Ms GILLARD (11:58 AM) —The Workplace Relations and Other Legislation Amendment (Superannuation) Bill 1998 is a fine example of the contempt with which the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business views this parliament, the moral imperative of keeping his word, and indeed the working people of Australia. This bill came before this parliament in substantially the same form in December 1997. The bill was the subject of an inquiry before the Senate Select Committee on Superannuation, which took evidence from union and employer representatives as well as experts in the superannuation area.

It is interesting to note that, while the government would have you believe that business is calling for the legislative change encapsulated in this bill, only one employer group, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, bothered to appear before the inquiry. The Business Council of Australia, the Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Metal Trades Industry Association were apparently so uninterested, despite being invited by the Senate select committee to appear, that they declined to appear and present their views.

The minister for workplace relations, in presenting this bill to the House, has shown complete contempt for the views of this parliament as expressed by the Senate select committee. The Labor representatives on the committee found:

The bill is neither in the best interests of employees nor employers and should be rejected.

Clearly, their considered views have not been taken into account by this minister, though perhaps that is not surprising given this minister has a track record of ignoring the good advice that is available in the industrial relations area, a track record that has led him to the folly of the Dubai conspiracy and to the Federal Court.

What may surprise—or, indeed, dismay—members opposite is the complete failure of this minister to act on the findings of government members of the committee. Those members found, in recommendation 5.16 which appears on page 26 of the Senate select committee report, in the following terms:

Government senators further recommend that the government give consideration to introducing a requirement that superannuation guarantee contributions be remitted on not less than a quarterly basis.

Recommendation 5.17 reads:

Government senators further recommend that the government give consideration to introducing a dispute resolution mechanism within a reconstituted superannuation complaints tribunal or other body to deal with potential disputes concerning superannuation between employers and employees.

Government members voting on this bill might like to take a moment to consider whether they are prepared to accept a situation where the views of three of their members—namely, Senators John Watson, Alan Ferguson and Julian McGauran—are treated with complete contempt. They might like to reflect on the precedent they are setting and on what grounds, if they accept this bill, they will be able to complain in the future when their views are treated with complete contempt by arrogant and out-of-touch ministers.

This bill also shows the contempt which the minister for workplace relations has for keeping his word. As we are aware, the minister secured passage of his workplace relations legislation by entering into a written agreement with the Democrats about policy positions and future conduct. The presentation of this bill represents another occasion where that deal has been breached. It was breached by the presentation of the unfair dismissals legislation; it was breached by the presentation of the junior rates bill in this House last week; and now it is being breached on the question of superannuation.

The agreement between this minister and the Democrats was contained in a letter and the following form of words was used about the foreshadowed legislation dealing with the superannuation choice of funds issue and the abolition of award based super. The legislation `must ensure workers are not made worse off as a result of any overriding or repeal of award superannuation clauses'. As I will detail, this legislation does make workers worse off and, as a result, it breaches the minister's undertaking to the Democrats.

This continued pattern of behaviour by the minister of breaching his deal with the Democrats not only says something very loud and very clear about the standards of this minister, but also sounds a salutary warning to the Democrats and to others in the Senate about the prospect of the government keeping its word in relation to any future deals about legislation, including, most importantly, the GST.

Perhaps most importantly of all, this bill shows this government's contempt for the needs of working people. Government speakers in this debate have tried to tell us that this debate is all about choice and have tried to paint the Labor Party position as being opposed to choice. Nothing could be further from the truth. Clearly, we on this side of the House believe in maximising the options and opportunities for all Australians. But we understand one great, essential truth that our conservative opponents do not: maximising choice, maximising opportunity, will not be achieved by government withdrawing from intervention and simply allowing the market to rip. That is a recipe for maximising the choice and opportunity of an elite few at the expense of the many. Rather, the real strategy about maximising choice and opportunity is a more complex one. It requires government, in partnership with representative community organisations, including trade unions, to judiciously intervene to ensure that market power is not exploited, market failures do not continue uncorrected and each and every Australian is supported in their lives in a way which enables them to make real choices.

In the superannuation area, working people are only going to continue to have real choices and real opportunities in a setting where superannuation is pursued as an industrial issue, with trade unions actively involved in ensuring that employers comply with their obligations.

