The Greens responses

1. Industrial Relations

Yes, the Australian Greens are on the record in supporting multi-employer bargaining. We moved amendments to the Fair Work Act to allow for multi-employer bargaining. We recognise that it is an essential component of ensuring fairness and stability across occupations. We believe it is the right of the parties to determine the level at which they bargain.

The Greens have always fully supported unfair dismissal laws. The only changes the Greens support making to unfair dismissal legislation is to strengthen the laws in favour of workers. For example we do not believe that employees of small business should have a reduced right to access redress from unfair dismissal.

The Australian Greens have always opposed AWAs and individual workplace contracts. We moved amendments to the Fair Work Bill and to the earlier transitional Bill to allow employees on unfair AWAs to terminate the agreements and be covered by the relevant award or collective agreement. We also moved amendments to better protect workers from the Individual Flexibility Agreements in the Fair Work Act. The Government did not support any of these proposals to better protect workers.

The Greens believe that robust and effective occupational health and safety laws and practices are vital for the social and economic health of our workplaces and, more importantly, for Australians and their families. We fought the Howard government's attacks on workplace safety and have defended the long established practice of involving employees and their representatives in workplace safety issues. The Greens support in principle the harmonisation of occupational, health and safety laws across the nation. However we want to see the strongest laws, not a weak compromise.

The Greens understand the importance of superannuation and support increasing the compulsory contribution to at least 12%.

The Greens are fully committed to pay equity. We moved amendments in the debate in the Fair Work Transitional Bill to strengthen the requirement for pay equity to be a consideration in the award modernisation process. Our amendments not supported by the Government. We support the recommendation of the "Making it Fair' report and will work in the parliament to implement those recommendations.

2. Workforce

The Australian Greens believe that an effective healthcare system is dependent upon a skilled and well-resourced workforce. A smart country like Australia should be training more health professionals. We have championed the need for increases in student places, be they in the medical, dental or nursing schools. We also want to see proper planning for Australia's health workforce and we are concerned that this has been hampered by little or no coordination or leadership, which has created a desperate shortage of appropriately skilled and qualified health practitioners.

Our Health policy explicitly calls for an increase in student places in medical, dental and nursing schools, and allied health courses, to address the shortage of health professionals. We believe it is important that we see improvements in facilities to ensure high-quality teaching and mentorship programs. We recognise the importance of clinical placements for nurses and midwives and will work with stakeholders, including the ANF, to ensure the education and training systems for nurses and midwives meet necessary requirements and provide opportunities for practical experience.

3. Aged care

The Greens are extremely concerned about the ongoing viability and sustainability of the aged care sector, the inadequate wages and conditions of aged care workers and nursing staff, and the emerging challenge of securing the skilled and dedicated carers needed to care for an ageing population.

The Greens would closing the wages gap by establishing an independent statutory authority to benchmark the true cost of providing care and oversee aged care funding reform. We firmly believe that aged care workers should receive the recognition and support they deserve for the important caring role they provide, and believe that the aged care funding formula needs to be reformed to ensure that aged care workers are paid fairly and equitably. We see this as a crucial element of a suite of reforms which also include a comprehensive workforce strategy, and a program to establish teaching nursing homes.

The Greens would ensure provision of high quality care by benchmarking the true cost of care and delivering funding reform so that that the aged care funding instrument of the future would guarantee care quality through the allocation of an appropriate mix of qualified staff. We would improve the transparency of aged care funding and depoliticising it by handing responsibility to an independent statutory authority.

The Greens are the only party to date who have a detailed vision statement on aged care reform. We released a comprehensive discussion paper on aged care reform in May which we have circulated widely to all of the key stakeholders in the aged care industry, seeking feedback on the ideas it proposes as a basis for formulating a comprehensive policy on aged care reform which will be released in August.

The discussion paper can be found at www.greensmps.org.au/agedcare

The response to date from elderly Australians and their families, consumer advocates, carers, aged care providers and care staff has been very positive and greatly appreciated. We have sent the discussion paper to the ANF and are still awaiting a response.

4. Healthcare

The Greens want to target our health dollars to the areas where they will do the greatest good to protect and improve the health of all Australians. We can greatly reduce health care costs by placing greater emphasis on keeping people well. By promoting early intervention through access to information, screening and referral services and other preventive health measures, we can reduce the growing burden of chronic disease. Our health and hospital networks should be organised to support primary health care.

The Greens support establishing an e-health system to enhance patient care, as long as the privacy of healthcare consumers is protected. We supported the Healthcare Identifiers Bill is last session of parliament which establishes the foundation of a future electronic health record system. The Greens believe that universal data will contribute to reducing the incidence of misadventure, save costs and inform performance across our health system.