HANSARD EXTRACT
|
Tax Laws Amendment (2006 Measures No.3) Bill 2006; New
Business Tax System (Untainting Tax) Bill 2006: Second
Reading |
| 14 June 2006 |
Mr HAYES
(Werriwa) (12.44 p.m.)—I
welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate on the
Tax Laws Amendment (2006 Measures No. 3) Bill
2006, which contains amendments to our tax laws. Of
particular interest among the many and varied matters that are
contained in this bill is the introduction of capital gains tax
exemption for grants paid under the Unlawful Termination Assistance
Scheme and grants paid under the Alternative Dispute Resolution
Assistance Scheme. Despite the fact that grants made available as a
result of Work Choices legislation are difficult to access, I am
pleased to see that the government is acting to at least exempt them
from capital gains tax.
I am sure the 10 million hardworking
Australians who have had their employment placed at risk, who have
had any sense of job security ripped from underneath them,
appreciate the fact that they will not be completely cruelled by the
Howard government should they be eligible to receive one of these
Work Choices grants. I am sure they would prefer not to have to make
an application for such a grant at all, because if they do find
themselves in the position of needing to make such an application it
means one thing. It means they have been sacked. It means they have
had the full impact of the
Howard
government’s industrial relations agenda thrust upon them.
It is possible to refer to the capital gains
tax exemption, although a relatively standard exemption for
recipients of government grants, as a positive thing. It may be the
one and only positive thing in the Work Choices legislation, but
referring to it as positive is drawing an extremely long bow.
Removing the rights of working Australians, outlawing the contents
of employment agreements, introducing draconian penalties are not
positive outcomes for any working Australian family. Members
opposite know that the introduction of Work Choices was nothing more
than the culmination of the Prime Minister’s 30-year ideological
dream for industrial relations reform. It is the Prime Minister’s
fantasy brought into reality, and typifies this government’s
obsession with cutting take-home pay and conditions for working
Australian families.
Recently, I was prevented from giving voice to
some real and legitimate concerns that were expressed to me by my
constituents in Werriwa, and no doubt some of the constituents of
the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education, Science
and Training, who is at the table, in
Macarthur have expressed them to him. They were
concerned about the issue of Work Choices. A gag was placed upon me.
I noted the advice from the parliamentary secretary at the time to
use other forums to get these matters out or to voice these matters
in the parliament. I think it is incumbent on all of us who are
representatives of our local communities to make sure that the
issues that are legitimately brought to our attention by our
constituents are given ventilation in this place.
The Work Choices legislation has set about
turning employment relationships on their heads, it has set about
weakening the position of employees, it has set about undermining
the living standards of working Australians and it has set about
forcing good employers to act badly solely so they can stay in
business. A great many people in my electorate are extremely
concerned about the introduction of Work Choices. Ever since the
government’s announcement that these sweeping changes were coming, I
have spent time at railway stations and shopping centres and at
meetings and functions of community groups picking up that vibe—and,
if anyone is listening out there and doing their jobs as local
members, I am sure they will be picking up the same vibe. They will
be hearing from the lips of constituents their concern about this
government’s extreme industrial relations agenda and the impact that
it is going to have not only on their take-home pay and conditions
but also on their families.
Not only are they worried about trying to
maintain their wages and conditions into the future but also most of
them are worried about their kids. They worry about how they are
going to fare under this negotiation system, which could be
typically referred to as ‘catch and kill your own’. I notice there
are a lot of flagpoles going up around my electorate. I know the
minister attends many of these ceremonies and I welcome him when he
turns up in Werriwa. I have talked to teachers, and they are worried
about how hard some of their most forthright and bold students are
going to find standing up to a potential employer—the negotiation of
a better deal, one on one, between an 18-year-old and possibly some
representative of a multinational company. I do not think there is
anyone on either side of the House who really believes the rhetoric
that both the Prime Minister and the Minister for Employment and
Workplace Relations have put on the issue of flexibility. By the way
heads all seem to go down whenever anyone mentions Spotlight, I find
it difficult to believe that government members would be willing to
swallow that sort of rhetoric. After all, their constituents have to
account for their integrity and their intelligence when they front
up to the ballot box and decide on who is best able to represent not
only the individual constituents in their electorates but also the
constituents’ families.
