Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, the Minister for Social Inclusion and the Deputy Prime Minister. Will the Deputy Prime Minister outline to the House key elements of the government’s proposed workplace relations system? Will the Deputy Prime Minister advise the House of alternative views on workplace relations?

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

I thank the member for Petrie for her question, and I note her deep interest in the circumstances of working Australians and their rights at work. Can I confirm to the House that, before the end of this session, the House will consider the substantive bill from the government on the remainder of its workplace relations changes. Can I confirm for members in the House that this bill will deliver on the government’s election promises, the things that it took to the Australian people and which the Australian people endorsed at the last election when they rejected the extremism of Work Choices and endorsed the government’s Forward with Fairness plans.

The legislation will deal with 10 national employment standards that every Australian worker can rely on—10 national employment standards that can never be ripped away in the way that basic entitlements were ripped off working Australians under Work Choices. The award modernisation process for the remainder of the safety net for workers who earn $100,000 a year or less has already been produced by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. These parts of the safety net, the National Employment Standards and modern simple awards will protect working Australians at work and will be a fairer and simpler system.

The legislation will deal with a fair bargaining system, enabling Australian working people to bargain in their workplaces with their employers, enabling them to unleash new productivity gains, which, of course, we have not seen under the divisive Work Choices policies of the Liberal government. The legislation will deal with a one-stop shop—Fair Work Australia—where employers and employees around the nation will be able to get advice, enforcement of industrial awards and agreements, and disputes such as unfair dismissals resolved. The legislation will deal with a new simple unfair dismissal system that gets the balance right, that enables small businesses in particular to get on with the business of managing their business but protects hardworking Australians from being unfairly dismissed. The legislation will include clear, tough rules for dealing with industrial action, because we want cooperation in Australian workplaces.

This legislation will be a companion to the legislation already passed by the parliament earlier this year, which ended the making of Australian workplace agreements. Can I remind the House, in case anybody has forgotten, about the damage that those agreements did to hardworking Australians. We know from data collected in May 2006 that, of those hardworking Australians who were confronted with Australian workplace agreements under the industrial extremism still endorsed by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, 63 per cent lost penalty rates, 52 per cent had their shift work loadings cut and 51 per cent lost overtime. We know that the opposition, and particularly the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, like to sneer at people who shop for specials. Well, presumably, they were delighted when they saw hardworking Australians have these basic pay and conditions ripped off them.

It seems remarkable to me that the Leader of the Opposition can come into the parliament today with concern about the circumstances of Australians when, as a cabinet minister in the Howard government, hardworking Australians would have been not just standing at his door but pounding on his door to tell him about the rip-offs under Work Choices. What did the Leader of the Opposition do about that? Absolutely nothing, except endorse industrial relations extremism.

The Leader of the Opposition said: ‘Work Choices was the single most important reform to workplace relations in any of our lifetimes.’ The Leader of the Opposition might change in terms of who has the job, but one thing never changes about the Liberal Party: they are and always will be the party of Work Choices.