Thank you Frank.
Thank you very much for having me.
And congratulations to the H.R. Nicholls Society on forty years.
Forty years is an impressive milestone for any organisation.
It is perhaps even more impressive for an organisation that has spent much of those forty years being variously dismissed as radical, ideological, extreme or, worst of all, influential.
Although I suspect many of you regard those descriptions less as criticism and more as encouragement.
The H.R. Nicholls Society was founded in 1986 because there were arguments that needed to be made.
Peter Costello was there at the beginning, one of the four people who organised that first gathering in Melbourne in 1986.
And we remember the late John Stone; Treasury Secretary, Senator, founder of this Society, and a man who never once mistook being unpopular for being wrong.
I want to acknowledge his son Andrew, who is here today, and who I have come to know and value as a colleague.
Forty Years
In 1986 Australia was changing.
The dollar had been floated. Tariffs were coming down. Financial markets were opening.
There was a growing recognition that an economy protected from competition, weighed down by regulation, and resistant to change would be unable to deliver the prosperity Australians expected.
But one area remained remarkably resistant to reform - industrial relations.
The system was centralised, legalistic, and it was dominated by institutions.
And employers and employees had remarkably little freedom to determine arrangements that suited their own workplaces.
Into that debate came the H.R. Nicholls Society.
For forty years, this Society has challenged orthodoxies.
You argued for freedom of association, for enterprise bargaining, for the rule of law, and for greater individual choice.
For a workplace relations system built around a proposition that should have been obvious all along: growth and productivity lift everyone's living standards - employers, employees and consumers alike.
There has been an important intellectual relationship between those ideas and the Liberal tradition of workplace relations reform.
That doesn't mean Liberal governments have always done everything the H.R. Nicholls Society wanted.
I suspect some people in this room have kept quite detailed records of our shortcomings.
*Please don't show them to me today.*
But that is part of the Society's value.
You have challenged Labor governments. You have challenged Liberal governments.
You have challenged unions and employer groups.
And you have challenged the idea that industrial relations should simply be an argument about who gets what.
Because there is a more important question: just how do we create more in the first place?
The Productivity Challenge
That question is just as relevant in 2026 as it was in 1986. Or 1996. Or 2006.
In each decade, we have seen the need - often an urgent one - to get our country working again. It is the fundamental problem that each generation has faced and beaten.
Until now.
When Australian workers hear the word "productivity", and they're hearing it an awful lot at the moment, they often think it means we want them to work harder.
But that's not what productivity means.
It's about finding better ways to do the job, so we can produce more with the same effort. The same hours and the same workforce.
And when productivity improves, workers share in the benefits through higher wages, better living standards, and more opportunities.
Even Bill Kelty knew that.
As he told his Labor comrades in 2012: "... you can be militant, as we were… year after year, more disputes, National Union of Workers, Storemen and Packers in the history of this country in the 1970s, and when we toted up what we got at the end of a decade of fighting, we'd made but marginal gain. It has to come from the productive capacity of the nation…"
Yet, despite this wisdom, the Productivity Commission tells us that productivity has barely moved beyond its pre-pandemic average.
In fact, Jim Chalmers was either the Treasurer or an adviser to the Treasurer in the two years in the last two decades where productivity went backwards, the furthest and the farthest.
That is not a recipe for better living standards. And industrial relations policy is productivity policy.
Put simply, Australia's industrial relations policy should be fair, simple, and productive.
When I took on the industrial relations and productivity portfolios, I did so deliberately. They are often treated as two different conversations.
Industrial relations is apparently about awards, bargaining, unions and tribunals.
Productivity is apparently for economists and people who enjoy discussing multifactor productivity before breakfast.
But in the real economy they are inseparable.
Our Test: Fair. Simple. Productive
I apply three tests to industrial relations policy.
- Is it fair?
- Is it simple?
- And is it productive?
First, fairness.
Employees should be paid correctly, treated properly and rewarded for their work. Full stop. Businesses should have the certainty and confidence to invest, employ and grow.
Those interests are not opposed. Successful businesses need successful employees. And successful employees need successful businesses.
Second, simplicity.
Complexity is not free. I speak regularly to small and family businesses that aren't asking government for a handout.
They're asking government to stop making their lives harder. They accept that rules are necessary. They want safe workplaces, honest markets, and employees treated properly.
What they struggle with is a system where genuinely trying to do the right thing doesn't necessarily mean you have done it.
I was blown away by the example in the Report released by the Society about the Restaurant Industry Award.
Under the food and beverage classifications, a Grade 1 employee can "remove food plates". But "general waiting duties" fall under Grade 2.
So the Award tells you that removing a plate can be Grade 1 work but when that same employee puts the plate down in front of the customer, if that amounts to general waiting duties, they're Grade 2.
And the difference? Sixty-four cents an hour.
