27 May, 2013
Transcript
ABC News 24 Capital Hill
With Lyndal Curtis and Senator Matt Thistlethwaite
9 May 2013
5:15pm
E & OE
Subjects: Workplace Relations, Referendum to recognise local government
LYNDAL CURTIS:
Hello and welcome to Capital Hill, I’m Lyndal Curtis. It’s only the second policy the Coalition’s unveiled but it’s one much anticipated, the one on workplace relations. The opposition leader says it’s cautious and sensible? The Government says it’s a reintroduction of the individual contracts that cut wages and conditions under Work Choices. Joining me today this evening are two Senators, Matt Thistlethwaite from the Labor party, and Mitch Fifield from the Liberal Party. Welcome to you both.
MATT THISTLETHWAITE:
Good afternoon.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Good afternoon.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
We’ll start with workplace relations and with the second policy announced by the Coalition in the lead up to the campaign.
TONY ABBOTT (FILE FOOTAGE):
We will retain and improve the Fair Work Act. We want to protect workers pay and conditions, we also want to maximise their opportunities to get jobs. The only people with anything to worry about from this policy are dodgy union officials and their supporters. This is an important element in the Coalition’s plan to create one million new jobs within five years and two million new jobs within a decade.
BILL SHORTEN (FILE FOOTAGE):
Everybody knows that Tony Abbott and Liberals cannot be trusted on workplace relations. Today they have released a policy which is short on details in a lot of areas, but disturbingly is proposing to put individual contracts right back up the charts in workplace relations. Tony Abbott’s extreme workplace relations policies should send a shiver up the spine of every Australian worker.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
Mitch did the spectre of Work Choices stop you going as far as you would have liked?
MITCH FIFIELD:
No, not at all. Work Choices is dead, buried and cremated. There was no desire in the Coalition to return to Work Choices. We got the message loud and clear at the 2007 election.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
But some in your own ranks would have liked you to go a little bit further wouldn’t they?
MITCH FIFIELD:
No. I don’t think so. When we were in office the public had the view, and they were right, that the pendulum went too far one way. Under this government the pendulum has gone too far the other way. And what we’re seeking to do is to get back to the sensible centre and that’s why our plan is to keep the fair work laws but to seek to improve them. We want to keep the independent umpire in place. We want to maintain protection for workers. But we have a series of sensible, modest, practical proposals. We also want to seek to bring the rule of law to bear again on Australia’s worksites by reintroducing the Australian Building and Construction Commission. We also want to make sure that trade union leaders are subject to the same laws as company directors. We want to make sure that their standards of behaviour are as high as they can be. And that’s it. That’s all we essentially want to do in the next term of parliament. What ever is in our policy is all that we well do. And if at some point in the future we thought that there were further changes that needed to be made, we would take those to an election and seek a mandate to do so.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
We might talk a bit more about that in a minute but Matt, Bill Shorten the workplace relations minister has said today Mr Abbott has confirmed unfair individual contracts will be back under a Liberal government. Now the Coalition is removing some restrictions on individual flexibility agreements that enterprise bargaining places on them, but essentially isn’t the Coalition using the agreements that Labor has been set up? And the test, the better off overall test, that Labor has set up?
MATT THISTLETHWAITE:
Well the most worrying thing about this policy that’s been announced today Lyndal is the fact that it has individual workplace negotiations as part of it.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
But your policy has those individual flexibility arrangements as part of your policy doesn’t it?
MATT THISTLETHWAITE:
Well, only on the condition that they’re signed off by Fair Work Australia, that they meet award conditions and that they’re not at a disadvantage compared to the enterprise agreement that may exist at the site. But I can remember during my time working as a lawyer, getting the phone calls, the thing I remember the most about Work Choices, isn’t the building and construction commission, isn’t the rights of work campaign, it’s getting the phone calls from the parents who were saying to me how is it possible in Australia that my son or daughter, young kids working as teenagers in retail in their early twenties could be forced to negotiate as an individual with their employer, without the protection of a union and have their conditions such as overtime and penalty rates wiped out. That’s what you get with individual workplace negotiations and that’s what you’re going to get under a Tony Abbott led government on industrial relations.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
But the Coalition’s policy says no one could be forced to take an individual flexibility arrangement. That they would have to agree to it. That its not, that they couldn’t come into a workplace, and be forced to take one first off. Isn’t that a protection against some of the things you mentioned?
MATT THISTLETHWAITE:
Lyndal if you look at this policy it’s very similar to the policy that John Howard took to the 2004 election. And then once they won that election, once they got control of both houses of the parliament, the House of Representatives and the Senate. What did we get? We got Work Choices, so the Australian public should be under no disillusion. You cannot trust the Liberals when it comes to workplace relations. What they do is they cut conditions when they come to government, and they do that to please the business lobby and big business in this community, and that’s what they’ll do again under this policy. It opens up the door for them to do that. The review by the Productivity Commission of unfair dismissal laws of penalty rates, it allows Tony Abbott to say to the business community, just hang in there, hang in there with us and over time we will get there, we will get there together, we’ll be able to diminish these conditions as they did, when they were in office under John Howard.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
Mitch, hasn’t the Coalition left the door open to making much more major changes if it wins a second term by putting the issue that the broad scope of workplace relations to the Productivity Commission?
