Why is the NSW government acting as a spoiler over Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Forward with Fairness?
With the death of Work Choices and the ALP controlling every government in Australia, a unique opportunity exists to clean up workplace relations laws nationally.
Workplace relations should not be a states' rights issue. Differences between the states on industrial relations law no longer reflect competitive differences, but impose national inefficiencies without benefiting workers.
Australia has just gone through an extended period of angry debate over workplace relations laws. Work Choices split the country. Morris Iemma's NSW government was at the forefront of anger over Work Choices and he praised Rudd's Forward with Fairness as the alternative model.
But now that Rudd is trying to implement Forward with Fairness nationally, the Iemma government is fouling up the process. Look what's been happening.
Federal Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard has been negotiating an agreement with the states to implement Forward with Fairness. Back in January this year the Iemma government commissioned a report that essentially said Forward with Fairness should not be fully implemented in NSW. Iemma's Industrial Relations Minister, John Della Bosca, has been lobbying the other states to support his watering down of Forward with Fairness.
The state and federal IR ministers have now agreed to a set of principles for a national IR system. It's clear a national Forward with Fairness model is effectively dead. The states, mainly NSW, have not agreed to properly implement Forward with Fairness. The inter-governmental agreement means states can and will continue to operate their own state based systems. This is a massively lost opportunity. What's the key issue?
Rudd's plan removes the old Industrial Relations Commission and replaces it with a simpler body called Fair Work Australia, designed to do away with much of the complicated legal processes that have plagued the system for too long.
But the Iemma government is intent on keeping the legal complexity in place in NSW by retaining the NSW Industrial Relations Commission. It's nonsense. The NSW system has long had the reputation of being the most legally complicated in Australia. Over the past decade NSW Labor has made it more complex. This doesn't serve the interests of business or workers in NSW or nationally. Excessive complication was a major criticism levelled against Work Choices.
What's needed is simplicity and consistency across the states. Forward with Fairness offers a one-off chance. Take one example, unfair dismissals. Present unfair-dismissal cases can take years to be heard and resolved. It costs thousands of dollars in legal fees for each case. Any payout to an unfairly dismissed person is usually eaten up by lawyers, let alone the costs to business. NSW is the worst state.
Forward with Fairness will shift unfair-dismissal cases for small businesses out of the hands of lawyers and into simpler mediation processes. The emphasis will be on fixing problems between workers and bosses. If payouts to workers are to occur, lawyers won't take the money. It's fairer and makes common sense. This small business template is a likely model for all business.
But Iemma doesn't want this, it appears. He is pushing to keep NSW unfair-dismissal laws in a retained state Industrial Relations Commission. Della Bosca has led the charge for Iemma and is in deep conflict with Canberra. NSW is gumming up national workplace reform.
What should happen? Arguably the NSW industrial relations system may have once served NSW well. But it was and is geared towards conflict in the workplace. In reality the system itself now creates conflict when what's needed is workers and business working together. This is the recognition inherent in Forward with Fairness.
It's a new system that's intended to lock in core minimum standards and protections. It targets minimisation of legal complexity, seeking resolution to practical workplace problems in practical ways. As a national model it holds the prospect of vastly improved workplace relations arrangements across Australia.
The key stumbling block is the old ideological warriors clinging to their factional power obsessions in NSW. Workers, business and the community no longer live life on the basis of class warfare assumptions. The workplace system needs to grow up. And so does Labor in NSW.
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