I mentioned earlier that I was gagged, and I do
note the member for
Macarthur pointed out to my local newspaper that there
are other ways to introduce these subjects into the House. I do take
his advice, as I am always grateful for advice from the member for
Macarthur, but at that stage during the MPI debate it was very
interesting to hear what the member for Deakin had to say. The
member for Deakin said that, if you take it as a whole, people are
better off having a job than having no job at all. I do not think
people are arguing that it is better to have people unemployed. But
the nub of this MPI debate, when it got down to the cut and thrust
of it, was that no-one is forcing you to take the contract, so do
not take the job. I think the words were to the effect of they do
not have to take the deal that they are offered. He is right, they
just do not get the job. That is the view that pervades the members
opposite, and it is certainly selling Australian workers and
Australian families short.
It is regrettable that my friend the member for
Macarthur—I say ‘friend’ because I do regard him very highly—who
joined in the debate only recently, is reported in the local
newspaper the Macarthur Advertiser as saying there is nothing
wrong with no overtime pay, no meal breaks, no penalty rates and no
leave loading. He was also reported as saying that people should
consider themselves lucky to have a job. Those comments are
misplaced and draconian. Mr Deputy Speaker, you could anticipate
that that might be the view of the Prime Minister trying to bat away
questions in question time or the Minister for Employment and
Workplace Relations trying to do another doorstop. To give the
member for Macarthur his due, I think he does try to represent
constituents with all due diligence, but to demean people and their
families to the point of saying that they should consider themselves
lucky to have a job does not say much for some of us as
representatives of our communities.
The workplace relations legislation has started
a race to the bottom. We have seen it with Spotlight. That case was
probably one of the most unwanted developments in the workplace
relations debate so far. Most people in the inner city areas
probably do not know too many abattoir workers—inner city Sydney is
a long way from Cowra—but they understand when you talk about what
is happening to people in Spotlight and the mothers who work in the
local haberdashery store. As
Pat
Farmer knows, we share a Spotlight store in Patrick Street,
Campbelltown. Spotlight is an organisation that has put paid to this
concept that there is any negotiation out there. There is no
negotiation. You will find Spotlight’s template Australian workplace
agreement on its website. It is not ashamed to put it on the
website. It has it there. It goes back to what the member for Deakin
said, ‘If you don’t want the job, don’t sign the contract.’ It is
not a case of, ‘Come in, let’s negotiate; let’s try to work our way
around an acceptable position for an incoming employee.’ That is not
the case at all.
When push came to shove on this issue, the
defence of Spotlight’s general manager of marketing was, ‘I didn’t
write the legislation; all I’m doing is implementing the legislation
of the federal government.’ In other words, ‘If this government is
going to allow us to cut corners, we’ll do it.’ Another interesting
piece of information came out at about the same time. Far from
trying to rail against the position of Spotlight, the National
Retail Association applauded Spotlight’s position. Not only did they
applaud it but they said that they had encouraged their members to
do the same. Will we see managers of the stores in the main street
of Campbelltown being seriously encouraged to take away overtime
rates and penalty rates for workers who work on shopping nights on
Thursdays and Saturday afternoons? Is that what this government
stands for? That is what the legislation allows. If members make
trite comments to the media about standing behind the legislation so
solidly, they have to be accountable. The simple fact is that the
cutting of wages and conditions and the undercutting of award terms
and conditions of employment is not appropriate. To do so may
generate new jobs out there, but at what cost?
The evidence presented to the estimates
hearings shows that 6,200 individual contracts have been lodged with
the Office of the Employment Advocate since March this year—since
Work Choices came into effect. In the OEA’s role as the examiner of
agreements, it looked closely at 250 random samples of all the
agreements that had been lodged. Unsurprisingly, it found that the
vast majority of agreements eroded the take-home pay and conditions
of Australians. It is not me or the Labor Party asserting this. It
comes from the Office of the Employment Advocate, which the
government appointed; hence, I have no hesitation in accepting the
figures that were put out by this statutory office-holder.
