JONES:
Now by any reckoning and even according to his critics, the Australian Prime Minister John Howard may well be one of the smartest politicians this country has ever seen. And across a range of policy positions, this kudos is being considered by his opponents. That's why I've asked him on the programme this morning, to explain why he has allowed his industrial relations so-called debate to seemingly run completely out of hand. Everywhere you turn, some other person, and I'm getting the letters, is having the tripe frightened out of him or her about what industrial relations changes are going to do to his job, to him, to his family, to her family, yet there is no legislation, there is no written document, how the hell therefore, have we allowed all these phantoms to become fact? The Prime Minister I'm sure has some answers. He's on the line. PM good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Alan.
JONES:
What is going on?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well what's going on is what normally happens when a big reform is undertaken. You announce the outline of it, you then prepare the legislation and during that period between the announcement of the outline and the presentation of the legislation, people who oppose the reform misinform the public, tell lies about what the Government's intentions are, and generally try and frighten the tripe out of people, as you put it so eloquently, in order to stop the Government going ahead.
JONES:
How can people say, now I read about, and look, so that you understand the gravity of this, I have a tsunami of correspondence on this from people. I read that the industrial relations quote, unquote reforms are draconian and are going to destroy everybody. But what is the document on which that kind of comment is based?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there is no document on which it's based. I made a statement to Parliament which gave a reasonably detailed but nonetheless broad outline of what is involved. I mean, let's take a simple thing like superannuation. I was asked a question the other day at a news conference in South Australia, no, no, I'm sorry, on the ABC in Melbourne, 'Is superannuation, okay? Is long service leave okay?' The answer to both of those questions is that superannuation and long service leave are legislated. There's no way that legislation...
JONES:
Let me take...
PRIME MINISTER:
(inaudible) is going to be upset.
JONES:
Yeah I understand.
PRIME MINISTER:
But that is an example of the kind of thing.
JONES:
Right.
PRIME MINISTER:
Until the legislation, the detailed legislation, and it's being prepared, is produced, people are going to run around making these absurd allegations...
JONES:
Okay, Malcolm Farr, whom you know, has written yesterday in the Daily Telegraph that the new workplace relations laws could be more painful than a big interest rate rise, and that penalty rates could go and therefore the average worker will lose his overtime and the loss will be equal to the impact of jacking up interest rates by 2 per cent. Now you've got the Labor Party saying many families rely on overtime to keep ahead.
PRIME MINISTER:
They do.
JONES:
They're right. And the Government, they, as the Labor Party are saying, won't rule out the possibility that penalties and special overtime rates will disappear from some workplaces without employees being compensated.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well look, penalty rates and loadings are going to remain part of Awards and if you are covered by an Award you'll be fully covered in relation to penalty rates and holiday loadings.
JONES:
So are there any circumstances where someone will have overtime rates absorbed into normal working time rates and therefore the take-home pay could be diluted by something like $64 a week?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Alan, I'm not going to make the mistake of purporting to guarantee the take-home pay of every single individual amongst the 10 million workforce in Australia is not going to change but what I can guarantee is this, that this Government is not going to introduce any policy that is going to result in a cut in the take-home pay or living standards of the Australian workforce. We were accused of this nine years ago when we brought in some changes to the workplace relations system and over the last nine and a half years, the take-home pay of Australian workers has risen. One of the reasons why we enjoy the support of millions of wage and salary earners around Australia is that we have delivered better wages and better working conditions than any Labor government in the past.
JONES:
Right, I understand that and I'll come to that in just a moment. I just want to ask you one more question about this though. The Bureau of Stats shows that almost half the full time workforce, that's just over 46 per cent of it, regularly work overtime and that in New South Wales there are supposed to be 940,000 workers on regular overtime. My point to you is this, and I'm trusting you understand this, that if that overtime were to become ordinary time, take-home pay could fall dramatically.
PRIME MINISTER:
I understand that.
JONES:
People are worried.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah, look I do understand that and it is perfectly natural if people run around saying well overtime is going to disappear, penalty rates are going to disappear, that people will be concerned. But I think people should wait until the legislation comes out. I think people should wait until the legislation is in operation and they will find that so many of these allegations are wrong.
JONES:
Okay, right, now the Catholic Church, and this is the point, I mean the Catholic Church haven't always been a critic of the Howard Government. Many of these people are very sympathetic to many of the things that you've done. They are saying though, intention to exempt certain size businesses from unfair dismissal laws removes the legal requirement upon an employer for the fair treatment of workers, that the termination of employment could be an arbitrary decision by the employer, without respect for the employment relationship and the need for the worker to support a family.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Alan, I don't know whether the entire Catholic Church is saying that. Perhaps some people within the Catholic Church are saying that, and some people within other churches are saying that. But the change that we are making here, and we are quite unabashed in advocating this change, because we believe it will actually lead to the creation of more, not fewer jobs. The change we're making here is to remove a law that was only introduced in 1994. When you hear people talk about it, you would think it was some ancient right deriving from Magna Carta and enshrined in the Constitution. There is evidence all around the world that if you make it too difficult for employers, especially small employers, to let non-performing staff go, you will discourage and scare those employers in the first place from taking on more staff. And this has been the finding of the OECD, of the International Monetary Fund, and if you look at the countries around the world like Germany and France, that have very restrictive hiring and dismissal laws, then you will find those countries have much higher unemployment rates. And the purpose of this change, which we have signalled no less than 40 times and we campaigned on it way back in 1996, is to remove the fear many small employers now have that if they find somebody is disruptive, they find somebody is not performing, it costs them a packet to get rid of them and they say, well it's not worth the risk of hiring new people in the first place. Now that's the logic of that.