Think about that.
A small restaurant owner trying to do the right thing can find themselves asking whether picking up a plate and putting down a plate has been paid the difference of 64 cents an hour.
That's not an esoteric absurdity or quirk of the system. That's a potential underpayment that's worth possibly thousands of dollars in legal fees or in hours of unproductive and counterproductive compliance time.
Does anyone really believe that any employer is looking to risk that for the potential riches of 64 cents per hour, plus super? That the winnings from dodging the award are worth being accused of underpayment?
Or is it because it's hard to get right?
Because I know that the Department that administers the Fair Work Act can't get it right. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation can't get it right. Universities can't get it right. Major supermarkets can't get it right.
And these are organisations that have teams dedicated to managing their workforce, and have lawyers on call.
If they can't comply, how is a family business, whose rosters are worked out over the kitchen table, supposed to manage it? How are they supposed to manage it?
At some point, this isn't some grand conspiracy. It's a sign the system is broken from the largest company to the smallest cafe, from the pub that hosts a talk about industrial relations to the department that is meant to be responsible for it.
The examples I give aren't trying to avoid their obligations. Quite the opposite.
They spent time and money trying to discover what their obligations actually are.
That is time they could spend serving customers, training staff, growing their business or employing another Australian. And they still got it wrong!
That should concern us.
And this is where the H.R. Nicholls Society continues to make an important contribution.
Your Employment Act blueprint asks a fundamental question:
Rather than endlessly amending an already complicated system, should we reconsider its architecture?
And the report being released asks how the award system itself can be made simpler. The question is the right one.
I'll give you a test we'll apply to every one of those 14 recommendations.
If an honest employer, reading the award in good faith, can't work out what they owe, then we should ask ourselves if it is the award that's the problem, not the employer.
Awards are supposed to provide a safety net. They shouldn't become a bear trap.
The people expected to use that safety net should be able to understand it. Simplification does not mean abandoning fairness. It means making the system easier to understand and easier to comply with.
Confusion is not a worker protection.
The report raises another manifestation of the same problem.
It estimates an average employer cost of $18,200 for an unfair dismissal claim and says only around 1.9 per cent of applications proceed to a final decision on their merits.
That raises an obvious question.
If it costs more to prove you were right than to pay to make a claim disappear, is the system delivering justice or has the process itself become the punishment?
And while we're talking about complexity, look at Labor's proposed Fair Work Court.
This was not a policy taken to an election. They announced it at Labor's National Conference, where it was immediately welcomed by the ACTU.
Two months later, we are still waiting for the detail.
We don't know exactly what its jurisdiction will be, how it will interact with the Fair Work Commission and existing courts, or what it will cost.
Now, of course, any responsible opposition will look at the detail when it comes to us. Because as I have said, is this a complication parading as a safety net? So far, I'm not at all persuaded that another institution is the answer to a system already weighed down by complexity.
Workplace relations policy should be designed around the interests of Australian workers and businesses, not around keeping delegates at Labor conferences happy.
Since taking office, Labor has worked through the ACTU's wishlist one checkbox at a time. Abolishing the ABCC. Multi-employer bargaining. Expanded delegates' rights. Intractable bargaining, the right to disconnect, Same Job, Same Pay. And now, a new court.
Each change is sold as fairness. Yet the government turns a blind eye to what these changes cost business.
Business, and particularly small businesses, continually raise the industrial relations changes under Labor as yet another hurdle to growing their operations, another handbrake on Australia's productivity.
Right of entry changes are a prime example. Now, I want to be very clear: unions have a legitimate role in workplaces. But we are hearing from employers, particularly in the resources sector, that entry permits are increasingly being used for industrial leverage and membership drives, rather than to protect workers.
We are seeing unions becoming more combative, more self-interested and less focused on their members.
That is not a recipe for cooperative workplaces. And it is certainly not a recipe for productivity.
Which brings me to the third test.
Productivity
Productivity isn't an abstract economic statistic. Higher productivity is how we sustainably increase real wages, allow businesses to expand and pay for better services.
Ultimately, it is how Australians become richer.
Yet under Labor, we have seen the largest collapse in annual productivity on record, and Australian living standards have fallen at a record level.
Core to lifting productivity is how much we can make our industrial relations system work for our productive capacity.
And Bill Kelty again, he understood this. I can't believe I'm quoting Bill Kelty more often than I'm quoting Peter Costello, but that's terrible, isn't it? But he understood Mitch Hook's principle that he mentioned just before of national interest over sectional interests.
He said: "the real gains you make out of society come from the productive capacity of the nation. They can't be secured from inflation, they can't be secured by words… And you might try hard to get more than you can get, but it never works."
Our workplace relations system should encourage cooperation, innovation and effort. To increase the productive capacity of our nation.
