Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to debate industrial relations and the 'closing loopholes' bill with Senator Sharma. As someone who lived through those years before we had enterprise bargaining, and given what we have seen with enterprise bargaining—at the time, enterprise bargaining in the 1990s was a wonderful thing. It gave my industry, truck drivers, the ability to get above minimum wages and to start getting a decent dollar while working with the employers to get productivity. The problem we had, Senator Sharma, just for your own information here, was: that was okay while we had the industrial relations system where, when productivity was gained in the workplace, when employers and employees worked together to improve productivity and get a pay rise for it, the basic award would move accordingly. You know how it works: the unions and employers would argue, they'd ask for 10 per cent or 15 per cent and they'd get one or two, and that was how it worked. Unfortunately, your previous idol, Mr Howard—I think he was your idol!—stopped and said: 'No more will the awards move. They will never move. They're not allowed to move again', and he killed that.

I'll tell you what happened: the good employers who actually sat down and negotiated with their employees all of a sudden found themselves, five or six years later, while their pay rates were moving with productivity—it got to a scale where a lot of companies could not be any more productive. There were so many award rate conditions that were traded off for profitability or for pay rises, while the ones who weren't doing enterprise bargaining with their employees were protected by an archaic central wage system where the awards never moved. All it did was, with the greatest of respect, penalise the good employers and employees who sat down to negotiate productivity with each other. It took about 15 or 20 years before it hit, and I was a member of the one union that pulled out of the ACTU—back in 1995, I think it was. We knew back then what enterprise bargaining would eventually do when there were no more productivity gains to negotiate back. I just wanted to clarify that for you.

To get back to what we're talking about here—and thank you very much, Deputy President, for allowing me some freedom there—seriously, this has been a real circus the last couple of weeks! When I say 'circus', I'm always mindful, after many years in this chamber—and with many more to come; unless I win lotto, I don't intend on going anywhere! I couldn't come back for the caucus meeting when Prime Minister Albanese announced the new tax plan with the Treasurer, but I listened to it on the radio intently and I was absolutely lifted. I was absolutely rapt to hear the new plan. How can you not be pleased to move from when Mr Morrison's stage 3 was first mooted and voted on many years back—I think it was about 2019, something like that. Since then, we have found ourselves in a situation that we weren't in before. We've seen interest rates go through the roof. I commend the leadership of Mr Albanese, our Prime Minister, and I also commend Mr Chalmers, the Treasurer, and Senator Gallagher, the finance minister, for showing leadership, for adapting, for moving. What may have been okay back then for a certain cohort of workers is not now; it is not the situation now. This is magnificent, when we know that 13.6 million Australians are going to get some form of tax relief. It really excites me that 84 per cent of that 100 per cent are getting more than they were going to get before.

I will say this, and it might ruffle a few feathers: all of us in this chamber cannot deny the fact that we are rewarded handsomely for our efforts. We are absolutely paid very well. We cannot whinge. I find it really weird when I talk to a lot of my friends who are on wages and earnings similar to what we're on here—I'm very happy that I'm only going to get half of what I was going to get before. I'd give up the whole lot; it doesn't worry me. I'm so rapt to see that middle Australia is going to get some of it and that lower wage earners are going to get some of it. That is what's right. We've got to get away from this shocking greed that we hear in the conversations around here.

I was talking to one of my colleagues the other day. He said he was up somewhere at the Press Club and he heard one of the fourth estate, the media, whinging because it's only $15 a week. 'What's $15 a week going to do for some wage earners?' Let me tell you, as a parent—and I've been through the hard times, growing up in the working class—that's a babyccino and a bickie with Smarties on it down at the shopping centre on shopping day. How good is that for the little one, who might not have had that before this? I've run out of time. An extension? No? Okay. (Time expired)