Mr TONY SMITH(11.12 a.m.) —It is interesting to look at the statistics on trade union membership between 1975-76 and 1992. During part of that period the member for Hotham (Mr Crean) was the President of the ACTU. It is quite clear that workers voted with their feet and left the ACTU in droves, as the member for Hotham did. He voted with his feet and he is in here now.

Mr Crean —I am voting with my feet now. I am walking out on you.

Mr TONY SMITH —And he is voting with his feet and leaving the chamber.

Mr Hardgrave —He is taking his bat and ball.

Mr TONY SMITH —Yes. Does the member for Hotham prefer to see young people on the dole, at $120 a week, or does he prefer to see them working? That is really the point about the Workplace Relations and Other Legislation Amendment Bill. I should also comment on the member for Fremantle (Dr Lawrence). We heard a mesmeric outline of figures and statistics about how women are disadvantaged here, there and everywhere without her applying herself to the terms of the bill and what the bill does for women, which I will refer to later.

Look at some practical examples. These people on the other side never do. Half of them have never been in a workplace. I was an articled clerk and I started with a female. As everybody knows, an articled clerk is a general dogsbody. We had equal pay, but it was not equal work. Whenever there was any heavy lifting or carrying or anything of a heavy nature that had to be done, guess who had to do it? The males had to do it.

Mrs Bishop —Oh really! Not in my office.

Mr TONY SMITH —I thank the minister at the table for her interjection. I did not forget that, but I did not complain about it at the time. We have had a non-ending litany of complaints from the member for Fremantle about how disadvantaged she was.

Mr O'Keefe —No wonder the minister pulled you up. It's a problem in your party.

Mr TONY SMITH —The member for Burke is like a rubber ducky: you squeeze him and he keeps popping out again. The real thing about this legislation is that it attempts to address the mind-set being displayed through the remarks we have heard from the other side; that is, that in reality we are seeing a new direction in master-servant relationships. I use that term in this sense: no longer are they master-servant relationships but partnerships. They are equal in the sense of common goals. That is the design in the legislation. We have heard from the member for Hotham an outline of what has happened with the accords. He extolled the accords.

Mr McArthur —It was up to No. 8. Which one was it?

Mr TONY SMITH —I think it got up to about 10 at one stage, or they were expecting it to before they lost government. The mem ber for Hotham was extolling the accord. But what the accord system did was entrench a wage-price dichotomy. In other words, the workers would go out and get their wage increase, and then of course prices went up. So they were no better off. In fact, as we know, real wages dropped under that system. So it is no good coming in here and extolling the accord system; it did not work.

But what it did do was entrench the union bureaucracy, the ACTU bureaucracy or the union involvement in all these things when in fact the percentage of people who were unionised was dropping ever so rapidly. I will come to it soon, but I think that percentage is getting down to about the 30-per cent mark.

This legislation will provide not only greater work opportunities but also a comfort zone for workers. There will be minimum standards. That is quite clear in the bill. But we must realise that we are in the 20th century. When you hear some of the rhetoric coming from the other side, it is quite incredible. You would think that they are talking about the last century, and they frequently do that. The member for Canberra (Mr McMullan), for example, in his speech to this House stated:

This bill is based on the assumption that the labour contract is just a contract like any other. Views like these threatened industrial peace and the rights and living standards of Australians in the 1890s.

That is where those opposite are still set; they are set in the 1890s. You have to ask yourselves why. Why don't we get a cooperative approach from the other side for what is really needed in this country? That is, a more workable industrial relations system—not confrontation but workable productivity, and a system that looks to get jobs as well. We all want to get jobs, don't we? Do those on the other side agree with that proposition or are they really saying, `No, we have a system that we're quite happy with because our bureaucratic mates in the union movement want to continue in their nice well paid jobs'?

Look at the philosophical direction that has been stated. In my submission, it is quite anachronistic. Look at the language of the member for Canberra. He states:

There is one thing you can definitely say about productivity in Australian workplaces. A bill consciously designed to attack the living standards of working men and women, to make them feel insecure . . .

That language is just absurd. It is just inconsistent with the bill, and it is designed to inflame. It is not designed to advance the argument one iota. Don't we have to move away from that to a more realistic approach, a pragmatic approach, to industrial relations in this country? That is what the opposition refuses to do.

We can remember the history of confrontation that has occurred over the years—confrontation that has not advanced jobs but hindered them. We can recall over the years—and I myself can recall this personally—experiences of thuggish union officials, standover merchants in unionised work places, where you could not get a job without a union ticket. Are those opposite saying that that should still obtain, that you should not be able to get a job unless you have been made to join a union?

Mr Hardgrave —Freedom.

Mr TONY SMITH —You do not hear them saying that any more. I believe that most of them still do subscribe to it, but they will not say it any more. It is not freedom, as remarked on by my colleague from Moreton. There are compulsory unionism, preference clauses, closed shops and all those things. How many young and older people could not get a job because they conscientiously objected to joining a union?

What about the position of independent contractors? I used to see truck drivers queuing up at the old Roma Street goods yards. One day some years ago I had a conversation with one. He told me the story of how he was running a truck—and everyone knows the margins that truck drivers are on; it is a very difficult job, long hours, high overheads—and was made to join a union. They would not load or unload his truck unless he joined a union, yet he was an independent contractor. Is that the sort of system that the members opposite want to sustain? It is unsustainable.

Did the system that those in the Labor Party evolved in their legislation, the Brereton legislation, work? Look at the Weipa dispute, the flouting of orders that occurred. It just did not work. Time and again, if the unions did not like an order that was made by the commission, they would just say, `Well, we're not going to follow that order; we'll go out and do what we like.'

