Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Under the Morrison government, the soap opera of politics never ends. I think we are entitled to ask why the government has introduced this bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019, and I think we are entitled to ask what its real purpose is. We are entitled to ask: where are the wage pressures supposedly emerging that are disrupting the economy? We are entitled to ask: just how many days have actually been lost through strikes? For the record, Australia today has seen only two or three days lost in strikes per 1,000 employees. That compares with 17 days per thousand employees under the Howard government in 2004. So this country is hardly a hotbed of industrial unrest, despite the government's hype about this bill and what it suggests.

Workplace productivity is up. It has risen by 1.1 per cent over the last five years. But very little of that is actually going to workers. In the year to the end of September, wages had risen by 2.2 per cent, which is barely keeping pace with inflation. This is a 15-month low. And the Reserve Bank now tell us that, despite their very best efforts, this is what is going to be the new norm, and, because of the enterprise agreements that are being set at the moment, we are going to lock in low wages for the foreseeable future for most workers in this country. In the biggest employment sectors—construction, manufacturing and retail—wages growth is less than two per cent. The incomes of workers in those sectors are falling in real terms. Unemployment remains stubbornly stuck at around five per cent of the workforce and underemployment is at more than eight per cent. Workers who are in debt are being faced with the prospect of having to delay their retirement.

The long-term indicators of the health of the economy are sounding alarm bells. Most crucially, investment in research and development has fallen ever since this coalition came to office in 2013. During the life of this government, there has been a 10 per cent decline in real terms in the spending on science, research and innovation. At the same time, business expenditure on research and development has fallen 12 per cent. That's what is happening in the real economy, and that is what this government should be really concerned about—because a nation that does not invest in research and development is not investing in the future.

But this bill is not about the real economy. It is not about what real people are facing. It is not about what real people are experiencing. This is a product of the self-indulgent fantasy world of conservative politics. After seven years, the coalition is stuck in this groove. The bill reflects the government's sandpit style of industrial relations. It is a political view of industrial relations which reflects no understanding of the actual relationship between workers and management, no understanding of how enterprises are actually built and no understanding of the relationships that firms have with their workforces or with their contractors. This is the sort of bill that will get the editorial support of TheAustralian Financial Review and The Australian. It will probably even be applauded by some of the sections of the employer associations. But most employers will see through this government. That's why this government complains so bitterly that it can't get employers on side. This is a government so intent on demonising the union movement that it has failed to recognise that, of the 1.5 million union members in Australia, many actually vote Liberal.

The government treats politics like a game, and it is now trying to treat the workplace like a game, but it shows no understanding of how the world of work is changing for many people. It has no understanding of their anxieties about wage stagnation and no understanding of the increasing insecurity of employment—about the new wave of automation transforming workplaces throughout the industrialised world. Instead of increased responses to of all that, the government has given us not an understanding of what is actually going on in the economy but this bill.

It is a bill that is characterised by nitpicking, viciousness and double standards. It is a bill driven by a desire to persecute and to hound, a desire to essentially seek to applaud those sections of its own reactionary right wing. It will not deal with the real problems facing Australians or the Australian economy in 2019. It is a bill that cannot hide this government's real intention. It is a bill that has nothing to do with promoting the good conduct of registered organisations, of trade unions. It certainly is not a bill that, as the government pretends, makes unions subject to the same rules as corporations. Despite all the hype, it is not aimed—even specifically, as it often says—at the CFMEU in Victoria. It will affect all unions. Because of its petty mindedness, it will seek to put in jeopardy the future of all trade unionists.

Australia already has the most restrictive industrial laws of any OECD country—probably the most restrictive industrial laws of any advanced industrial economy. This bill will impose on unions an even harsher set of legal obligations. It is intended to make it even more difficult for unions to get on with their jobs. It will make it even harder for them to fight for better wages and conditions for their members.

Senator Cormann, as he so notoriously admitted in an unguarded moment, made the point that low wages growth is part of this government's policy. The government knows that, when unions are strong, they set the pace for wages and for wages growth in the economy. The government's fear of the union movement is remarkable. Every indicator points to the fact that the government has already achieved the low wages growth it is so desperately seeking, yet the government still fears the bogeyman it has imagined the trade union movement to be. It wants to make sure that there will be no prospect of the revival of trade union activity in Australian workplaces, because it knows that the very trends over which it has presided are likely to do exactly that. Wage stagnation and increasingly insecure employment are making workers and their families angry, making them anxious and making them feel alienated. The government does not want that anger to flow into industrial action—action that might restore wage justice and may change the balance of power in the workplace.

The government's corporate allies have shown the same fear. A report published in The Australianjust yesterdaysuggested that fear is making some corporate executives lose touch with reality. Very few working days are actually lost to strikes in Australia, yet The Australianof course makes no recognition of that. It cites instead a survey of 375 senior executives at firms with more than a thousand employees, which was conducted by the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills. The respondents to the survey apparently feared that workplace activities could cost the companies up to 25 per cent in annual revenue. No evidence is given to that calculation, not least in The Australian's report of the survey, but the executives were not reluctant to give reasons for the new wave of worker activism that they so desperately fear. More than half of the executive surveyed said that the gap between the executive and employee pay 'fuelled by years of stagnant wages' would be the trigger for activism. There is no indication in the report that the executives think it might be reasonable for employees to resent the growth in management salary packages while other wages are stagnating. There is even a sense that they somehow think it's improper for workers to be concerned about such things. Mr Anthony Longland, a partner in Herbert Smith Freehills, is reported as saying that employees are 'becoming increasingly agitated about issues that went beyond pay and workplace culture'. He said:

Our research suggests that employees are willing to voice opinions about topics ranging from strategic corporate decisions to ethical business conduct.

