Page 3870 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 October 2005
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understands the process; she understands the ambit nature of claims and how that system works.
I always thought it was verging on ludicrous that I would get these claims served on me by unions, asking for $10,000 a week, 52 weeks paid leave a year and all sorts of things, simply as a basis for creating an industrial dispute. What consistently happens with the living wage cases is that the ACTU normally files a claim, as you know; then the commonwealth puts a view; one or two of the peak employer organisations weigh in; and sometimes the state and territory governments do. Then there is a negotiated outcome. To say that the commonwealth wanted to drag wages down by $50 a week and really lost out is about as credible as saying that the ACTU seriously thought that the extent of their ambit claim was likely to be successful. In neither case is that valid.
But the problem with the Industrial Relations Commission and the nature of those previous cases is that, really, they fail to take need into account. I saw, in the mid 1990s, decisions handed down that would have wrecked the employment and lives of people. There was a case in 1994 where an increase extended by the commission would have cost the hotel industry $104 million over a six-month period. I was faced with a situation where international hotel owners said to me, “We are not going to be able to draw more funds down; we are not going to increase our borrowings; we cannot increase our payroll. If we are obliged to live with this situation, we will have to let people go.”
I managed to convince unions to let us have a freeze, even though they had the potential to apply that order. But it showed the inflexibility of the industrial system, because, essentially, they were saying one size fits all. They were saying, essentially, through that commission, “Bad luck if you have got sections of industry that are in grave difficulty.” The only way you could get around it was to present individual sets of books before the commission—a totally impractical arrangement for national wage matters. The capacity to work and develop arrangements that work for a particular business where the employees have a direct involvement and understand their and the business’s needs means we are going to see a lot more stability in employment arise out of this.
I spoke earlier of the gloom and doom predictions of the past. We saw that predicted by people such as Mr Beazley, who said things were going to fall apart and disappear under a Liberal government. Back in 1996, he said:
The Workplace Relations and Other Legislation Amendment Bill strikes at the heart of the desire by all Australians for a fair as well as a productive society. If we pass this bill into law, we will return the workplace to the battleground it used to be.
I am sorry, Mr Beazley, but, sadly, your predictions have been proven wrong. We have a situation where we have a low level of industrial disputation; we have a situation—and Mr Stefaniak will detail this—where we have a high level of satisfaction among people utilising the Australian workplace agreements; we see families with more money in their pockets.
I should take up a point that Ms MacDonald made. She talked about economic prosperity and put all the emphasis on wages. What she does not appreciate is that your economic prosperity is governed by a raft of factors. It is governed by how much you pay in interest on your home mortgage; it is governed by whether everybody in the house can
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