imcrookonit
Ex Member
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MPs rail against Tony Abbott's IR policy
TONY Abbott is facing a backbench push to abandon his promise not to touch Labor's industrial relations regime.
This comes as several MPs agitate for a policy to exempt small business from unfair dismissal laws.
Before the election, the Opposition Leader dumped a proposal to exempt small business from unfair dismissal laws for three years as he tried to neutralise the Labor Party's scare campaign on Work Choices.
Mr Abbott said that if the Coalition won power it would not change Labor's workplace relations laws during its first term.
The Opposition Leader is sticking with all his election policies but has appointed his finance spokesman, Andrew Robb, to head up a review of all policies.
The Australian has spoken to senior MPs and backbenchers who say the opposition's current workplace relations policy is unsustainable and must be changed to give small business help.
Four MPs - including recently dumped frontbencher Steve Ciobo - told The Australian Labor's work laws were unacceptable and Coalition policy should not mirror them.
A further five MPs made the same comments on the basis of anonymity. Mr Ciobo said John Howard won many elections promising to exempt small business from the laws and the Coalition could do so again.
"There's no doubt, with 2.4 million small businesses, that flexibility of the workplace remains supreme," the Queensland MP said. "People are concerned about having to pay go-away money.
"We have been elected many times before embracing small business exceptions for unfair dismissal and we should be doing everything we can to be responsive to small business needs."
Nationals senator John Williams said he would push for change in the partyroom.
"I've always believed that small business should be exempt from wrongful dismissal," the NSW senator said. "It's just a crazy situation where, for example, you might have a rural outlet in a country town, they might have to put someone off to save the business and if they can't do that the business could go down. There has got to be a bit of flexibility about the circumstances. You can't let businesses go broke and everyone loses their jobs."
West Australian Liberal MP Don Randall said Labor's policy was damaging small businesses in his electorate.
"We've got this culture that's come back into the workplace where anyone can claim unfair dismissal so you have to pay go-away money," Mr Randall said.
"This is thanks to the Labor Party and the union movement.
"In my own electorate people are saying to us, 'Can you have a look at this? This is crazy'. I plan to report back to the partyroom and the policy review that this is an issue of increasing concern because small business people are wanting us to take notice of their problems in this area."
South Australian Liberal MP Jamie Briggs, who was an adviser to Mr Howard on workplace relations and Work Choices before becoming an MP, said the industrial relations position the Coalition took to the last election needed to be reviewed. "While I understand the concern with the perception about making changes to industrial relations laws (before the last election), even the Finance Department in their red book brief said the government needs to ensure that the labour market is flexible enough to employ people," Mr Briggs said.
"We have a proud record in pursuing laws which allow more people to be employed.
"We made a mistake with Work Choices . . . but it's an important time to go back and have a look at what we took at the election and looking at our economic reform over the next three years."
Before Mr Abbott's backdown on the small business exemption, he had said: "Work Choices is dead but the Rudd government has gone too far. It's got the balance wrong. It's given too much power to the unions at the expense of business, workers, the unemployed and Australian productivity. By contrast, the Coalition has been the party which under the Howard government created more than two million new jobs."
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