Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is directed to Senator Abetz, the minister representing the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Is the minister aware of a report released today by the Australian Mines and Metals Association which identifies 15 reasons why common-law contracts are inferior to Australian workplace agreements? Does the government agree with the report’s finding that preferring common-law contracts to AWAs would be bad for workers and bad for the economy? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies?

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Adams for her question. Being a Western Australian, she knows the importance of Australian workplace agreements for workers in the mines and minerals sector. I am aware of the report by the Australian Mines and Metals Association—a report from the coalface, so to speak. The report makes it very clear—and allow me to quote what it says—that Australian workplace agreements in the resources sector have provided a safer, more productive, better paid, dispute-free workplace. In particular, the report identifies that not only do workers on AWAs in the resources sector have wages 30 per cent higher than those on awards but also the injury frequency rate in the sector has declined by a massive 85 per cent since AWAs were introduced in 1996. It is no wonder that up to 80 per cent of the resource sector workforce in Western Australia has chosen to sign up to workplace agreements. If you are a worker you get more pay and a safer workplace, and if you are an employer you get more productivity and fewer strikes. It is a classic win-win.

Very interestingly, the report also considers whether common-law contracts could adequately replace Australian workplace agreements, as proposed by Labor. Tellingly, the report shows 15 reasons why common-law contracts are in fact inferior to AWAs for both workers and the economy. For example, a common-law contract cannot be used to override an award or collective agreement, meaning employees and employers cannot customise their agreement in a manner different to the award or collective agreement, thereby totally defeating the purpose of having an individual agreement in the first place. And get this: common-law agreements do not prevent unwanted intervention by unions and they do not deny unions the capacity to enter a workplace, even if there are no union members in that workplace. No wonder Labor wants to replace AWAs with common-law contracts. It is all about entrenching union power in the workplace. With Mr Rudd as Labor leader, it is the same old Labor Party but with a new paint job. But that paint job is fast peeling off.

This report blows the lid right off Labor’s false claims that the million people on AWAs can simply move to common-law agreements and all will be fine. The truth is now out. Common-law agreements are not a comparable substitute for Australian workplace agreements. They are worse for workers and they are worse for the economy. The only thing they are good for is the unions.

The Mines and Metals Association have quite accurately described Labor’s policy to replace AWAs with common-law agreements as economic vandalism which puts at risk Australia’s reputation as a stable economy—deliberate economic vandalism to the sector of the economy which Labor, I might add, falsely claims is underpinning our current good times. If Labor ever got into power it would be ripping up the underpinning of the economic good times that Australia is currently enjoying. That is why Labor cannot be trusted with our economy. (Time expired)