Labor’s IR package faces new mandate pressure

Whether Labor won a mandate for its big IR changes is becoming a focus of attack on proposed legislation now facing a deadlock in the Senate.

Only five months before the election and less than a year before the Government introduced its wide-ranging workplace reforms Jim Chalmers, now Treasurer, declared the contentious industry-wide bargaining “was not part” of Labor election policy.

Whether the newly-elected Labor Government took the policy to the election and won a mandate for such big changes is becoming a new focus of the attack on proposed legislation which is facing a deadlock in the Senate.

On November 21 last year Dr Chalmers, then shadow treasurer, was asked on ABC Insiders if industry-wide bargaining was “a yes, or a no, or a maybe’’?

Dr Chalmers replied: “It’s not part of our policy.” He added that Labor’s industrial relations policy had been announced “some time ago”.

Video extract above.

Anthony Albanese and Tony Burke have both argued this week that Labor “has a mandate” for the changes which are opposed by industry groups, business, farmers while balance-of-power senator, David Pocock, seeks more amendments and a delay to the legislation.

Senator Pocock wants delays because there has not been enough time to consider the legislation and wants the contentious sections on industry-wide stripped out of the proposed laws and to be debated next year.

The Government wants all the legislation passed by Christmas with only two full weeks of parliamentary sittings before the summer break.

On Monday independent Wentworth MP, Allegra Spender, asked the Prime Minister if he agreed that wages could be raised without the legislation and that it “wasn’t taken to the election”.

Mr Albanese said it was “not credible to say that we did not take our policy to lift wages to the election.”

“That’s what our secure work better pay bill will do. We believe there is a need to reform the system. That was something we took and that we engaged very much on with business, and continue to do so, as well as with unions,” he said.

“That’s why our legislation is worthy of support by this parliament, because we believe that very clearly we have a mandate for it,” Mr Albanese told parliament.

On Tuesday the Workplace Relations Minister, Mr Burke, argued that Mr Albanese said during the election campaign that “we need to get wages moving”.

“The key to getting wages moving has always been bargaining. And he put bargaining squarely on the table for the Jobs and Skills Summit. At the Jobs and Skills Summit, we had that conversation, and this bill and the elements of this Bill are a direct result of that Jobs and Skills Summit,” the minister said.

“So, you know, that’s an exact process that was committed to during the election campaign that’s been followed, and that’s why we have the legislation in front of us now,” Mr Burke said.

The pressure over Labor’s mandate to introduce industry-wide bargaining comes as Peter Dutton told Coalition MPs that industrial relations would be dominating parliamentary debate for the rest of the parliamentary week.