Surely the outcomes that will be achieved by this legislation are positive. In reality, getting away from the rhetoric, is it not the case that the bill tries to achieve the sorts of outcomes—I have mentioned them before—that will make for a genuine, lasting and equitable relationship in the workplace—voluntary unionism and prohibition on discrimination?

It seems that the current President of the ACTU does recognise, albeit reluctantly, some advantage in the legislation's proposals. She said in an interview on the Face to Face program:

The other issue I raised is he always talks about freedom of people to choose, and I can live with that too . . .

So there is some reluctant concession, in relation to the general parameters of the bill and what it is trying to achieve, that there is something good there. It is good to see that there is that concession, albeit a fairly small one.

Look at the undoing of amalgamation if it is the wish of members. It is all about choice. Members of a union can establish autonomous enterprise branches if they wish. Again, that is a choice. Members will remember the decision in Moore v. Doyle which was handed down in 1974. That decision meant that from 1974 to 1988 all registered organisations had to provide for branch autonomy in their rules in any event. We have put that requirement into the bill.

The compliance provisions of the bill provide for a speedy relief procedure. There is no bogging down in compulsory conciliation, and injunctive relief is available from the Federal Court and the superior courts. There is provision for a prohibition on paying or accepting strike pay. There are also secondary boycott provisions in this bill. These are good provisions.

Then we get to the unfair dismissal farce. It was even recognised by the former Prime Minister during the election campaign that something had to be done about this. These provisions deprived young and older people of work. The examples were legion of how that legislation was being applied. What happened was that people in small and medium businesses were reluctant to take people on for fear that those provisions would be brought into play and they would be dragooned into a hearing, paying excessive legal costs. They frequently paid a small monetary settlement—sometimes a larger one, unfortunately—to get the whole thing out of the way so they could get on with their business. Surely, that shows that they did not work. Everybody, except those on the other side, knows that they did not work.

One of the other provisions in the bill relates to the Employment Advocate. It is interesting to reflect on how that will work, particularly how it will work for women. The member for Fremantle was complaining about this. The Employment Advocate has a general function of providing assistance and advice to employees about their rights and obligations. Are women not protected by this legislation? This will be particularly significant in relation to Australian workplace agreements. The advocate can provide workers considering an AWA with information to enable them to fully understand the proposed agreement.

The bill has been drafted to enable the advocate's advising and assisting functions to be contracted out. One option which has been given close consideration is to partially contract out some of the functions of the advocate to non-government community organisations. One of the advantages of that approach would be that, where workers are perhaps a little chary approaching a government bureaucracy for assistance with an employer, they could perhaps go to a subcontractor, who has been contracted to do some of the work of the Employment Advocate, to get some advice. Women may feel more comfortable with that. That may be the case particularly for women from non-English speaking backgrounds. They may feel more comfortable in seeking help from community based organisations. There are a number of women's working centres that could play a vital role in this area.

It also needs to be remembered when considering how the bill will help women that there will be benefits in balancing work and family. It is true that unions have resisted the insertion of part-time provisions in awards despite the fact that women want part-time work so that they can cope with the desires, needs and onerous responsibilities of running a family. It is interesting to note what is proposed in relation to carers leave. The provisions for carers leave are a minimum standard.

Mr Hardgrave —Yes.

Mr TONY SMITH —As the member for Moreton says, it is going to help women to juggle their families and work in a realistic way. It is true that the unions have been very resistant to part-time work. There has been a great growth in casual work. In many respects that has not been a good thing because it has predictably meant no access to conditions such as sick leave and maternity leave. That situation will not continue to the same extent under these proposals. The key point in this legislation is choice. It is about safety net support and about getting on with the job.

Mr O'Keefe —The choice your lawyer union gives to people to practise without being a member of your union?

Mr TONY SMITH —The member for Burke wants to take us back into the Dark Ages and wants to keep his union mates in a bureaucracy.

Mr Hockey —Turn on the lights!

Mr TONY SMITH —Exactly. It was never intended that a massive union bureaucracy be established. People who have never got their hands dirty are now running unions. Unions evolved from workers who knew the job, got their hands dirty and represented members from first-hand experience. They knew what it was like to be on the job.

It has been said by the very respected member for Charlton (Mr Robert Brown) that these are the forces of reaction. It is quite the opposite. The reactionaries are on the other side. There are more people, or at least as

many, with working-class credentials on this side as on the other side of the House. That is reflected in the avalanche of the blue-collar vote. I come from a largely working-class electorate. There was an avalanche of blue-collar voters voting for the conservative parties in this country at the last election because they saw the direction they wanted to be taken in. They do not want to be taken in the direction of confrontation.

With the greatest respect to the member for Charlton, he really has got it wrong, and that is where the reaction is. If you look at what `reactionary' means, it is the reaction from that side of the House. There is the member for Canberra, too, with his slash and burn descriptions—all this reactionary stuff. There can be no better comments on the legislation than those of Mr Michael Easson, ACTU vice-president from 1993-94 and NSW council secretary from 1989-94. What did he say? As reported in the Courier-Mail on 14 June 1996, he said that the legislation was not radical or draconian. He stated:

I don't regard it as massively radical. It is moving further than the previous government would have done, but I think it is an incremental development.

If you look at the Working Nation statement in 1994 you will see that it is exactly that. Members opposite should re-read that statement and then ask me, `Is this legislation much different from the general proposals in that statement?' Mr Easson goes on:

The laws would test the maturity of workers and employers to bargain together.

That is what it is all about. With appropriate safeguards it can work. It is about maturity, it is about getting rid of Big Brother—the ACTU—who says, `We know better than the workers. We'll tell you what you should have. Even though you have reached an agreement with the bosses in the workplace, we'll tell you what you should have.' We want to get away from that. It requires maturity and lateral thinking to move away from the old hardline reactionary utterances of those opposite. (Time expired)