ISSUES: Transition Bill, no new AWAs
JOHN STANLEY: Of course the election has been run and won. We do have a new government and the issue at the centre of the election campaign was industrial relations, the workplace relations changes and Australian Workplace Agreements. Yesterday the new Federal Cabinet set workplace relations and the new workplace relations laws as its first order of business when Parliament resumes next year. There are a number of questions; there are political issues, as to whether the Coalition will allow these changes through the Senate. But at the more practical level, for people who are employers and employees, what’s it mean for you? I mentioned earlier in the show, a fifteen year old that we know here, who was given a workplace agreement only yesterday, an AWA. Now, she is fifteen, she has got a casual position, she doesn’t expect to have it for too many years but in theory that AWA could last for five years and under the changes planned by the Government there will be no retrospectivity. Which means when the AWAs are abolished, next year, the ones that are existing, will run until they expire which could be up to five years. The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Employment and Workplace, Julia Gillard joins us on the line. Good morning to you.
JULIA GILLARD: Good morning.
TIM GLIBERT: There’s a lot on your plate and a lot of questions there. Just on that question of retrospectivity, can you understand why people would be concerned that they are being offered AWAs right now that will be illegal within a few months?
JULIA GILLARD: There’s a balance here and I can understand both perspectives. I can understand the perspective of the employee who is being offered an agreement today. I can also understand the perspective of the employer who says; well I am trying to make an agreement that is perfectly lawful today, what’s going to happen to that agreement? And when we designed our policy we had to weigh those considerations in the balance and we thought the best approach was to say agreements that were perfectly legal on the day on which they were made continue. When we change the law, then after the law is changed there will be no new Australian Workplace Agreements. And that’s kind of in keeping with the convention that incoming governments have, that they don’t disturb contractual and legal arrangements which are on foot.
JOHN STANLEY: So people who are offering AWAs today, once that legislation comes through, what will their options be?
JULIA GILLARD: Well, if you are offering AWAs today then those AWAs stay for the balance of their term. After our legislation comes into operation, there’ll be no new Australian Workplace Agreements. Your options could be to make a collective agreement with all of your staff to govern their terms and conditions, to make individual common law agreements but those common law agreements have to give people better than the safety net that is the significant difference with AWAs which can give you something worse than the safety net. Or for a two year period, there will be a transitional instrument called an Interim Transition Employment Agreement, an ITEA, that’s a statutory individual agreement but once again, unlike an AWA that has got to not disadvantage you compared with the safety net. So it can’t rip bits of the safety net away and not give you anything in return.
JOHN STANLEY: The previous government spent a significant amount of money advertising these changes, employers listening to what you have just said, are they going to be getting enough detail and information about how they will approach this new industrial era?
JULIA GILLARD: We will certainly be in the business of giving people genuine information. Our criticism of the government wasn’t that it was trying to get information to people, it wasn’t doing that. What it was doing is it was spending millions of dollars, indeed more than $121 million in total on propaganda ads on TV. And I would defy anybody to say they had watched those advertisements of two blokes talking over a beer in the pub and genuinely learnt anything about the mechanics of our industrial relations system.
TIM GLIBERT: But there was some documentation though wasn’t there, some information for employers?
JULIA GILLARD: It was pretty thin and one of the complaints from employers, particularly about the changes to Work Choices the former government made this year was that they were insufficiently explained when they came into operation as the law, before anyone knew what was going on. Now, we are certainly not going to repeat that process. We will make sure that there is genuine information for employers and employees. What we won’t have is wasteful TV propaganda campaigns.
TIM GILBERT: Minister, can I just paint a scenario. A 16, 17 year old who has signed an AWA, in some ways you could say they were bullied into it or it was a difficult circumstance and that’s a long term agreement that they have signed. When the laws are changed, what can they possibly do?
