Mr BEVIS (9:48 AM) —If ever there was a piece of legislation that should not be before the parliament it is this Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 that we are now debating. There is already in place in the existing legislation a continuation of youth wages through until the middle of next year. An Industrial Relations Commission inquiry into this issue is under way as we speak. The inconsistency in the approach of the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business to this matter is something I will return to shortly.

Given that background, it is important to understand the context in which this debate is being held today and to understand a little of the history of our wage fixing system, and in particular the way in which junior rates of pay have come to be included in our system of wage determination. The basis of the Industrial Relations Commission's wage determination goes back to the Harvester judgment in 1907, which determined for the first time the minimum level of income that was needed for ordinary Australian people of the day to survive. The test applied at the time was the amount of money required for a male adult to support—as it was then commonly termed—the wife and three children. That was seen as the minimum wage that was required. That formula was adopted and largely followed for most of this century.

As part of that determination it followed that if you were not in that situation—if you were not of an age where you might be supporting a wife and three children—you would receive a junior rate of pay. That junior rate of pay has flowed through since 1907, effectively from that decision. The decision was very much influenced by the thinking of the day and a view on what was then required to support the then typical family unit. That has been entrenched in many awards and agreements since that time. To this date, people under 18 or under 21 are variously identified as juniors.

This raises an interesting point: what constitutes a junior? In the course of this debate the minister might like to define for us the intent of his act in relation to whether it is intended to identify an 18-year-old person as an adult entitled to a full adult wage or whether he wishes the age to remain at 21 years.

The present situation is that the junior rates of pay are covered in existing legislation through until 22 June 2000. The 1996 act, which this government introduced and which the minister proclaimed as a great advance and one which he was very happy with, provided that junior rates of pay would continue and that there would be an inquiry conducted by the full bench. At the time you might recall that the coalition and the Democrats agreed to a statement to support that 1996 legislation. In part, they referred to junior rates in these terms:

. . . junior wage rates will be exempted from the anti age discrimination requirements of the act for a further three years from 22 June 1997.

Section 120B of the Workplace Relations Act 1996 then established that the full bench of the commission would conduct an inquiry into the feasibility of replacing junior rates with non-discriminatory alternatives. That is a comprehensive inquiry which is undertaking its work as this parliament is discussing this bill.

That raises the question as to why this bill is here at all. The simple fact is that this bill has been placed before us in an act by this minister and this government to intimidate the commission and those people appearing before it. It is an effort by this government to very publicly strongarm the operation of that inquiry and to effectively say to the inquiry and to all who appear before it, `Frankly, we don't care what goes on in the commission's investigation, we don't care what evidence is put before it, because we intend, if we have the numbers, to railroad through a change in the legislation that will make absolutely redundant the inquiry that is presently being conducted by the commission.'

It is worth noting that this inquiry by the commission is not something it is conducting of its own motion. It did not ask to do this. The industrial commission is conducting this inquiry for one reason and one reason alone: this minister and this government voted for a piece of legislation that as a matter of law required the commission to do it. This government requires the commission to conduct an inquiry and, literally weeks into the inquiry, then does its best to steamroll it out of the way. That is the basic situation that we are presented with in this parliament. It is totally improper for us to be in this position and it is wrong that the commission and those appearing before it should be subjected to the sort of intimidation that this minister and this government have sought to bring to bear upon them.

The inquiry is intended to be a very comprehensive one. The government has required that the inquiry look at whether it is in fact desirable to replace junior rates of pay with a non-discriminatory alternative, to look at the consequences for youth employment if junior rates of pay were to be abolished, and to look at the usefulness of junior rates of pay for different types of employment or in different industries and in the school-to-work transition. The act requires that the commission conduct its inquiry and report back to the minister by 22 June 1999. That means that the government, and soon after that the parliament, will have available the findings of the commission, along with the evidence that has been put before it, one year before the existing legislation would see an end to junior rates of pay.

