Mr BEVIS (8:40 PM) —I want to cut straight to the chase in respect of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002 [No. 2] because it has been around this parliament too many times. The bill is fundamentally flawed. It is inherently unjust, and that is why this parliament has, on seven occasions, rejected it in the last six years. We should have no misunderstandings about this: when I say the parliament, I do not mean simply the Labor Party. The Labor Party has certainly opposed this bill on every occasion, as it should be opposed. Most of the parties in the Senate have opposed it as well, which is why the government have not been able to get passage of the bill. The simple fact is that—as much as the government like to package the debate on this bill in their usual union-bashing rhetoric—this bill has not enjoyed the support of the Senate at any point in the process since the government were first elected in 1996, whether it was embedded in broader legislation, such as the then minister Peter Reith's first-wave laws, or whether it was separated as a bill in its own right. The reason for that is clear and straightforward: it is inherently unjust.

At the core of this bill is a proposal the government want to force upon workers in small business. It provides that they may be dismissed in circumstances which a court would find to be unfair but leaves them with no remedy, no rights and no redress. This bill seeks to empower employers in small businesses so that they have the right to, in an unfettered way, dismiss an employee in circumstances that a court would say are unfair, and yet it gives workers no rights whatsoever. That is what this bill seeks to do. It is little wonder that the parliament has rejected that principle on seven occasions, and it will continue to do so. The Australian people would regard us as derelict in our duties as members of parliament if we were to allow laws onto our statute books that enshrined the principle that you could be sacked—you could lose your livelihood and your capacity to earn income and put a roof over your and your family's heads—in circumstances that were unfair and yet the law of the land would say you have no rights whatsoever. That is what this bill does. That is what the government have sought to do on seven occasions now. Amazing though that sounds, they are precisely the provisions that the bill seeks to impose.

Labor has put forward alternative proposals. If time permits, I will go to some of those first. I want to expose, yet again, the problems with this bill and why this bill is so despicable and deserves to be spurned by this parliament an eighth time. The bill before the parliament at the moment seeks to change not one of the leftover Labor laws but a Liberal Party law. The law dealing with unfair dismissals in the federal jurisdiction now is the law that Peter Reith, as minister, wanted. Indeed, this is how he described it when he succeeded in getting it through the parliament:

No longer do we have any pretence of `a fair go all round'. The government does not want a fair go all round; the government wants the opportunity for workers to be dismissed unfairly and yet have no rights. That is hardly a qualification for `a fair go all round', which is how Peter Reith, not usually known for his support of workers' rights, described these very provisions on unfair dismissal when his bill went through the parliament in November 1996.

It is important to also acknowledge that the bill Peter Reith put through—the law as it is now—was not a modification of Labor's first law. The previous speaker, the member for Blaxland, spoke about the introduction of these federal industrial relations laws in 1994, but the provisions for unfair dismissal were subsequently changed by the Labor government before the 1996 election. Version 1 of Labor's unfair dismissal laws was effectively watered down—that is, after some operation, faults were identified by the government, and people were taking cases that were not, in the view of the government, proper to be taken. The law was changed before the 1996 election to further reduce the opportunity for people to be protected by those unfair dismissal laws—that is, the field was tilted a little more in favour of the employer to fix up some of the inequities in the system.

We then had the third rewrite of those laws, which were the Peter Reith laws that the government said were fair. The government no longer regard them as fair. If you were to listen and take at face value the comments of Liberal and National Party members in this debate, you would think that these were abominable laws that restricted the operation of business in every facet of working life on every day of the week. The laws we are talking about are Liberal laws. Every one of those criticisms they raise is about their Liberal law. These points are not lost on the commentators out there who have followed this debate over the last six years. When the government reintroduced the bill earlier this year, the Canberra Times said:

So said the editorial of the Canberra Times. It is a fine principle, which I am sure all the readership of the Canberra Times—or, indeed, the readership of any paper in Australia—would say is fair and proper. But it was not good enough for this Liberal government—not good enough for John Howard, the man who in opposition said that he would knife the Industrial Relations Commission. The changes to industrial relations law, of which this is a part, is a core promise—even if only to himself and even if he did not take the rest of the Australian public into his confidence—that he would see through. And we are seeing that here.

