Mr WILLIS(6.56 p.m.) —I think everyone realises that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business (Mr Reith) and many members on the other side are engaging in absolute obfuscation in trying to suggest that, by removing the right to protection against harsh, unjust or unreasonable dismissal, workers in small businesses with fewer than 15 employees will be adequately covered. We all know that the situations in which they will be covered are extremely limited, related to areas like discrimination and notice, and that in many situations related to harsh, unjust or unreasonable dismissal they will have no protection at all. That is the reality; the minister knows it. Let us stop mucking around and pretending that there is no change in their situation.

As far as the minister's comments go about standard practice at the international level, I do not think it is standard practice at the international level to have exemptions of the degree of fewer than 15 employees. There are a number of countries, as he said, which have some exemptions. The ones for which details are available to me include Germany, Austria and the Republic of Korea, which has exemptions for fewer than four employees, and Sri Lanka. The only one that I could find that had anything like the proposal that is here in this legislation of fewer than 15 employees was Sri Lanka.

Mr Reith —What an insult to the Sri Lankans.

Mr WILLIS —So now we are to have Sri Lankan labour standards. That is what you are giving us: the same rights and the same coverage in relation to small business as they have in Sri Lanka. What is your next burst? Are you going to give us a Sri Lankan 48-hour week or two weeks annual leave like in Sri Lanka or the Sri Lankan $60 a month minimum wage?

Once you go down the deregulation path and you are unsuccessful, and you believe you must do more deregulation and you are unsuccessful, and you must do more, you simply unwind all of the protections that have been built up for Australian workers over the years and the decades. That is the path this government is on. You start to take us back to the kinds of minimal protections that exist in many of our Asian neighbour countries.

The minister also says that his actions are consistent with our international obligations. As I said in my speech at the second reading stage—and I do not have time to repeat the details here—that is simply not true. He said it at the Press Club; he has been saying it all over the place. It is not true. The committee of experts, whom he dismisses as a bunch of nincompoops who do not know what they are talking about, presumably do know a little about this subject. They are the international experts on the convention. They did a report on the protection against unjustified dismissal in 1995. What they said in that report was, in paragraph 73:

A member State which ratifies the Convention has to list in its first report (to the ILO) submitted after ratification the categories of workers which may have been excluded in pursuance of paragraphs 4 and 5 of Article 2 . . .

That is the area on which this government is relying for support for this legislation: the exemption given in paragraph 5 for size of undertaking. The report goes on to say, in paragraph 74:

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.

It could not be clearer. They are saying absolutely that once you have the first report—and that was given in September of 1995—there is no entitlement to bring in extra exclusions. But that is what this government is doing with this legislation. It is totally against the international convention. In fact, so was the Workplace Relations Act which came in at the end of last year. The exclusions that are in that are against the convention as well. You have no entitlement under the convention to do either. You must know that. Your department must know that.

You are trying to bluff the people of Australia. You do not give a damn about the international conventions or the ILO. You just want to trample over all of that to satisfy your small business clientele. You tell the people of Australia that this is all about creating employment. It will do nothing for employment. What it will do is cause great concern and hardship to a lot of employees of small businesses in this country.