Mr PALLAS (Tarneit) — It gives me great  pleasure to speak on this matter of public importance. Having been both a trained lawyer  and  also a union official for some 18 years, I have a passing appreciation of the law and the right to the presumption of  innocence — which  the Attorney-General of this  state does not seem even vaguely  concerned about.  He may  be cognisant of the fact that there are  legal proceedings taking place, but it does not appear to influence  him at all. He has turned  this Parliament  into a  kangaroo court,  and it really does demonstrate the level to which this government is prepared to stoop.

Let us  also look at the perversion  of history by those opposite.  We hear from the  Attorney-General  that  they  support  a  centralised  system of industrial relations. That would come as a surprise to  everybody, because we remember what happened in 1992 when before coming to power members  of  the previous coalition government  promised,  hand on heart, ‘We will not attack the award  system;  we will preserve the award system’.

Then they got into government, and what did they do? They put  in place a system where new employees were effectively immediately put  onto  individual contracts of  employment.  They  put in place  a  system  where  a  fair  and  independent industrial  umpire was gutted and  left without any  capacity. Only five minimum conditions of employment were preserved for workers. That was the sort of system those opposite considered to be flexible and productive. So when they talk about flexibility  and productivity let us not believe that it is anything more than a shroud over a pure and venal desire to extort from workers their right to earn a decent living.

And what happened? How did that centralised system  come  about? The trade union movement worked with the federal Labor government, and we put  in place schedule 1A  of  the  federal  Workplace  Relations  Act   1996,  which  facilitated  and fast-tracked  workers  being  relocated  into  federal  awards  —  against  the Victorian conservative government’s urging.

  Mr Wakeling — They ceded the powers.

  Mr PALLAS— They effectively  lost the capacity to cover workers in the award system.

  Mr Wakeling — The Victorian government ceded the powers.

  Mr  PALLAS  —  Yes,  it  ceded the  powers  eventually,  after  the   federal jurisdiction  had  effectively  taken  the  ground  by  moving  retail  workers, warehouse  workers  —  you name it, they had all  gone.  And what did it do? It demonstrated  that  those opposite were  prepared  to  see  workers  effectively impoverished under its mad ideological views.

A history lesson littered with —  I do not know — facts would demonstrate that an Attorney-General should concern himself with what is actually happening, what happened  in  the past and  in  fact  the  pedigree  that  those  opposite  have demonstrated.

So let us talk about what is  happening in  the building industry today. Between November 2011  and May 2012  the Victorian construction industry haemorrhaged 32 500 jobs, with job numbers going down from 268 500 to 236 000. That was a 12 per cent reduction in employment in the entire  construction workforce — gone — in just six  months  under this government’s custodianship. Under this government’s watch  178 Victorian construction jobs have disappeared every single day. I hear from  the Attorney-General that  it is the  federal  industrial relations system that is to blame.

What then is  his  answer to this: to the fact that  over the same period during which  Victoria lost 27 100 full-time construction jobs New South Wales added 10 300 new  full-time  jobs  to  the  industry,  all  regulated by the same federal jurisdiction?

If the government wants a  demonstration of its failure  to effectively regulate these areas, it is demonstrated in its inability to appreciate the idea that the building and construction industry is regulated effectively by these provisions. The official ABS statistics show this to be the largest half-yearly drop in full construction jobs in the state since  these records  began in  1984. That is the legacy of  a dithering  government that does not have  an agenda  in respect  of industry  growth,  the  development  of  the  construction  industry  and indeed infrastructure

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that could be appropriately  and adequately delivered.  Those opposite seem more concerned with protecting their own  jobs  than they are with protecting jobs in the Victorian construction industry.

Of course those opposite wish to talk about their  long-term plans. We hear from the pontificating Treasurer about issues such as productivity. Let us talk about productivity in  this state. The government constantly cites productivity  — as it  has of course in the debate on  this matter of public importance — as being the sole and  guiding  objective of its  philosophy. More specifically it  cites productivity as  a goal, but  its approach is  misdirected, ideologically driven and narrowly focused on labour productivity. It ignores multifactor productivity and fails to address the real drivers of productivity — infrastructure, skills, innovation and management practices.

On the  issue of management practices,  about which we  hear  nothing whatsoever from those opposite, the Australian Financial Review of 11 July 2012 stated:

  Treasury is blaming Australia’s  poor productivity performance  on second-rate  management practices it says are similar to those in France, Italy and the UK.

  David Gruen, head of  Treasury’s macroeconomic forecasting unit, said managers  of Australian  companies  ranked well below the US, Japan and Germany, in part  because of the many small manufacturers and fewer multinational corporations.

Mr Gruen is quoted as saying:

  ‘Better managed firms are more innovative and have higher productivity …

  Research found  manufacturers’ productivity would improve about 8 per  cent if  they were as well managed as those in the US.

But we hear nothing about productivity in the context of what anybody other than workers must do. It  is  all shrouded in  the  language  of a need  for  greater flexibility,  but  we  know  based on this government’s form what that means: it means the  flexibility of  a safety  net  and the  flexibility of  the right  of workers to effectively organise through their unions being denied.

