Mr WILLIS(5.41 p.m.) —At the outset I want to clear up any confusion that may be in the minds of listeners of the previous speaker, the member for Paterson (Mr Bob Baldwin), and indeed various speakers on the other side about what the Workplace Relations Amendment Bill is actually doing. This bill is not amending Laurie Brereton's or the Labor government's unfair dismissal laws; it is amending this government's law and stripping away a right which this government said last year they were entitled to but has since changed its mind about.

It is stripping away a right for people who are employed in small business, if dismissed in a harsh, unjust or unreasonable way, to seek redress: a fundamental right which this government last year and before the last election said they should have but has now changed its mind and said they should not have. Why has it changed its mind? Because it is desperate to create jobs. It will do almost anything to create employment, even to the point of destroying the fundamental rights of people, but it is not succeeding in doing that.

This legislation is fundamentally flawed. It is flawed because this government assume that, by taking these sorts of measures, they will be able to create employment. There is no evidence of that whatever. They also assume that the previous government's legislation in relation to unfair dismissals destroyed jobs. We heard reference after reference in this debate and from the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) in question time on numerous occasions about Labor's job destroying unfair dismissal laws.

That is the mythology of this government. The facts say the opposite. The facts say that, when the Labor government's legislation was in place, there was very strong employment growth. Since this legislation has been taken away, we have not seen such strong employment growth. I am not saying that these are the only issues related to employment, but this government is saying that this is necessary to create employment. There is absolutely no factual basis for that whatever.

Let us look at what happened under Labor's period in office with the unfair dismissals law. It came into effect at the end of March 1994. From then until February 1996, a period of 23 months, what happened to employment with this job destroying unfair dismissals law? We had growth in employment of half a million—just over 500,000. So much for the job destroying law. There were 500,000 additional jobs created while this legislation was in place. Certainly it was not perfect and certainly we made some adjustments to it, some of which came into effect at the end of our period in office. But it was not job destroying. There is no evidence to show that it was job destroying. It did not stop half a million additional people getting jobs.

In fact, in the period after we left office, for the rest of 1996, when this legislation remained in effect—although there was legislation around from May of last year to amend it, it did not come into effect until the end of December—there continued to be some employment growth under the Liberal govern ment. In the 2¾ years that this Labor legislation was in place, we had growth in employment of 568,000 jobs. In the period since this legislation was chucked out and the new legislation was brought in on the basis that it would create employment, how many jobs have been created? Seventeen thousand jobs have been created in the seven months from December to July. Under the previous legislation, we were creating 17,000 jobs a month. We have had 17,000 in seven months with this legislation in place.

As I said, this is not the only factor in determining employment growth. But, on the basis of that evidence, one certainly cannot say that the previous legislation was job destroying, and one certainly cannot say that the current legislation, through the Workplace Relations Bill, and the unfair dismissal changes have been job creating in the way they were claimed they would be. There simply is no evidence to show that.

If you look at the facts, which no-one on the government side wants to do, you will see the opposite to what the government believes to be the fact, that is, there was no job destroying legislation. The legislation gave rights—and certainly it may have been overdone in the first place. The evidence does not say it destroyed employment. We had half a million additional jobs, 17,000 a month on average. This government would give its right arm to create 17,000 a month at the present time. It simply cannot do that.

From that employment evidence, it is quite clear that the basis of this legislation is false. The basis of this legislation is that you have to take away the rights of workers in relation to unfair dismissal to create employment. The past shows that that is not so. Of course, this government refuse to acknowledge that. I can understand that they do not want to look back or acknowledge anything that was done under the previous government. But they are basing legislation on that assumption. They are stripping away the rights of people on that assumption. They have no right to do that.

I draw attention to the fact that, in the first seven months of the Labor government's supposedly job destroying legislation, we created 186,500 additional jobs. In the first seven months of the Workplace Relations Amendment Bill and the changes to the unfair dismissal laws, we have had 17,000 additional jobs. What a comparison.

Such startling differentials make it absolutely clear that there is no evidence whatever that Labor's unfair dismissal laws were job destroying or even that they inhibited the growth of employment. Certainly, they did not prevent very strong employment growth. There is no evidence whatever that the government's new and greatly restricted unfair dismissal regime has provided any boost to employment.

In the light of this, one might ask: why, then, do government members so fervently believe that the bill now before the House will lead to strong employment growth? The answer is that it is just ideology, just a belief, just something that they think must be right: if you take away some kind of employment right for workers that small business or business generally has found a bit objectionable, then that will create jobs.

It is much more complex than that. You have to do a hell of a lot of things to create employment. Certainly, this government is not doing them. This kind of measure, rather than creating employment, is just making our society less fair and less equitable by taking away fundamental rights from workers.

Another reason we can be utterly sceptical about claims that this legislation will be a key to employment growth is that many small businesses are already completely exempt from the unfair dismissal laws. This government's Workplace Relations Amendment Bill, which came into effect at the end of last year and which changed the unfair dismissal laws, excluded lots of people in small business. They already are excluded.

It covers only those who are in the Commonwealth public sector; employees located in the territories or in Victoria, which has ceded all its industrial powers to the Commonwealth; federal award employees who are employed by a constitutional corporation, that is, a foreign corporation, a financial corporation, a trading corporation, or a body incorporated in a territory or Commonwealth authority; and federal award employees who are engaged in interstate or international trade, such as waterside workers, maritime employees and flight crew, and so on.

