Mr RANDALL (8:16 PM) —It is my pleasure to speak on the Workplace Relations Amendment (Secret Ballots for Protected Action) Bill 2002 [No. 2]. This bill has been in this House before. It is back here again because it has not passed through the Senate, which is largely controlled by the Labor Party, the Democrats and the Greens in concert. Before I say anything further, I will say that it was interesting to sit here this evening and watch the previous speaker, the member for Brisbane, try to recreate history and put his own inflection on the situation. As the opposition spokesman for workplace relations in the previous parliament, he could not cut through, and he is now trying to fight back from the back benches. There was a diatribe of the same old mantra of the Labor Party protecting the unions and having a go at the bosses. It is the old-fashioned class warfare. We know the Labor Party is largely controlled by the unions. Whether there is a 60-40 rule or a 50-50 rule, the majority of people on the other side of this House have a pedigree in the union movement. They must belong to a union to be a member in this place and they depend on the union movement for their preselection. I will go into that further later on.

The fundamental principle of democracy in the world hinges on the secret ballot. It is only totalitarian and authoritarian regimes that hate secret ballots. I repeat: it is only totalitarian and authoritarian regimes that hate secret ballots. They do not like democracy because they want the control in the hands of one or two. This is no different from the union movement in this country, which is supported by its friends in this House, the Australian Labor Party. Why is this legislation back here? It is back here because the purpose of the bill is to provide that industrial action taken by employees will not be protected unless it is approved by secret ballot. It is a fundamental right in a country like Australia. We are not talking about some draconian country that is controlled by one, as in a dictatorship, or by a socialist government. We are talking about one of the great democracies, and the second-oldest democracy in the world, Australia. The secret ballot is pivotal to this democracy.

It is clear-cut and understood by everybody that the secret ballot will ensure that those participating in an action have decided upon the action and have not been misled or bullied into it as a result of the union they are forced to belong to. When I say `forced to belong to', I do so because we know in this country that the rule of no ticket, no start still applies. Whenever you try to wipe it out, it goes underground. We have heard in the Cole royal commission, for example, large companies saying that they find ways on their books of paying the union membership of employees who do not wish to belong just to save peace on the industrial site. As I have said in this place before, if the Mafia were running an extortion scam like this, they would be locked up. But the union movement in this country can get away with standover tactics and extortion and have people dragooned into unions and into taking action.

I will mention the measures of this bill very briefly to get them on the record, because they have been mentioned by many people in this House. Applications for secret ballots must be made to the commission and can be made only when a bargaining period is in place not more than 30 days before the last occurred nominal expiry date for any relevant certified agreements. What must be included in the application? Applications must include the question to be put or proposed in the ballot, the nature of the proposed action and details of the types of employees. The commission must determine applications within two working days of the applications being made. The application must not be granted unless the commission is satisfied that the applicant has genuinely tried and is still trying to reach agreement with the employer. These provisions are to make sure the ballots are well run, democratically organised and properly controlled.

What is required for a ballot to approve action? At least 40 per cent of the relevant employees must vote and more than 50 per cent of the votes must approve the action. That is fair; 50 per cent plus one is the rule of majority in this country, so that is inordinately fair. The action must commence within a 30-day period beginning on the latter of either the date of the declaration of the ballot or the latest nominal expiry date of any existing certified agreements. Who can be the ballot agent? The ballot agent can be the commission, or it may appoint the AEC or another person as the authorised ballot agent. However, the non-AEC person must meet certain criteria before being appointed.

Here is a very interesting case. This is how concerned and interested the government is to see properly conducted secret ballots: the Commonwealth will be directly liable to the ballot agent for 80 per cent of reasonable ballot costs, provided that the applicant notifies the industrial registrar of the cost of the ballot and the industrial registrar determines the reasonable ballot cost. So the federal government is saying, `We are not only going to help you organise the structure of this process but we will pay 80 per cent of the costs.' That is very fair, especially given the outcomes that may flow. The limits of this bill are that an order for a ballot or result of a ballot may be challenged in a court. In order for the ballot to be challenged, it would generally need to be in contravention of secret ballot provisions that amount to more than just a technical breach or involve fraud or misleading the commission or some irregularity that may have affected the outcome of the ballot. Those are the measures.