It should give businesses confidence to employ and workers confidence that their skills and effort will be rewarded not just in wages but in lifting the prosperity of the next generation.
It is the only way in which we will be able to continue to pay for a compassionate society, a competitive opportunity for investment, and a better future for our children.
But cooperation, confidence and productivity can only flourish where the rules are clear, fairly applied and respected.
And nowhere is that more important than in an industry as significant to our economy as construction.
Construction and the Rule of Law
Now, the Coalition's position on the rule of law in the construction industry has had a very long history, and I acknowledge those in the room that have been involved with that history. We've reinstated a strong cop on the beat before, and the Coalition is committed to doing it again. We believe an industry as economically significant as construction needs a strong cop on the beat.
That is why a Coalition government established the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
It is why we restored it after it was abolished.
Now, we see that at the first opportunity Labor have abolished it again. To what end? At whose request?
As the Victorian Royal Commission into the Big Build has already heard from the Counsel Assisting:
"...[t]he State revoked its own building industry code, and the Commonwealth building industry regulator, the Australian Building and Construction Commission, was abolished in February 2023. Taken together, these features may have created incentives for some to engage in corruption, criminal conduct or serious misconduct; for others to tolerate it, and for its costs to be hidden inside the ordinary price of building."
The allegations and investigations of the past two years have only strengthened our view that construction needs a regulator with the powers, resources and resolve to uphold the law without fear or favour.
The H.R. Nicholls Society has continued to make that case.
It is why we believe Australia needs a strong construction watchdog again, with even greater powers.
John Lloyd, as many of you know, was the inaugural ABCC Commissioner and now a Senior Research Fellow with this Society. He has argued for the return of a strong, effective construction watchdog. And we absolutely agree.
We've reinstated a strong cop on the beat before, and the Coalition is committed to doing it again.
We know something has to change. ABS data says working days lost because of industrial disputes hit 69,600 in the December quarter, the second highest quarterly number in 10 years.
The rule of law isn't an anti-union or a pro-employer principle. It is a democratic principle.
Honest unionists benefit when misconduct is exposed. Workers benefit when their representatives are accountable.
Honest businesses benefit when competitors cannot gain an advantage through unlawful conduct.
And taxpayers benefit when the billions they spend on infrastructure are protected.
The Setka Bill
As a Victorian, I've watched these allegations and despaired for my state.
Putting the CFMEU's construction division into administration cannot be where scrutiny ends. The Administrator himself, Michael Crosby, has identified a limitation on his powers.
When the ABC's Sarah Ferguson asked him why John Setka could only be excluded for five years, his answer was simple:
"Because the rules limit me to a maximum period of five years. That's as much as I can do."
Parliament makes the rules. And Parliament can change them.
That is why in August I introduced a Bill to remove the five-year cap.
It would allow for indefinite periods of exclusion, where the circumstances warrant it.
Because if conduct is serious enough to warrant permanent exclusion, the law should not force the Administrator to put an expiry date on it.
The very people who have taken the taxpayers for mugs and brought their union into disrepute should not simply be able to wait out the clock.
Commonwealth Procurement: Value for Taxpayers
But we don't need to wait for the Royal Commissions to tell us what we can do to protect against corrupt behaviour, or to just prevent yesterday's alleged criminals from returning.
We can act against the schemes today to ensure when taxpayer money is spent, it is not siphoned off to criminal cartels and organised crime.
As Geoffrey Watson found in his report 'Rotting from the Top: the CFMEU in Victoria During the Setka Era', the use of enterprise agreements in procurement "allowed the CFMEU to enhance its power, control the market, and to effect corrupt schemes for their benefit, for their friends' benefit, and to punish perceived opponents."
Labor have, despite all evidence of the dangers of such schemes, just introduced the same architecture seen in Queensland and Victoria at a national level - and not just limited to construction.
Earlier this year Labor changed the Fair Work Act.
In a sneaky addition to an otherwise uncontroversial bill, Labor's changes exempted the Commonwealth from discrimination laws.
This means that when making all contracts, procurement and grants, the government can legally preference businesses that have union-backed enterprise agreements.
The Coalition opposed those changes and tried to remove them in both Houses, but in true Labor form, the bill was rushed through without scrutiny and without debate in a deal with the Greens.
With that legal hurdle out of the way, last week the Government released their draft "Secure Australian Jobs Framework" with two pathways: with an enterprise agreement and without.
Two pathways. One for businesses with a union-endorsed agreement, and one for everyone else. You can guess which one Labor expects to win the work.
Our position is straightforward: Government contracts should be awarded on merit.
If you comply with Australian workplace law, treat your employees properly, can do the job and can deliver value for taxpayers, you should be able to compete.
An elected Coalition government will repeal Labor's provisions that allow union favouritism with taxpayer dollars.
And we will go further.
