Ms PLIBERSEK (1:12 PM) —If the titles of legislation were subject to the Trade Practices Act, we might perhaps have a case for false advertising in the title of this bill. It would be more correctly titled `Less pay, worse jobs'. The bill title should actually reflect the intent of the bill. The intent of this bill is to sideline the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and make it irrelevant, to attack unions and make them irrelevant if possible and to leave workers to negotiate their own conditions individually through AWAs. Pay increases are to be made contingent upon award stripping so that award employees will be required to give up their superannuation, long service leave and all of the other entitlements covered by awards to get their pay rises.

It is a disaster for working people all over Australia and especially for women. It represents a thinly veiled attack on the union movement and the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. It reverses the fundamental premises of the legal system such as independent umpires and the onus on applicants in the injunction process. It is the work of a minister and a government intent on destroying the balance between employers and employees, which has been the defining feature of Australia's successful industrial relations system. We should not be fooled by the suggestions of the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business that the bill represents evolutionary and incremental reform. It is a radical and destructive attack on workers and tilts the balance even further against them than the 1996 amendments.

I would like to speak first of all about the particular effects of this bill on women. Women will be disproportionately affected by this legislation, because, of course, as you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, they are concentrated in casual employment, in part-time employment, in lower paid work and in industries where their bargaining power is less. Often they also have less union coverage. So this legislation will affect women disproportionately.

The changes to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission mean that the bill limits conciliation to certain allowable matters. It means that the Industrial Relations Commission cannot be called upon to help workers and employers negotiate equal opportunity and sexual harassment conditions. More generally, in the past the Australian Industrial Relations Commission has helped women achieve better working conditions, including maternity entitlements and equal remuneration for work of equal value. The stripping of the Industrial Relations Commission's powers is disastrous for women workers who have in the past been able to negotiate these vital entitlements.

Award stripping particularly affects women workers. The ACTU estimates that over 50 per cent of women working part time are on awards. That is more than 800,000 workers. Twenty per cent of full-time working women are also dependent on awards—an additional 420,000 workers. The minister is stripping the awards and entitlements of over 1.2 million Australian women. These women have depended on these awards, in particular for pay increases, in the past because, as I said, they are often concentrated in industries where their bargaining power is substantially lower than some of the more male dominated industries. The move towards bargaining is bad for women. Women have not done as well in the bargaining process as men, due to their weaker bargaining power. As I said, that is because of the concentration in part-time and casual employment, their concentration in lower status jobs and occupations and lower union membership.

All of the reports over many years have shown that Australia has comparatively good levels of pay equity. They are certainly not the best in the OECD, but the advances that we have made have been based on the fact that in the past we have had a centralised bargaining system which has allowed workers in weaker bargaining positions to gain the benefits of the industrial activity of workers in stronger sectors.

In fact, Geoffrey Crockett and Alison Preston in an article titled `The future is bleak: Enterprise bargaining and gender wage equity', which was written this year, show that moving employment negotiations from the public sphere into the private sphere will certainly not advance the struggle of women workers. They suggest that decentralised bargaining will adversely impact on female earnings. They say that this has already been proved in Western Australia, which has implemented many of the reforms proposed by this bill. We can look at the future of the federal legislation by examining the effects of the Western Australian legislation—and that, of course, is not just true in the issue of equity between men's and women's wages but also relates to the issue of accessing workplaces with the required notice.

Crockett and Preston show, for example, that between 1991 and 1998 the wage gap in Western Australia rose 5½ percentage points from 17½ per cent to 23 per cent. That is a very significant increase over a seven-year period, and is certainly not a situation we should be proud of. Australia, as a country that has in the past led in many areas of wage equity and other gender equity issues, is in fact now introducing legislation that is proven in Western Australia to have increased the wage gap between men's and women's earnings. Census data shows that this change was entirely brought about by adverse wage structure effects and not because of changes in productivity between men and women. I think that is a very serious issue. There has been in the past an argument that the wages gap is based on the fact that men are stronger or working in heavier industries, but really this research by Crockett and Preston shows that the increase in the gender wage gap has just been because of women's lower bargaining power in the wages bargaining process. In fact, Western Australian women have improved what the academics would call their relative human capital endowments—they are referring to education, work skills and so on—but these gains have not offset the detrimental effects of the legislative changes.

An analysis of these workplace agreements show that equal opportunity provisions have been weakened and that the beneficiaries of the new system are managers rather than workers. So people in situations where they have strong bargaining power are able to bargain their wages up, but for the majority of workers that is certainly not the case.

I will make some more general comments about the legislation as well. The bill confines the Industrial Relations Commission's compulsory arbitration powers. It removes matters which the Industrial Relations Commission can include in awards such as long service leave, notice of termination, skills based classifications, training and education provisions. The award stripping that is proposed will remove all but the most basic minimum conditions. This is a shameful situation, given how many generations Australian workers have fought to have these types of provisions included in their awards, for the very good reason that they are the sorts of rights and entitlements that workers should expect—not just for themselves but for all of their colleagues; not just for workers who are in strong bargaining positions but also for the majority of workers who on their own cannot win such conditions and who rely on collective action to achieve these sorts of conditions.

