Get tough on workplace reforms, industry urges Michaelia Cash

Industry has slammed the Coalition’s approach to the workplace relations debate as ‘far too cautious’.

Industry has slammed the Coalition’s approach to the workplace relations debate as “far too cautious”, warning the new leadership not to “take the easy way out” and have “another wasted year” without reform.

Employer groups joined unions in piling the pressure on incoming Employment Minister Michaelia Cash within hours of her swearing in, with Master Builders Australia declaring her an “outstanding appointment” to the portfolio and warning that the reinstatement of the Australian Building and Construction Commission — which previous minister Eric Abetz had failed to usher through the Senate — was “an essential priority” for the building and construction industry.

In a speech to the Brisbane Club today, AI Group chief executive Innes Willox will say unions “intimidated” the government “into taking a backseat in the community debate” in industrial relations reform, resulting in six “frustrated” years for employers. “Since the Howard government was defeated in the 2007 election, the Coalition has adopted a far too cautious approach in the community debate about workplace relations,” he will say to the club’s workplace relations special interest group.

“The unions will have the incentive to keep going with their repetitious Work Choices slogans, like some kind of a tiresome parrot, for so long as the federal government responds by being intimidated into taking a back seat in the community debate.”

While Labor “tipped the scales in favour of unions”, the Coalition “went into the last federal election with a very modest agenda for workplace relations … We need to play our way back into the game”.

Calling on Malcolm Turnbull and Senator Cash to “get on the front foot” when the trade union royal commission and the Productivity Commission inquiry into the workplace relations system report, Mr Willox will also argue for an overall change of tack in the government’s approach to the IR debate.

Master Builders Australia chief executive Wilhelm Harnisch yesterday said restoration of the ABCC was a “vital reform”, and in welcoming Senator Cash to the portfolio declared industrial relations “a major driver of productivity growth” for building and construction.

Commonwealth and Public Sector Union national secretary Nadine Flood also called on Senator Cash and Malcolm Turnbull to take a “fresh approach to public sector workplace relations”. “This new ministry, and Cash’s past experience in … industrial relations, provides an opportunity for rethinking the government’s failed bargaining policy and instead taking a modern, productive approach to public sector workplace relations.”