Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

After just one year of the Howard government’s Work Choices laws, it is clear that these extreme and unfair laws are hurting working Australian families through the erosion of take-home wages and conditions and fewer rights in the workplace. Today marks the one-year anniversary of John Howard’s unfair industrial relations laws. The contest for the election is now defined. If you want John Howard and his unfair laws then you can vote Liberal at the next election. If you want to get rid of these laws there is only one way to do it, and that is to vote Labor.

We know that these unfair laws were the single biggest issue on people’s minds when they voted in the New South Wales election. None other than New South Wales Liberal Pru Goward emphasised their impact. She said, ‘I predict that they will be the single biggest issue on people’s minds when they vote in the federal election.’ This issue is one of the great defining differences between the conservatives and Labor.

The press is full of stories about how these laws are hurting Australian working families. But what about real figures, statistics we can really analyse to look at how well or how badly these laws are treating Australian working families, solid information and analysis? My Senate colleagues and I have pressed hard to get verifiable facts. We have heard grandiose claims that Work Choices gives employees better flexibility and protects conditions, yet, when the figures are made available, what we find is exactly the opposite.

The Howard government was forced to respond to one set of statistics released last year by the Office of the Employment Advocate. It was through the Senate estimates process that the Office of the Employment Advocate provided details of the only analysis of the content of Australian workplace agreements—and that study was conducted by the Office of the Employment Advocate itself. What did that study show? It showed that 100 per cent of AWAs cut at least one so-called protected award condition; 22 per cent of AWAs, some of them lasting for up to five years, provided workers with no pay rise; 51 per cent of AWAs cut overtime loadings; 63 per cent of AWAs cut penalty rates; 64 per cent of AWAs cut annual leave loadings; 46 per cent of AWAs cut public holidays payments; 52 per cent of AWAs cut shift work loadings; 40 per cent of AWAs cut rest breaks; 46 per cent of AWAs cut incentive based payments and bonuses; 48 per cent of AWAs cut monetary allowances; and 36 per cent of AWAs cut declared public holidays. However, after the great embarrassment and political damage this study has caused, the OEA has not done any further analysis of the content of AWAs. I wonder why!

It seems that the government have acknowledged that Work Choices is hurting working Australian families through the erosion of take-home wages, conditions and workplace rights, and that the government would rather have a debate in which there are no verifiable facts. In that way they can never be proved wrong. Senator Abetz would never like the facts to get in the way of grabbing a headline, as he indicated in question time today. It seems that the government would prefer to fly blind when it comes to the impact of Work Choices on the nation’s workers and workplaces.

Through questioning of Office of the Employment Advocate representatives and the minister’s representative in Senate estimates, I have found the following. The government has no way of knowing precisely how many AWAs are in operation. The government currently does not measure or analyse any data on wages and flexible working arrangements in AWAs, even when these arrangements could be beneficial to employees. There is no way of knowing whether an individual Work Choices AWA has replaced an existing AWA and, apart from the information already released by the Office of the Employment Advocate and the ABS, there is currently no way of knowing what may be contained in AWAs individually or by industry.

The government is not monitoring AWAs to establish how conditions are being treated, contradicting what they have said in parliament and to Australian workers. The government has admitted to not painting the full picture and has acknowledged that there should be robust analysis. But there is no project or formal job under way to do this; there is simply a discussion going on within the OEA itself. There has been no direction from any previous or current Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations to analyse AWAs.

The government is now refusing to answer almost any questions on them. The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations confirmed in February this year that, of the 800 questions asked, 400 answers had been provided to the minister but were being held up in the minister’s office. The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Mr Joe Hockey, has more than 400 answers from his department to questions put on notice by the opposition at Senate estimates in November 2006, yet he has not provided to the Senate one answer in respect of those 400 questions since February.

Given the government’s bleating about how a detailed analysis cannot be undertaken due to the problems involved, it is almost unbelievable that they have not even asked for it to be done. I say ‘almost unbelievable’ as we must remember that it suits the government not to have any information on this area: they can make whatever pie-in-the-sky claim they like and never be proved wrong.

However, information is still coming from highly regarded sources. According to data from the ABS, a truly independent authority, if we compare the earnings of men on AWAs with those of men on collective agreements, the men on AWAs earn less. If we look at the ABS data for the earnings of women on AWAs compared to those of women on collective agreements, we see women on AWAs do much worse. These are all published ABS statistics that are not capable of being denied.

Recently the ABS released employee hours and earnings data for May 2006. The data indicates that Australian women on Australian workplace agreements are earning less than Australian women on collective agreements. Australian women on AWAs who work full time earn on average $2.30 less per hour, or $87.40 less per week based on a standard 38-hour week, than those on collective agreements. Australian women on AWAs who work as casuals earn $4.70 less per hour, for every hour they work, than those women on collective agreements. These statistics are from May 2006 and therefore largely deal with AWAs entered into pre Work Choices when there was a no disadvantage test applied and before Work Choices allowed the stripping away of so-called protected award conditions. We can only assume, given the only figures we can rely on are from the Office of the Employment Advocate, that by now those figures will be considerably worse given the percentage of stripping away of so-called protected award conditions.

Across Australia, AWA employees’ average hourly earnings were 3.3 per cent lower than those of people on registered collective agreements. These are figures from the ABS, and they cannot be disputed. But what do we hear from the government? In question time today, I heard Senator Abetz being very careful with the language he used. One night in here some time ago, he told me about an old lawyer’s trick that he used to use: when you did not have a case to argue you argued the technicalities. That is what we have seen from the government today. That is what we have seen from the government for the last 12 months on Work Choices.