MITCH FIFIELD:
Well Lyndal, the Productivity Commission is not a body to be feared. Let’s not forget that it was the Productivity Commission that came up with the landmark report that proposed the National Disability Insurance Scheme. So both sides of politics recognise that the Productivity Commission is an independent, objective body that produces good work. But any proposition that the Productivity Commission may come up with in the next parliament that we may agree with we would take to the polls. We would seek a mandate. We would not seek to legislate in the next term of parliament. But I’ve just got to come back to individual flexibility arrangements for a second. Let’s not forget, individual flexibility arrangements were a creation of the Australian Labor Party. They are not individual contracts. They are not Australian Workplace Agreements. Our sole proposal in relation to individual flexibility agreements is that if an employee wants to avail themselves of an individual flexibility agreement then they will have the opportunity to do so and still subject to the “Better Off Overall Test” that the Labor Party introduced. So that is the only change. No one will be forced, compelled, or have as a condition of employment that they seek to enter individual flexibility agreement. All we are doing is giving that as an option, should an employee seek to choose that. And what can be wrong with that?
LYNDAL CURTIS:
One that are you are reintroducing that does have a large degree of compulsion, that does have wide coercive powers, is the Australian Building and Construction Commission, why do you need to go back to that model, and does it in some senses, do you need it when you have what you’re setting up the Registered Organisations Commission as well.
MITCH FIFIELD:
I think you need both. We’ve seen a rise in union militancy on worksites since the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. We’ve seen the unsavoury episodes at the Myer Emporium site in Melbourne. When we had the Australian Building and Construction Commission in place we saw an increase in productivity in the building industry of about 10%. We don’t want union thuggery to be entrenched in those workplaces and you need a cop on the beat to make sure that doesn’t happen. But in addition you need a Registered Organisations Commission to make sure that the same rules, the same standards, the same penalties apply to union leaders as apply to company directors.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
Matt, one final question on this, most workers aren’t members of unions are they? Do you think they’d be receptive to the sorts of campaigns that unions and Labor have run in the past against the Coalition in regards to industrial relations?
MATT THISLTHWAITE:
I do because the average union member these days Lyndal, is a female working in the public sector like my wife who is a nurse, that’s your average union member these days, and they rely of the protection of collective bargaining, decent unfair dismissal laws and the right to have a real increase in their wages. But just going back to the point that Mitch Fifield made a moment ago, under Labor the number of days lost to industrial disputes has actually fallen, so this scare campaign that the Opposition run about the building industry simply isn’t true. About 102,000 days per year were lost under the Howard government due to industrial disputes, that’s fallen to about 48,000 under the Labor government and Labour productivity has actually been growing at a greater rate, about 1.7% under Labor compared to 1.3% under the Coalition. So the objective facts state that the fair work system that we have at the moment is working well.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
We might move on now. The Government has announced that it will put a referendum at the time of the next election to recognise local government in the Constitution. Matt it will be financial recognition seeking to overcome problems created by a couple of court cases is it more an administrative than a symbolic change?
MATT THISTLETHWAITE:
It’s an important change Lyndal because for the last few years, federal government has increasingly been funding a number of important programs out of the local government level. The great beauty of being a Senator is that I get to travel around New South Wales, particularly to rural and regional areas. And I go to places where we’ve been opening these wonderful new infrastructure programs under local and regional infrastructure programs, things like upgrades to local libraries, upgrades to local halls, basic, necessary infrastructure and that’s been put in jeopardy because of the chaplaincy case and the government is simply suggesting an amendment to section 96 of the constitution which would allow the federal government the power to directly fund local government and I think that’s something that’s long overdue. It’s a sensible minor reform to our constitution and I welcome the fact hat Tony Abbott said he’ll support.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
Mitch, a couple of the states as I understand it do have some concerns, I think one of those is Victoria but will the Coalition, as Matt suggests, will the Coalition give this bipartisan support?
MITCH FIFIELD:
Well Lyndal, we all support local government and we support the Commonwealth funding local government. I think the example par excellence was the Roads to Recovery program of the Howard government which saw local government deliver real bang for the buck on the ground. So we’re all supportive of that. And we’ve indicated that we’re happy if there are question marks over the capacity of the Commonwealth to continue to do that, to look at reinforcing the ability of the federal government to continue to have a financial relationship with local government . But what the Government is doing is really setting this referendum up for failure. Local government is the creature and creation of state governments and if you were seeking to embark on this referendum, the first thing you would do would be to talk to and to negotiate with the states. Now I’m not aware that there is as yet a single state that is in favour of this referendum. We’re at five minutes to midnight in relation to the electoral cycle and the Government haven’t taken the time to make the case to the Australian people for this referendum. Don’t put a referendum up if you’re really intending it to fail.
LYNDAL CURTIS:
And that’s where we will have to leave it, we’ve run about of time but Matt Thislethwaite and Mitch Fifield thank you very much for joining us today.
MATT THISTLETHWAITE:
Thank you very much Lyndal.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Thanks Lyndal.