JULIA GILLARD: Certainly if someone is being bullied or put under duress to sign a workplace agreement or in anyway bullied or put under duress in their workplace then they should contact the Workplace Ombudsman. Even under the law of the country today, those things aren’t lawful and the Workplace Ombudsman can take action. If someone voluntarily enters into an agreement today, an Australian Workplace Agreement, then that agreement will last for the balance of its term. Now I understand that there is balance here between certainty and fairness, we had to weigh that in the balance but we thought it would cause too much disruption to have retrospective legislation. It would cause too much uncertainty for employers and employees for agreements that were lawful, somehow then be taken away or disrupted. So when we change the law we will change the law. We can’t do that until the Parliament meets. Obviously because the election was so late in the year it’s not possible to bring Parliament back before next year. But as soon as Parliament is back, in the very first week it is back, it will have before it the bill that will end the ability of anyone to make a new Australian Workplace Agreement. We just can’t do it quicker than that because of the logistics of getting Parliament back.
TIM GLIBERT: The rest of your changes will happen in 2010, does that include the unfair dismissal laws? What’s happening there?
JULIA GILLARD: What we have always said is that there would be two pieces of legislation. The first bill, the one we have just been talking about that ends Australian Workplace Agreements, the ability to make new ones, that’s the transitional bill. It will be followed by a substantial piece of legislation. That substantial piece of legislation will deal with the whole of our new IR system. Now the system will come into full operation, every bit of it will be in operation on the first of January 2010. That’s when awards will be modernised, that’s when our new industrial umpire, Fair Work Australia will come into operation. Obviously that bill will deal with a number of matters including unfair dismissals. What we have said on unfair dismissals and I think we have got the balance right here, is it’s not right if you are a good worker who has been there five, ten, fifteen years and you suddenly get dismissed for no reason and you have no remedy. It’s also not right that an employer gets dragged away from their business for days and days and ends up spending tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers to fix an unfair dismissal claim. What we want to have is a streamline system that works for everybody, that makes sure if a worker has a genuine complaint about their dismissal that gets heard and fixed but that people aren’t dragged away from their business that the complaint is dealt with quickly.
JOHN STANLEY: And what is your advice, Minister? Is it don’t sign them until you let this run its course?
JULIA GILLARD: Everybody will be in different circumstances so what I would certainly say is if people are feeling bullied or under duress then they should certainly ring the Workplace Ombudsman. If people want advice about the contents of their employment agreements, they want to know whether or not for example, they pass the Liberal Party’s so-called fairness test, which is in operation today, then they can get Workplace Authority. And people then need to weigh in the balance whether or not they want to sign the agreement. Can I say also to employers, I think employers want to weigh in the balance whether it is in their interest to have people on industrial agreements that they know aren’t going to be part of the future. At the end of the day if you employ twenty people, you might want to think, does it really suit me to have some on Australian Workplace Agreements now when I know during the course of next year I wont be able to make a new Australian Workplace Agreement for the staff member I hire after Labor’s law comes into operation. Employers when they think about that might think, well its not in my interest to have all different sorts of agreements in my workplace, I’ll work it through, get the new laws, work it through and then have arrangements that suit me and suit my employees.
JOHN STANLEY: But ultimately, that was the key point though wasn’t it because if they come up and say here’s an AWA, that’s my offer to you of a job, take it or leave it, you are not being bullied, the employee doesn’t have a choice, they either take it or leave it.
JULIA GILLARD: That’s true, that’s the Liberal Party’s laws and the Liberal Party’s laws are in operation today and I can’t change the Liberal Party’s laws until Parliament can be brought together and a bill dealt with by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, that is the only way of making a new law. So I understand that there’s the harm that the Liberal Party’s Work Choices laws have done to the Australian community. We always said in the election campaign, we couldn’t go back in time and fix all of the harm that Work Choices caused to Australian families. What we could promise and what we will deliver is a better system for the future.
JOHN STANLEY: Julia Gillard we will leave it there, I appreciate your time. Thank you.
JULIA GILLARD: Thank you very much.
JOHN STANLEY: The Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Employment & Workplace Relations. Of course there are conflicting noises coming out of the Coalition on the issue of whether they will try and block these changes in the Senate when they go through next year but I think that has got a bit of a way to run. Brendan Nelson said, he is still working out his position on this so that may not happen until after Christmas.
ENDS