A Coalition government will enshrine in the Public Governance and Accountability Act an objective that value for money, efficacy of delivery and compliance with Australian law are the primary considerations when contracting with the government.
It really should be that simple, and in construction it matters enormously.
Australia has a housing shortage.
We need more homes, more builders, more investment, more capacity and more competition, as well as much better productivity.
The answer cannot be to unnecessarily narrow the pool of businesses able to compete to build them.
That is why a Coalition government is committed to unwinding these changes.
Our tests for Commonwealth procurement are straightforward:
Can you do the job? Are you following the law? Are taxpayers getting value for money?
Those should be the questions at the centre of Commonwealth procurement. Industrial relations should improve workplaces.
It should not be a mechanism for governments to pick winners.
Forty Years On: The Next Reform Agenda
But today isn't really about one Bill, or one union, or one government. It is about forty years of ideas.
Anniversaries allow us to look backwards. Useful ones force us to look forward.
The challenge for workplace relations reform in 2026 isn't to recreate 1986. It isn't to recreate 1996. And it isn't to recreate 2006.
The economy has changed. Technology has changed. Businesses have changed. The way Australians work has changed. And AI will change it again.
So the task isn't nostalgia. In fact, the challenges we face today put at risk the gains of the last forty years.
The next workplace relations reform agenda has to be designed for 2026 and beyond to protect the hard-fought reforms.
There was a time when Labor itself spoke very clearly about the connection between workplace relations and productivity.
In 1993, Paul Keating called for "primary emphasis on bargaining at the workplace level", with awards operating as a safety net.
He said that over time there should be "fewer awards, with fewer clauses."
And he argued that enterprise agreements should be based predominantly on improving the productive performance of businesses, because productivity improvements are what sustain real wage increases.
That was a Labor Prime Minister more than thirty years ago. Would that today's leaders were as economically literate.
Just last week Iain Ross - former president of the Fair Work Commission and now RBA board member - said that he didn't think Australia could have an inflationary wage-price spiral like that of the 1970s because we have moved away from a program of "comparative wage justice", irrespective of the capacity of individual employers or industries to fund them.
Australia moved away from that system for good reason. But I'm sorry to tell Iain, Labor has brought it back. What did he think multi-employer bargaining is?
In that very same week we saw the Fair Work Commission block a bid by the ETU to enforce a statewide multi-employer agreement across tier-one contractors. It had the potential to rope in hundreds of non-union firms.
The Commission ruled that the deal threatened the productivity and integrity of the construction industry, and was against the public interest, due to risks of price fixing and restrictive trade practices.
Those are the consequences of the system Labor has created. Deals that threaten the productivity and integrity of the very sector that we are relying on to build homes, hospitals and schools Australians so desperately need.
The economy has changed enormously since Keating. But the basic economic relationship has not.
Higher productivity is what allows businesses to pay higher real wages sustainably.
So we should be asking again whether bargaining is happening as close as possible to the workplace, whether small businesses can understand the rules they are expected to follow, and whether employers and employees have enough room to reach arrangements that work for them.
There is an urgency to this that we cannot ignore.
The Burning Platform: Getting Productivity Moving Again
Last week's Intergenerational Report assumes long-term productivity growth of just 1.2 per cent. This is a heroic assumption given Labor's record.
In the previous Intergenerational Report, Treasury estimated that lifting productivity growth by just 0.3 percentage points would leave GDP around 9.5 per cent higher and wages around 8.5 per cent higher by 2062-63.
This is the burning platform.
It is a simple fact: if we cannot get productivity moving again, Australians will be poorer. This is not good enough.
The job of any government is to leave the country in a better place than we found it.
Angus Taylor understands this and is determined that the Coalition will reverse that decline and get Australia moving forward again.
Because Labor is taking us backwards, and they have no plan to change it.
If we are serious about lifting Australia's economic performance, then we need to be serious about the whole productivity agenda.
We need affordable and reliable energy, with ideology taken out of the system.
We need to embrace technology and artificial intelligence, not fear them.
We need a lower and simpler tax burden that rewards investment and enterprise.
We need better skills and training so Australians can take advantage of the jobs and industries of the future.
And we need a workplace relations system that encourages businesses to invest, employ and grow, and allows workers to share in the prosperity that creates.
Conclusion
Fair. Simple. Productive.
These are the tests.
And if we believe in those reforms, we should be prepared to campaign on them.
I am prepared to do that. So is Angus Taylor. So are my colleagues.
Forty years later, the policies will be different. The economy is different. The workplace is different. But the task is the same.
For forty years, this Society has been prepared to ask whether Australia can do better. Today, it needs to continue that task, not because of the gains we have made but because those gains are at risk.
The last forty years of progress is at risk of being unwound. Now is the time to make the case again. Because we all know what is at stake if we don't.
Thank you.