JONES:
Okay, well let's move on, because that's answered that. Now you keep saying, or people within the Government, that there are five items that are supposed to be the new workplace safety net. The relative minimum wage rate set by a new Fair Trade Commission, and then there are four legislative conditions covering annual leave, sick leave, unpaid parental leave and maximum, ordinary hours...
PRIME MINISTER:
That's if you go into a Workplace Agreement.
JONES:
That's right. An Agreement. That's ordinary hours at work. Now they are saying, the critics, the conditions therefore of the five, don't include public holidays or meal breaks, so they are going to be negotiable. One union says the changes would make working on public holidays and through lunchbreaks open to bargaining between workers and bosses.
PRIME MINISTER:
But what I have said in relation to that, and it will be reflected when the legislation is introduced, I have said that the existing arrangements concerning meal breaks and public holidays will continue. There are some cases already where people take a shorter meal break.
JONES:
And shorter public holidays.
PRIME MINISTER:
By agreement.
JONES:
They take the cash rather than the holiday.
PRIME MINISTER:
They get it in return. I mean some people have to work on public holidays.
JONES:
And indeed the Gallop Government has introduced that legislation in WA.
PRIME MINISTER:
And it would be absurd and unfair and unreasonable if somebody has to work on a public holiday that that person isn't compensated by being paid whatever it is, the double time or the time and a half.
JONES:
Righto, well let me ask you...
PRIME MINISTER:
I just want to make the general comment that those arrangements are going to continue.
JONES:
Right. Now the Church says, the Catholic Church says the Fair Pay Commission will set a minimum wage for a single adult worker and the Church has long time been an advocate of a family wage, a wage fixed having regards to the needs of a family so it can live with dignity. Now what they say is of course that governments always at election time say we're pro family. But suddenly the fair wage is not really the Harvester judgement wage from 1908 which was designed to say that a husband and his wife and two children could live in comfort, but basically the fair wage is not enough really to sustain a family in a contemporary environment.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Alan, I don't think we in 2005 should be bound by what might have been regarded as appropriate in 1908. With all due respect to everybody, I think we have to look at today's reality and today's reality is that family incomes under this Government have gone up in an unprecedented way. Today's reality is that Family Tax Benefits for families have boosted the living standards of low and middle income families.
JONES:
But see that's what George Pell says. George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney says well if the Government claims the economy has been performing so well, with productivity so high, why do we need this new round of family-threatening industrial relations change?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well he didn't say they were family threatening. He did not say that. What he said was that if we're doing so well, why do we need change. Well the answer to that is that we're doing well now because of past reforms. If we are to continue to do well in the future, we have to have further reforms.
JONES:
You've made that point before on this programme.
PRIME MINISTER:
And that is the reason.
JONES:
Okay.
PRIME MINISTER:
I make it again. This idea that we can just complacently assume that the prosperity we now enjoy will go on forever without any further changes will condemn us to a fall in living standards in the future. And the reason we need these reforms is they will boost workplace productivity and a boost in workplace productivity will lead to an increase in living standards in the future, more jobs and a maintenance of the living standards for Australian families...
JONES:
Well let me ask you this. There has been another report in the last 24 hours that many small Australian businesses, including most family-owned farms, could be excluded from the reforms because they are not companies, and that the Government is employing its constitutional corporations power to create a national industrial relations system. So the new national system will only apply to corporations and farms, as well as small businesses are often not incorporated, so the use of the corporations power creates problems for farmers and small businesses who aren't incorporated, they won't be involved. What's the answer to that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the answer to that is that we will be using the corporations power, but we are in discussions with the National Farmers' Federation, which incidentally is a very strong supporter of the industrial relations reforms that we're undertaking to ensure that there is no disadvantage suffered by Australian farmers as a result of the introduction of these changes.
JONES:
All right, can I just ask you though comments by the Treasurer, who said that not only were smokos and lunch breaks up for bargaining but firms employing more than 100 workers could one day eventually be exempt from unfair dismissal laws as well?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there is absolutely no part of the Government's policy that includes that. He was answering a question about what some people might argue in 10 or 15 years time.
JONES:
All right, well let me ask you 10 or 15 years time...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well let me tell you now, speaking on behalf of the Government, our policy is to change it in relation to firms with fewer than 100 employees, full stop. That's our policy. We didn't discuss getting rid of it altogether at some time in the future. That's not part of our policy. We have a full discussion about this issue. We decided that 100 was the right balance because that is the outer limit of the definition of a small business, being the definition of a small manufacturing business.
JONES:
So what about the fact though, before we go, that Labor might one day be in charge of a single national workplace regime which the changes would allegedly initiate. What might that mean to all Australian businesses?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think that would be bad for Australian business, but I think it's bad for Australian business that Labor is in charge of the industrial relations systems of many of the States. This argument that you don't make changes on a nationwide basis through fear that in the future you'll have a Labor Government that will overturn all of it. If you get a future Federal Labor government they will implement the industrial relations policy they believe in. The best way to guarantee you wont have a national Labor government overturning all of this is to get the reforms through.
JONES:
So why don't we get the document out as soon as we can?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Alan, Alan, we are doing that. But it's got to be correct and it will be correct. It is always the case that you make an announcement then you produce the detailed legislation.
JONES:
All right.
PRIME MINISTER:
Nobody can do it the other way round.
JONES:
We've got to go to the news, but I'm glad of your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
JONES:
Thank you for your time. The Prime Minister John Howard.
[ends]