Legislative Council
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Legislative Council Thursday, 14 September 2000 THE PRESIDENT (Hon George Cash) took the Chair at 11.00 am, and read prayers. STATE WORKPLACE AGREEMENTS Motion Resumed from 13 September on the following motion moved by Hon N.F. Moore (Leader of the House) - That this House calls on the Opposition to repudiate demands by the union movement and the federal Australian Labor Party to scrap state workplace agreements and acknowledge that its opposition to state workplace agreements since 1993 has been ideologically driven and dictated by the union movement. HON N.F. MOORE (Mining and Pastoral - Leader of the House) [11.03 am]: I will not take up the time of the House for much longer on this issue. We on this side of the House are having some difficulty understanding what the Labor Party is about in respect of this very important issue. Yesterday Hon Tom Helm gave us some indication that the unions were not opposed to workplace agreements, but I suspect the word that is missing out of all this is the word “individual”. What we will probably get from the Labor Party is a policy which says that workplace agreements are all right provided everybody has the same one, which bears a remarkable similarity to the old award system that it replaced. If that is what the Labor Party is going to do it should come clean and tell everybody so that the mining industry, the tourism industry or the hospitality industry is not led up the garden path through the Labor Party suggesting that in some way or other its industrial relations policy will allow for individual workplace agreements to continue to be available to workers in Western Australia. As I suggested yesterday, a large number of people in the various work forces in Western Australia are happy to embrace individual workplace agreements and collective workplace agreements. Those agreements have made quite a dramatic difference, in a positive sense, to the working conditions of many thousands of Western Australians. Obviously, that is the reason the Labor Party is sending these mixed messages - the mixed messages being that Dr Gallop has a progressive view on these matters and the unions do not. As Hon Tom Helm said, the unions are now falling into line. It will be interesting to see whether that is in fact the case. During my introductory remarks on this motion I gave some indication of what the media at least thinks about the unions’ attitude towards Dr Gallop’s position. As I said yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition made a long speech about this matter and, in part, he said that the Labor Party will have a policy that accommodates the interests of getting rid of the workplace agreements legislation. I can understand that - they get rid of the legislation and replace it with something else. He went on to say that it would be replaced with a system that no longer protects itself with secrecy, and diminishes the rights of the umpire. So, the Labor Party will take us back to a system where individuals cannot make their own decisions. He went on to say that it would be a system that no longer works against the interests of collective arrangements with unions or penalises and discriminates against the unions. Translated into real-speak, that means going back to the old system that was in place before in which the Industrial Relations Commission and the umpires and that process are paramount, it is not open to workers or individual employees to make arrangements on their own behalf because they really need to be “protected” by the unions, and union membership is pre-eminent. In that context it is interesting to look at some of the figures about union membership. In Western Australia union membership was down to about 21 per cent of the work force in August 1999. It is probably less than that now. That clearly demonstrates that people in the workplace are pretty satisfied with the existing situation. That is the dilemma for Dr Gallop, because he has his union colleagues on one hand telling him what he should do and on the other hand he can see what is happening in reality in the Western Australian workplace. The first part of the motion states - . this House calls on the Opposition to repudiate demands by the union movement and the federal Australian Labor Party . Hon Tom Helm has suggested that the union movement itself is not demanding that the Opposition scrap workplace agreements. There is a bit of confusion with the federal ALP because all the reports coming out of the Hobart conference indicate that Mr Beazley is opposed to what Dr Gallop has said he will do. Maybe it is a question of semantics, whether or not we are talking about workplace agreements per se or whether we are talking about individual workplace agreements, and that is something we need clarified when the Labor Party policy which has been agreed to by its Caucus becomes public. The second part of the motion states - . this House calls on the Opposition to . acknowledge that its opposition to state workplace agreements since 1993 has been ideologically driven and dictated by the union movement. [Thursday, 14 September 2000] 1233 Here is a chance for the Opposition to support this motion. If those opposite do support it they would be repudiating demands by the unions to scrap workplace agreements. If the unions are not making that demand then, of course, it is academic whether the Opposition supports it or not. If those opposite are now opposed to workplace agreements they should acknowledge that the reason they are opposed to it is that it has been ideologically driven by the union movement. I hope that the Labor Party will support the motion. Doing so will give it a chance to make it clear to the community that it supports the workplace agreement system that has been put in place in Western Australia, because that is what Dr Gallop is leading us to believe. In this pre-election period it is important that people know exactly what the Labor Party is proposing to do. I acknowledge that the Labor Party does not have to put out its policy until the election comes around, but I hope that it will be clear about what it proposes to do in industrial relations and that it will spell it out in detail so that every worker and every voter in Western Australia knows exactly what the policy means for them - not some glossy, half-hearted, semi-detailed - Hon Tom Stephens: Liberal-type policy. Hon N.F. MOORE: No, hang on a minute. The coalition went to the election and said that it would fix up the industrial relations system. It said what it would do and it did it. The Labor Party has now come to realise that it works. I read out some of the comments made by members opposite when they were opposing this legislation back in 1993. In those speeches they said that it would bring about the end of the world. Hon Tom Stephens: The President should have stopped me interjecting. Hon N.F. MOORE: He should have. Now the Labor Party has acknowledged, via the comments of its leader, that the 1993 legislation has had a positive impact. The Labor Party should act in a manner similar to that of the coalition in 1993 and 1996 when it puts forward to the voting population of Western Australia exactly what it has in mind for industrial relations. The coalition spelt it out in detail and it delivered. Instead of the Labor Party trying to convince the mining industry or the hospitality industry that it is wishy-washy on workplace agreements and that it thinks they might be okay, it should tell them what its policy is. It is not good enough to say that workers who are on workplace agreements and who are doing better than they would have otherwise can keep them, but that everybody else who the Labor Party thinks should be doing better than they are should be put on some sort of award, thereby taking away their rights to workplace agreements and taking away the capacity of employers to negotiate with their employees. I hope that the Labor Party does not go down that path. This is an opportunity for the Labor Party to support this motion. Why would it not? Hon J.A. Cowdell interjected. Hon N.F. MOORE: Perhaps I should have amended the motion to say “state individual workplace agreements”. That might have made it a bit easier for the Labor Party. By voting against this motion, members opposite will be acknowledging that the union movement and the federal ALP are calling on them to scrap workplace agreements and that is okay. If that is what members opposite think, that is fine. However, they have already indicated that they think what the coalition did in 1993 is okay. By voting against this motion, they will be saying, in effect, that their opposition to state workplace agreements has not been ideologically driven or dictated by the union movement; it is basically a strategy based on the politics of the moment. This has been a worthwhile debate. However, it is a pity, as we have been told by Hon Tom Stephens, that we will have to wait to find out what the Labor Party stands for. That is a pity because people are entitled to know where it stands, especially as the media is speculating about this very important issue.