If the government was fair dinkum about this issue and wanted to conduct its affairs with some propriety, it would wait until after 22 June, it would allow the parliament and the public to consider the evidence before the commission's inquiry and to consider the findings of the AIRC, and if it then wanted to pursue the bill it would introduce whatever bill it chose to after 22 June—a full year before it has to worry about the current provisions running out. There is absolutely no doubt that the motivation behind this tactic is one of intimidation upon those people who are involved in the inquiry. In spite of the efforts of the government to intimidate the inquiry and those appearing before it, it has in fact attracted a lot of very good, high quality submissions.

It also produced, just before Christmas, on 22 December last year, a comprehensive issues paper so that people wishing to participate in this debate can have some framework to follow. That issues paper is about 111 pages long. It is not a small document; it is a comprehensive analysis of the issues that should be considered. These are issues, I might say, that I doubt will be considered by those opposite in the debate in this parliament. They certainly have not been considered by the government, because they introduced the bill before the issues paper was out. So, even before the issues paper was presented for consideration, this government and this minister decide they want to steamroll the matter through. I invite the members of the government who are going to speak to talk about the issues paper, the 111 pages that are there, and discuss some of the items in it. I doubt very much whether any of the members of the government even know that the issues paper exists, much less have bothered to go through it.

It is important to get some idea of where we are at in this debate on junior rates of pay. At the moment there are a mixture of awards, agreements and heads of power dealing with conditions of employment that cover the full range. For example, there are awards and agreements that make no reference to age restrictions and yet employ people who would be defined as juniors, that is, under 21 or under 18. Examples are the plumbing industry awards in Queensland and Western Australia and the Ford Motor Company vehicle industry consolidated award. There are awards where adult age is identified as 18 and there are awards that identify adult age as between 18 and 21. Of course, there are those awards that include junior rates of pay as a standard feature.

The people of Australia could rightly ask, `Why won't Peter Reith wait? What is it that forces him to pursue this matter?' The Democrats, not surprisingly, are pretty distressed about this, and the public comments that have been made by their spokespeople identify that. So they should be. They actually had an agreement with this government, signed by the minister for workplace relations, in which he gave a commitment to this inquiry and gave a commitment to the process I have just described. He has now reneged on that. He has now doublecrossed the Democrats. But why should they be any different? He has a practice of doing that to a whole lot of other people in the community, and I do not see why the Democrats should be spared a doublecross by Peter Reith. Everyone else has to cop it. The simple fact of life is that this minister and this government have gone back on their word and have reneged on the undertakings they made with the Democrats.

It is interesting to reflect on what the minister said at the time he made the agreement with the Democrats. Speaking in the press conference at Parliament House at the time, he said:

We are pleased to have a written agreement with the Democrats on this matter.

He said he was pleased that the legislation would pass the Senate and acknowledged that he had always anticipated changes. As reported in the Canberra Times of 28 October 1996, he said:

In some respects the legislation has been made more effective.

He also said on the previous day:

We wanted to ensure it was a fair deal in the end.

So the minister painted the decision in 1996 in his agreement with the Democrats as a fair and reasonable outcome, one which in some respects he said actually improved on the government's bill. Yet here in a key aspect of it he decides to doublecross the Democrats, to doublecross the undertakings he has given to the Australian people and the statements he made in this parliament, and now to try and railroad through a piece of legislation to make redundant the inquiry which he in fact voted to establish. I thought it was interesting to note that as a result of all of that Democrats Senator Natasha Stott Despoja was reported as saying on 18 November last year, after this bill was introduced, that there will be no more deals between her party and industrial relations minister Peter Reith. He may well find his activities are very counterproductive.

Let me turn now to what this bill proposes to do. Most people understand that it proposes to remove the sunset clause that presently exists until 22 June 2000. That will mean that awards and provisions for junior rates of pay will be allowed to continue ad infinitum, without restriction. Most people understand that that is what it is about. What a lot do not understand is that there is a far more insidious aspect to this bill.

