Blue Jackie: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled 
Blue Jackie: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled 
[Volume:668;Page:15387] 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak in the Committee stage of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) and to speak on Part 1 in particular which is definitely the substantive part of the Bill. Part 2 deals just with consequential matters. 
I pick up on a comment made by the previous speaker Darien Fenton who said this bill was the result of a one-liner in a manifesto was not well-thought-through and was ideological. I absolutely refute that. In particular on the extension of the 90-day trial to all businesses virtually every other country in the OECD has a trial. It is actually longer than 90 days in many countries so our 90 days is extremely moderate. The bill is certainly well-thought-through and it will be good—good for workers good for employers and good for our economy ultimately. 
I will focus on the extension of the 90-day trial to all businesses. As members will be aware in 2008 our policy really pertained just to businesses of fewer than 20 people. This bill proposes that that policy be extended to all businesses no matter what their size. This bill will give businesses confidence to expand to diversify and—importantly—to employ workers who do not have a work record. Those people might be migrants youths students or women returning to the workforce. 
I think it is important to note that one cannot just pluck jobs out of thin air. Businesses have to want to offer jobs to workers. The only way that will happen is by giving businesses confidence that they can increase their business and employ more people. 
This Government is absolutely focused on creating jobs and growing the economy. We have a number of measures on that which include tax reform trade—and I congratulate our Prime Minister on the free-trade agreement talks that have started at APEC—and research and development. Another way we are doing it is by boosting infrastructure. 
This legislation perfectly dovetails into our Government’s plan for growing the economy raising living standards and moving forward as a country. It will do that by giving businesses confidence. That is really quite a simple comment. It will give businesses confidence so that they can employ more people expand and have greater productivity so we as a country can more forward in the background of the economic recession that we have been facing. 
Jobs are not plucked out of thin air—they are not plucked out of thin air. The surveys we have done to date show that 80 percent of employees were still in employment once their trial finished. They were not fired let go or dismissed at day 89. This is not a fire-at-will bill as the Opposition likes to call it. That is absolutely the truth. 
The policy is very moderate. Heavens above! As I have mentioned before many countries have trial periods that are much longer than 90 days; they are up to 1 year in some countries. Until we had the 90-day trial Denmark was the only other country in the whole of the OECD that did not have a trial period. We were clearly out of step with the rest of the world. We are not marching alone on this; we are with many other countries. The sky has not fallen in those other countries. This policy will work for business employees and the country as a whole. 
The policy has been positively received. I quote just one employer who talked about this bill. He said: “I felt that under the last Labour Government the odds were well and truly stacked against small businesses. The cost of employing someone was 6 times more when they were voted out than it had been 3 years earlier … We have used the 90 day rule but the person would have been sacked anyway—for stealing! It would just have taken a little longer and caused more stress to other employees and the business.” 
A very interesting survey called  
What Next? National Conversation about Work 
 was done by the Human Rights Commission. A whole lot of myths were absolutely thrown out the window. One of the myths was that employers are bastards. They are not. The survey showed that employers treated their employees like family. Let us face it: we have to have a good working relationship for a business to go forward to grow and to be productive. It was very much a family affair for many of those businesses. There were many other positive comments.