JULIA GILLARD: Today is the two year anniversary of Work Choices; it’s when the Liberal Party’s extreme workplace relations laws started. And for two years, Australian working families suffered under these laws. And they’ve particularly suffered by being confronted with Australian Workplace Agreements that ripped away basic pay and conditions. And these laws have created huge queues for businesses; with businesses now having agreements in a queue of more than 100,000 waiting many months to have their agreements processed. Well on this two year anniversary of Work Choices we are here to start burying Work Choices. Today the Governor General has proclaimed Labor’s Transition to Forward with Fairness Bill. It will come into effect at midnight tonight. That means, from midnight there will be no new Australian Workplace Agreements. This is the beginning of the end of Work Choices. From midnight tonight, no Australian worker needs to fear going to work tomorrow only to be confronted by an Australian Workplace Agreement which rips away basic conditions for no compensation or no proper compensation. We have more to do to bury Work Choices. Later in the year we will be bringing to the Parliament a substantive bill to ensure that the country has a fair and balanced industrial relations system. But this is a significant beginning; it’s a significant beginning of the end of Work Choices. At the last election Australians voted to get rid of Work Choices. Here we are today on its anniversary marking the beginning of the end. This is an important step forward for fairness for Australian working families and it is an important step forward towards a simpler system for Australian businesses.
JOURNALIST: Was there a last minute rush by employers to get AWAs in before midnight?
JULIA GILLARD: There is no evidence in the figures that are collected by the Workplace Authority; obviously all agreements go to the Workplace Authority for processing. There is no evidence in those figures that there has been a sudden increase in the number of Australian Workplace Agreements. The important thing is we are moving to a system where there will be no new Australian Workplace Agreements. And in Labor’s view we should never again in this country have as a standing part of our workplace relations system statutory individual employment agreements.
JOURNALIST: What about the transitional agreements, are employers able to sign up employees to new transitional agreements? Can you just explain that?
JULIA GILLARD: We are in a two year transition period; it is what our policy promised before the last election. We knew to end Work Choices and to introduce a fair and balanced system was going to be a big change and in making that big change we wanted Australian employers and employees to be able to make a measured transition; for no one to be confused about what was happening in their workplace. Consequently from midnight tonight there will be no new Australian Workplace Agreements. We will start a two year transition period in which awards will be modernised. And when awards are modernised and we have the full new system in operation on the 1st of January 2010 there will be no statutory individual employment agreements of any nature. In the transition period employers who have used AWAs and were using them in December last year can have access to an interim agreement. That interim agreement has to pass a full no disadvantage test against the underlying award and it is strictly for a period through to the 31st of December 2009. So that is part of the transition but Labor’s full system will have modern simple awards, people can bargain to get more than the award either by joining their workmates to do so or by striking a common law contract with their employer but the common law contract always has to give them better than the safety net. The great vice of Australian Workplace Agreements, what they were designed to do, was to strip the safety net away and we are ending that with the proclamation of this legislation today.
JOURNALIST: Why is it that Cabinet is not meeting while the Prime Minister is away?
JULIA GILLARD: Cabinet is meeting on its usual time cycle. Obviously you are referring to the question of the listing of new medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. And can I say in relation to that that the important drugs that have been in today’s papers, talked about in today’s papers; one for multiple sclerosis, another for late renal disease. These are important medications but they are going through the usual process and the usual process is for the medical experts from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee to look at the medication and to work out if they are medically effective and would help people. And then once they’ve given them the medical tick off, for there to be negotiations about price. And those negotiations have been happening. We are talking about drugs that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. So it’s important that government attends to and does the best possible deal it can to get these mediations for a price that is sustainable to the taxpayer as well as going to get the medicines into the hands of patients who need them. That’s the process Government has been going through, it’s the usual process and it is not in any way associated with the Prime Minister’s trip overseas. Nothing about that process has been affected by the fact the Prime Minister is travelling today overseas.
JOURNALIST: So it’s not a case of one man running the country?
JULIA GILLARD: This is going through the absolutely usual process. And the absolutely usual process is you get the medical experts to tell government whether it’s medically effective. That’s obviously a job for independent experts, not for politicians, and we ask them to do it. And then for government to negotiate the best possible price and the Minister for Health is handling that matter. So this is a matter completely unrelated to the Prime Minister’s trip overseas. It is going through the usual process.
JOURNALIST: So can you as the Acting Prime Minister, can you run Cabinet [inaudible]?
JULIA GILLARD: If there was a need to have a Cabinet meeting outside the scheduled meeting time, then of course, as Acting Prime Minister I could convene a Cabinet meeting. But in relation to these medications, they are going through the usual process, the matter is in the hands of the Minister for Health, that’s where it should be and that’s where it would be whether or not Kevin Rudd was in the country or travelling overseas as Prime Minister to engage in some important talks about the global economic circumstances that could impact country and of course foreign policy matters generally.
