Dr NELSON (5:53 PM) —It is a great opportunity to be able to speak this evening—to a packed chamber and packed galleries—to the Workplace Relations Amendment Bill 2000. I introduce my remarks by responding to some of the things said by the member for Lalor. This bill represents another significant instalment of the Howard government's economic reconstruction of Australia in the post-Keating era.

One of the issues that was visited in question time today was that of real wages and where real wages have actually gone for everyday working Australians. In the decade to 1984, through the period of the ACTU-government accords—which really stand behind the opposition to this bill that we are hearing today, particularly from the member for Lalor—when we averaged 3½ per cent growth annually and 160,000 jobs a year, the number of people unemployed in this country increased from 670,000 to 840,000. What the ACTU-government accords did, and what the Labor Party's attitude to workplace relations would perpetuate, was entrench the very settings that militate against employment growth—that is, very high levels of government expenditure, unsustainable levels of public expectation, reflected in large external public deficits, maintaining a complex and inequitable taxation system and, as a consequence of that, high interest rates. As we now know, in the last five years of the Hawke and Keating governments, real wages for Australian workers dropped by five per cent. In contrast, we have had a 2.3 per cent per annum average growth in real wages since the change of government in 1996—a real increase of about seven per cent.

One of the reasons we are now living in a society that is sustaining high rates of economic growth—and I am sure you saw, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the OECD has revised our growth forecast for this year up to 3.9 per cent and forecasting 3.75 per cent—in a low inflation environment is essentially the increasing productivity in the workplace. Those things were partly due to the efforts of the Labor government, particularly under Mr Keating, to introduce enterprise bargaining into the workplace so that workers could negotiate working conditions with their employers which were appropriate to the circumstances of both the workers and the industries in which they worked. If you apply—which is really what the opposition are arguing today—a common set of conditions right across a work force in a world where, increasingly, we are competing not with other parts of the state or other companies in the city in which an industry might be based but with other parts of the world, it is important that, if we are now going to sustain a productivity level which is three times that which it was through the 13 years of Labor government, we actually have to see that the kinds of things that prevent pattern bargaining in the workplace are actually sustained by the federal parliament.

I find it extraordinary—and I will go into this in a moment—that the same members of the previous Labor government who so passionately argued enterprise bargaining under the leadership of Mr Paul Keating as being important to give the next generation a reasonable prospect of a job by being able to compete with the rest of the world are actually here today arguing against our government trying to sustain the basic principle of enterprise bargaining in the workplace. But I should not be surprised. I have been in this parliament for four years, and I have seen some most extraordinary things.

The member for Lalor said the name of the 1999 bill More Jobs, Better Pay came from the `Ministry of Truth'. Of course ridiculous things are said by politicians and governments of all persuasions all of the time, but `more jobs, better pay' is what it is all about. Over 700,000 new jobs have been created since March 1996 and, as I said, there has been a seven per cent real increase in wages for workers in those four years. We have had more jobs and better pay. It does not matter what side of the political fence you are on; surely that is something you ought to celebrate.

Pattern bargaining undermines the enterprise bargaining system, and it returns central control and workplace arrangements which are not reflective of the needs of either the individual workers or their employers. This bill will enable the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to terminate a bargaining period and thereby render industrial action in pursuit of such claims unlawful. If Australia is to compete, and if my children—indeed, your children, Mr Deputy Speaker—are to carry with them the reasonable prospect of a job, remembering that the biggest single lifetime determinant of poverty is unemployment, there are certain reforms that this nation must undertake: reforms in transport, communications, energy, taxation, regulation and workplace relations. This means having an environment in which employers and employees are able to negotiate their wages and conditions in circumstances appropriate to their own needs.

There are two broad objectives which underwrite the government's reforms. The first is to ensure that Australia has a workplace relations system that sustains and enhances our standard of living, our jobs, our productivity and our international competitiveness. The second is to promote a more cooperative workplace relations system that is compatible with the realities of a diverse, mobile and skilled labour force. It has been improvements to the nation's productivity as a result of structural reform, structural reform commenced by the previous Labor government, that has enabled us to sustain high rates of growth in a low inflation environment.

The majority of Australian employees in the workplace relations system are now employed under enterprise or workplace agreements, whether they are collective or individual and whether they are under federal or state laws. There are now more than 100,000 workplace agreements under federal laws, agreements that Mr Beazley, the Leader of the Opposition, has committed to abolish under instruction from the unions should the opposition succeed in winning government. The ALP and the ACTU adopted enterprise bargaining as policy in Accord Mark VI in 1990. In fact, when the Industrial Relations Commission first refused to adopt the Labor-ACTU accord in 1990, the ACTU described the decision as `vomit'. Prime Minister Keating threatened the Industrial Relations Commission by publicly questioning its continuing relevance. It is no mistake that this year's budget papers record:

When the then Minister for Industrial Relations, Laurie Brereton, introduced his Industrial Relations Reform Bill into this parliament in 1993, he said:

That was the member for Kingsford-Smith, who was then the Minister for Industrial Relations in the Keating government, a government which comprised many of the members who to this very day are opposing this particular bill. Pattern bargaining undermines not only what we have today but also the very thing that the member for Kingsford-Smith was doing when he was the Minister for Industrial Relations. This bill deals with a real problem in that pattern bargaining is occurring in one of Australia's major industry sectors, and that of course is the manufacturing industry. If ever there was an industry in which the security and welfare of employees was inextricably linked to international competitiveness and productivity growth, it has to be this one.