Prior to entering this place, I worked for eight years as an industrial lawyer at the law firm Slater and Gordon in Victoria. In particular, I worked for the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union in Victoria in its various legal needs. Those opposite, particularly the minister for workplace relations and, indeed, the Treasurer (Mr Costello), would have us believe that there is some shame involved in having worked either for trade unions or on their behalf as a lawyer. Indeed, I was very proud to work in that setting in Victoria and very proud to assist the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union with its work.

I note that the Treasurer, before entering this place, was also involved as an industrial lawyer, albeit on the other side of the fence, and is, in some senses, and perhaps as a result of his own self-promotion, most famous for his role in the Dollar Sweets case which, of course, was a case that did working people no good.

Mr Danby —It was led by Goldberg.

Ms GILLARD —I am reminded by my friend the member for Melbourne Ports that the lead lawyer in that case for the employers was Mr Alan Goldberg QC, but no doubt the federal Treasurer was busy marking up the precedents and carrying the bags—a way, of course, to establish a reputation prior to entering this place, if you put the correct spin on it.

The correct spin on the question of trade union involvement—involvement whether as a unionist directly or as an industrial lawyer—is that the experience sears into you the difference, the vast chasm, that exists between the industrial relations rhetoric of choice and individual bargaining pursued by our conservative opponents and the industrial reality of many working people's lives. Indeed, it is certainly true that there are many progressive employers who understand that a partnership approach with employees, based on mutual respect, leads to the highest levels of productivity. I am sure that in this place there are many of us who are proud to have met and dealt with such employers.

But the blunt reality is that there are also many employers who believe that their relationship with their employees is solely about determining whether a dollar goes into their pocket or into the pocket of their workers. On each and every occasion, they do all that they can to ensure that the dollar goes into their pocket. The reality is that in those instances the only limit put on employer exploitation is the limit put by industrial regulation and the active pursuit by the trade union movement of compliance with that regulation.

In performing work for the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union in Victoria, I have been in factories where the electrical cords for the sewing machines trail through puddles of water on concrete floors. I have heard of employers who keep their time and wages book in pencil, so that when they show it to the union organiser—

Mr Cadman —Have you seen it?

Ms GILLARD —I have actually seen them produced in court cases, to respond to my friend opposite. In particular, I was informed by a union organiser of a story where an employer kept his time and wages book in pencil and when the union organiser pointed out that the entry for the machinist's wage rate was wrong his solution was to take out his rubber, rub out the entry and pencil in the correct wage rate. What that means is that the time and wages book bore no relationship to the reality of what people were getting paid or the hours that they were required to work in that workplace.

I have dealt with workers who, after years of loyal service, turned up one day at the factory to find the factory gate shut, the machinery moved, the boss gone and their basic entitlements, like last week's wages, holiday pay and redundancy pay left unpaid. Indeed, I prosecuted on behalf of the union many employers who made the collapsing of company structures to avoid liabilities to workers an art form long before anyone ever heard of Patricks, Chris Corrigan and the minister's Dubai conspiracy.

In settings like this, the truth is that workers will only have superannuation contributions made on their behalf if their trade union focuses on ensuring employer compliance and actively pursues it. I have on a number of occasions as a lawyer been involved in disputes with employers where the union has ascertained that the employer has failed to make the relevant superannuation contributions and has pursued that and had that failure rectified in a timely manner.

The compliance task is made infinitely easier by superannuation being an industrial matter regulated by awards and operated by industry funds. The reality is that the simplicity of the industry funds structure makes ensuring compliance easier. With the one fund it becomes easier to educate employers as to their obligations. With the one fund it becomes easier to familiarise workers with what they should expect from the fund in the form of statements. This makes it easier for workers to identify if something is going wrong and contributions are not being made on their behalf. Unions, due to their familiarity with and focus on the one superannuation fund can more easily follow up non-payment issues and, in the case of non-payment, immediate recourse can be had to the Industrial Relations Commission as a way of getting the employer in a situation where questions of non-payment can be discussed and hopefully resolved in a timely fashion between the parties.

