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TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS


ON THE OCCASION

OF

THE COMMISSION'S

WELCOME TO

COMMISSIONER RICHARDS

AND

COMMISSIONER MANSFIELD

AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS COMMISSION

MELBOURNE

TUESDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2002

JUSTICE GIUDICE, PRESIDENT

VICE PRESIDENT ROSS

JUSTICE BOULTON

SENIOR DEPUTY PRESIDENT MARSH

SENIOR DEPUTY PRESIDENT WATSON

SENIOR DEPUTY PRESIDENT WILLIAMS

SENIOR DEPUTY PRESIDENT ACTON

SENIOR DEPUTY PRESIDENT DUNCAN

SENIOR DEPUTY PRESIDENT KAUFMAN

SENIOR DEPUTY PRESIDENT LACY

DEPUTY PRESIDENT LEARY

DEPUTY PRESIDENT HAMILTON

COMMISSIONER SIMMONDS

COMMISSIONER GAY

COMMISSIONER FOGGO

COMMISSIONER HOLMES

COMMISSIONER BLAIR

COMMISSIONER HINGLEY

COMMISSIONER CRIBB

COMMISSIONER EAMES

COMMISSIONER TOLLEY

COMMISSIONER WHELAN

COMMISSIONER RICHARDS

COMMISSIONER MANSFIELD

***

PN1

JUSTICE GIUDICE: Commissioner Richards.

PN2

COMMISSIONER RICHARDS: I have the honour to announce that I have received a Commission from His Excellency, the Governor-General, appointing me to be a Commissioner of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. I present the Commission.

PN3

JUSTICE GIUDICE: Mr Acting Industrial Registrar, I direct that the Commission be recorded.

PN4

Commissioner Mansfield.

PN5

COMMISSIONER MANSFIELD: I have the honour to announce that I have received a Commission from His Excellency, the Governor-General, appointing me to be a Commissioner of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. I present the Commission.

PN6

JUSTICE GIUDICE: Mr Acting Industrial Registrar, I direct that the Commission be recorded. Mr Lloyd.

PN7

MR J. LLOYD: In recent years there has been quite a massive change in workplace relations. The Act and therefore the Commission has adapted to this change and played an important role. It follows that the calibre of the people appointed to the Commission must be high. They require leadership skills and good judgment.

PN8

Commissioner Richards, I must say your appointment gives me a degree of personal satisfaction. Your entry into the field of workplace relations occurred in 1993 when you were appointed to the Victorian Department of Business and Employment, an appointment which I approved. From there your new career in workplace relations went from strength to strength. You were appointed as assistant secretary in the Department, that was followed when you were appointed in 1996 as the Chief of Staff and Principal Adviser to the Honourable Peter Reith, Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business, a role in which you could have a significant influence on the direction and implementation of government policy.

PN9

From there you moved to the Business Council of Australia, where you held the position of Assistant Director, from 1998 to '99 and then to the role of Industrial Registrar in 1999.

PN10

You have carried out your responsibilities in this important position in an exemplary manner. I have now had the pleasure of working with you over a number of years. I have a profound respect for your drive, your commitment and your knowledge. You have a capacity to master new and challenging issues in quite an extraordinary manner. I have come to rely on your advice and wise counsel on many occasions; you are a person of unquestioned integrity.

PN11

As I say at the beginning, I endorsed your appointment, as a person with no workplace relations experience, to my group in the Victorian Department. This turned out to be a very sound decision. You have coped well with many challenges over recent years and shown a very real skill for introducing new concepts and ideas. I believe your personal qualities and experience guarantee that you will be successful in your new appointment. I wish you well.

PN12

Commissioner Mansfield, in contrast, you have spent a majority of your working life in workplace relations. You have a distinguished career in Australian trade unionism. You became active in trade unions as a young man and in 1963 you were appointed Assistant Secretary of the Victorian branch of the ATEA. In 1966 you moved to the federal office of the union where you held various senior positions. In 1977 you were elected Federal Secretary of the association, a position you held for nine years until 1985.

