KELLY FULLER: The Assistant Minister for Trade and Manufacturing is Senator Tim Ayres, and he’s with us this afternoon too. Good afternoon, Minister.

TIM AYRES: G’day, Kelly, it’s good to be on the show again.

KELLY FULLER: Thank you for chatting to us. We appreciate it given how busy you are these days. And we’re really grateful for your time.

TIM AYRES No worries.

KELLY FULLER: So, this is all about, we’re told from the Government, about getting wages moving. So two issues here: work to do with the crossbench and this looming brouhaha with business. There is the contentious and non-contentious parts, which we just walked through with Adam Zarth. Why not take what seems to be an offer from the crossbench and business to carve out what you can get passed the Parliament for sure before Christmas and let the rest be considered by an inquiry?

TIM AYRES: Well, we’re not contemplating splitting the Bill. The bits of the Bill that have attracted the attention of some elements of the business community and been controversial are, indeed, key elements for getting wages moving again. Now, we’ve got an enterprise bargaining system in this country that’s broken, a set of relatively modest and sensible and straightforward changes that will be good for wages, but they’ll be good for productivity. They’ll be good for employment. They’ll be good in pay equity and gender equality terms as well. And they’re going to bring back more cooperation to Australian workplaces.

We don’t want to hold those reforms back. They’re good reforms. We did a lot of work on them in the lead-up to and during the Jobs and Skills Summit. There won’t ever be perfect agreement across the economy about every reform we do, but we’ve done a lot of work. We’re committed to working with the crossbench and with the business community and the trade union movement over the next, you know, few weeks. But these are urgent reforms and we need to get them through the Parliament and get these reforms moving.

KELLY FULLER: So the big battle around multi-employer bargaining, we just heard from business there they’re concerned about, you know, competitive industries being in the same room together, more – you know, bigger businesses, you know, in the room with smaller businesses who could offer better pay and conditions if they weren’t in the same room together. These are all sort of growing to be their list of concerns. Is it reasonable that businesses have those concerns about this change? They say it also wasn’t put to them before the election.

TIM AYRES: Yeah, this is a really important point. You know, I’ve watched the debate in Australian industrial relations both as a trade union official in my time before Parliament in manufacturing and over the last few years. And there’s a real gap between where the debate where the debate in Australia has been with elements of the, you know, business lobby groups and the reality.

If you look at the international evidence on multi-employer bargaining, of the 26 OECD countries 18 have various forms of multi-employer bargaining as the cornerstone of their industrial relations systems. And those multi-employer bargaining arrangements lead to more jobs, higher employment, less unemployment, higher pay, higher productivity and more cooperation in workplaces.

You know, they are a cornerstone not just of their pay and productivity arrangements but they’re a cornerstone of the way that they get the institutions, workers and unions and employers and employer representatives working together in the economy.

Now, if we’re shooting for a system that’s going to deliver higher employment, lower unemployment, higher wages, higher productivity and higher cooperation, which bit of that don’t we want? You know, Australia has been an outlier on these questions. We’ve got an enterprise bargaining system that doesn’t work for most Australians. We’ve already got some multi-employer streams in the system, none of which work. These are a series of very straightforward fixes that will mean more workers get access to bargaining. That’s going to be good for the economy and it’s going to be good for productivity.

KELLY FULLER: Only last week we heard from the Mining and Energy Union. They told us that they believe the Peabody Mine in Helensburgh had moved to terminate an enterprise bargain agreement with 18 workers to try and get ahead of this legislation, which is one of the changes in this big omnibus bill. How do you react to those concerns? Are you concerned you might see – the company has denied that that’s what they were doing, to put that on the record. But are you concerned that there might be more disruption, you know, in the interim while this all gets sorted?

TIM AYRES: Yeah, I read that story, Kelly, and I don’t want to comment on that particular story because I don’t know enough about what’s happened there. I see that the Union is concerned that Peabody have taken those steps.

I’ll just say two things about it generally, though: the first is the current system does allow employers to terminate agreements and take workers back to the minimum standards as a very aggressive bargaining tactic. We don’t want to see that. We don’t want to see it in industrial relations. We want to see less conflict, not more conflict. We want to see more cooperation. And so that element of the old system is a real problem.

The second thing I would say is, yeah, I think your overall observation is right – what we don’t want to see is people gaming the system here. There are a set of reforms. Workers and their Unions, the employers and their employer organisations, the crossbench, everybody should be engaging with the substance of those reforms, not trying to set in place arrangements to anticipate what they think might happen around the corner. Let’s get through this and then I want to see workers and their unions and employers, you know, working together next year to deliver good quality agreements that lift pay and productivity and help get an economy that’s delivering for everybody.

