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Grant Chapman,
Senator for South Australia
First Speech - 21/10/1987Mr President, may I commence by congratulating you on your re-election
as President of the Senate and indicating that I look forward to contributing
to the deliberations of this chamber under your conduct of proceedings. I also
note the presence in the chamber of Senator David Hamer and I pass on to him my
congratulations on his re-election as Deputy President and Chairman of Committees.
Mr President, your call for the traditional courtesies of a maiden speech
to be extended to me reminds me that being elected to serve in both Houses of
this Parliament at different times is virtually a unique way in which a person
can be restored to maidenhood. In passing, it is worth noting that Mr J. R. Odgers,
in his celebrated Australian Senate Practice, states that it is a time honoured
custom that a new senator making his initial speech to the Senate is heard without
interjection or interruption. However, my research shows that this has not always
been the case. Although this traditional courtesy appears to have bee
n afforded
new senators for some decades, it seems that early in 1968 was the first occasion
on which a presiding officer drew attention to the fact that a senator was about
to deliver his maiden speech. Somewhat earlier than that, it appears that the
tradition of courtesy had not yet been established. I refer to the maiden speech
of my grandfather's cousin, Senator John Hedley Chapman, in the Senate in 1926.
His speech received several interruptions by way of interjection, albeit apparently
helpful in nature. It is therefore of some interest to see how the tradition of
this courtesy has developed to the stage where someone such as me, who was initially
afforded the privilege of delivering a maiden speech in the House of Representatives
almost 12 years ago, is afforded that opportunity a second time by returning to
this Parliament, in a different chamber, after an absence of some 4 1/2 years.
I valued the opportunity to represent the people of the south-western suburbs
of Adelaide as member for Kingston i
n the House of Representatives for some
7 1/2 years from 1975 and look forward to that experience, combined with further
experience of private enterprise gained over the last 4 1/2 years in what some
would call the `real world', equipping me to make an effective contribution to
the policy and issue deliberations of this chamber. I must say that it is a particular
pleasure to have been elected to the Senate at this time and thereby have an opportunity
to serve in this historic chamber before the move to the new Parliament House
next year. It is also satisfying to rejoin so many of my colleagues who were first
elected with me at the 1975 election and, in particular, Senators Michael Baume
and Short, who, like me, following defeat after several terms in their marginal
lower House seats, have returned to service in the Senate. I well recall the
despair we '75ers caused the Labor Opposition as their initial taunts of `oncers'
had to be changed to `twicers' and in the case of so many of us `thricers'. It
is als
o a privilege to have the opportunity to serve in the same chamber
as the earlier Senator Chapman to whom I referred and also a cousin of my mother's
by marriage, Senator Edmund Piesse, who represented Western Australia in this
place in the early 1950s, and of course to be here with my present cousin a couple
of times removed, Senator Baden Chapman Teague. This comes close to matching the
cousins Baume, who surround me closely at the moment, but, of course, falls short
of the brothers McGauran in the present Parliament. I come to this place determined,
firstly, to do effectively my job as a senator, recognising that the Senate is
the last institution in Australia capable of ensuring that the Executive governs
through the Parliament, rather than by decree, Press release, ordinances or regulations.
I will resist any attempts to dilute the power, role and responsibility of the
Senate as an effective House of review. In particular, the recent suggestions
by the Constitutional Commission to limit the Senate's
power over legislation
to that of delay only, should not be countenanced. To equate this democratically
elected chamber with the hereditary and nominated House of Lords lacks all logic.
Secondly, I come to this chamber as a South Australian, elected to this States
House with the responsibility of representing South Australia. Notwithstanding
the apparent decline of the Senate as a States House, if senators remain mindful
of the constitutional intent of this chamber, it can continue to play a role in
providing more effective representation for the less populous States than is possible
simply through their House of Representatives representation. In proportionate
terms, the representative role of senators is much more important to the smaller
States than it is to New South Wales or Victoria. Thirdly, I come to this
chamber as a Liberal, both by philosophical inclination and by party identification.