JOURNALIST: The department store, Myer today announced that it would pay six weeks maternity leave for employees. What do you think of that?
JULIA GILLARD: I think that this is a terrific move to see by such a major company. Obviously there are many employers now who offer employees the benefits of paid maternity leave and that’s to be applauded. It’s good for working women because it helps them balance work and family life. It’s also good for employers because it makes it more likely that a woman who has worked for them and has gone off work to have a child will come back to the same company. And in a tight labour market companies want to retain the skills of their female workforce; they want women to come back to work. We have of course asked the Productivity Commission to inquire into the best system of paid maternity leave for this country. And one of the things we are conscious about that inquiry looking at is to build on what is already out there and developing. We want to make sure that we are building on what is there and any system that is designed, works well with the benefits that are there for some women employees at the moment including of course the newly announced benefits for employees at Myer.
JOURNALIST: The retail sector though, in regards to paid maternity leave has lagged behind the likes of the finance sector and you’ve got Woolworths and Coles both a very large employer that don’t pay maternity leave. Do you think this will now encourage them to follow [inaudible]?
JULIA GILLARD: I think this is a matter that individual employers will take a decision about. But certainly the more common it becomes for employers to offer paid maternity leave; the more likely we are to see it spread. Women are obviously looking when they make their decision about where they are going to work, at the full range of benefits that might be available to them should they chose to have a family. And I think it will be something that women weigh up when they are selecting employers in the future and I think employers are increasingly conscience of that particularly in a tight labour market where often it can be difficult to get the workforce that you want and it is important to be holding and retaining women in your workforce.
JOURNALIST: The last time the Prime Minister was out of the country he was gone for four days and there were all sorts of issues with carers’ payments. What can we expect when he is gone for 17 days?
JULIA GILLARD: What you can expect of course is for government to be doing all of the things that government normally does in this country. You can expect to see the Prime Minister overseas, engaged in a very substantial set of important talks, particularly on the global economy, though of course running to other important matters in the foreign policy area. We need to remind ourselves that this is a time where there are concerns in the global economy. We have seen the impact of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States and its impact on financial markets around the world. Our world is a smaller and smaller place. Australia is within that world and affected by what happens in that world. We are particularly affected by what happens in the global economy. So it is an important time and an appropriate time for a new Prime Minister to be overseas talking to people about these matters, which could have such an important affect on this nation and that’s what the Prime Minister will be doing. In the mean time of course, here at home, the government will be working as government always does. I will be attending to matters on behalf of the Prime Minister as acting Prime Minister. I will of course be attending to my portfolio obligations including matters relating to the ending of Work Choices and you should expect to see the Minister for Health doing what the Minister for Health does and that includes dealing with matters of listing medication on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
JOURNALIST: [Inaudible]
JULIA GILLARD: Yes, the regulations were also dealt with by the Governor General today. So we have the full package; the Act and the Regulations.
JOURNALIST: [Inaudible] national IR system?
JULIA GILLARD: Yesterday’s COAG meeting was obviously dealing with a range of matters, in particular dealing with a range of important matters under the Productivity Working Group that I chair, they go to our education system, right through from the education of our smallest children in pre-school, through schools and vocational education and training. It’s a new big national agenda. It was the States and Territories saying they are prepared to put their shoulder to the wheel with the Federal Government for the Education Revolution. It was an important step. Of course there was an important dialogue about national Occupational Health and Safety laws; that is harmonised laws around the country. The question of a national industrial relations system for the private sector, which is the Government’s policy, was dealt with when the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council last met.
JOURNALIST: [Inaudible]
JULIA GILLARD: No, it was dealt with by the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council. The question of Occupational Health and Safety was before COAG yesterday and dealt with in the COAG papers.
JOURNALIST: [Inaudible]
JULIA GILLARD: We have certainly worked with the Workplace Authority, so the Workplace Authority will be able to provide advice and assistance to people on the new law from tomorrow. Indeed it would have been providing some advice to people who have rung up in anticipation wanting information or assistance about what these legislative changes mean for them. Can I be very clear, it is not the Government’s intention to waste hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on thinly disguised party political propaganda. That’s what the Liberal Party did with Work Choices and we have seen the evidence of that this year with mousepads, fridge magnets and pamphlets and so on. We are not engaging in a propaganda war but we believe its important people can get authoritative advice and the Workplace Authority is the right place to do that.
JOURNALIST: [Inaudible]
JULIA GILLARD: That is true. One of the provisions of the Act that has been proclaimed today is there is not longer a requirement for employers to hand to employees what was referred to ironically as a Workplace Fact Sheet. What it basically was was government propaganda, Howard Government propaganda by another name enlisting employers under the threat of fines to the Work Choices propaganda war. That requirement is gone as a result of today’s Act. OK, thank you.
ENDS