Page 1525 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2006
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We’re saying to the Australian people we believe this is in the best interests of this country, we believe we have got to move forward, we have got to continue being productive if we want to sustain the economic growth that we’re experiencing at the present time and to ensure that our kids get the sort of future that we have today.
That was on 27 March 2006. Let us not forget that the earlier changes made to the industrial laws by the Keating government in 1993 naturally received some robust and rampant resistance from the union movement. The protest movement was alive and well. Members may recall that at that time Laurie Brereton, the then Minster for Industrial Relations, attended a meeting at the Sydney Town Hall. The union movement howled him down because he dared to suggest that we needed to move away from the old award system in Australia. It is historically significant to point out that the Howard government in a sense is now trying to fulfil at one level that which Paul Keating set out to achieve in 1993 as to the direction that Australia had to go in in order to achieve reform in industrial relations.
To continue with some more background and context, I am enlightened by comments made by Ms MacDonald in this chamber on 2 May 2006. I will cautiously and selectively quote her. She said:
I was around when Laurie Brereton was the federal minister for industrial relations and he changed the act. There was a lot of discussion amongst the union movement and employer organisations at that time about the changes and what the impact would be, and I was not necessarily one who was totally opposed to some of the changes that the federal minister, a Labor minister, was putting in. But of course I did not agree with everything that Laurie wanted to put in place, because I, as somebody working on the ground with those people at the coal face—I was doing that on a daily basis—I believed it would make life more difficult.
Ms MacDonald went on to say:
On the other hand, I would also say that I certainly have never been one to suggest that the way that the industrial relations system is set up should be balanced so much to one side, so unfairly balanced to the employee side, that it would send small businesses, medium businesses or large businesses broke, because the fact is that everybody is affected by that. The people who own the businesses, whether they be small business owners or large shareholders, are affected, as well as the people they employ. There is no point in sending a business to the dogs, should I say, because at the end of the day all you do is hurt the working families.
But, as I said at the start, I have recollections of some fairly shadowy behaviour from individual employers—and that was under the previous system.
Ms MacDonald said that on 2 May 2006. I find this is a balanced opinion, and coming from a member of the ALP in the ACT it is refreshing. It is based on sound observation, and it recognises a need for equity in the law for both the employer and employee and, in my opinion, it acknowledges the need to constantly review the laws to protect and afford rights and responsibilities to both employees and employers.
But let us just refer back to the interim report, which indicated at paragraph 5.12 that “time and evidence are needed to reliably and validly determine the effects on working
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