Ms HALL (6:56 PM) —The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Workplace Relations Requirements) Bill 2005 is classic Howard government legislation, driven by the philosophical zealots on the other side of this parliament who are committed to their antiunion, anti-worker agenda. This is extreme legislation that highlights the Howard government’s ideological preoccupation with controlling and converting every institution to fit its narrow vision of the world. This legislation will hold universities to ransom: either the universities meet the government’s extreme industrial relations requirements or they miss out on desperately needed funds.

Universities have suffered under the Howard government. You only need to talk to people from any one of our great universities to understand just how much they have suffered and just how much this government has eroded their funding base and affected their ability to deliver quality education to the people of Australia. This legislation is an attack on the autonomy of the universities, and it is also an attempt to micromanage the day-to-day running of the universities.

We know from various pieces of legislation that have passed through this House just how the government likes to enforce its agenda on every institution. It uses funding to manipulate and to change institutions and vital services that are provided within the community. This government has absolutely no respect whatsoever for any organisation and, unfortunately, universities have really suffered. Funding for universities should be about improving education, learning and research. It should be about providing the best learning environment for students. It should be about preparing our students for the work force. It should be about ensuring that we have a society based on knowledge—knowledge that will, therefore, improve our communities. It should be about ensuring that our great universities conduct the research that we need to move forward, and it should be about making Australia a competitive nation as it goes through this century.

At the dawn of a new century we should be looking to the future and examining the skills that we need as a nation. We should be looking at our universities to deliver those skills and knowledge—to be the institutions for the development of thought for looking to the future. Unfortunately, under the Howard government, this has changed. Universities are not about seeking knowledge. This bill is not about preparing us for the future; it is about running the government’s narrow agenda. This legislation is about implementing and including industrial relations changes and making them more important than what the universities are about. Universities are about learning and research. Instead, this is where the Howard government is taking us.

This bill enacts the industrial relations policies of the government in relation to universities. It imposes some requirements consistent with the government’s industrial relations approach to the work force generally. But the bill goes, in a number of undesirable ways, beyond those requirements. Bearing in mind what I just said about the importance of universities and about how they are the institutions where we develop knowledge and thought, looking to the future, you will see how the actions of this government have actually impacted on that.

In 2003 the government attempted to pass legislation that would impose a number of unreasonable industrial relations conditions on the capacity of universities to access additional funding. The measures in this bill were a component of the package of legislative changes to higher education that the government was then attempting to win support for in the Senate. But in order to secure majority support for the bulk of its package, the government agreed to drop these industrial relations measures from its higher education legislation. Following the last election and the changes to the composition of the Senate, the government has once again introduced the industrial relations proposals that were not supported in the Senate in 2003.

That says to me that this government is going to arrogantly force its extreme agenda on the people of Australia, it is going to override any opposition and it is going to use its numbers in the Senate to ram through each and every piece of legislation that it chooses to. The government is not going to allow proper consultation and debate on legislation. All it will be about is ensuring that it gets legislation through and it will ride roughshod over anyone that disagrees with it. That is what the universities are facing here—a government that will ride roughshod over them if they do not agree with its agenda.

The government is seeking to force universities to introduce these draconian industrial relations conditions to secure funding. By putting these extreme industrial relations requirements in front of quality education and research, the government is, as I have previously stated, eroding the quality of our universities and the quality of the skills that we have as a nation—we are already very aware of the shortage of skills—and eroding Australia’s position in relation to the rest of the world.

The government has been responsible for cutting $5 billion from Australian universities since coming to power, and we have seen many changes in the university sector. We have seen the government refusing to index university grants, and there has been a greater reliance on student fees. In the region that I represent, which is the Hunter and the Central Coast, the government has treated Newcastle university appallingly. The government has refused to grant the university regional status. It is important to put on the record here in the House tonight that the Central Coast has one of the lowest, if not the lowest, number of students in Australia going on to tertiary education. Instead of making it easier, instead of increasing access to university education, this government is trying to intervene, in the most draconian manner, in the universities’ agendas and their ability to deliver education.

We have seen how the student to staff ratios have increased and we have seen increased casualisation of the work force. When I am talking about the quality of education, it is interesting to reflect on the question that the shadow minister asked the minister today in question time when the shadow minister referred to the OECD’s report Education at a glance 2005. The shadow minister brought to the attention of the House that Australia is the only country in the OECD to actually reduce spending on university and vocational education as a proportion of GDP since 1995. We put that in the context of this piece of legislation and it makes it even more horrific. Here is a government seeking to influence the agenda of universities and link funding to adopting its industrial relations requirements. I have always believed that the funding of universities and education is about ensuring that we have fully qualified, skilled workers and also a population and work force that is knowledgeable and has a good understanding. The shadow minister went on to point out that public funding for tertiary education in comparable OECD countries had risen by 38 per cent since 1995 while public investment in Australia had fallen by eight per cent in that period. This government is looking to do over the universities if they do not sign up to the government’s industrial relations requirements.

