Page 3448 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 September 2005
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I guess we can always get a little bit concerned when business is much more appreciative of policy changes about workers than workers are themselves. Mark Bethwaite of the group Australia Business Ltd has said:
Every leader who introduces courageous change is going to suffer a short-term reversal. In five years time, we will look back on the years prior to 2005 and wonder why we persevered with six different industrial relation systems which give rise to 4,200 award in 29,000 classifications. God looking down would not impose a system of that complexity and confusion on a country which is less than two per cent of global production.
That is the business word on our current industrial relations system, which I grant needs improvement but not the kind of change that has been proposed by the government.
The so-called industrial relations “reform agenda” will not contribute to the nation’s collective wellbeing. Instead, it will further concentrate this nation’s wealth in the hands of those already doing very well. In my opinion, these reforms are ideologically driven and are an attack on the human rights of Australians. The changes will hit hardest those least advantaged in our society—young people, women, those in low paid work, casuals and temporary workers.
Statistics show that since the initial breakdown of workers’ rights in the late 70s, those worst affected have been the young and those on low incomes. These members of our community have experienced a real decrease in their wages over the last 20 years, while the real wages or salaries for those on high incomes has increased exponentially. Statistics prove that the income inequality has increased and the trickle-down effect often advocated by neo-liberal economists is just not working. This is neither fair nor just.
Mr Speaker, I am going to particularly focus on the impact of the proposed changes on women, who for some time have been identified as one of the more vulnerable groups in our economy. Even despite advances in wages and conditions, on the whole most women’s jobs are still more lowly paid than many men’s equivalent jobs. The National Foundation of Australian Women has recently initiated the study with NATSEM on the impact of “welfare to work”—remember that these changes are also in the wind—combined with new industrial relations laws on women. The conjunction of those two very major reforms needs to be considered because that is where the most vulnerable people are.
Taken with the new “welfare to work” provisions, such as those that are pushing single mothers back into the workplace, we have a recipe for injustice. More than 60 women’s groups have warned that women will suffer more than men under the government’s workplace changes. The what-women-want project, involving 64 women’s groups boasting 3½ million supporters, says women’s income security and job stability will be eroded under the changes. Women are more likely to rely on minimum award wages and conditions and generally have less bargaining power in their workplaces than men. As a result, they will be disproportionably affected by the government’s plan to strip back awards and encourage more Australian workers to sign individual contracts based on one-on-one negotiations with their boss.
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