PN13

In 1985 you were then elected Assistant Secretary of the ACTU, a position you have held until last month. The outline of your career confirms that you have held very senior positions in Australian trade unions over about four decades. You have been the centre of an immense change in Australian unionism.

PN14

In your ACTU role you have obviously made a wide network of contacts throughout the business community, government and in legal circles. I have been involved with you on bodies like the National OHS Commission and the Comcare Commission. I have found you to be an excellent representative of Australian workers in those positions. You are forthright, clear and persuasive in advocating your position. More importantly, I have found you to be a person of integrity and one who engenders trust and respect.

PN15

While I know you defend the interests of Australian workers with vigour, I am confident you will give a fair hearing to other views, views that are based on reasonable facts and clear argument. I consider your qualities will ensure you will be successful as a Commissioner of the AIRC. I wish you well. Thank you.

PN16

JUSTICE GIUDICE: Thank you, Mr Lloyd. Mr Combet.

PN17

MR COMBET: Thank you, Mr President. Mr President, your Honours and Commissioners, obviously the ACTU is very pleased to be able to welcome Commissioner Mansfield and Commissioner Richards to the Commission because this is an institution approaching 100 years of history and it is a uniquely Australian institution which has played an enormously historic role in balancing the interests of employees and employers and ensuring something that I think goes deeply in Australian thinking and that is the commitment to fairness, and particularly fairness in the workplace and achieving a balanced outcome between the interests which are commercial interests of employers and the living standards of employees.

PN18

That is why I think it is very important to have the opportunity to welcome new members of the Commission because it does represent the ongoing vitality and life and embracing of change of this institution, something that the unions have respected for some time. This year is the 75th anniversary of the ACTU so we have a fair sort of a history with the Australian Industrial Relations Commission as well so it is a particular pleasure to be able to welcome two new Commissioners to the institution, and I think it is important to have some regard to the contemporary circumstances in which the Commission finds itself, along with the Australian workforce.

PN19

And over the last 10 years, I think it has been fair to say, that there has been probably a most dramatic period of change in Australian industrial relations. We have seen, over the last 10 years, some of the most profoundly sustained economic growth that we have ever had in our economy. But at the same time, when we look beneath the surface of the growth, what we find is that there has been a substantial widening in inequality. Of all of the jobs created in the last 10 years, nearly 90 per cent of those jobs pay less than $26,000 a year and 50 per cent of those jobs pay less than $15,000 a year, at a time of very profound economic growth.

PN20

And in that context, I think the Industrial Relations Commission has a tremendously important and continuing role to play to ensure that we do get fair outcomes in workplaces for Australian people in workplaces. Outcomes that do balance the necessary interests of employers in an increasingly competitive environment with the need to ensure that Australian people have decent living standards. That history goes back, of course, right to the inception of this Commission and judgments like the Harvester judgment in 1907; all of the different manifestations of wage fixation that we have seen articulated in forums before this Commission and decisions of this Commission, through to the contemporary living wage cases of recent years.

PN21

So it is a time of change and it is very important, of course, that the Commission adapts as well to that change, and that the industrial parties, if I can use perhaps a slightly older term, retain their commitment to this institution. And, I think that is evidenced in the continuing appointments to the Commission and in the fact that on this occasion, in particular, there has been a balanced approach taken by the Commonwealth to the appointments.

PN22

The ACTU, of course, is losing someone in Commissioner Mansfield who has been an Assistant Secretary of the ACTU since 1985 and a full time union official for 39 years. I can tell you this institution is getting a very good person and we shall miss Bill Mansfield. I think, when reflecting upon Bill's career as a union official, one of the things that stands out is Bill's commitment to study and learning, opportunities for training, for education so that people can advance themselves. Bill has personified that in many respects himself, having left Yarrawonga, I think at a fairly early age, probably as a teenager, to come to Melbourne in 1958 to train as a technician within Telecom, or whatever the particular name the organisation may have had in those days.

