John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the 126th report of the Committee of Privileges, entitled Person referred to in the Senate: Professor Barbara Pocock.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I seek leave to move a motion relating to the report.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the report be adopted.

This report is the 46th in a series of reports recommending that a right of reply be accorded to persons who claim to have been adversely affected by being referred to, either by name or in such a way as to be readily identified, in the Senate.

On 3 February 2006, the President received a submission from Professor Barbara Pocock, Director, Centre for Work and Life, University of South Australia, relating to comments made by Senator Abetz during question time in the Senate on 29 November 2005. The President referred the submission to the committee under Privilege Resolution 5. The committee considered the submission on 9 February 2006 and recommends that Professor Pocock’s proposed response, as agreed by the committee, be incorporated in Hansard.

The committee reminds the Senate that in matters of this nature it does not judge the truth or otherwise of statements made by honourable senators or the persons referred to. Rather, it ensures that these persons’ submissions, and ultimately the responses it recommends, accord with the criteria set out in Privilege Resolution 5.

I commend the motion to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

The response read as follows—

RESPONSE BY PROFESSOR BARBARA POCOCK PURSUANT TO RESOLUTION 5(7)(b) OF THE SENATE OF 25 FEBRUARY 1988

On 29th November 2005 in question time Senator Abetz, in his capacity as Minister representing the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, said that I had misled parliament. He went on to question my independence calling me ‘supposedly independent’.

Specifically, Senator Abetz referred to my appearance before the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Committee’s Inquiry into the Work Choices Bill. Senator Abetz said that I had ‘failed to disclose union-funded research totalling well over $500,000. She also failed to disclose a period of full-time work with the United Trades and Labour Council and two years working for the former leader of the Australian Democrats.’

I regard the statement that I failed to disclose facts to a committee of the Parliament as a serious allegation. My reputation as a reliable person who does not lie or mislead is of great importance to me, both professionally and personally.

Senator Abetz is factually wrong on the three charges of ‘failing to disclose’ that he levels at me under privilege. These facts are easily tested by reference to public sources and to Hansard.

Since 1987 I have received funds from the ACTU for research projects (including ACTU contributions to research projects funded in the main by the Australian Research Council) to the value of $55,000 ($30,000 for research on long hours of work, $5,000 for research on precarious employment and a $20,000 contribution to an ARC Linkage grant).

I have received research funds of $87,000 for other union-linked projects. This includes the project I mentioned to the Committee that I am undertaking with unions on the effects of low pay, to which union organisations are contributing funds of $72,000 (much less than my estimate before the Senate Committee).

Since 1987 my research has been supported by funds of over $1.4 million. Of this, only 10 per cent is made up of funds from union sources ($142,000). This is close to the level of support I have received from non-ARC government bodies (federal, state and local), and less than support from large corporations. This is well below the $500,000 alleged by Senator Abetz. The bulk of support for my research has come from competitively won, peer-assessed ARC grants through the Commonwealth Government.

Over my twenty years of active research I have undertaken significant projects on vocational education, industry restructuring, industrial relations theory, work and family, family friendly conditions in Aboriginal legal services, work/life balance, part-time and casual work, equal pay, and women’s employment, as well as women’s representation in unions and union reform.

Senator Abetz implies that having received funds from unions, I am no longer independent. In fact, I have been a critic of many union activities as my publications show. However, my research often pursues analysis of employment issues as they affect the disadvantaged, including the low paid and women. These issues are also of obvious concern to trade unions. This coincidence of concern explains union support for my research into low pay, long hours and precarious employment and their effects upon Australian workers and their families. It does not, however, mean that I am a paid advocate for unions, just as I do not become a spokesperson for a corporation or a Commonwealth government agency when they contract me to research a particular issue. I guard the independence of my analysis with vigour. However, this is the conflation that Senator Abetz suggests. It is wrong.

The second allegation that Senator Abetz makes is that I failed to disclose that I had worked for ‘a period of full-time work with the United Trades and Labour Council and two years working for the former leader of the Australian Democrats’. As is readily apparent from public web sources (including my own web site and that of the University of Adelaide), I worked for the United Trades and Labour Council from 1986-88 and for Senator Stott Despoja for fourteen months in 2001-02. I have also worked—and for longer periods—for the Reserve Bank of Australia and the NSW Government and, for the last seventeen years, as a university academic. I did not disclose any of these facts to the Senate Committee for the simple reason that I was not asked. To suggest that I ‘failed to disclose’ my employment history is disingenuous to say the very least.

Senator Abetz makes his misstatements in an attempt to undermine my reputation as an independent researcher. He fails to acknowledge that I have been an academic for seventeen years and my research has been widely published in Australia and internationally. It has been funded from many sources, and I have received seven ARC funded projects following a rigorous process of peer-review. I have a national and international reputation as an expert on industrial relations, best exemplified by my Queen Elizabeth II Research Fellowship 2003-2007.

My research is on the public record and has been for many years. However, Senator Abetz’s attempts to malign my reputation were made a short time after I represented, with others, the shared grave concerns of 151 Australian academic experts about the Government’s Work Choices Bill before the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Committee. At that appearance, Hansard records that Senator Murray suggested that questions from Government Senators about sources of funding for my research were ‘McCarthyist stuff’. This is a suggestion which deserves close study. It will not affect my own efforts to bring research evidence to bear on questions of public importance in Australia, and I hope that it will not affect other researchers, whose work should be considered on its merits, not sullied by factually inaccurate personal attacks made under privilege in our parliaments.

Barbara Pocock

Professor

Centre for Work and Life

University of South Australia

31^st January 2006