This bill was introduced here in February 2002 and was rejected by the Senate in 2002. You can understand that the Greens may vote this way because they vote with the Labor Party all the time. But the Democrats, who wish to be negotiators and be relevant to the debate, for some reason have decided to take themselves out of this debate and allow it to become a running sore in the community. They have no will to resolve the matter other than to see it drag on and on, denying the workers of Australia the democracy that they are entitled to.

As I have said in this place a number of times, the greatest myth in this country is that the Labor Party stand for the workers of this country. They do not. The Labor Party in this country stand for the elites and the union bosses; they do not stand for the hands-on coalface workers. In fact we know that those sorts of people now vote in droves for the coalition government. I am talking about the sorts of seats where they use their feet to change their votes because of what we offer. The Australian Labor Party will oppose this again on the basis that it is aimed at limiting strikes and eliminating the remaining rights of workers to strike and because it is contrary to ILO standards. The Australian Labor Party will oppose the bill because it is contrary to the existing role of the IRC, because it orders that secret ballots are sufficient— and we just heard the member for Brisbane rattling on about that—and because the bill favours employers. All this is class warfare stuff: us and them.

Mr Slipper —They are 100 years out of date.

Mr RANDALL —That is it. The dinosaurs on the other side might wonder why they are still sitting over there. The bill removes the intimidation factor felt by many employees who feel pressured into approving industrial action in hands-up vote situations. I began my working life in the Pilbara as a schoolteacher and I had a number of other jobs there, including labouring on the site. A number of times in Wickham it was `everybody out the gate'.

Mr Stephen Smith —Were you a signed-up member?

Mr RANDALL —I was a member of the teachers union. In fact, I was a union organiser until my last year of teaching. So I believe in collective bargaining, but I do not believe in it when it becomes rorted, in the hands of one or two, and not democratic. So I have a bit of background in this, and the member for Perth knows that.

We know how intimidating the hands-up vote can be. I am aware of many cases, particularly with militant unionists—as Joe Bullock calls himself, as a member of the CFMEU in Perth—who stand over and belt the living tripe out of those blokes who do not vote their way. And they will not employ them on the sites again. The no ticket, no start regime makes sure that these guys, the subcontractors in particular, do not get to come back on the site. It is all about control and the bosses being in charge.

Mr Slipper —The union bosses.

Mr RANDALL —Yes, the union bosses. Continue to help me because we need to identify the ones in the woodpile. In most voting situations people are entitled to, and expect, privacy surrounding that decision. Given time, I will return to an element of the debate that I brought up last time I spoke on this and that is the Chartist movement, which was basically the genesis of the secret ballot in the world. It is something that the Labor Party should adopt because it is the grassroots of their industrial organisation. It grew out of the heart of industrial Britain.

Mr Slipper —They will not adopt it.

Mr RANDALL —Of course they will not. I will continue with a few elements about the Chartist movement while I am at it. If the Labor Party were serious about their background, they would identify with the Chartist movement which grew in Britain in 1838. The Chartist movement had six demands: universal manhood suffrage—they got to women's suffrage later on; equal electoral districts; votes by secret ballots; annually elected parliaments; payment of members of parliament; and the abolition of property qualification for membership. Chartism was the first movement that was both working class in character—hear this, those over there who pretend to represent them—and national in scope. It grew out of the protest against the social injustices of the new industrial order in Britain in 1838. It was led by a chap called Lovett. They collected three million signatures in Britain and took them to the British parliament, yet the British parliament rejected the idea. You may ask whether that was the end of it. No, they continued to push this issue until 1848. But how about this: the principal leaders of the Chartist movement in Britain—and nearly every other Chartist leader—were arrested and sentenced to short prison terms. In fact, a number of the Chartists were transported to Australia as convicts. Unbelievably, people who fought in Britain for the secret ballot were sent to Australia as convicts because they were fighting for the six democratic changes that I was talking about.

