes or no?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What I am trying to do is to explain the equivalent of complex mathematics to someone who cannot count, so it does require a bit of explanation. Under Labor’s full system, you will have a choice as to whether you have a collective agreement or an individual common-law contract. You might want to concentrate here, because you might learn something: the collective agreement is not lawful unless it passes a full no-disadvantage test against the award. That means that people under a collective agreement have to do better than the award. How is that different from the current system? Under the current system, award conditions can be ripped away without any compensation—redundancy pay gone, notice of change of shift gone. You believe in that, you voted for its continuation today.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Deputy Prime Minister should just be a bit careful about which ‘you’ she is talking about. She should address her remarks through the chair.