I am grateful to those members of the Liberal Party State Council in South Australia
who made the judgment
to support my preselection for the fourth position
on the South Australian Liberal Senate ticket for the recent Federal election,
and will do my best to fulfil the expectations which they have of me in representing
the Liberal Party. I also thank the many thousands of Liberal Party members and
supporters whose hard work throughout that election campaign ensured the election
of my colleagues and me. It was no fault of theirs that the ultimate prize of
winning government eluded us. My Liberal philosophy is derived from that of
the traditional English Liberals, such as Hume, Burke and Adam Smith, rather than
that of the so-called European Liberals. Spontaneity and the absence of coercion
are the hallmarks of this Liberal philosophy, with its commitment to limiting
the extent to which Government interferes with the lives of individuals, including
their economic lives. Liberal parliamentarians must not succumb to the temptation
which elected office provides to override these basic Liberal principles, often
for
the best of motives. In the context of being a senator, a South Australian
and a Liberal, it is appropriate to direct my remaining comments to a subject
which received brief reference in the opening speech by His Excellency and coincidentally
was part of the subject matter I addressed in my very last speech in the House
of Representatives, on what subsequently turned out to be the very last sitting
day of the Thirty-second Parliament, 14 December 1982, with the 1983 election
having been called during the subsequent summer recess. That subject matter is
Australian industrial relations structures and practices, the reform of which
I believe to be the single most important issue facing this nation. The rigidities
and coercion involved in our present structure are inconsistent with liberalism
and detrimental to the interests of small States like South Australia, which require
greater labour market flexibility to enable them to compete on interstate and
overseas markets, and therefore are appropriate for consi
deration in fulfilling
the review role of a senator. During my 4 1/2 years away from this place I
have watched with interest the new-found `stay in government at any cost' pragmatism
of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), which, in pursuit of electoral popularity,
has seen it move, or create the illusion of moving, close to the Liberal Party
in many areas of policy. However, the one area in which, for the sake of this
country's economic health, it has been most important for the Government to move
towards the Liberal Party and modernise its approach, but which it has completely
failed to do, is in the field of industrial relations. It is the field of industrial
relations which continually reminds us that, whatever illusions this Government
may create about itself, it remains the creature of the trade union movement and
its political purpose is to do that movement's bidding. This explains the bizarre
behaviour of the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) at the Commonwealth Heads of Government
Meeting. This fervent repu
blican swore undying allegiance to his Queen. He
vowed that, as ever in the past, he would do anything and everything his Queen
told him to do. It turned out that he had another faulty earplug. He though that
they were saying `Crean', not `Queen'. During the life of this Government
we have seen two analyses of our industrial relations structure and practices
undertaken with Government support-firstly, the report of the Hancock Committee
of Review into Australian Industrial Relations Law and Systems and, more recently,
the document Australia Reconstructed. Both of these documents ignore present day
realities by reinforcing the continuation of our present outmoded and failed system.
Indeed, the Government sought to further entrench this system through the industrial
relations legislation introduced in the latter part of the last Parliament, based
on the recommendations of the Hancock report. Such was the fury this legislation
generated among the growing number of people who recognise the need for drastic
ch
ange that it was temporarily shelved. But the recent publication of Australia
Reconstructed demonstrates that the unions' push for the further entrenchment
of their privileged position is again on the Government's agenda. Professor
Richard Blandy of the National Institute of Labour Studies at Flinders University
has accurately described the Hancock report on industrial relations as `the last
hurrah of the past, rather than a blueprint for the future'. It is a product of
the cosy industrial relations club which dominated Hancock Committee membership
and establishes no relevant truths about the merits of Australia's present industrial
system. Instead, it reflects the conservatism, risk aversion and values of the
club. It reflects the fact that industry peak councils, the Australian Council
of Trade Unions (ACTU) and tribunals have become a common interest group, concentrating
on short term compromise solutions rather than tackling basic problems and longer
term issues. The report attempts to set in conc
rete our outdated 80-year-old
system of industrial relations. Professor Blandy describes the Committee's recommendations
as `defuturising'-a term derived from the famous Dutch sociologist, Fred Polak,
who said: . . . a retreat from constructive thinking about the future, in order
to dig oneself into the trenches of the present. It is a ruthless elimination
of future-centred idealism by today-centred realism. We have lost the ability
to see any further than our collective nose. The Hancock report fails completely
to make a positive case for our arbitration system. It does not tell us how, or
even if, its proposals will correct the major defects of our present system, which
are the lack of productivity related wage levels and the high level of industrial
disputation. Nor does it indicate a path to faster innovation and more vigorous
entrepreneurship, to higher productivity, to lower unemployment and inflation
and, in general, to a better Australia for us all. It resigns itself to the tyranny
of the status
quo, because that is what the unions want and neither the Government
nor the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission is sufficiently independent of
the unions. It completely fails to address what ought to be the proper extent
of union power in Australia. On the contrary, the Committee has chosen to accentuate
the power of the unions in Australia by advocating the removal of all remaining
legal sanctions against unions, retaining for the Conciliation and Arbitration
Commission only an H-bomb equivalent, of union deregistration for persistent disobedience.
While failing to substantiate its own advocacy of the present system, the
Hancock report dismisses the arguments for change on the basis that they have
not met the requirement of demonstrating definite and decisive advantages. But
it never states the required standard of proof, particularly with regard to a
decentralised and deregulated alternative system. This resistance to necessary
modernisation is reinforced by the report Australia Reconstructed.