If this bill is passed, the reality is that in an industry like the clothing industry the winners will be the less scrupulous employers. Despite the government's puffery about choice, the only exercise of choice will be the choice exercised by the employer to get out of the industry fund and to dodge, duck and weave in any way that minimises the possibility of non-complying behaviour being identified. The reality is that this bill gives clothing workers and those in an industrial position like them only one choice: the choice to be forced out of their industry fund, which brings with it active trade union involvement in ensuring compliance, into new employer selected and defined arrangements aimed at avoiding being caught cheating on the system. So make no mistake about it—for workers who are already doing it hard, this bill, because of the loss of the industrial framework and regulatory setting, may well mean the loss of their superannuation entitlements.

Indeed, the losses sustained by workers do not stop there. This bill, in lapsing workers effectively from award standards to the standards defined by the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992, contemplates a series of direct and immediate losses for workers. Firstly, we have the situation where workers who earn less than $450 per month will lose their superannuation entitlements because there is a difference in the way in which many awards treat workers in such a position as compared with the superannuation guarantee legislation. Clearly many part-time and casual workers in areas like hospitality will no longer have superannuation paid on their behalf. If we think that this is a minor or confined problem, any brief look at the statistics dealing with the increasing casualisation of our labour force would indicate to thinking members in this place that this is a problem that could be very widespread. The most recent ABS figures—August 1998—indicate that we had in that setting 26.9 per cent of employed persons coming up as casual. Clearly not all of them are involved in the hospitality industry, and numbers of them may be working more hours than would gain them $450 per month, but by the same token there must be many thousands who are engaged in very casual work or intermittent work which will mean that their wages per month may, in all months or in a number of months in a calendar year, go under $450.

In these circumstances, the economic theory advanced by members opposite would have us believe that these workers would get the superannuation money—it would no longer be put into a fund on their behalf but somehow there would be an amazing market device that would make sure that the money ends up in their pockets. The blunt reality of this—and we are all aware of it—is that in an industrial setting like, for example, an employer dealing with a casual waitress or waiter who may be intermittently employed, that worker will be offered a fixed hourly figure which will remain unchanged when the superannuation entitlements have changed. This is what will happen if this bill is passed. So the dollar that would have gone into superannuation will be a dollar that stays in the employer's pocket rather than being passed on to the worker. That is the first loss.

Loss No. 2 is that many awards provide for superannuation contributions to continue to be made to workers who are absent from work due to work related illness. In particular, many awards provide for superannuation contributions to continue to be paid during what is referred to generally as the accident make-up pay period, that is, the period when workers still have a residual entitlement from their employer to a top-up payment to the amount that the workers compensation payments are giving them so that they are not sustaining a loss. In those circumstances they continue to have superannuation paid on their behalf. That is another loss if we lose superannuation as an industrial matter and lose the current regulatory regime provided by many awards.

Loss No. 3 is that, under the superannuation guarantee legislation, we would have no coverage for part-time workers under 18 and no coverage at all for workers over 70. Under current industrial awards, that is not the case for all awards, so there might well be pockets of workers who experience a loss there.

Loss No. 4—and perhaps it is the worst—is the loss of the regulation governing frequency of payments. Many awards, because of the nature of the industry involved, provide that the employer must remit superannuation contributions in a more timely fashion than the superannuation guarantee charge legislation contemplates. The proposed legislation contemplates a setting whereby you remit your annual premium after the expiration of the financial year in which that premium accrued. This is quite different from a number of industrial awards, where the superannuation contributions need to be remitted on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Given my experience in the clothing industry and some of the fly-by-night operations in that industry, the reality is that the structure employing the workers will have collapsed many times and been replaced by a new corporate shell by the time the annual contributions become due. In such cases, those annual superannuation contributions will never be remitted on behalf of the workers involved. Not only will this have the effect of ensuring that the bundle of superannuation money in that worker's account is less than it should have been but also, because the superannuation contribution has within it the death and disability premium—if the contribution has been paid—the non-payment of the contribution will have the effect of ensuring that the death and disability benefits will not be available to a worker who, in these very unfortunate circumstances, becomes injured or dies.

This bill should be rejected by the House for the reasons that I have outlined: for the fact that this legislation has been rejected in the past by the Labor members of a Senate select committee and doubts have been expressed by the government members; for the reason that it will prejudice the superannuation entitlements of working people, in that we will not have the same compliance regime that we currently have; and for the reason that a number of workers directly under this legislation will lose the entitlement they currently enjoy. I urge the government members opposite to do no less than their Senate colleagues on the Senate select committee did, and reject this bill in this unamended form.