House of Representatives

Monday, 3 June 2013 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 17
We heard a member before talking about how the IR
policy will be no WorkChoices because it is written
down. Last week we saw that his word is not worth the
paper it is written on. During their time they removed
penalty rates, breaks between shifts, minimum and
maximum shift lengths and a cap on the number of
consecutive days worked. You only have to read the
FIFO report by the regional Australia committee to see
how it impacts on families.
It is the Gillard government that will enshrine
penalty rates into law to give workers greater certainty
that they will be protected—whether it is those
working on night shift, overtime, unsocial or irregular
or unpredictable hours on weekends and public
holidays. It is we who support shift workers, whether
they are in manufacturing, hospitality or public safety,
such as police and ambulance officers. It is about time
that those opposite really went out and did the same. It
is this side of the House that always stands up for
workers; those on that side of the House that always
want to stand on them.
Dr JENSEN (Tangney) (11:26): The coalition
supports individual flexibility arrangements—Labor's
individual flexibility arrangements—but we want them
to be more effective. Individual flexibility
arrangements should not be excluded by enterprise
bargaining agreements. Our position is clear, and has
been stated on a number of occasions. I will state it
again: the umpire, the Fair Work Commission, after
hearing all submissions, should make the decision,
balancing all considerations. The liberal parties are the
true originators and protectors of the great Aussie
notion of the fair go. There can be no better way of
getting ahead than getting a job. The Liberal Party has
always, and will always, work to ensure that jobs are
our number one focus. A Liberal government will work
to create the conditions for growth and make it easier
to get a job. Cutting back on red tape and green tape
will increase the pool of available jobs.
This motion aspires to a noble and worthwhile end,
but adopts a misguided means laden with potentially
unintended consequences. By this I mean that every
single member of the coalition wants to see the quality
of life of all Australians improve. However, the way to
go about doing this is not to resort to outdated
economic concepts like price floors. Unlike Labor, the
coalition recognises that the world of work has
changed and that the world in which we work has
changed. Australia has to become more competitive.
We compete every day with every country around the
world. The work week is no longer nine to five,
Monday to Friday. To deny the obvious changes in our
way of living is as inane as to deny the internet, 24hour
shopping and banking and so on.
In 2009, noted New York Times columnist Thomas
L. Friedman wrote The World is Flat. The book is a
CHAMBER
prescient reminder to Australia and all Western
developed nations that we must adapt to the new reality
of a globally-connected world, where intellectual
services are traded easily, or die. One has only to look
at Australia's position on the competitiveness index to
know that we are not going in the right direction.
Presently, Australia is ranked 20th by the World
Economic Forum, two places lower than Saudi
Arabia—so too on unit labour productivity, as it is
when one removes the crutch of the resources industry.
One can see again that we are moving in the wrong
direction, and the trend is negative. By implementing a
price-floor model into a globally obsolete notion of the
working week, Labor is ensuring fewer of the people it
purports to help will be at work. Fewer young people,
part-time workers and those returning to work will
have work. Put simply, the higher the unit cost of
labour, the fewer people will be employed.
The Fair Work Commission is best placed to
arbitrate on the market-clearing rate of labour, plus
sufficient and appropriate compensation to correct
asymmetries of information on the part of the worker.
Making Australia more uncompetitive does nothing to
address the needs of the Australian worker in the
knowledge economy, to say nothing of the Asian
century. There needs to be less red and green tape.
There needs to be a recognition of individual flexibility
arrangements, provided a greater or compensating
benefit has been won—again, the proper recourse
being the Fair Work Commission.
Scrap the carbon tax to ease the pressure on
Australian business. Fix the budget to return certainty
and confidence to the Australian economy. If we do
not work to build real solutions and instead opt for
ideas best consigned to the scrap heap of history, then
we will never get to having that cafe society. The
hospitality industry will continue to feel the strain and
our best chance of sustainability growth via a
sustainable industry in tourism will be jeopardised.
The Fair Work Commission was set up to be the
independent umpire on issues of award and penalty
rates, yet here we are discussing a motion that in
essence undermines the role of the Fair Work
Commission. Where is the trust in the umpire—an
umpire the Labor government set up?
Mr MARLES (Corio) (11:31): Rather than being a
motion which undermines the work of Fair Work
Australia, as has been said by the member for Tangney,
this is a motion which absolutely supports the work of
Fair Work Australia and its predecessor, the Australian
Industrial Relations Commission, since its inception in
1904—because that is what occurred to give rise to
penalty rates. That is why am so pleased to speak today
in support of the member for La Trobe's motion before
the House.