In typical Peter Reith style of Balaclava led industrial relations, he decided to go one bridge too far and send in the savage dogs again. What he has decided to do is include in the bill a requirement that the Industrial Relations Commission not just maintain junior rates of pay clauses in awards that exist at the moment but also that it must—not may—insert into every single industrial award and agreement in this country a junior rates of pay clause, even if it is not there, even if it has never been there. He will legislate to require that a junior rates of pay provision be inserted into all of those awards if it is possible for a person who is a junior to do that work. That does not mean if they are currently doing it, just that if one day someone under 21 is employed to do that work, then this bill will require the commission to place in that award an obligation that there be junior rates of pay. That has some very serious consequences.

Junior rates of pay vary from award to award, but typically you can classify them in this way: full wage at age 21; 90 per cent of salary at age 20; 80 per cent of salary at age 19; 70 per cent of salary at age 18; 60 per cent of salary at age 17; and 50 per cent of salary at age 16. Obviously that is not universally applied; some awards provide full adult wage at age 18, and some do not have junior rates of pay whatsoever. But typically where 21 years of age applies for the adult rate of pay you will find that sort of formula commonly applied. What does that mean when you translate the effect of this piece of legislation? Government members had better understand this, because they will be bound by their party discipline to vote for it.

For example, take people who work in distribution centres for the retail industry, covered by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Award. At present that award contains no junior rates of pay. A 19-year-old person working in that distribution centre will be paid according to their work value, according to their skill. At present under that award an 18-year-old person starts out being paid $412.60 per week. If the standard junior rates formula were to apply to them, they would find that their new salary would be $288.80. That is a wages cut of $123.80 per week.

The commission will have no choice in this matter. The legislation which this government has before the parliament will require the commission to insert a junior rates scale into that award. Who wants to kid themselves into believing that there will not be employers out there who will not then pay the junior rate? That is what the award says is the legal minimum. There may be those in the government who want to argue, `They can put it in the award, but the employers will not use it. Even though the law says they do not have to, the employers will gladly pay another $120 per week for those 18-year-olds.' Anyone who argues that is kidding themselves. I invite the members of the government who want to propose that line of defence to please use it.

There is not a soul out there in the work force who actually has had to confront this on a daily basis, who is 18 years of age and has gone to a job and been told when they walked in the door, `You work here for three or four days and after that we will decide how much you get paid. But for the first three or four days there is no pay while we have a look at you.' There is not a soul out there who has been employed as an 18- or 19-year-old student and has not found themselves in the position where they are being paid below minimum legal rates. That is the standard practice. If you do not believe that, go and spend an hour at a university and talk to any students who walk past. They will tell you that. My own children have encountered that. That is the standard situation that unemployed 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds face when they go out into the work force today, made worse by your industrial relations legislation.

Let me give some other examples. I cited the situation that would apply to an 18-year-old worker in a distribution centre. If you happen to be 20 years of age and you have been working in that distribution centre for a couple of years, you would currently be paid $433.40. Under the junior rates of pay scale, you would get $390, a cut of $43 a week. That is going to be the effect of this piece of legislation.

I cite another example which also demonstrates the point. Under the Metal Engineering and Associated Industries Award, there are no junior rates of pay. An 18-year-old in that environment would be earning $434.60. Under the junior rates of pay, their pay would be reduced to $296.83, a cut of $137 per week. We are talking here about massive cuts. We are talking here about a piece of legislation that gives the commission not one shred of discretion. It will require the commission to insert those junior rates of pay into awards.

There is an interesting double standard which this minister wants to apply in this debate. I am reminded of the minister's view about paid rates awards. The minister very warmly welcomed the decision of the commission to remove paid rates awards. So public servants, teachers, police, nurses—although at the end of the day the nurses were saved the heavy brunt of the decision, no thanks to this government—now get paid according to what is referred to as a paid rates award and there are typically annual increments in those award structures, usually with some assessment of performance.