Whenever this issue comes up, government members and ministers tell us that we must pass this legislation for a couple of reasons but, first and foremost, because it will create jobs. They are very precise about this; they can tell us how many jobs it will create. On many occasions, the former minister, the current minister and indeed the Prime Minister have said the legislation will create 50,000 jobs. I will not quote all of them, but I am sure those who have followed this debate are familiar with the citations. However, it is interesting that, when you ask these people—ministers of the Crown—to explain how they arrive at this figure, they get a bit coy. I will give two examples. On the 7.30 Report on 20 May this year, Jeremy Thompson asked the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations how he arrived at that figure. Mr Abbott said:

That is what the minister had to say on 20 May. A couple of weeks later, on 9 June, he was asked the same question at a Meet the Press interview. The minister—obviously well across the subject, as we know he is in these matters—answered the question this way:

A couple of weeks earlier, when he was on the ABC, it was one in 20. When he was on Meet the Press, it was one in 30. The government cannot even get the lie correct. They cannot even work out the story-line.

There was one of those extremely rare moments of truth from the mouth of former Minister Peter Reith when he had to answer a question on notice—so it had to be in black and white in the Hansard. One thing that we know is that ministers are usually fairly careful about misleading the parliament, because that can bring consequences for a minister.

Dr Emerson —He mustn't have read it!

Mr BEVIS —I suspect someone wrote the answer for him. But in a rare moment of honesty—and, indeed, for Peter Reith it was exceedingly rare—Peter Reith actually had this to say in answer to the question about how you calculate these figures. In answer to question on notice No. 2940 in the last parliament, he said:

`It is not possible'? Hang on! The story-line was that it was one in 20, and a few weeks later it was one in 30. But the former minister is on the record as saying it was not possible to calculate it.

I want to put on the record, yet again, where this figure of 50,000 comes from. The 50,000 figure, as has sometimes been admitted by ministers over the course of the last six years in this government, comes from an off-the-cuff comment made by Rob Bastian from the Council of Small Business Associations. I have no complaint with Rob Bastian; he is an advocate for his industry and he does a fine job. Good luck to him! But if you talk to him about these matters, as I did at some length, he will freely acknowledge that there is no research, there is no survey and there is no estimate. It was an off-the-cuff remark that does not even have so much as a postage stamp of data to back it up—zip, zilch, nil; absolutely no research whatsoever.

So it is little wonder that the current minister, Tony Abbott—who is a little wonder—would find himself unsure of whether it was one in 20 or one in 30. Frankly, for him to hold a thought for more than two weeks is a challenge. Clearly, he could not hold that central thought for more than two weeks. It is also the case that the former minister, Peter Reith, had the same problem, but at least when he had to answer a question on notice he came to the truth. So why do all of this, apart from the political spin of it? I will come to some of those reasons. It has always amazed me that the government actually succeeded in doing two things with this. The first is distracting small businesses' attention from the things that are important to them by what this government has burdened them with; this is the red herring to distract them. The second, to some extent, is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy—that is, it has said this so often that it has actually convinced some people that there is a problem where none existed before.

If this was such a big issue then you would think that, in the middle of last year, when the current minister went to meet the Retailers Association of Queensland, they would have actually headlined that. But if you have a look at the Retailers Association of Queensland bulletin from the time that they were meeting with the minister, which was July 2001, you will see that they wrote:

This is not what they cited as being high on their agenda. Bear in mind that this is a peak organisation, in the lead-up to a federal election, getting a precious half hour to tell the minister what they want fixed. If this was a big issue, you might think it would be high on the list. It was not. They said:

It was the burden of the tax system that was on their minds. That was what they wanted to talk about. That was in the circular to their own members. In the lead-up to the election campaign that was their priority.