Three of the major unions in the Victorian manufacturing industry, under the collective banner of the Victorian branch of the Metal Trades Federation of Unions, have embarked on a campaign to replace enterprise bargaining with an industry-wide pattern agreement. It is likely, if not certain, that they will use industrial action against hundreds of Victorian businesses to achieve their objective in brutal ways, aided by a compliant Victorian Labor government. In fact, the union claims involve quite a bit more than an industry-wide pattern agreement and the demise of enterprise bargaining so strongly embraced and supported by the Keating Labor government. They include, for example, a six per cent wage increase per annum, which is twice the CPI, and also a GST inflator. Casuals are to be made permanent, there are to be prohibitions on redundancy, contractors are to be used only with union consent, there will be a prohibition on the right to make workplace agreements and to overwrite statutory award simplification and there will be compulsory trade union training leave and compulsory rights of entry into business premises. Also, some of them actually want a 36-hour week.

Questions have been raised recently as to whether the Leader of the Opposition has the courage—I note these days that it is described as `ticker'—to lead not only the Australian Labor Party but indeed the country. It is essential that he be prepared to stand up for what he believes is right. In 1993, when he was the Minister for Employment, Education and Training, the now Leader of the Opposition and his government legislated for enterprise bargaining, specifically providing that industrial action would not be available in industry-wide claims. In other words, on the very principle that underwrites the legislation before us here today that is being opposed by the opposition, he has now caved in to the ACTU, capitulating to union dogma on workplace relations. The ground for industrial relations debate is quite clear. Labor will go to the next federal election committed to the regulation of industrial relations laws only through awards and collective union agreements. This is of course irrespective of the 150,000 workplace agreements that are likely to be in force by the time the polls are held.

In the Western Australian mining industry, for example, a recent survey found that 29 companies with 7,213 employees had 87 per cent employed under individual employment arrangements. The results found higher levels of productivity, remuneration and improved safety standards. Labor's opposition to this bill—indeed its raison d'etre—is to disenfranchise workers and transfer industrial power back to union officials, the same people who write Mr Beazley's speeches. Labor would like to abolish the Office of the Employment Advocate, which has refused to approve individual workplace agreements where workers' rights have not been protected by law. Further to this, why is Labor opposing the bill? During the 1998 election campaign, the Leader of the Opposition told the Australian people that Labor would keep a formal system of individual agreements in federal laws but make them reviewable by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. In fact, this is precisely what has been done by the Queensland Beattie Labor government, but I do not think the member for Brisbane is opposing that. The simple reason why that commitment has not been honoured by federal Labor is a deal between left-wing and right-wing unions. They do not want workplace agreements and, as has been shown before, the Leader of the Opposition does not have the stomach for a fight with the unions. When you look at it, it is not hard to see. He needs to fight the ACTU, the combined right and left unions, the 61 per cent vote that unions get at Labor's policy convention, the unelected union officials who decide political donations and ALP preselections, the former ACTU presidents who currently sit on Labor's front bench and the union domination of the shadow ministry. Labor's opposition to this bill brings together both bad policy and, I would suggest, considerably weakened leadership.

This bill will enable the Industrial Relations Commission to terminate the bargaining period where it has found that a party has engaged in pattern bargaining. It will further boost the Industrial Relations Commission's power to issue orders that unlawful industrial action cease and to also order cooling-off periods, as referred to by the member for Lalor. One of the reasons why we have just seen a 15 per cent wage increase and a 36-hour week in the building industry in Victoria is pattern bargaining. The unions manipulating workers in individual workplaces have been able to ensure that the industry is basically held to ransom across a single uniform negotiating process in the state of Victoria. We had three or four big building companies move out of that and negotiate a deal with the unions but, in the end, that will destroy small businesses in the state of Victoria.

Whatever we might think about it—and I just direct you to the assessment done by Access Economics in relation to it—that outcome will in the long term cause 3,000 people, human beings with families to support, to lose their jobs and it will add in excess of $2 billion in oncosts to the Victorian economy. That virus, if you like, which has now taken root in Victoria, will soon be going into the manufacturing sector, a sector that can hardly afford this kind of pattern bargaining behaviour, and I am sure it is only a matter of time before it crosses the border and comes to New South Wales.

Mr Deputy Speaker Quick, I am pleased that I have been able to persuade you that this bill is of particular concern. I am sure that all of those members who were members of the Keating Labor government who so strongly supported enterprise bargaining when the member for Kingsford-Smith was the Minister for Industrial Relations will similarly support the government's wisdom today—support and protect the jobs of workers, and growth and productivity in our economy.