What we do know is that all the six points of the Chartist movement, with the exception of annual parliaments, have been secured over time in Britain and in Australia but not in the union movement. Australia became the first country to introduce the secret ballot. For example, Victoria and South Australia were the first states to introduce secrecy of the ballot in 1856. That is the reason it is referred to as the `Australian ballot'. This system eventually spread throughout Europe and the rest of the world. In Great Britain, the secret ballot was finally introduced for all parliamentary and municipal elections by the Ballot Act of 1872, 16 years after it had been introduced in Australia. In the United States, the Australian ballot system was put in place for the presidential election of 1884, 28 years after it had been introduced in Australia. I rest my case. The Chartist movement was born out of the industrial movement in Britain—which the Labor Party should identify with. The key element of the Chartist movement is secret ballots, yet because the Labor Party are prisoners of the union movement in this country, they will not agree to the secret ballots because they owe it to their preselection bosses and they are not allowed to do it.

This bill does aim to protect jobs through democracy. Those workers affected by taking strike action will have an unfettered say about whether or not they want to take the action. What is wrong with that? The Australian Labor Party are more interested in putting the rights and concerns of those who control them before the rights and concerns of the workers, the ones they purport to protect. The unions tell the Australian Labor Party to just ignore this sort of democracy, that it does not exist in the confines of their own internal processes. Not only do Australian Labor Party members not have the chance to have a fair say in the unions; the unions get the first say. Without secret ballots before strike actions, the unions unfairly deny the workers a say.

Other governments, such as the UK government, have been encouraged to introduce the secret ballot. Tellingly, overseas Labour governments have had the courage to stand up to the unions and go ahead with these changes. The member for Brisbane said that Tony Blair's courage to introduce secret ballots was somehow flawed because the British secret ballots are not the same as the Australian secret ballots. What a load of baloney. They are secret ballots after all. No matter what mechanism is used, ultimately, if they are regulated by a fair regime and they are conducted in a proper way—like our own ballots when running for seats in parliament—what is so bad about that? It is just a natural right that people should be entitled to.

In Australia, of course, we do not have a Tony Blair. We have a Simon Crean as the leader of the Australian Labor Party—and when I say `leader', I say it very guardedly. When I read columns such as Glenn Milne's in this morning's Australian and listen to other commentators—and the faxes and the emails are flying—it seems that, in the absence of a strong leader, there are a lot of nervous nellies on the other side who are anxious about where they are going. They are very concerned about the absence of leadership in the Labor Party. George Campbell said before Christmas that Simon Crean had only six months in the job. I think the six months are running out. After the New South Wales election, we may very well see. But we want Simon Crean to stay. We think Kim Beazley is good on the back bench, and we want Simon Crean to stay where he is. We think he offers the sort of leadership that the Australian Labor Party are entitled to. As a result, people in the Labor Party are being robbed by the union movement because they do not have a leader who will actually come out and stand for something. Look at all the things that have been knocked back through sheer opportunism. The Treasurer and the Prime Minister went through them today.

Tony Blair amended the secret ballot provisions in the UK in 1998-99. Industrial reform will secure a more productive and more competitive workplace and a more rewarding and fairer workplace for workers. These outcomes will provide a stronger and more efficient economy and more harmonious and fairer workplaces. We know that just the other day Ian Macfarlane, chairman of the Australian Reserve Bank, said that Australia's position and solid performance in the world economy compared to the OECD countries was the result of flexibility in the work force. That is what the leadership of the Howard government has brought to the Australian workers: a far more dynamic and stronger work force because it is more flexible. If you go back to the old rigid dinosaur days under the Hawke-Keating government, it was so regulated and regimented that productivity was strangled. Now that the Labor government in Western Australia has taken the state back more than 10 years in labour laws, we are finding, for example, that young kids cannot get weekend jobs to the same extent because they come up against double time, treble time and all those sorts of things. Employers will not pay that; they cannot afford to pay it. As a result, young people are being denied jobs.

There is a genuine desire to see unions be more accountable to their members, and should this happen they might have far greater participation in the organisations, and this bill will address that. Finally, the minister has made the comment that the secret ballots bill is the single most important piece of legislation to ensure that we do not have strikes in this country without first having secret ballots. If it is good enough for the German socialists and good enough for the British Labour government, it should be good enough for us here, too. (Time expired)