The bill makes industrial action illegal except in the most meagre set of circumstances. In this respect we are actually embarrassing ourselves in the international community when we reach a situation where Australia is saying in the international context that we no longer believe that workers have the right to withhold their labour—their only real bargaining power. I think that this certainly sets us back decades in having an advanced industrial relations system.

Sympathy and political action, of course, is unprotected under the allowable circumstances for industrial action. The Industrial Relations Commission must authorise a ballot to take place. That requires an application with signatures from five per cent of the work force. That is terrific news. If you are in a work force where you are very sackable and where you are very vulnerable, you are hardly likely to put your name to a petition suggesting industrial action.

This also applies to the rights of entry provisions included in this bill whereby unions can enter workplaces only if they have a written invitation from a union member and if 24-hours written notice is provided to the employer. There are provisions for an official to obtain a certificate from the registrar to protect the identity of the union member requesting a visit, but it is not clear how onerous this process might be or whether workers will be prepared to use it.

Just imagine being the one worker on the shop floor—perhaps a migrant worker sewing clothes for a few dollars an hour—who is brave enough to invite the union in to inspect the premises, to inspect the working conditions or to inspect the pay records if you believe you have been underpaid. It would certainly take a lot of strength of character and bravery to be the one to risk your job and risk retaliation from the employer. To be brave enough to be the one who will do that would certainly be an achievement. The most vulnerable workers, of course, are the ones least able to negotiate on their own behalf, but they will also be the ones least likely to invite their union into the workplace because they will be the ones most fearful of retaliation, having been identified by the employer as the person who is the troublemaker.

I believe that the bill will also lead to greater not less industrial disputation because of the onerous requirements relating to allowable industrial disputation. A situation is created here where there is no incentive for goodwill between employers and unions. In fact, unions, by and large, see these requirements as so onerous and so unreasonable that they are more likely to behave illegally if this bill is passed—so in fact increasing the level of disputation. The Assistant Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, Dave Oliver, told Workforce magazine last month:

If they tighten it up too much, then we will have to defy the law. The unions have always taken industrial action and we always will.

And of course it is the unions' responsibility to defend the interests of their workers in the most effective way possible. If the government gives them no room to move and no possibility of reaching any sort of reasonable accommodation, they are forced into a situation where conflict is increased.

Unprotected action occurs in any situations other than those specifically described in the bill. For example, when workers protest against the loss of jobs through restructuring, the Industrial Relations Commission is obliged to issue orders to stop or prevent industrial action within 48 hours of an application being made. The bill's definition of industrial action covers only unions. It is significant that when the minister implies that this is a bill that promotes a level playing field, that is fair to both workers and employers, it is plain to see that the intention of this bill is certainly not to be even-handed. The definition of industrial action used to cover both employers and unions with a broad definition that included any change to normal work arrangements.

The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, in particular, has been successful at having actions by employers defined as industrial action and therefore making those actions illegal. The fact that the CFMEU was able to use the provisions of the previous legislation obviously irritated the minister so much that he has now changed the legislation to make sure that employers are no longer covered by this legislation. An analysis of the bill provided by leading industrial lawyers suggests:

Perhaps the most glaring example of the distinct lack of even handedness on the Minister's proposals is that which seeks to expand the scope of s127 to ensure that orders may be made against unions and their officials, while at the same time confining the grounds on which an order may be made against an employer to just one, unprotected lockout action.

Secondly, there is also a requirement that the Federal Court must act promptly in enforcing section 127 orders. The court has demonstrated a willingness not only to prioritise section 127 orders but to sit outside normal sitting hours for these matters. An analysis of the minister's proposals by 80 leading industrial barristers and solicitors suggests that the provision:

. . . may have something to do with the Minister's desire to get even with the Federal Court because of the decisions made by the Court during the course of the waterfront dispute.

It is hardly a good basis for making public policy, is it? A hurt ego and a desire for revenge are hardly a good basis for public policy.

In these provisions the government is seeking to limit the discretion of the courts. Even the Industrial Relations and Management Newsletter in July this year said:

. . . there is a concern that by limiting Court discretion so much, genuine cases may not get the special attention they need. Employers are not always in the right—nor are unions and employees always in the wrong.

You would never guess that from reading this legislation; you would never guess that there is any chance that the employer would ever be in the wrong.

I return briefly to right of entry. This has certainly been a problem in Western Australia. I will not go into too much detail, but the CFMEU is a union that has experienced a lot of difficulty with this. It has led to a number of injuries, and indeed deaths, on construction sites in Western Australia where safety re quirements have not been adhered to. Because of the onerous conditions of rights of entry in Western Australia, union officials have not been able to enter those sites and inspect them. This has certainly led to injury and, I think it is fair to say, a number of deaths in the construction industry in Western Australia. I am very concerned that this legislation will indeed lead to an extension of that problem around the country. I think it is also fair to say that there is no way in which this legislation is fair to Australian workers; there is no way in which it meets the suggestion in its title that it will provide more jobs and better pay—in fact, it will be just the reverse.