KELLY FULLER: Senator Tim Ayres is with us. He’s the Assistant Trade and Manufacturing Minister. And, look, are you worried about a funded campaign against you? There are several sort of stories we've certainly read this week, that that's what's going to happen. These kind of campaigns have proved very bruising in the past, particularly to Labor Governments. Is that what you’re looking at?

TIM AYRES: It’s a democracy. People are entitled to say what they want to say, you know, in the public debate. I think people are over it a bit, though. What Australians want to see is business and unions working together in the national interest, working together to make their workplaces better. You know, there are a whole set of reforms here that everybody should be engaged in. Yes, fixing the collective bargaining system, but also there’s a set of pay equity and gender equity principles here that are being driven into the legislation that will help us deal with this wage gap between men’s and women’s jobs that keeps hovering persistently around 15 per cent without any real change.

It will see us implementing more of the Respect at Work recommendations to deal with, you know, sexual harassment and making jobs, good jobs for women as well as for men. There’s a host of reforms here. We need to engage with the substance of them, get them done and actually focus on – if people want to run an advertising campaign, well, I guess people will watch that and take it with a grain of salt. But what I’d actually prefer is – let’s focus on the things that matter in our workplaces and make jobs better, lift pay and lift productivity at the same time.

KELLY FULLER: I’ll move quickly on to electricity prices in just a second, if that’s okay, to do with manufacturing.

TIM AYRES: Yes, of course.

KELLY FULLER: But just briefly before we leave IR, the budget forecast reasonably modest wage growth over the forward estimates, not getting ahead of inflation until 2024. Do you know, do those figures bank on this Legislation passing, or does that not calculate on this Bill passing?

TIM AYRES: That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to that. I would expect that it would be based upon Treasury’s assessment of the status quo. But I don’t know the answer to that question. What we do know is that we’ve just come off the back of a decade of historically low wage growth. You know, it’s been the longest period of persistently low wage growth in Australian history. And many groups of workers have gone backwards. Just as we’re facing a series of, you know, inflation and as you’re pointing to, steep rises in the price of electricity and gas for households and business. This is a very tough environment, but don’t forget we’ve had a decade of historically low wage growth. So some families are in a pretty tough position facing these challenges. We’re very aware of the position that many Australian families find themselves in.

KELLY FULLER: We’ll just do that quickly then, before I keep you too much longer. But just to the sort of the idea of your portfolio responsibility in manufacturing, obviously gas prices, electricity prices, you were talk about there we heard Adam Zarth say they’re trying to look at how to absorb 56 per cent increase. Is regulatory intervention to lower energy prices the only option you have to ease the cost for businesses now, do you think, and broadly, you know, families and community?

TIM AYRES: Yeah, there’s two sets of prices here. I mean, there is some overlap and some relation between electricity and gas prices. But don’t forget the previous Government hid a 20 per cent rise in electricity prices from voters –

KELLY FULLER: But what will you do now is the question. No point looking backwards anymore – we need to look forward.

TIM AYRES: It’s not bad having a cheeky look over your shoulder –

KELLY FULLER: As long as you don’t mind a cheeky reminder to comeback.

TIM AYRES: But right now we’ve dealt with the supply issue in gas. This is the crucial issue for industry. We’ve dealt with the supply issue for gas. We’ve made it very clear to the gas producers we expect them to get prices down to a level that’s sensible and sustainable for Australian industry. I haven’t seen any sign of that happening. You know, we want the gas producers to be working in the national interest. They are making very significant profits off the back of very steep rises in world gas prices based on the war – Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. We’ve said we want to see those price levels fall to a normal level that supports Australian industry. And at this point all of the options are on the table.

We are determined to see the gas industry put its shoulder behind the wheel and work in the national interest. We haven’t seen any signs of that happening. There are large manufacturing businesses on the east coast who are very sensitive to the price of gas and are having –

KELLY FULLER: But you’re not looking at regulatory intervention at this stage?

TIM AYRES: Well, as I said, all of the options are on the table, Kelly. The Government is considering them all.

KELLY FULLER: All righty.

TIM AYRES: The Treasurer made that very clear yesterday, and we expect the gas industry ahead of us considering all of those options to do the right thing by Australian manufacturers and households and deal with the price. Because they are making very strong profits overseas and they should do the right thing by Australian consumers and manufacturers.

KELLY FULLER: Senator, thank you for your time this afternoon. I really appreciate it.

TIM AYRES: Thanks, Kelly.