Page 4598 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 27 November 2019
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Mr Turnbull and Mr Morrison; an idea that is still a very good one: let us recognise that workers rights are, indeed, human rights. It will not fix all the problems facing Canberra workers, but it will set a standard and it will help many.
The content of my amendment includes four key points taken from the covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, which Australia ratified on 10 December 1975.
The first is the right to work, including the right to choose occupation and profession freely. This is not like the right to work laws that exist in some parts of America. The right to work does not extend to the right to work in insubstantial and below standard conditions. Sometimes we hear the rhetoric from fundamentalist Liberals about “freedom of contracting”. When the contract is between the powerful and the powerless, some of my cruder friends refer to it as freedom to get screwed.
Hence the second substantive point in section 27B: the right to just and favourable conditions. The word “favourable” does a lot of work in the treaty, and I have very deliberately included it here. “Favourable” goes a long way beyond fair or just. It means that people should be made better off by their work. It means that conditions should not be set at a minimum or a subsistence level, but well above that. It means that in deciding working conditions, the benefit of the doubt should be towards making the worker the winner.
The third substantive point is the right to enjoy those entitlements without discrimination. The defining examples are taken from our anti-discrimination laws. The right to not be discriminated against on each of these sits equally. I reject totally the rhetoric that says that the right to freedom of religion can be read as the right to discriminate against people based on sexual orientation. Likewise, discrimination based on social origin, colour, language and political opinion seem to be lurking in the shadows. Despite the protestation of the conservative wing of the Liberal Party, the wing that dominates the Canberra Liberals, being a bigot is not a right and is not desirable in our community. Everyone has the right to be protected from bigots in the workplace, and that standard belongs in our Human Rights Act.
The fourth and fifth substantive points will turn this amendment from theory into practice. The fourth point is the right to form and join a work-related organisation with the objective of promoting and protecting economic and social interests. The fifth is the right to not be discriminated against for doing so. Those two rights—the right to organise and protection from retaliation—are two of the least protected rights in Australia today. The status quo in Australia is a punitive response to workers organising: $50,000 fines for demanding that women have a place to wee in the workplace; punitive investigation of union organisers; phone taps; families being stalked; endless legal bills; attempting to break the will and solidarity of our unions; and harassment of delegates at every turn. On the other side of the lake they are debating going even further, creating endless paperwork and threatening to replace union officials or deregister unions for filing paperwork late.
We must step up where the federal government has failed, and where it is continuing to fail, in recognising the human right to have a union represent workers. We must also step up on a second point. Internationally, human rights law recognises the right
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