That definition of groups excludes various small business people. Obviously it excludes the employees of sole traders and of partnerships. A myriad of small businesses outside Victoria and the territories are not covered because they are not corporations, or they may be corporations but they are not constitutional corporations. So there are lots of small businesses which already are not covered.

This legislation is just sweeping up the rest of them, making sure that those who were covered initially are now no longer covered. Many of them, probably the majority, have been excluded already by the legislation which was brought in earlier this year. So we are here just tidying up, making sure that no small business need be worried about unfair dismissal legislation.

Despite this already large exemption of small business, there is no evidence that it has led to increased employment. In fact, employment growth has been pathetic since this exemption was made, as I have already shown. Furthermore, there is no evidence, apart from anecdotal evidence, that these laws were especially burdensome for small business.

Chief Justice Wilcox of the Industrial Relations Court of Australia noted in his annual report for 1995-96 that small business employers were underrepresented in unfair dismissal cases that came before the court. In talking about an independent survey of the court's unlawful termination litigants, he said:

There is no indication that the jurisdiction attracts particular classes of employees beyond their representation in the community. Respondents also are a cross-section of Australian employers, except that small business seems to be under-represented. Although ABS statistics show that 91.7% of employers have fewer than 20 employees, the survey showed that only 33% of respondents were in this category. It is interesting to speculate why this is so. Perhaps communication is better in small enterprises.

In other words, what he is saying is that small business is underrepresented in the cases before the court for unfair dismissal and that, therefore, things must be working better in small business than in business generally. What this bill is about is exempting small business because there is supposed to be a special problem there. Mr Justice Wilcox is saying the opposite is true. He is saying that there is less of a problem with small business than with big business, in terms of the cases that come before the court. This government is addressing a problem at the wrong end, if there is a problem at all. Certainly, the government's actions do not fit with the words of Justice Wilcox.

In this report Chief Justice Wilcox also noted that by October 1995—that is, before the latest changes by the Labor government to the unfair dismissals law came into effect—the number of cases that came before the court was just under two per cent of all involuntary terminations in the Australian work force. So, as he said, a tiny proportion of all the people who were sacked pursued litigation against their employer and took a case to court. So much for this being an overwhelming problem.

In targeting an exemption for all small business, the government have claimed also that this is in accord with ILO convention No. 158, the termination of employment convention, which they say allows exclusions of this type, even though the convention states, in article 2, paragraph 1:

This Convention applies to all branches of economic activity and to all employed persons.

So the international convention on which the unfair dismissals law is based—and which we ratified—says that this should be applying to all branches of the economy and to all employed persons. It does go on to allow for some exemptions. Countries can have exemptions for some categories, such as:

. . . limited categories of employed persons in respect of which special problems of a substantial nature arise in the light of the particular conditions of employment of the workers concerned or the size or nature of the undertaking that employs them.

It is those words which the government has seized on, to say, `We can use that exemption in the convention to put through this—based on the convention. We will be hunky-dory, in line with the convention.'

However, the convention goes on to require that a country, in its first report on the convention to the ILO, shall set out any exemptions and the reasons for them and also:

. . . shall state in subsequent reports the position of its law and practice regarding the categories excluded, and the extent to which effect has been given or is proposed to be given to the Convention in respect of such categories.

So what it seems to me to be saying is that you must, in the first place, report on who you have excluded and why, and then in subsequent reports you must say how those exemptions are going and what effect is being given to the convention in respect of those categories. In other words, the impetus seems to be for going back towards the full coverage, which is the objective of the convention. But what this government is doing is going the other way. It is not paring back on the exemptions; it is going to more exemptions.

What is also important is that these words have been interpreted by the committee of experts of the ILO to mean that, after you have put in your first report, there is then no right under the convention to have any further exclusions. As the member for Greenway (Mr Mossfield) said in his address a little while ago, the first report was put in by Australia in September 1995. According to the committee of experts, after you have put in your first report, that is it. You have no further right.

Let me read from the ILO publication, Protection against unjustified dismissal, a 1995 report by the committee of experts. In paragraph 74, it says:

Article 2(6) allows governments to take account of future developments towards a reduction of the exclusions referred to in the first report, but it does not allow them subsequently to introduce new exceptions that were not in force at the time of the first report. In addition to affording the appropriate flexibility, the purpose of exception clauses in ILO Conventions is for member States to endeavour to gradually achieve broader application—

in other words, to pare back on the exemptions, not to expand them.

Therefore, this government is going against this convention. What it is doing is a defiance and a breach of the convention. The committee of experts has said that it is not within the terms of the convention to do exactly what this government is doing. In terms of this convention, you have no right to further extend exemptions after the first report. What you did with the Workplace Relations Act at the end of last year—narrowing the coverage on unfair dismissals and excluding lots of people—was in total defiance and breach of the ILO convention, as is what you are doing now.

That is the situation this government is in. It is acting in a way which is totally contrary to its international obligations, and it is doing so on the totally false premise that, by doing this and taking this harsh action against the workers of this country, it will create employment. It will totally fail in that regard, as it has totally failed so far during its period of office.