Page 2854 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992
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Madam Speaker, the fundamental question is this: Is the present system in Australia realistic? Is it working? The answer has to be, for three reasons I would submit, clearly no. First of all, the present system takes conditions of employment and it formulates what those conditions should be at the national level for the most part, or at best at State level, and then it says, "These conditions are going to be imposed locally in every workplace that falls within the description to which this particular industrial award applies, irrespective of how applicable that award might be to the particular circumstances of a particular workplace and irrespective of how many jobs that particular award might actually cost". Let us not fool ourselves; many industrial awards in this country do cost jobs. They do cost jobs because they are applied inappropriately in workplaces, with the result that the persons who presently enjoy employment simply cannot continue to be employed.
Mr Lamont: Where? Name one example.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, if Mr Lamont is not aware of the countless examples of firms that have gone to their employees and said, "We cannot keep going; we are at the end of our profitability and we want to renegotiate the arrangements under which we continue to work in order to keep going. Will you be in that?" - - -
Mr Lamont: That is not what you said originally.
MR HUMPHRIES: Yes, it is. That is what I said. That is exactly what I said.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order, please!
MR HUMPHRIES: The present system, Madam Speaker, has clearly resulted in workers being unable to continue in employment because the industrial system simply does not have the flexibility to allow them to negotiate reasonable conditions for them to be able to continue in their present employment.
The second reason, as we have seen in this community, is declining levels of union membership. People in this country are perceiving that unions are no longer an important part of protecting their position and their employability because they see that unions are not relevant to the conditions of employment in their workplace. The third problem, Madam Speaker, and it is a very eloquent statement as to the inadequacies of our present industrial relations system, is the nearly one million unemployed people at present. If that is not an articulate testimony to how dramatically the present system has failed, I ask you what is.
The problem with the present inflexible wages system is that it divorces wages and conditions from profitability. Madam Speaker, let us get this quite clear. Profits in the operation of businesses create jobs and sustainability is necessary to preserve jobs. If a business cannot make money, then it cannot continue to offer long-term job prospects for its workers. On countless occasions, notwithstanding what Mr Lamont might think, in the last few years at least, businesses have had to say to workers, "We simply cannot afford to offer you a job at the level which is prescribed by the industrial award and therefore we are afraid we have to let you go". Occasionally, some employers have taken a different tack and they have said to their workers, "We cannot continue to offer you employment at the
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