Although
this has been promoted as a document of the ACTU, which has, in fact, endorsed
the report, the most frightening aspect is that it was sponsored by this Labor
Government and written by public servants at taxpayers' expense. When it is understood
that a major part of the work was undertaken by Mr Ted Wilshire of the Trade Development
Council, it is not hard to understand its analysis and conclusions. Ted Wilshire
has been closely associated with Ted Wheelwright, one of the founders of the Marxist
political economy course at the University of Sydney, which is often referred
to as the Bessy degree. In drafting this document, Wilshire would have received
much support for his old guard left wing views from some of the other members
of the joint ACTU-Trade Development Council mission that visited Europe in preparing
this document. These include Tom McDonald of the Building Workers Industrial Union
of Australia, the successor to Pat Clancy of the pro-Soviet Communist Party; Laurie
Carmichael of the Amalgamat
ed Metal Workers Union, ex-communist and born-again
socialist; and Colin Cooper of the left wing Australian Telecommunications Employees
Association. Indeed, a member of the ALP has suggested to me that Australia
Reconstructed is simply the left wing's prescription for gaining more power, while
people like Carmichael and Halfpenny are chasing more Government money for their
industry, the metal trades industry, which their activities helped to destroy
in the 1970s and early 1980s. The words of the present Federal Treasurer (Mr Keating)
to the 1986 ALP biennial conference in Hobart are pertinent. He said: I say
this to the George Campbells and others. They carry the jobs of dead men around
their necks in the manufacturing industry with the $39 a week in the metal trades
agreement in 1981. The report is purportedly based on investigations carried
out in Europe, but it does a good job of rewriting the economic history of Europe,
as well as the recent economic history of Australia, before drawing its con
clusions and recommendations from that rewritten history. Its implementation would
embody the worst excesses of the corporate state of big government, big unions
and big business. It is, therefore, not surprising that it is shot full of contradictions.
While purporting to recognise the need for wage adjustments to be made on the
basis of `price and productivity movements in the internationally traded goods
and services sector', this is contradicted in the same breath by limiting it to
wages other than national adjustments under the centralised wage system. At page
91 the report says: Australian industry assistance traditionally relied on barrier
protection-tariffs, bounties, import quotas. It is now widely accepted that this
assistance contributed to an uncompetitive manufacturing industry. However,
in recommendation 1.6 concerning the establishment of a national development fund
based on superannuation contributions, it says: . . . if insufficient funds
are available through the superannuation mechani
sm, there should be a one
per cent tax on all imports supplemented by a surcharge on luxury imports. Recommendation
4.5 says, in part, . . . skills accords should be negotiated at the local and
enterprise level. However, this hint at decentralisation is stopped dead in
its tracks by the recommendation that for the national employment and training
fund, which is to be financed by a tax on companies, the trade union movement
be given an effective veto over which companies will be allowed to draw training
funds from the fund. Agreement must be reached with the unions-and, it should
be emphasised, with the unions, not the employees-on matters such as superannuation,
disputes settlement procedures, work and management practices, job security and
even purchasing policy before such funds would be available to the company. Chapter
by chapter, the analysis and recommendations of Australia Reconstructed resurrect
old left wing shibboleths. Who said the 1970s were dead? Donald Horne has
arisen, like Skyhooks
or Jimi Hendrix, with a sequel to the sequel to The
Lucky Country, with a statement last week finding nothing but virtue in Australia
Reconstructed. But, of course, Professor Horne is Chairman of the Australia Council.
His job is to promote Australian fiction. In proposing the establishment of
a national development fund, the authors demonstrate their complete lack of understanding
of the nature of investment. The history of national economic plans and centralised
economic decision-making is that they lead to inferior economic results. At page
93, the report states: If industry is to make substantial commitments on investment
and employees are to undertake appropriate skills development, it is essential
that firms and individuals are able to plan ahead with certainty. Surely the
events of the past few days on international share markets demonstrate the impossibility
of planning ahead with anything remotely like certainty. This is why decentralised
decision-making in economic affairs is essential. The
last thing the Australian
economy needs in its present situation is a series of five-year economic plans
whereby national goals and decisions are determined by powerful representatives
of big government, big unions and big business under a corporate state mentality.
In its approach to wages policy, the report ignores the need for all wage
determinations to be based on productivity and international competitiveness.
In addition, by trying to compress wage relativities, the Australian Council of
Trade Unions will obscure a crucial mechanism for delivering signals to individuals
to adjust their economic activity. Changes in wages and prices promote restructuring
quickly and efficiently. Yet in advocating the approach of Australia Reconstructed
the ACTU, while purportedly keen to restructure the Australian economy, seems
intent on fudging these signals and instead is proposing to direct change through
taxes and subsidies determined by committees. The recommendations concerning
the implementation of indust
rial democracy programs represent a further union
grab for power. Consultation with employees and their industrial representatives
is good management practice which can be highly beneficial to an enterprise, but
this is a far cry from unions becoming an integral part of the business decision-making
process, which Australia Reconstructed seeks. This would make it increasingly
difficult for management to make decisions against the wishes of the trade unions.