PN23

Not long after, a few years after, Bill was asked to do some temporary work within the union and also became shortly thereafter the Assistant Secretary of the branch and staying with the union to ultimately become National Secretary in 1978 and eventually, as I have said, joining the ACTU in 1985 when he was elected as Assistant Secretary.

PN24

Now during that time, any union official does a lot of work helping other people and Bill, in particular, has made a number of significant contributions from helping individual members, unfair dismissal cases or occupational health and safety issues, pay campaigns, a whole range of things. In 39 years you contribute a lot to helping working people advance their lives.

PN25

There have been many things that he has done but, in recent years, I think it is very important to note several things in his work that I think will enrich the capacity of the Commission. One of them is his commitment to international institutions and his work within the International Labour Organisation and contributing to the development of conventions that will help working people internationally. These things have been done by consensus through the processes of that organisation and Bill brings a lot of experience in that regard.

PN26

In addition, Commissioner Mansfield has contributed a lot of work in recent years to vocational education and training in our society, serving as a member of the Australian National Training Authority Board, which was established 10 years ago, to advance opportunities within our community for vocational education and training opportunities for people in the workforce and to ensure that these things reflect the needs of the business community also. That has been a longstanding commitment of Bill's, to ensure that people have these opportunities for education and training that will help them in their working career.

PN27

In addition, he has also done a lot of work on occupational health and safety having served for a long time as a member of the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission. And all of these things will be tremendously enriching, I think, in the work that he carries out in his new role in the Commission. He is also a person who can make a tremendous contribution to a workplace. He is an interesting character because he has won hearts of the ACTU staff many times but, on the occasion of his leaving, he donated a cappuccino machine for the staff.

PN28

Now many think, well this is just a lovely gift from Bill on his departure from the ACTU. Of course there is a little bit more to it, and this tells you a little bit about him too. He has been a bit concerned that half the staff are down the coffee shop out in Swanston Street and he did remark to me that this will be an improvement in productivity. And just to make sure, he has left us a photograph of himself - it is one of those photos where the eyes tend to follow you around the room as you are walking around. It is conveniently placed near the cappuccino machine and the staff know that as they are having their cup of coffee, they will be doing it while they are working. I think that is the observation that is left.

PN29

He is a person - I am told his favourite leisure activity is going to Bunnings to do some hardware shopping and he often brought that expertise to bear at the ACTU as well doing a lot of repairs at the organisation. But I can say in all sincerity, Bill Mansfield is a wonderful person who has made a tremendous contribution as a union official, to his union, to the ACTU and to working people generally through the posts that he has held and I wish you all the best and I am sure that the Commission will be much richer for your participation.

PN30

As to Commissioner Richards, I haven't had any personal experience except, I think, to say that in previous positions, and particularly with the former Minister for Workplace Relations, Minister Reith, along with Mr Anderson who is also in a new position, I will speak momentarily. I think probably the two of you together with the former Minister have caused me more than one or two sleepless nights. So what I think that probably says, is that you have done your job pretty well and I also wish you all the best in your position. I think it is very important that there is a balanced approach taken in making appointments to the Commission so we do welcome your appointment and we look forward to working with you, as we will.

PN31

Speaking on behalf of unions and union members and the people that we represent, we do look forward to working with you in your new position and wish you all the best as a Commissioner. You do, as Mr Lloyd has indicated, bring considerable experience from your previous positions with the Business Council of Australia, with the Minister in a very senior advisory capacity, I think as Chief of Staff, as the Registrar of this institution and also in your previous positions in the Department of Business and Employment in Victoria. So that is a rich work history which will bring significant advantage to this Commission. I welcome both of the new Commissioners.