It is as if 'ethical business conduct' is somehow separate from wages policies pursued by companies.

This is at a time when the system of wage setting in this country is so ramshackle that wage theft has become rife. The accounting firm PwC has estimated that in Australia at the present time companies are pocketing $1.35 billion a year that could be paid to their employees. That's $1.35 billion a year that they're legally supposed to pay. It doesn't include the amount of money that they are able to secure by forcing down wages because of their bargaining power. It is surprising that people have allowed this to happen for fear of a new round of activism even though the data indicates that's not actually happening. This is once again a case of guilty consciences in the business world, perhaps. It is not surprising that this government, with its sandpit view of industrial relations, should be afraid of a new round of industrial action.

So we have this bill before us. In the amendments to this bill that the government has announced it will be moving in the committee stages, there are some changes intended to make the bill align more closely with the Corporations Act, but no-one will be fooled by this. The difference between the government's attitude to unions and its attitude to corporations is plain for all to see. If we compare this bill with the Prime Minister's comments last week after the extraordinary revelations about the banks, we can note just how strong that discrepancy is. The regulators in AUSTRAC found that a bank, as other speakers have already indicated, failed on 23 million occasions to prevent money laundering, including possible terrorism transactions. Many of these transactions, we are told, involve child exploitation material. Under these circumstances, the Prime Minister says: 'Well, that's simply a matter for the companies concerned. It's a matter for the boards'. So we have financial institutions in the country that facilitate the abuse of children and it's a matter for the boards, but when this bill comes to law, when a union organised to defend its members is brought before a court, it will be determined whether it is run by a fit and proper person.

The contrast could not be sharper. Even a failure to submit paperwork on time could lead to a union leader being dismissed and the union being deregistered. So the government's highest priority now would seem to be the capacity to pick up union officials who might be tardy in delivering paperwork, but it's done nothing to deal with the malfeasance in corporate Australia. Just remember how hard it was to get them to understand the need for a royal commission into the banking sector and to get them to enforce proper ethical conduct in the corporate sector. But they now have a highly politicised body, namely ROC—a thoroughly discredited body which, the courts themselves have demonstrated, has acted illegally and totally inappropriately in regard to the AWU.

We've had a highly politicised royal commission into trade unions, in an attempt to destroy Labor figures. We're being told now that that's to be the treatment of the labour movement in this country but that the treatment of corporate executives is to be entirely different. This is a government that has deference to sections of corporate Australia while demonstrating, day in day out, hostility to trade unions. So it's laughable to suggest, as Mr Morrison and Mr Porter try to, that this bill treats unions and corporations in the same way. There is no equivalence in the way unions and corporations are treated—in law, in fact, or in terms of the balance of power in this country.

The original version of this bill in 2017 was rejected by this parliament—and so it should have been. The government is now trying to reintroduce it in a more docile Senate. Of course it's up to the crossbenchers to make their calls on these matters. There is no action by this government to end wage stagnation. There is no action by this government to deal with the issue of wage theft. There is no action by this government in terms of the exploitation of Australian workers. On this government's watch, there has been revelation after revelation of companies ripping off their workers, and we've seen examples from the Domino's pizza chain, to Michael Hill jewellers, to the restaurants of George Calombaris, to Woolworths. We've seen wage theft and exploitation—which will not be stopped by this bill. In fact, it will make those practices so much easier.

This bill is politically motivated. It's an attack on the ability of trade unions to organise and to represent the working people of this country and on the ability of workers to run their own unions and to choose who leads them. So I urge the crossbenchers: you ought to look very carefully at the consequences of moving against the trade union movement in this country—against those who actually fight to protect against superannuation theft and dangerous workplaces. You ought to look very carefully at the coalition's onslaught on trade unions and the industrial rights of working people in this country.

You ought to look carefully at the watering down, as this government has already talked about, of unfair dismissal laws, at the scrapping of the better off overall test, and at a government that openly says that the industrial relations system, the award system, is too complex—'It's so complex!' But ministers in this government never ever point out the fact that companies never seem to have any problem when it comes to the overpayment of wages! They don't overpay people; they don't overpay their taxation. It's not too complex to underpay them! We now have a situation where there are 122 awards. This is down from 1,500 when the Howard government were in office. Companies have managed to cope with income tax law that ran to 11 volumes and more than 5,000 pages. Yet the Prime Minister seems to think that the award system is beyond the companies' ability to understand!

In terms of our international obligations as to the rights of people to organise and as to freedom of association—the basic democratic rights—why is the Liberal Party in this country so determined to undermine those actions and undermine those basic freedoms, and to place every obstacle that it can in the path of workers to choose their right to organise and bargain collectively? Why is it that, under this government, when unions seek to amalgamate so as to be a better and stronger force in the workplace, every obstacle is placed in their way? Yet, when companies seek to merge and to act in that way, there is of course every opportunity taken for this government to claim that this is consistent with market forces, and that to act otherwise is somehow an unnatural act. Workers, when they choose to amalgamate their unions, will be subject to restraints. And the government of course has dreamt up every possibility of imposing restrictions on workers and on their capacity to defend their living standards and improve their opportunities in life. Yet this government does everything it can to protect the rights of business to organise and improve their position in terms of profit at the expense of their workforce and at the expense of the Australian people. This is a clear case where the government has one rule for people who work in industry and another rule for those who own industry.