Welfare Reform in Australia: Labor's view

Too often, workplace deregulation has resulted in more flexibility for employers than employees. It has produced unfriendly working conditions for people with families. Recent evidence in Australia points to the fact that family-friendly clauses in workplace agreements have remained largely the preserve of better educated, higher-paid workers.

This underscores the fact that Labor's traditional concern with equality of bargaining power in the workplace is not some kind of old-fashioned obsession, but is essential if the great bulk of the Australian workforce is to have a more family-friendly working life.

Put simply, where workers have bargaining power, they are getting a more family-friendly workplace. Where they do not have bargaining power, they are missing out. Our nation cannot afford for the majority of workers to miss out.

Labor has a simple four-step plan for labour reforms that will improve families' abilities to balance work and family life.

The first element of our four-step plan is to restore the power of the Industrial Relations Commission - the workplace umpire - to deal with all subject matters of industrial disputes.

The second will be the creation of a database of 'family friendly' clauses for work awards and agreements. This gives both employees and employers in each workplace the benefit of others' experience.

A third point is to get Australian judicial bodies with an interest in industrial issues to work more closely together. There is real value in having the Industrial Relations Commission work hand-in-hand with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to advance the family-friendly agenda in Australian workplaces.

The final element of our industrial reform proposals is to extend anti-discrimination legislation to ensure that workers are protected from the extremes of workplace abuse.

This is about providing protection to workers caring for sick children or frail, elderly parents or pregnant women enabling them to balance work and family responsibilities in difficult times. We want to help families find some space in their lives for those that matter most to them - their children - while at the same time acknowledging the importance of work.

Flexible assistance to families

Another idea Labor has put forward is allowing new parents to access future basic family payment entitlements up-front in the form of a family account. This would enable many families to have one parent stay at home for the first few years of a baby's life.

Policies like this would extend to many more families an opportunity that is currently afforded to only a few. This is what Labor means by a welfare system that gives people choices that they would otherwise not have.

These are the priorities Labor brings to welfare reform. As well as emphasising the critical elements of investment, opportunity, reward, and balanced obligations, Labor believes a longer-term approach needs to be taken. However, while in the past we have focused on the social benefits of good economic policy, we now need to turn our minds to the economic benefits of good social policy.