PN32

JUSTICE GIUDICE: Thank you, Mr Combet. Mr Anderson.

PN33

MR ANDERSON: Your Honour the President, Presidential Members, Commissioners and in particular Commissioners Richards and Mansfield. On behalf of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and our members, I would like to formally welcome and express our delight at being here to witness both Peter Richards and Bill Mansfield assuming their new office. Commissioners, your appointments are warmly welcomed by the employer community. You will add considerably, as both John Lloyd and Greg Combet have mentioned, to the collective wisdom, to the standing and to the capacity of the Commission.

PN34

Whilst it is true that you have both been appointed by the state to this high office, we know that both of you have had enough earthy experience to keep your feet firmly planted on the ground. That is important because members of bodies and tribunals, such as this Commission, have a capacity to impact so directly on the wellbeing of private individuals and private enterprise.

PN35

Having worked with both Peter Richards and Bill Mansfield over many years, ACCI and our member organisations know that Peter and Bill have the personal capacities and qualities to meet the expectations that the community holds and that the employer community holds for those in high office. These are qualities of integrity, of wise and sage judgment, of quiet reflection, of fair play and fair dealing, and of hard work.

PN36

Commissioner Richards, Peter, your appointment is a credit to you and to your intellectual and individual capacities. Your policy work in government, at both a state and federal level, has given you a unique insight into the world of industrial relations as it then was, and workplace relations as it now is. Having known you personally for nearly 10 years and having worked closely with you, I can attest to the respect with which you are held by those who have relied on your advice and your work.

PN37

Very few would know just what considerable personal energy you contributed to the tumultuous changes in workplace relations during the 1990s. We know you, Peter, as a person with a tremendous work commitment, a remarkable eye for detail, and at the same time, a vision of the big picture and, perhaps most importantly, a calm demeanour, even in the midst of crisis or hostility. Your advice and assistance was objective and reasoned. It was probably only in matters of sport, particularly when your thoughts turned to the Geelong Football Club, that your advice became somewhat subjective and, may I say, problematic.

PN38

Your policy advice to Ministers and departmental heads and officials had the happy knack of translating the language and concepts of industrial relations into something discernible and meaningful. I can recall being tempted to ask you to paraphrase provisions of the Workplace Relations Act for me as an alternative to reading the statute myself, such was your capacity for retention, analysis and accuracy.

PN39

Whilst in government you had a marked influence on many aspects of policy reform. Your advice was digested, valued and acted upon by Ministers and those in the highest office of this land. The task of translating policy into a meaningful statute and into something meaningful in workplaces through a bicameral parliament is no task for the faint hearted, and you were up to that.

PN40

As difficult as the Workplace Relations Act may be for practitioners, and may I say, even for members of the Commission, were it not for your wise advice during the 1990s, we would probably all now have an even more difficult task of chartering our way through such a major statutory reform. As Industrial Registrar, you have maintained the administration of the Commission in good order. You have garnered the respect of users of the Commission's services. You have played an essential role in reforming and modernising processes in the Commission's registry. It is now much more client focussed and, in particular, information technology aware than it once was. Your appointment to the Commission is, given your skills and background, a most appropriate career progression.

PN41

I now turn to you, Commissioner Mansfield. Your background in the trade union movement has already been extensively commented upon by Greg Combet. Your career has admirably qualified you for the role you now assume not because this Commission needs union or employer officials per se, but because it needs the characteristics that you now bring to the job, characteristics that have been evident in your working life as a union official.

PN42

Bill, your dealings with the employer community have been sincere, have been passionate and have been constructive. We could ask for no more. You have integrated your commitment to the collective advancement of the interests of workers, with the obligations that come with participation in tripartite organisations. You have looked for agreement in outcomes whilst maintaining your views and values. Your dealings with us have traversed much ground, including on the workplace relations front as Greg has mentioned, on the international front, on training and education, on occupational health and safety, and in relation to the welfare and wellbeing of disabled and disadvantaged workers in our community. That is an impressive portfolio.