The minister welcomed the decision that they could no longer be paid like that; those people had to be paid only according to their skill and increasing productivity, the value of the work they were doing. The only people in our society that the minister thinks should not be paid according to their skill are people under 21. With this government, the only thing that matters if you are under 21 is your date of birth, and that decides how much you should get paid. That is a disgrace.

I mentioned that there is a commission inquiry being conducted at the moment. In typical fashion, the minister wants to have it both ways, so he comes in here endeavouring to intimidate them, steamroll them, and push them out of the way with a piece of legislation. But only last week his department wrote to the commission setting out their views on what they think the commission should do. There is an interesting line in the letter which the department wrote to the inquiry on 1 February this year. They said:

The fact is that it is the translation to practical models which has consistently stalled the efforts of industrial parties to develop a feasible, non-discriminatory alternative for over a decade.

I just want to repeat the last few words:

. . . to develop a feasible, non-discriminatory alternative for over a decade.

This government's own submission acknowledges that the current system is discriminatory. They do not dispute the fact that there is an unfair discriminatory system—that is, you can be 18 and get paid 20 per cent or 30 per cent less than someone who is 21 and do exactly the same job with the same responsibilities. That is unfair discrimination, and that much is not disputed. But the government would have us believe that in 1999 we do not as a nation possess the intellect and the wit to produce an alternative system that fairly compensates someone who is 18, 19, 20 or 21. We cannot work that out. Mind you, the minister gladly embraces the view that we can work it out for every teacher, policeman, public servant, fireman and ambulance officer in the land. It is very easy to do it for those people, but if you happen to be a 20-year-old storeman working for Woolworths in a distributive centre somewhere in Australia it cannot be done. So he actually wants to reduce the pay of the young person who is currently being paid according to their performance and require the commission to insert a new clause that would have that effect. This is a very duplicitous approach that this minister and this government have adopted.

It is important to appreciate just how many people are covered by junior rates of pay at the moment and how many are covered by awards and agreements in which there is no provision for junior rates of pay. According to the commission's issues paper, some 56 per cent of all people in the work force aged under 21 are currently employed on a junior rate of pay. The question that the other half have to answer, the question that the 44 per cent of Australians under 21 have to ask themselves is: how many of those are going to be able to remain on a full rate of pay, and how many of that 44 per cent of young Australians are going to be forced to accept junior rates of pay?

The inquiry has actually had a look at some 196 awards. Of those 196 awards, 118 contain junior rates of pay, 78 did not. The great bulk of those 78 awards will be forced by this piece of legislation to insert new lower junior rates of pay. Of the 274 enterprise agreements that have been considered by this inquiry, 43 per cent contained junior rates—that is, most do not. Most of the enterprise agreements considered by the AIRC inquiry actually have no junior rates of pay clause. This bill will force the commission to include a junior rates of pay clause in those enterprise agreements.

We all recall that they were commitments that this government gave prior to various elections—1996 and the last one. I guess the most memorable of them, though, was the commitment that was given by the Prime Minister himself when he said:

Under those circumstances will a Howard government create a wager system which causes the wages of Australian workers to be cut.

Under a Howard government you cannot be worse off but you can be better off. I give you this rock solid guarantee. Our policy will not cut your take-home pay.

So said the Prime Minister to the Young Liberals Conference in January of 1996. He did not tell them the truth, because 44 per cent of young people—and this is the Young Liberals Conference, I might add, that he was talking to—if they are typical Australians working in an award situation, are about to have a junior rates clause inserted into their awards if this government has its way. And you are living in fairyland at the bottom of the garden with the tooth fairy if you think employers are gladly going to pay $100 more than the award says they have to. So we have a duplicitous government that has not only sought to steamroll the commission and the inquiry that is under way but also sought to deceive the public and particularly young Australians.