The recommended creation of 20 super-unions is directly contrary to an expansion
of enterprise-level employee participation. It is unreasonable to expect employers
to introduce industrial democracy programs at the enterprise level, when the unions
intend amalgamating into super-unions which will force the creation of bigger
employer groups, more centralised negotiation and arbitration and make the system
more remote from the individual requirements and peculiarities at the enterprise
level. The prerogative of management to manage an enterprise must not
be
subverted. The sad fact is that both the Hancock Review of the Australian
Industrial Relations Law and Systems and Australia Reconstructed fail to offer
adequate solutions to our industrial problems. Fortunately, there is a better
way. That is the approach which I first advocated in 1981 and which I am pleased
to see was largely adopted by the Liberal Party as its industrial relations policy
for the last election. That better way is a more market-oriented system of industrial
relations and wage determination. The need for improvement is obvious. Australia's
record of industrial disputation remains one of the worst in the world and continues
to be a disincentive for productive investment both from internal and overseas
sources. The advocacy nature of our present industrial relations structure
heightens the atmosphere of conflict, rather than co-operation, between employers
and employees. The concept of comparative wage justice, with wage determinations
in one sector of industry flowing on to other s
ectors and individual enterprises,
irrespective of their capacity to pay, hinders economic growth. Conflict between
Commonwealth and State awards leads to strained employer-employee relationships,
especially when these complexities impinge on one employer. Impediments to
change, whether they be lack of political will, the influence of the industrial
relations club or the unfounded fear that a more decentralised, deregulated system
would lead to industrial anarchy must be overcome. The changes to be implemented
must recognise that in the post-industrial society there is a movement to small
scale organisation, with modern technology and entrepreneurship meaning that smaller
scale production units have become more viable relative to larger scale mass production.
Our industrial relations system must therefore incorporate greater flexibility
to encourage productivity growth. This requires a more decentralised system of
wage determination, to allow direct negotiations and agreements to be reached,
between e
mployer and employees, acting at the individual enterprise level.
The individual must be allowed to accept employment, if he so desires, at a market
level of remuneration, rather than being forced to accept unemployment as the
alternative. Wage determination must be based on a combination of national
productivity and Australia's international competitiveness, with the individual
capacity to pay at the enterprise level. Highly profitable enterprises should
share those profits with the employees who have assisted to create them, but less
profitable enterprises should not be sent broke by being saddled with wage structures
they cannot afford. To encourage this and generally to ensure an improvement in
employer-employee relations, the present craft basis for our trade union structure
must be replaced, not with super-unions, but with an enterprise-based structure.
This must be linked to voluntary union membership, which would be the greatest
incentive for unions to genuinely represent their members' views rath
er than
those of the union leadership. While unions must have the capacity to effectively
represent their members, they currently have too much power. This must be curbed
by ensuring that employers and unions are equal before the law. Recent events
reinforce the vulnerability of the Australian economy and, with it, our standard
of living and way of life. A change to our system of industrial relations is central
to the necessary goal of greater national productivity. It is my contention that
the changes I have outlined will do much to achieve that improvement. However,
they will not be achieved overnight, nor can they all be achieved by legislative
fiat. A great deal must be achieved by a marked change in attitude, especially
among militant trade union leaders, to allow greater co-operation between employers
and employees, in the recognition that they do have common interests and must
develop unity of purpose. I trust I will see this necessary change implemented
before too many years of my period of servic
e in this chamber have passed.
Before concluding, may I congratulate other newly-elected senators who have
made their maiden speeches during this Address-in-Reply debate. May I also pay
tribute to those senators from the coalition side who retired at the last election.
Senators Collard, Townley, Jessop, Carrick, Dame Margaret Guilfoyle and Withers
were all well known to me as colleagues during my previous period of service.
I valued their friendship and counsel during that time. They each made effective
contributions to the welfare of Australia during extended periods of service,
the latter three serving with distinction as Ministers of the Crown. I pay
particular tribute to my former South Australian colleague, Senator Don Jessop,
who like me, served in both Houses of this Parliament and as a senator was a stout
defender of the Senate's constitutional role. He played a key role in this Parliament
in advocating the allocation of greater resources, especially by the private sector,
to industrial resear
ch and development, particularly while Chairman and Deputy
Chairman of what was then the Senate Standing Committee on Science, Technology
and the Environment. I understand that his services as resident optometrist will
be sorely missed by aging senators and members. In conclusion, I thank the staff
of the Senate for the assistance they have extended to me on my return to Parliament.
They have ensured that the transition back into parliamentary life has been smooth.
I also thank the Senate for the courtesy it has extended in hearing me and trust
that my remarks did not transgress the traditions by being unduly provocative. 
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