Delahunty Catherine: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:191. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Mr Chair may I congratulate you. I do not think either of us ever imagined when we were in the same class at high school that we would end up here tonight.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): It is probably the only reason you got the call.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: I will not hesitate to make full use of my incredible advantages. The Chair was very quiet at school but he seems to have found a voice. However I know that he wants us to stick narrowly to Part 1 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill so I intend to do that. The Chair also asked for novelty so I am going to attempt to give you a bit of novelty on this bill. I would like to acknowledge however all the Opposition speakers so far because I think they have been absolutely brilliant and on the money. There is a bit of a novelty here when we start looking at the regulatory impact statement on the summary of assessment of the proposals when they look at the objectives of the Act in terms of international obligations. I do not know whether anyone else has mentioned this. There are nine proposals and out of the nine there are seven that fail to meet our international obligations. I am just going to read not the proposals but the summaries of what they are. They are “Uncertain” “Inconsistent” “Inconsistent” “Inconsistent” “Uncertain” “Uncertain” and “Inconsistent”.Sue Moroney: It sounds like the Government.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Well it does. It does sound a bit like the Government. It does sound a bit like the entire drafting of this piece of legislation which is a disaster. But it is also interesting that particularly in terms of labour law international obligations are a serious matter and yet this bill will go through despite the fact that seven of the nine proposals are completely at odds with our international obligations. Does anyone care on the Government side of the Chamber? I do not think they do and it is a pity because the amount of work that goes into developing international labour law and the commitments that we make to international obligations are serious and binding and yet they are being absolutely abused.However I will move rapidly onwards to my favourite part of this bill clauses 43 to 46. Let us talk about tea breaks. Let us talk about tea breaks in history because clauses 43 to 46 are an example of how history does repeat itself and how important history is. It was interesting hearing some of the maiden speeches yesterday when they talked about Margaret Thatcher and the brave new world. It was quite disturbing to hear all these young people talking about this because they do not seem to know the facts of history and what labour laws such as this one can do in taking us back—way back behind Margaret Thatcher way back into the 18th century—because actually in 1908 there was a miners’ strike that was directly related to clause 43 and 46.Paul Foster-Bell: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. This speech is veering very distantly from relevance to the particular clause being debated.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Mr Foster-Bell I will be the judge of that and although I agree with you I think it is better that you do not bring it up.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: I will continue focusing on clauses 43 to 46 because I think clauses 43 to 46 could well be called the “Crib-time Bill”. Crib-time if you do not know what crib-time is for the younger people here who do not study history is that in 1908 in Blackball they had the crib-time strike and it was about exactly this point which is in this amendment Act—this point about people’s right to eat at work and to have time off. So actually it is incredibly important to remember what people went through to create this and now in one stroke of the pen it is gone. I read the commentary on this and I found it pretty bizarre. Let us have a look at it. It says here that things would be more flexible and it would be fine. Changes to meal and rest breaks provisions will be more flexible and will improve the work and productivity. It is just quite bizarre. How can this possibly be? It talks about the fact that there can be compensatory measures for cutting these breaks. What? What is going to compensate you for that? What is going to compensate the forestry workers who have died this year? Nothing.We actually have to be serious about what meal breaks are. As many others have pointed out this is not a luxury; this is a necessity. So do not bandy words around in these commentaries and do not make up stuff about compensation that does not exist and then facilitate the undermining of laws that have been in place and that were fought for and developed by workers since 1908. It is dangerous down the mines in the forests in the rest homes and in the mental health services and crib-time 21st century is important. That is why clauses 43 to 46 are such serious clauses because we should never take for granted such clauses.I have a friend who works in the bakery of a supermarket. This is directly related to clause 43 I promise you and she is on—