Something more needs to be said about the definition of an adult because, if there is a definition in the bill, I certainly have not come across it. And given that the government is going to require the commission to insert junior rates of pay, they should at least define, for the commission and the rest of us, when you cease to be a junior. Do you cease to be a junior at 18 or 21? As I said before, a number of awards include 21 years of age; some include 18. But that raises some other anomalies. The junior rates of pay provision goes back to 1907. It was a different world, a totally different world. And since 1973 we have had an environment in which full adult suffrage accrues at age 18.

At the age of 18, you can decide whether you want this government at all, you can vote for them, you can be held criminally liable for your actions and sentenced in a court as an adult. Obviously you can participate in all legal activities, you can consume alcohol, you can freely join the military, you can wear the Australian military uniform and go overseas and die for your country but, as far as this government is concerned, when it comes to your civilian life you are still a junior and should be paid as a junior. And how is that defensible? How is anyone in this House, how is the minister, how is anyone on the government benches going to defend a proposition that says that as an 18-year-old or 19-year-old or 20 year-old you can die for your country and you can vote to determine the policies of your nation but the day you go and get yourself a job we think you are a junior and you are not worth full rates of pay? It does not matter what the job is, it does not matter what the skill level is, it does not matter what your training is, it does not matter what the productivity is, you will be paid according to the date of your birth, if John Howard and Peter Reith have their way. There is no equity in that.

In their submission last week to the Industrial Relations Commission inquiry, their only defence of that was to say, `It is too hard to figure it out. It is too hard to work out an alternative system.' It is not too hard to work out an alternative system and, as the minister and this government well know, alternative systems are in place elsewhere in the world. They are in place here. We make judgments every day in determining conditions of employment—not based on age but based on skill, competency and things like that. Is there some magical barrier to applying skill and competency for someone who is under 21? What absolute nonsense.

Given that the inquiry is under some threat from this government, I want to turn to some of the submissions that are in it. I would recommend to those opposite and to those interested in this debate that they have a look at submissions from the Queensland government, the National Children's and Youth Law Centre, a whole range of union submissions—including the shoppies union, which the minister totally misrepresented in this place and he was the subject of rebuke here and elsewhere for that—the Anti-Discrimination Board of New South Wales and the Youth Affairs Network of Queensland. All of them have put in thoughtful, genuine submissions that address the inequity and look at alternatives that work.

The Queensland government submission proposes, as its preferred model, a competency based system by progression. It quite sensibly proposes the gradual introduction of competency based wages for those under 21, introduced on an industry by industry basis, and that those competency wages should be initially based on the junior rates of pay. Until we have that industry by industry, we do not move away from the existing system in that particular industry; that is, you do not have to turn the switch off overnight. There are smarter ways of doing this. It is possible to progressively go through these issues—industry by industry, agreement by agreement—and work through a fair, non-discriminatory basis for paying young Australians what they are due, given their work contribution.

All this humbug is from a government and a minister who do not mind seeing a 40 per cent wage increase for the senior public servants they have appointed to do their political bidding. Some of it—the bonuses—is actually going to be paid according to how well they do the political bidding. It is okay to do that, and it is okay for the minister to get a $43,000 discount on his penthouse in Melbourne by picking up the phone and ringing up his mates. I might say that the $43,000 discount that Minister Reith picked up on his unit happens to be three times the annual salary of an 18-year-old in the metal award. The 18-year-old has to work for three years just to get the equivalent of the discount Mr Reith thinks it is fair enough to get on his new unit—just by picking up the phone and ordering it. They are the double standards that are being applied.

So we have a government and a minister saying to the young workers of Australia: `Trust me. I am Peter Reith. I am from the government and I am here to help you.' I have to tell you that the people out there do not believe it—especially from him—and they sure as hell do not believe it when they have a look at what this government is doing to young people. There is a long list of cuts to services for young Australians which I do not have time to go into, but I hope others will during the course of this debate. We will oppose this legislation. It is unfair and it is intimidating. (Time expired)