The AWAs examined will cut family budgets and
make it even harder for many families to keep their heads above
water. There is no doubt about that. The evidence provided to the
estimates hearings shows that every single one of the 250 individual
contracts examined by the Office of the Employment Advocate excluded
one protected award condition: 64 per cent removed leave loadings,
63 per cent removed penalty rates, 52 per cent removed shift
loadings, 40 per cent lost gazetted public holidays and 16 per cent
excluded all—every one—of those conditions. They simply relied on
the government’s five minimum standards.
In addition to that, nearly one in four
individual contracts removed leave loading, penalty rates and shift
loadings. How did the government respond to that? The only response
offered by the Prime Minister when he was presented with these facts
in question time was that 84 per cent of the contracts examined
resulted in higher rates of pay than the relevant award rates. The
recent individual contracts offered to the new Spotlight employees
also had a higher rate of pay than the award—a full 2c an hour
higher than the award rate of pay.
Of course, while the wage rate might have been
higher, when you take into account the removal of shift penalties
and overtime payments, the take-home pay of employees certainly was
not higher. The take-home pay for employees on wages a whole 2c an
hour higher than the award was less than that of their colleagues
who were being paid award rates of pay and who still had all those
other award entitlements accruing to them. In outer
Western Sydney and, I imagine, just about every other location, take-home pay is
what is relevant to Australian working families. We can talk about
individual rates but, at the end of the day, it is about what
workers’ take-home pay means to them and what they need to sustain
their families.
Even more staggering was the government’s
defence of the actions of Spotlight. It tried to excuse it by
suggesting that new stores had been opened because they could pay
lower rates of pay. What rubbish that is. I cannot believe the
government would genuinely believe that a new store would only open
in
Mount
Druitt simply because Spotlight did not have to pay award rates of
pay. Like other members in this place, prior to entering the
parliament, I was in business. I know the member for
Macarthur referred to me as a union lobbyist, but I was
in business. I actually helped the development of other
organisations. Sure, I was retained by the Police Federation of
Australia to assist them as well, but I would not necessarily see
that as meaning I was just a union lobbyist. From my background in
working in business development, let me say that businesses do not
work out where they are going to set up a new venture just by
looking at how cheaply they can pay their employees.
Businesses go out to expand by looking at the
marketplace, at the customer base and at how their goods and
services are positioned in a market. They present a business plan. I
do not know any business—maybe members opposite do—that has in the
forefront of its mind when it wants to set up a new business: ‘How
can we undercut the award wages and conditions of hardworking
Australians? How cheap can we get it? That will be our business
model.’ Maybe those ones who want to go offshore, do their
manufacturing offshore and embrace the Chinese approach of living on
$5.80 a day in some of the provincial areas think this. If that is
what they are advocating for Australian workers, let them be upfront
and say that.
Let me simply say that what has occurred at
Mount Druitt was a prime example of how this government is
encouraging new jobs by allowing employers to undercut terms and
conditions of employment, to undercut award wages and to force
people onto individual contracts which only satisfy the five minimum
conditions and are not even at the same level as those for existing
employees. It is an utter nonsense. I would also indicate that this
is not a matter that is only relevant to new employees. Think about
the position of the other 6,000 Spotlight workers if it is now
appropriate and legal for their management to employ 35 new people
to whom they do not have to pay overtime, penalty rates and leave
loading. If they work side by side on the same shift at that
Spotlight store, one group is going to get paid $90 a week less than
the other group. What do you think is going to happen to the other
group? I will tell you: the next contract they get offered will not
have those penalty rates in it. It is not only these 35 new people
that Spotlight want to recruit at
Mount
Druitt; it is the 6,000 other people in that store. This is all
being done, according to the general manager of Spotlight, on the
basis that it is government legislation— (Time expired)
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