Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Listening to some of the contributions during this second reading debate on the Fair Work Bill 2008 tonight it is easy to lose a broader perspective or understanding of some of the history and background of Work Choices and what is proposed to replace it—this bill. Tonight we debate a bill that delivers one of Labor’s core promises from the last election—that is, to sweep away what remains of Work Choices and to replace it with a fair workplace relations system. This bill represents one of the most important reforms that this government will introduce. Many people have been waiting for this reform for a very long time.

To fully understand the importance of removing Work Choices we need to examine it in context. Work Choices represented the combination of a decade of efforts to introduce an ideologically inspired and extreme framework for regulating Australia’s workplaces. Between 1996 and 2003 I spoke in this place on over 30 bills introduced by the previous government relating to workplace relations. As the opposition spokesperson on workplace relations issues in the Senate over several years, I directly experienced the Howard government’s determination to introduce its ideological reforms. On some occasions we managed to defeat bills with very extreme measures in them. On other occasions we managed to incorporate amendments that took the edge off some of the more extreme elements. On some occasions bills passed with the support of minor parties. But then the Howard government managed to secure control of the Senate. It is in that context that Work Choices makes sense. The Howard government then had the capacity to introduce all of the provisions that had been rejected or amended over the previous seven years, and they did so. But they did so with no mandate at all. They did not go to the election with any industrial relations policy. They had no mandate for their workplace relations reforms or indeed Work Choices at all. Most laughable, I think, is the suggestion from opposition members and senators now that they really did not understand the impact of what they were doing. They knew very well what they were doing; they had been trying to do it for many, many years. And when they secured the balance of power in the upper house they went the whole hog.

But let me return for a moment to the government’s mandate, which I think is very clear. At the 2007 election, Australian voters faced a choice—a choice between a Liberal-National government that planned to get even more extreme on industrial relations and Labor’s plan to go forward with fairness. They emphatically rejected Work Choices, and I do not think anybody today doubts that. The legislation reflects the Rudd government’s pre-election commitment that was set out very clearly in Forward with Fairness. And I was somewhat bemused during the Senate inquiry to hear witnesses such as Heather Ridout from the Australian Industry Group suggest that we should use Work Choices as the basis for moving forward now that we are facing a global financial crisis. The Australian Industry Group, as I recall, was one of the very organisations that said Labor needed to set out very clearly prior to the election what its plans were. We took them seriously at the time and we did so, and we did not expect to see the Australian Industry Group then say, ‘Oh, but we didn’t really mean that; now we want you to work from Work Choices as the basis for future reform.’

We need to contrast the mandate that Labor now has with the situation under the Liberals with Work Choices, which was introduced without mandate and without genuine consultation. Not surprisingly, Work Choices was never accepted by Australian workers despite an unprecedented advertising barrage to convince them that they were going to be better off. Eventually the Howard government decided, ‘Oops, the electoral impact of them now being worse off means maybe we do have to backtrack a little bit.’ But, alas for the previous government, it was a tad too late.

In deciding the new industrial relations system, the Rudd government, in contrast, has undertaken a very thorough consultation process with all key stakeholders before finalising the bill. With this bill we are no longer in an environment in which radical employers feel emboldened to push the envelope. And let me remind the Senate what the scenario was like under the previous government. We will not see attack dogs and men with balaclavas; we will not have a federal government either actively or secretly encouraging employers to test the law at every opportunity; and we will not see people being forced onto individual contracts. We will see equal remuneration included as a consideration rather than the narrower concept of equal pay which was introduced with the agreement of the Australian Democrats in 1996. With the celebrations around International Women’s Day, that is one issue that I am keen to celebrate today. We will now reintroduce to our law a broader concept of equal remuneration for workers as opposed to the much narrower one which has seen a widening of the gap between the wages of men and women. We will see disputes being settled by an independent umpire. I am very glad to see the old regime being swept away. The bill will have a significant impact on many vulnerable workers as it gets the balance right in the workplace and achieves both fairness and flexibility.

I want to spend a little time tonight dealing with some of the concerns that have been raised by the opposition. I listened just now to Senator Barnett talking about the opposition senators’ minority report. But, again in the broader context, I want to take the Senate back to some comments made by Senator Gary Humphries. Senator Barnett was referring to the opposition’s minority report and comments made there. But look, for instance, to today’s article in the Age by Michelle Grattan where she takes us back to comments made by Senator Gary Humphries, as deputy chair of the Senate inquiry into the bill, to the ABC not long ago. He said the bill was:

… cleverly articulated before an election and now presented in much the same form.

‘Much the same form’. You would not believe that if you were listening to opposition senators in the second reading debate. But, as even Senator Humphries concedes, this bill has been presented in ‘much the same form’ as was clearly articulated before the election. He goes on to say:

I would be surprised if my colleagues felt as if there were an excuse or a basis to reject the main architecture of this bill.

Yet when you listen to the second reading debate you would think that opposition senators standing up here are maintaining a case to oppose the main architecture of this bill. But let us look at some of the aspects they have gone to—