The industrial relations war of 2022 will be long remembered. Hopefully not because it caused economic distress and increased inflation and unemployment, but because common sense won. Let’s wait and see.
One memory of this current war that will linger is the role of the Minister for Small Business, Julie Collins. Collins has promised good things for small business, but she is either a lame-duck minister or is actually working behind closed doors with other ministers and with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) to make life harder for those she supposedly represents.
Julie Collins should resign as Small Business Minister and stick to her favoured portfolios of Homelessness and Housing. If she does not have the gumption to resign, she should be removed. Then the Prime Minister should take the portfolio as his own and deal directly with small business issues. As the Prime Minister is very obviously not interested in the small business sector — his only interest is the unions — taking the portfolio might help him learn about the reality of community.
There is no doubt the government is being subservient to the ACTU, which is not surprising being a Labor, union-funded, government. But research shows Australia is fifth lowest in the OECD when it comes to trust in unions; yet here we have the Prime Minister, the Industrial Relations Minister and the Small Business Minister all taking instructions from the ACTU. (That research shows that 75% of Australians do not trust unions — 75%!)
The Albanese government has done well on many fronts and started its reign with a wonderful bang. There are many, many good ministers in the government but they have all been pushed to the back room by the unions and by Tony Burke — with shameful acquiescence from the so-called Small Business Minister.
All of the initial good work now comes undone because the unions have become the shadow government.
As a result, this could be a one-term majority government. The next election will see a backlash against Labor from small business voters — there are more than 2 million of them, with more than 900,000 employing 4.5 million other people. That is a big number of voters.
The government, and the Small Business Minister, oddly, continue to acknowledge the complexity of employment for small businesses, while at the same time increasing complexity to a point where small businesses will have to find extra funds to participate in their new proposed system of multi-employer bargaining. The increased amount is somewhere between $14,000 and $17,000, and some estimates are as high as $75,000.
When challenged about this cost Collins and Burke laugh it off by saying small businesses can access support from their industry associations.
But these associations will have to find millions of dollars more, from their members, to help negotiate a system that gets more complicated by the minute. And there is a good chance a lot of those associations will be spending more time dealing with union officials who will be threatening and coercing their members into agreement-making.
We should consider what is under threat. Australia has the highest minimum wages in the world and average and median wages that are in the top 10 globally. Employment conditions that are the envy of workers in nearly all other countries. Historically low unemployment. Superannuation that is also an envy of the world. An economy that is world-class.
We need to work hard to maintain and improve where we can, and where we must, but the government’s industrial relations legislation will not do that. The argument that it will push up wages has no proof. If the legislation goes through unchanged then competition will also be limited and the price of fuel, pharmaceuticals and food will rise.
One of Labor’s election promises for small business — now a broken promise — was to “draw on Labor’s history of working with unions, workers and industry to deliver better outcomes with settings that are simpler, more accessible, and fair”. The opposite of that is happening.
Peter Strong is the former chief executive of the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia.
Peter Strong was CEO of COSBOA for many years, and has worked for the federal public service, the World Bank and the UN.