PN43

You have worked closely with many employer officials over the years, not the least being Bryan Noakes, the former Executive Director of ACCI and longstanding representative of Australian employers. Bryan has had no difficulty in reminding me of the quality and character of your work back to the 1970s when you were a member of the National Committee of Inquiry on Technological Change, a tripartite body that started to confront, not avoid, the emerging challenges of a changing economy and the information age.

PN44

You have contributed greatly to occupational health and safety policy and raised the stakes in Australia for safer workplaces. That has culminated in a recent agreement between the ACTU, ACCI and every government in Australia of all political persuasions to a national strategy for occupational health and safety. Your fingerprints on that process are lasting.

PN45

You have directly advocated the cause of training and career development. Your personal commitment to the cause of traineeships and apprenticeships, through the development with ACCI of the National Training Wage Award, is a great accomplishment.

PN46

On the international front, you have been workers spokesman on many issues at the International Labour Organisation, including a pivotal role as the workers spokesman on employment, on social policy, on youth affairs and in our regional area. ACCI officers have been delighted to have sat with you on bodies such as the National Labour Consultative Council, the International Labour Affairs Committee, the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission, JITEC, and the Australian National Training Authority, just to mention a few. In that, you have earned our respect and the respect of your colleagues and you have demonstrated skills that are most appropriate to your new role.

PN47

And so, Mr President and Members of the Commission, we join as the employer community in welcoming and congratulating both Commissioner Richards and Commissioner Mansfield to their new roles.

[10.26am]

PN48

JUSTICE GIUDICE: Thank you Mr Anderson. Commissioner Richards.

PN49

COMMISSIONER RICHARDS: President and Members of the Commission, Acting Industrial Registrar, bar table, ladies and gentlemen. Can I just firstly thank you all very much for your attendance this morning to this welcome ceremony for not only my own appointment but also the appointment of Commissioner Mansfield whose appointment I also welcome personally.

PN50

Can I also thank those at the bar table for their comments and their commentary, this morning. I must admit it is a unique experience to be spoken of in the terms in which you have just spoken, at least this side of the grave. I don't know when another experience will come to pass but not for some time I hope.

PN51

I should also say that I have received a very warm welcome from the members of the Commission who are resident in Queensland. They are not able to be here today owing to various prior commitments. But it is a welcome, I think, that would come as no surprise to those who know those members, even if only fleetingly. And I should also like to note that I have received a similar welcome from members of the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission and I have appreciated that enormously. I must say, however, that I have been warned that I shall not obtain or attain provisional Queenslander status until some time approximating my retirement. All that in due course.

PN52

If, in speaking this morning in my few comments I do not have a wildly celebratory tone in my voice, it is simply because by nature, I suspect, at the beginning of all significant endeavours, and this, indeed, is a significant endeavour that stretches out in front of me, I am by nature cautious. But I think, also, by dint of my experience over the last three and a half years as Industrial Registrar, I have come to appreciate in some very small way the stresses and strains and difficulties which the determinative and deliberative processes impact on members of the Commission. It is not an easy job.

PN53

But that said, to the best of my knowledge, none of us are press ganged into these positions and we are all Tribunal members willingly and I look forward to the new tasks and the new life that they also give rise to.

PN54

I think it would be remiss of me if I overlooked, on this occasion, a chance to reflect or pause just fleetingly and reflect upon the Australian Industrial Registry. I would thank the registry most of all for putting up with me for the last three and a half years and that was no mean organisational feat in its own right.

PN55

But that said, I would like to thank all of those members of the registry, very sincerely, for participating in the many, many tasks, from the bottom up, that have engaged us so comprehensively over the last few years. It has been a very significant experience, I think a very significant organisational experience as well. I will miss, indeed, the emerging professionalism of the members of the registry. I will miss their technical competence, at least directly and above all else I will miss their direct companionship.

