When David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie found their way into the Senate’s balance of power, Labor’s chances of passing bills brightened.
Both have a reputation as pragmatists, but when it comes to navigating its complex industrial relations legislation through the Senate by winning one of their swing votes, the government is not spoiled for choice.
Lambie, quick to judge the bill as a union power-grab and still stroppy at Anthony Albanese for cutting crossbench staff, spent Friday warning about the bill’s impact on grocery prices and hard-up small businesses.
The pathway for Labor’s “secure jobs, better pay” bill has only ever realistically been the Greens and Pocock.
Earlier in the week, Pocock was asked whether he felt like a kingmaker. Sporting a big grin, the Australian Capital Territory independent replied matter of factly that the government needed one more vote (him). He may as well have said: “No I feel like the king.”
Pocock is still working out what sort of senator he wants to be: the sort that transacts unrelated business, like when he suggested wiping the ACT’s public housing debt could help win his vote; or one that sticks to improving the bill in front of them. One who gets bogged down in process arguments, as if it’s inherently unfair for the government to ask for a vote after three sitting weeks, or one who votes on principle.
On Tuesday, Pocock seemed bemused when reporters wanted to know why he hadn’t met the prime minister since July.
Within 24 hours he’d had another meeting with Albanese, and a long list of further amendments tabled by the workplace relations minister, Tony Burke, followed.
At Friday’s Senate inquiry and through weeks of negotiation, Pocock has been all ears, displaying the patience of a man who knows he’s at the start of a long apprenticeship as a senator and a student of industrial relations.
Pocock was inquisitive, asking for basic factual information about what industrial instruments workers in industries including agriculture and construction are employed on. What sort of pay rises are they getting?
But sympathy for unions was in short supply when Lambie had her turn in the Senate inquiry.
Lambie asked the National Farmers Federation leading questions about possible supply chain interruptions from strikes noting that the price of meat and vegetables is already “bloody atrocious”.
She invited them to “remind Australians of the effect if unions have too much power”, leading to a spurious Waterfront dispute analogy – exactly the sort of thing that would be curtailed by the new powers for the Fair Work Commission to arbitrate intractable disputes.
And far from feeling the urgency to get the bill legislated this year, Lambie saw danger in forcing employers to get their head around the bill right before Christmas.
“There’s all of about four weeks left by the time this hits, if it was to get up, these businesses won’t know what’s hit them until it plays out – they wouldn’t have a clue,” she said.
In reference to the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission Lambie, a fierce critic of Victorian construction unionist John Setka, observed the construction union “is so excited about this going through”.
Lambie got to the bottom of why Victorian government construction jobs only go to unionised companies not “normal people out there that haven’t been unionised”.
The Master Builders explained that Victoria, the ACT and Queensland governments had procurement codes requiring pay deals with unions.
Lambie crowed: “How convenient!” And later observed: “So it’s all under Labor – they’re all Labor governments.”
Pocock and Lambie actually have very similar concerns when it comes to the complexity of the bill.
But while Lambie’s instinct is to blow the debate up and make the government pay for pushing it through, Pocock is accumulating ideas for improvements and means to fortify his proposed settlement of splitting the bill.
As long as one representative continues to display a constructive attitude, it’s hard to see the government leaving the bargaining table empty-handed.
