Page 5435 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 8 December 2009
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Mr Corbell: What about the workers?
MRS DUNNE: What about the workers indeed, as Mr McMillan would say. If the minister had taken time to consult, he would have found, as I was advised by Mr Fanner, the General Manager of the ACT branch of the Australian Hotels Association yesterday, that the view of the Hotels Association is that this was essentially legislating for compulsory unionism. The point that Mr Fanner made was that there was no way that a union would give a non-union member this information, required for their employment, in a timely fashion.
I was told by Mr Fanner that in the hospitality sector of the security industry, the unions are thought by the employees to be irrelevant. Mr Fanner asked why security industry employees should be treated differently from other kinds of employees. He went on to make the point that the federal workplace relations act, the Fair Work Act—all 800-odd pages of it—sets out employer obligations and employee rights, and there is no need for this. It was put to me that Labor was trying to sneak in a free kick for its union mates. Mr Fanner also raised, quite rightly, the implications that this would have for other industries, such as the building and property industry. If everybody had to go to a union and have signed off and certified that they had been informed about their rights and responsibilities as, say, an employee in the building industry or in the hospitality industry more generally, the implications for this would be quite wide ranging.
In addition to this, the chamber of commerce, in response to my inquiries of them, informed me that the relevant industry association, ASIAL, the Australian Security Industry Association Ltd, had not been consulted on this issue. The chamber saw that there were significant policy issues that had been hidden in this omnibus bill, which is where they would expect to find technical changes only. In a press statement today, Mr Peters reinforced that there had been “no consultation … on such a significant policy change with the Chamber, the industry or any of the other industry bodies”. Mr Peters also took the view that this was “a back-door attempt towards compulsory unionism” and was “contrary to Federal Government industrial relations policy in this regard”. He said:
The Federal Government has the Workplace Ombudsman whose role it is to deal with such industrial issues.
Mr Peters also asked:
Where might this lead to?
He asked if it would now become government policy for every applicant for a public service position to require a certificate from a trade union. He said that perhaps staff of members of the Legislative Assembly would require a certificate from a union. Mr Peters went on to make the point that this is a significant increase in red tape which will be an inevitable cost to the community.
What we have seen here today is appalling arrogance from this government. It has clearly not diminished since the people of the ACT ripped away its majority at the last
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