Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to comment quickly on the demise of Work Choices in industrial relations, an issue that is of particular concern to my electors. During the campaign, I met many workers who were losing their penalty rates, rest breaks and other important conditions. What Work Choices was doing in particular was creating a take it or leave it attitude amongst many employers. This particularly affects workers in areas where there are weak bargaining positions, like retail and hospitality. In my electorate, where there are a lot of retail and hospitality workers, this was a very big issue.

There are a few key points about Work Choices. First of all, it had no mandate. It was conceived and prepared in secret without reference to the Australian people and it created an environment where working people’s conditions were lost without any compensation at all. That is mainly because of the provisions in the bill which removed the independent umpire, the Industrial Relations Commission, and introduced AWAs without any no disadvantage test, which accelerated the trends that were already present in the operations of pre Work Choices AWAs. It had almost Stalinist controls on unions and employers throughout the bargaining process and it introduced greenfields agreements where employers could, in effect, make an agreement with themselves if they were moving or refurbishing a site.

This was, I think, a specific repudiation of John Howard’s 1995 promise that no worker would be worse off under the Liberals. The environment created by Work Choices was a direct result of the intent of these laws. Many in the Liberal Party are now trying to pretend they did not understand the implications or the effects of Work Choices. We have people saying that the cabinet was not aware. That is absolute nonsense. We now know that the Liberals are divided between two groups: the honest true believers who want to stand by Work Choices and those who want to make a tactical retreat. Either way, the Liberal position is to make laws to the detriment of working families. Labor’s bill will restore fairness and the bargaining position for workers. It will provide an important transition from AWAs to collective agreements.

To conclude, one worker likened bargaining under Work Choices to playing poker in a game where your opponent had all the picture cards and you had all the number cards. That is why Work Choices offended the Australian ideal of the fair go.