Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) Share this | Hansard source

Yes—former Prime Minister John Howard. He gets a majority in the Senate, and he is able to implement his perfect dream in terms of industrial relations. Madam Deputy President, you may recall the name of this particular product. It was called an AWA, an Australian workplace agreement. These AWAs removed all of the fundamental terms and conditions that workers had won over the entire history of the industrial relations system in Australia. For the purposes of the debate, I recount the sorts of things that were taken away under these Australian workplace agreements. Seventy per cent of workers lost shift loadings, 68 per cent lost annual leave loadings, 65 per cent lost penalty rates, 49 per cent lost overtime loadings and 45 per cent no longer had public holidays. That was the result of Work Choices for Australian workers.

I make this comparison between Work Choices and the decision of the full bench of the Fair Work Commission on the most recent penalty rate cut. Work Choices was a slow-moving product. There was no immediate change, not overnight. Of course, the Australian population woke up to Work Choices, and Prime Minister Howard was defeated in the 2007 election as a result. In fact, former Prime Minister Howard lost his own seat in that election. The Australian community understood the unfairness of Work Choices. But there is quite a bit of difference between what happened under Work Choices and what is happening now, following the decision by the Fair Work Commission. This is a cold and heartless decision, and 700,000 Australians will lose up to $77 a week as a result. As I said, Work Choices was a slow-moving change. This will not be slow. It is not contained. Whenever this decision is finalised, that is what is going to happen: there will be a dramatic effect on the income of people amongst the lowest paid in our country.

So, over that whole time, we can see a clear pattern in the way in which those opposite have dealt with industrial relations. Bit by bit, every time they got an opportunity, they sought to take away the terms and conditions of workers in this country. Unions, great unions like the SDA, have had to deal with those sets of changes for all that time. What did they do in those 20 years, since the time Senator Seselja was five or 10 per cent better off under his agreement? They kept working away to ensure that those workers continued to get those hard-won benefits.

I am not sure which particular Woolworths store Senator Seselja worked in, but the agreement would have covered it, and, if he were working for a Woolworths store today, his weekly rate of pay—I am not talking about the casual or the part-time rate—would be about $100 higher than the equivalent award. Not only that but there are guaranteed wage rises, nine per cent wage increases, locked in over three years; and higher junior rates of pay. Workers in the retail industry, for almost its entire history, did not get adult rates until they were 21 years of age. Under the Woolworths agreement they get the adult rate at 20 years of age. In terms of benefits, there is public holiday work, all voluntary; there are much better rostering provisions than apply under the award, and they take into account family responsibilities; greater compassionate leave, significantly higher than under the award; longer breaks of 15 minutes per four hours rather than the 10 minutes under the award; extra days of personal leave; better overtime provisions—I could go on.

The point of all that is that, over that 20-year period, those unions have sat down and negotiated with some pretty hard companies. That is one thing I agree with Senator Roberts about: you are dealing with pretty hard companies here when you are dealing with some of these national and international companies. But the unions have managed, over that time, to maintain the wages and conditions of employees.

If I understand Senator Roberts correctly, his complaint is that, when you look at some of these agreements and you look specifically at the rate of pay that people get for Sunday, it is lower than under other awards. That is true. He says there is something untoward about that. There is nothing untoward about that. That is the way enterprise bargaining has worked in this country for 25 years. Workers, through their unions, sit down with companies and negotiate about their terms and conditions.

I have just been through the Woolworths agreement to show just how much better off you would be under a Woolworths agreement than if you were under an award. What the employers in this industry who are not subject to enterprise bargaining agreements want to do is cherrypick these agreements. They say: 'There's something we like in this agreement, and we're going to take it out. We just want that bit.' For years the SDA heard this complaint from the small retailers that Senator Roberts was talking about, and we said, 'Okay, if you want the same arrangements as a Coles or a Woolworths'—I could go through a similar explanation with Coles—'if you want these terms and conditions, you pick up the totality of the agreement.' So the union in South Australia—the SDA, that great union that I have referred to—sat down with Business SA, representing all of the small employers that Senator Roberts was talking about, and they reached an agreement that gave them a lower penalty rate on Sunday in exchange for all of the improved benefits that you would get if you worked for Coles or Woolworths or one of these other employers. They said, 'This agreement is now open to any small business that wants to come and sign up.'

That was two years ago. How many small businesses took it up? A hundred in that two-year period? Ten? You might think 10. One? No, zero. Not one small business took up the offer to move to a Coles- or a Woolworths-type agreement. Why not? We asked the question: why not? It was because they were going to pay more than if they stayed under the award. So these people have stayed under the award and complained about the penalty rates on Sundays, saying they are missing out.

What does the full bench do? To my great disappointment, the full bench sides with these small employers and decides overnight to reduce the terms and conditions of penalty rates on Sunday for these workers, some of the lowest-paid workers in this country. The employers get what they want. They do not have to negotiate now about higher wages, better leave provisions, better bereavement leave provisions, better rostering provisions and better public holiday provisions. They do not have to do that. You might ask yourself: what is an employer who has done an agreement like the Coles agreement or the Woolworths agreement going to say? I will tell you what they are going to say: 'We don't need enterprise agreements anymore. We can just fall back to the award. We've got everything we want, and we can reduce the wages of our staff.'

You might have listened to Senator Xenophon—perhaps you did not—on the radio in Adelaide last week. What was his solution to this? His solution to this—and he may have changed his position—was to say, 'Well, let's keep all of the people who are under the award on their current terms and conditions, but any new employee goes to the lower rate.' Let me tell you—I have had a considerable period of experience in the retail industry—what that means. Most of these workers who work Sundays, let us be honest about it—except if they are in a Coles agreement or a Woolworths agreement—are casual employees. They will simply be replaced. They will not be called up. So not only will they lose their penalty rate; they will lose their job, if that is the solution that the commission finally comes up with. They will not be called anymore, because their rate is 50 per cent higher than somebody who would only get time and half. They will not be called in to work. So not only is it a cut in your penalty rate; you actually lose your job. So that is not a solution to the problem.

How do we deal with this problem that we are now faced with? There is only one way to deal with it, and that is to restore the penalty rates as they were. That is what our leader, Bill Shorten, has proposed to do. That is the right answer, and I am getting the impression now from reading the paper that all of the other parties are starting to come back to that position. If you do not do that, then there is no point to enterprise bargaining in this country in the retail and hospitality industries—there is no point whatsoever. No company is going to have a negotiation about an enterprise agreement if they get what they want through a reduction in the award. It totally wipes out 25 years of industrial relations history.

It is true that we are overturning a decision of Fair Work, but Labor has done that before, Deputy President. Can I remind you of this. It was done during Prime Minister Paul Keating's time. The unions had argued for a 12 per cent superannuation payment to workers in this country. To everybody's surprise, the full bench of the commission said: 'No. We're not going to award this. We're not going to support any arrangement to introduce improved superannuation.' The ACTU and the unions went to the government and said, 'We want you to fix this.' And, instantaneously, Prime Minister Paul Keating said, 'Yes, I will.' The decision was overturned, and we now have in this country the best superannuation scheme in the world as a result of that decision to overturn a Fair Work decision.

We need to do the same now. We need to reverse this decision. We need to overturn the decision. We need to restore enterprise bargaining to this country, and we need to get back the penalty rates that these workers have now lost.