There are lots of surveys that get bandied around when it comes to this issue. Some of them are classic cases of push polling. Some of them are more innocent than others, but some are very deliberately constructed push polling. Others contain the sorts of questions whereby, if you went into a workplace and asked workers, `What is important in this workplace?' they might say safety or whatever. But if you went in and said, `Do you think you should get more money?' they would all say yes. If you asked, `Do you think you should have a cleaner work environment?' they would all say yes. It is a bit like that with the employers. If you actually look at the authentic surveys that have been done, you will see that they are small in number. Unfortunately, this government does not want to conduct serious broadscale surveys of the workplace.

The last major serious study of workplaces was released in about 1998, but it was actually a study that was done in 1995. It was AWIRS 95: the Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey 1995. It was the most comprehensive survey of Australian workplaces that had been done in the last 10 years. Interestingly, it was done about a year or two after Labor had introduced these unfair dismissal laws. So it was not the Peter Reith watered down version, as it were; these were Labor's undiluted laws which the government—the Liberal Party—would have us believe were so hurtful to employment. In that survey small businesses were asked the reasons why they had not recruited employees. If you look at the responses from the small business community, you will find that the No. 1 reason given was that they did not need any more employees. That stands to reason. Sixty-six per cent said that. The percentage of respondents who said, `Not recruited due to insufficient work,' was 23 per cent. Again, that was a totally sensible response that you would anticipate. The level of respondents who chose the option, `Not recruited due to a lack of demand for the product,' was six per cent. Again, you would expect that.

There was in fact a response which identified unfair dismissals as the reason for not recruiting. The figure for respondents in that survey who cited that as a reason why they had not employed someone was 0.9 per cent—less than one per cent of respondents cited unfair dismissal laws. I can go through a series of other surveys to illustrate the same point. One that took my fancy was conducted in the minister's own electorate earlier this year. That survey found that 79 per cent of small businesses said that lack of need or insufficient work were the reasons that they had not recruited staff. Again, this confirms the earlier research. Furthermore, 52 per cent actually nominated the GST as the government policy that caused them the most concern—and that survey was conducted in February this year. Asked if their reasons for not hiring were other than those listed, not one respondent in Tony Abbott's own electorate cited unfair dismissals. That survey was done at the start of this year. Not one said that, but 52 per cent said the GST was the government law that most affected their business. So, if the government actually wanted to do something to assist small business, they could have a quick look at the operation of the GST and the impact it has had on small business.

I just want to cite one other survey—there are many that could be cited—done in Victoria in February 2001. Victoria is interesting because it basically has no state jurisdiction; so it is the Commonwealth system alone that you are looking at. Small business respondents were asked to indicate the degree to which 11 different factors affected their business. Top of the list was the GST. After that came government regulations and then labour costs. At the bottom of 11 factors came unfair dismissal laws. It was ranked 11th out of 11 issues; it was stone cold last. And that was in Victoria, where there is effectively no state system. That is important because it introduces the other critical factor into this equation. We are talking here about a federal law that affects maybe 20 to 25 per cent of the work force. Even if this law were to be passed, three-quarters of the Australia work force in the small business community would be totally unaffected by it.

In all of my years involved in this debate and speaking at employer forums, industrial relations societies and worker forums, I have had some people tell me horror stories of unfair dismissals where the employer got a raw deal. On the facts presented, if indeed that was the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I would agree with them that they got a raw deal. You know what? Invariably, in every single one of those cases that was presented to me over the years, not one of them was under federal jurisdiction. They were all under state jurisdiction. There may be a case that someone can cite, but I can stand here, having spoken at more forums than anybody, including the minister, on this matter, and say that not one under federal jurisdiction has been raised with me in any forum that I have addressed on these matters.

If the government were genuine about these things, it would not be pursuing this legislation for the eighth time. It would be looking at Labor's amendments and seeking to deal with some of the underlying problems. Business is increasingly sick of being used as a football by this government in terms of industrial relations. Labor has put forward alternatives that are fair and reasonable and that honour the principles of a fair go all round. In 1996 the government said that that is what this law that it now seeks to amend did. In 1996 this government said it wanted a fair go all round. Everything it has said and done about it since proves that that is not the case. (Time expired)