From my perspective, it is definitely not good enough. Who suffers? Australian students and Australia as a nation. That is what this government always forget. They forget that it is not them against the universities and it is not them against the unions. This is really impacting on the way our nation operates. It is impacting on our skills base and it is impacting on our economy. These legislative changes move the focus from teaching and learning to implementing the government’s industrial relations changes. The legislation is about forcing Commonwealth government workplace relations on higher education providers. The government are pursuing their anti-union agenda, which pervades all of the Howard government’s legislative agenda. In this instance it is impacting on the day-to-day operation of the universities and the quality of teaching and research.

I would like to demonstrate how the Howard government is trying to hold universities to ransom by bludgeoning them into accepting these extreme, reactionary, industrial relations requirements to secure funding. This is a government that will stop at nothing to ensure that its agenda is adopted. It is a government that does not look to what benefits the country. It is a government that can only see one thing—that is, its agenda: its absolute hatred of unions—and it lets that pervade its thinking, which therefore has an impact on the outcomes for this country.

This legislation has five conditions attached to it for securing funding by universities. The first condition is choice of agreement. It provides that employees have genuine choice and flexibility in agreement making by being offered AWAs. Employees on AWAs earn two per cent less and work six per cent more hours than those on registered collective agreements. Women in particular employed on individual contracts earn 11 per cent less an hour compared with men employed on collective agreements. Women receive about 90 per cent of the hourly rate of men employed on collective agreements. The percentage reduces further under AWAs, where women earn only 80 per cent of the hourly pay rate of men. Casual and part-time employees on AWAs earn 15 per cent less and 25 per cent less respectively relative to their earnings under the terms of collective agreements. AWAs are bad news for employees, especially women, and women represent over 50 per cent of the staff at universities. AWAs are subject to a no-disadvantage test, and I must say that that has not worked too well.

This government is not about better conditions for workers. It is not about better choice. It is really about poorer conditions and ensuring that workers get the lowest wages and the poorest conditions that they possibly can.

The second condition is the direct relationship between employees and the higher education provider. Workplace agreements, policies and practices must provide for direct consultation with employees on workplace relations and human resource matters. It is a direct relationship between the employer and the employee. Third-party involvement is only at the request of the affected employee. Once again, this is the government’s anti-union agenda. Underlying all this is the government’s hatred of unions and the fact that they do not want to see unions in any workplace in Australia.

The third condition is workplace flexibility. The higher education workplace agreements, policies and practices are to facilitate and promote fair and flexible arrangements. That is what this government says, but you always look at what underlies these statements. The higher education provider must have working arrangements and conditions of employment which are tailored to the circumstances of the higher education provider. I think you get the best outcome in any workplace where you take into account all parties. Over the years, women have been granted maternity leave. In the higher education sector there is 26 weeks of paid maternity leave. If you compare that to the community norm, you will find that maternity leave is unpaid. We all know that ‘workplace flexibility’ is code for casualisation and poorer conditions.

There are two other conditions: productivity and performance, and freedom of association. Productivity and performance are really an agenda for easy termination. Freedom of association is the fifth condition outlined. The legislation prohibits using Commonwealth Grant Scheme funds to pay union staff salaries or fund union facilities such as offices, but—and this is where the double standards come in—it will support the facilities of non-union bargaining. So, if you are a union, there is no assistance; if you are not a union, no worries—that can be funded through the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. These are double standards, and that really shows the government’s true agenda.

On this side of the House, we have a different agenda. The Labor Party position on industrial relations has six key features. We believe in a strong safety net of minimum award wages and conditions, a strong independent umpire to assure fair wages and conditions and to settle disputes, the rights of employees to bargain collectively for decent wages and conditions, the rights of workers to reject individual contracts which cut pay and conditions and undermine collective bargaining and union representation, proper rights for Australian workers who are unfairly dismissed, and the right to join and be represented by a union.

We do not believe that funding arrangements should be used to manipulate institutions that are as important to the Australian community as our universities are. The government stands condemned for introducing this legislation into this parliament. It stands condemned for trying to link higher education, learning and research to its industrial relations agenda. This legislation should be rejected by all members of this parliament.