PN56

But that said, can I thank you all again, very much, for being here today. It is a very important day for myself, personally, but it is also an important day for Commissioner Mansfield, who I also wish well on his appointment. Thank you again.

PN57

JUSTICE GIUDICE: Commissioner Mansfield.

PN58

COMMISSIONER MANSFIELD: President of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, Mr Geoff Giudice, Vice President Iain Ross, Members of the Commission, my friends Greg Combet of the ACTU, Peter Anderson from the ACCI and John Lloyd from the Federal Department of Employment Workplace Relations and Small Business, ladies and gentlemen. Firstly, thank you to the representatives of government, employers and employees for your warm and generous welcoming remarks.

PN59

I understand that when Deputy President Mick Keogh was welcomed in 1982, he responded with one word, thank you. It was possibly one of the more appropriate and intelligent responses ever given. Now, Mr President, as my youngest son has reminded me, he is on a one hour meter, I would just like to make a few additional comments on this occasion.

PN60

I do wish to congratulate my fellow Commissioner, Mr Peter Richards, on his appointment. Congratulations to Peter.

PN61

Secondly, I wish to recognise the important role this institution has played in the social and economic development of Australia. From its inception, in the early part of the last century, the Industrial Relations Commission has set minimum standards of wages and working conditions which were designed to ensure that living standards of employees directly reflected the capacity of the economy and improved alongside of its growth. Standards relating to the basic wage, living wage, hours of work, recreation leave and equal pay for women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are illustrations of the important role of the Commission, which it has played in achieving and I quote, "the economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia", as set out in the objects of the current Workplace Relations Act.

PN62

In the past, the people of Australia have been rightly proud of the commitment to equity and fair play which has existed between all levels in our community. However, some recent trends are suggesting now that our egalitarian values are weakening and, in my view, this adds to the importance of this Commission in regard to advancing those outcomes which will help achieve the improvements in prosperity and welfare of working Australians as set out in the Act, as I mentioned earlier.

PN63

Thirdly, in regard to the role of the Commission in the resolution of disputes, I have not forgotten the words of Commissioner Ted Deverall, which I read in the Financial Review in the late 1960s, when he said it should be a workshop not a shelter. Ted was advocating that the workplace parties had, wherever possible, to accept the primary responsibility for resolving their differences rather than taking the easy way of having a matter dealt with by the Commission.

PN64

In my view, Commissioner Deverall's remarks are as relevant today as they were some 35 years ago. This Commission should not act as a shelter to take over the primary responsibility of the parties to genuinely seek agreement in disputes. However, we should also recognise that his view advocated that the Commission should have a positive role as a workshop to deal substantively with matters where there is no reasonable prospect of disputes being resolved between the parties.

PN65

Fourth, I want to commend the Minister for the balance of the appointments to the Commission on this occasion. In my experience, virtually all senior representatives of employers, unions and government officers support a continuing balance between the various interests who play an active role in the functioning of this important institution.

PN66

Finally, I would like to thank my family, many of whom are with us this morning, my former colleagues in the union movement, employer representatives, fellow board members of the Australian National Training Authority and the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission and my colleagues in the ACTU, who helped me in both of those endeavours, and also the representatives of government, at federal and state levels, with whom I have worked. I thank them for their support, their considerable assistance with the matters for which I was responsible and their willingness to consider my arguments objectively and fairly.

PN67

In my 39 years as a full time union officer, I have dealt with a great number of outstanding individuals and I pay tribute to their tolerance and assistance to me over that time.

PN68

Mr President, I regard it as an honour for me to receive an appointment to this Commission. I will do my best to uphold the high standards set by past and present members.

PN69

Thank you to all my family and friends for joining me on this occasion.

PN70

JUSTICE GIUDICE: That concludes the proceedings this morning. Adjourn the Commission.

ADJOURNED INDEFINITELY [10.36am]