We  heard also  from the  Attorney-General today that he is very keen  to ensure that private  sector work not involving  the government as  a  contractor should also come within  the responsibility of the construction code of compliance unit — that is, regardless of what your arrangements were in the private sector, you would  be unable  to tender  for government  work even  if you  complied in  the context of that government work.

Therefore those businesses, livelihoods and jobs would be at risk. We have spent a  lot  of  time  talking  about  coercion.  You  could  see  no  more  dramatic illustration of economic coercion than that.

The Attorney-General or somebody  else  may  well  want to address the fact that Daniel Grollo on Monday on radio 3AW  made it very clear that  he had absolutely no  problem  with his workforce  wearing  insignia and  badges  and flying union flags. He said he  had  no  problem  with it. What is  going  to  happen  to the capacity  of  that  company  —  the  company that the government is here  today championing in terms of the situation it  currently confronts — to access work? If you read the transcript of that interview,  Mr Grollo  was emphatic about the right  of his workers to effectively not comply with the  construction  code  of compliance.

  Mr Clark — You are making that up.

  Mr PALLAS— I am making that up? I invite the Attorney-General to get hold of the transcript through his many spin doctors.

  Mr Clark interjected.

  Mr PALLAS— Now, of course, there is no  requirement or  restriction on union insignia, I am told.

  Mr Clark — Have you read the code?

  Mr PALLAS—  Here we  go; I  am sure the Attorney-General will illuminate me. Effectively, what this government  is  doing  is selectively and inappropriately looking at  issues  of productivity that  should be seriously  considered  in an economic context.

The commonwealth Treasury has noted  that  labour  productivity growth accounted for 90 per cent  of  income growth over the  four  previous decades. We need  to broaden our sources of productivity growth.

As the Victorian Treasurer told the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee on 4 May:

  It means that we  have  had  to  hold the wages policy at  2.5  per  cent plus  productivity offset.

Under the new code in terms of how one can access  wage increases in this state, what this  Attorney-General  in his role  as  Minister for Finance  has recently released indicates  that in  order for a department to get a wage increase above 2.5  per  cent  — that is,  to  keep  pace with inflation  —  he requires that department produce a business case.

This is  a wonderful  thing, because  he does  not require  the  existence of  a business case before  the government publicly announces infrastructure  projects worth the billions  of dollars of investment  this government has  committed  to such projects. The hurdles this government requires working people to

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overcome  are  increasingly being  dismissed.  Billions  of  dollars  are  being committed without a business case.

Let  us not  forget the  fact that  this government cannot honour its  word, its pre-election commitments to people. Its antiworker disposition is  hidden behind crocodile tears of  indignation.  We should remember what the Premier said on 16 November 2010 when he declared  there  would  be  absolutely no reduction in the number of public servants. He said:

  I am not going to cop this line from the Labor Party.

That is what the Premier said — absolutely no  reduction  in  public  servants. Then on  26 November the Premier, who  is no longer considered a doyen of virtue when it comes to pre-election commitments or indeed honouring  his word, pledged ‘to protect public service jobs’.

He accused the previous leader of  the Labor  Party and then Premier, Mr Brumby, of spreading election-eve lies. Who is lying now? It is quite obvious — —

  The DEPUTY  SPEAKER —  Order! The member  is not  permitted to  use the  word ‘lying’. Misleading?

  An honourable member interjected.

  The DEPUTY SPEAKER  — Order! The Speaker has  made that very clear. I ask the member to use another word.

  Mr PALLAS— I will refrain, Deputy Speaker.

When we talk about what is going on in industrial relations in this state at the moment, we are talking largely about the consequence of a government that has no agenda,  no  vision  and  no intention  of  doing  anything  other  than  simply identifying those  to whom it  can  attribute blame for  the  circumstances this state is in.

We hear the  Attorney-General ask, ‘Will you condemn union violence?’ The Leader of the Opposition has made it  clear that  we condemn violence in workplaces and condemn thuggery by balaclava-clad security guards on waterfronts. We also stand up for the right of people to effectively organise. When will people in Victoria hear members of this government stand up for the rights of workers? When will we hear members  of this  government stand up for the rights of people to organise? Of course we will hear nothing, because this is essentially about  members of  a government  that  is  so consumed by its own inadequacies and failure to  govern that it has made a profession of attributing and shifting blame.

I refer to  the cowardice of their capacity  in effect to find  somebody else to blame, with an industry  that has  seen 12  per cent of its workforce disappear, and their being totally fixated on Labor productivity, with a  distortion of the history of what has occurred in terms of the  development of  a unitary  system. The history of Labor in government is that it  is a government that governs  for all sides of the  industrial  equation, a government that looks seriously at the issues  that affect it and, more  importantly,  a  government  —  which  is  in opposition in this  case — that has  consistently said industrial relations  is best resolved through mediation and through negotiation.

  Honourable members interjecting.

  Mr PALLAS  —  The Attorney-General  talks  about  obeying the  law;  the  law enforces itself, and  those  opposite simply  demonstrate  their failure  to  do anything  other than  apologise  for what  is  effectively  nothing short  of  a one-sided, selfish, self-interested view that advocates for privilege. This is a government that has done nothing to materially advance the wellbeing of workers. It has appeared before  industrial tribunals and  opposed workers interests time and again.

See Tim’s speech in Hansard here.