Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today in continuation on the Independent Contractors Bill 2006. Prior to the interruption of debate, I was discussing how much money the government had been wasting on advertising its industrial relations changes, and I will come back to that. Since the debate was interrupted, the Senate committee looking at the Independent Contractors Bill has tabled its report. It does not make comfortable reading for government MPs, I would imagine.

The committee unanimously recommended that the whole of part 4 of the bill be removed. This is the part which you will recall sought to remove protections such as annual leave, public holidays, overtime, superannuation, workers compensation and redundancy pay from outworkers in the clothing industry. The government’s own senators have rejected these unfair provisions, which the committee found ‘serve no useful purpose’. I think they could have gone further and rejected the bill in its entirety, because the rest of the bill also serves no useful purpose. This bill, just like Work Choices, is about as far as you could get from the fairer, simpler, national system that the government spent over 50 million taxpayer dollars advertising.

The Australian people know that the Howard government’s extreme industrial relations laws are not fairer. I have had massive amounts of feedback into my office from people who are concerned for themselves, their children and their grandchildren. The changes are certainly not national. Work Choices gutted the state systems but still left them with some jurisdiction. This bill overrides some state laws for some independent contractors and leaves others alone. And the laws are not simple. The common-law criteria that will be used by courts to decide who is and who is not an independent contractor under this bill are more difficult and complex than the state deeming rules. This bill overrides the deeming provisions of state industrial laws but leaves other state legislation—such as occupational health and safety and workers compensation—alone.

So it is not a simpler system. The only simplistic thing about it is the Howard government’s simplistic argument that individuals are in a better position when they are stripped of their rights and they are negotiating on their own against their employer. This is more of the same ‘every man for himself’ stuff that we are now used to from this government. It is estimated that around 40 per cent of independent contractors only deal with one employer. In effect, they are wholly and solely ‘dependent contractors’. These people are employees in all but name, yet this bill is going to let their employer avoid their obligations to their workers.

This bill is going to encourage sham arrangements, where genuine employees are shifted into contracting arrangements so that employers can avoid paying workers’ entitlements. The protections for workers against such actions are simply not strong enough, and the encouragement to employers to engage in sham arrangements are simply too great. It is always worth reminding people that many employers will do those sorts of things just because they can. Just as Work Choices encourages the spread of AWAs to undercut wages and conditions, starting a race to the bottom, this legislation encourages the shifting of workers into contracting arrangements with lower wages and fewer conditions.

So the incentives for bad employers are strong, just as the protections for workers are weak. Under this bill, the onus of proof is reversed so that the worker has to convince the Magistrates Court that the contracting arrangement was or would be an employment arrangement. After that, the worker would have to rebut any claims by the boss that they acted in good faith, genuinely believing that contract was for services, and could not have been expected to know that it was a contract of employment. These claims of good faith will in all probability be very difficult to refute.

So, once again, the Howard government is stacking the odds against the ordinary worker. It is a move to further centralise power in the hands of the government and its Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, who, by the way, has his own ‘independent contractor’ now—his new assistant, Mr Hockey, the Minister Assisting the Minister for Workplace Relations. On the surface, it looks like this appointment is a bit of a ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine—Minister Andrews, the hard, cold, uncaring face of Work Choices, is now joined by the jovial Mr Hockey, the Minister for Human Services, who presides over a supposedly kinder, gentler Centrelink, which he said last year would ‘put the “service” back in service delivery’. It looks like a good match, but I am not sure. Let us not forget that Minister Hockey retains the responsibility, through Centrelink, of implementing Welfare to Work—not so jolly and jovial there—the policy that sees 16-year-old kids with leukaemia forced to get a job. And now he is the assistant for Work Choices—the policy that forces down wages and conditions so that people are forced to accept anything they are offered, otherwise they will have their benefits cut.

I have always said that these two policies—Work Choices and Welfare to Work—when taken together would wreak havoc on young people, the unskilled and people with sickness and disabilities. And now, by giving Minister Hockey responsibility in both, the Howard government has confirmed just how closely these two policies are linked. Under the new welfare system, a person on Newstart must accept an offer of a job or run the risk of being breached and losing their benefit. Under the new industrial relations system, that person can be made a ‘take it or leave it’ offer of an individual contract containing the minimum wage and four other minimum basic conditions. Remember that under the new Fair Pay Commission—another great product of the Howard government spin factory—there is every chance that the real value of the minimum wage will be eroded over time.

So let us look at the choice this person faces: take the job on the boss’s terms or risk not only not having a job but also losing the Newstart allowance. It is not much of a choice. But these two pieces of legislation—Work Choices and Welfare to Work—were always intended to go hand in hand to slash wages. Now we have the ministerial crossover—the two ministers going hand in hand to enforce this crackdown on the low paid and the disadvantaged.

At the same time, the government has also launched a backbench industrial relations task force which is designed to, and I quote the Prime Minister’s announcement:

… better inform the Australian public how these changes—

Work Choices—

will strengthen the Australian economy.

As far as we can tell from the Prime Minister’s announcement, that is the task force’s only role—just more spin.

Families all around Australia are feeling the pinch as these extreme industrial relations laws hit home, and all this out-of-touch government can do is keep trying to convince them they are actually better off as their incomes and their conditions slide ever lower. The government will not actually listen to the Australian people about how these laws are affecting them. This task force will not be out there listening. It will not actually try to quantify the impact of these laws on our economy or the wages and conditions of Australian workers. By contrast, the Australian Labor Party have been listening to the Australian people. The Labor Party established their own industrial relations task force in December last year. Since then we have been listening to communities all around this nation. We have been out there hearing what is actually happening in places like Launceston, Townsville, Blacktown, Tumbi Umbi, Darwin and Lismore.

The Labor Party has an acute understanding of the impact of Work Choices, and that is why it is opposing the further extreme changes contained in this Independent Contractors Bill. I must say that recent attacks by the minister in the House on people who presented to Labor’s IR task force are just so typical of the bullying attempts to muzzle people in our communities. Apparently, according to the minister’s comments, if you are a member of a union you do not count as a real Australian. What rubbish! Like Work Choices, this bill removes rights, entitlements, conditions and protections that should be afforded to all Australians in the workplace, whether they be employees or independent contractors.

I noted an earlier government member speaking of ‘setting the workers free’. Well, the only things this legislation is setting the workers free from are their protections, their rights, their conditions and their dignity. The government is not setting the workers free; it is actually cutting them loose. This is another bill that is all about the Howard government’s utter contempt for the working people of this nation. It is the government saying to independent contractors, as it is saying to all Australian workers: ‘You’re on your own. Look after yourself.’ It is survival of the fittest, but those who are less fit and less powerful in the workplace will certainly miss out. We are sick of the government saying ‘Good luck’ and leaving these people desperately hanging out. They do need support, as everyone does. This country is strengthened by a strong labour movement based on equity and fairness. The Independent Contractors Bill 2006 is not about a labour movement that is committed to delivering economic prosperity to this nation. In fact, it undermines its citizens’ commitment and willingness to do so.

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