Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have just come from the Food and Grocery Council dinner. It just so happens that the Food and Grocery Council of Australia and its dependent businesses are almost entirely dependent upon owner-drivers from New South Wales, Victoria and other states. In the two most populous states, New South Wales and Victoria, grocery businesses are supplied by people who work under award conditions, who will, by virtue of the Independent Contractors Bill 2006 and the guarantees given to them by the minister for workplace relations, have their current situation of being protected by award provisions and entitlements entirely protected until a review, some 12 months hence, in 2007. In all of the other states we have a situation where there are already independent contractors.

I was at one of these facilities in Villawood in my electorate talking to people who will be turned into independent contractors. They are not now independent contractors; they are still employees. There was a great deal of rejoicing from the Transport Workers Union, and that was rightly so, because it was a great victory on the day. There was some rejoicing from the employees of this company but also a great deal of trepidation because they were not sure what the future held for them. The minister’s press release indicated that the special conditions of New South Wales and Victoria had been taken into account and that there was a moratorium in relation to them—they would be protected, at least for a 12-month period, because their particular situation had been recognised. But the sting in the tail of the minister’s press release was that 12 months down the track there would be a review aimed at looking at the national scene and—from a national point of view, what is the fundamental word that is important here?—that the review was directed towards a ‘harmonisation’ of a national approach.

I do not think a single one of those employees who are owner-drivers would not be in a position to understand that in 12 months time they are going to be harmonised into becoming sham independent contractors by virtue of this bill. This is a sham government which has delivered a sham bill in relation to independent contractors, and it is a measure of the corruption of this government over a 10-year period and of how far they have debased our legislative system. If this were brought into the House as a taxation measure, it could not survive but, where it is an industrial relations measure, the full force and weight of the government is behind it.

There are sham provisions in this bill which argue that if there are particular arrangements made such that there is a sham situation where a person who is really an employee is deemed to be an independent contractor then that can be taken to the Federal Magistrates Court and exposed. I think this is entirely ludicrous. The whole point of this bill is to create an entirely farcical situation in which people who have been, are and in the normal course of events would continue to be deemed as employees are set up as independent contractors.

Why are the guys in my electorate who take cars from one end of the country to another—the people I was talking to on that particular day—concerned about their circumstances and the change? Why are they sticking to the notion of collective agreements and the protections that they have in relation to the award? Why are they so at variance with their employer, whom I politely went to see as I walked onto the property and who then read me the riot act about how wonderful the government’s approach was and how he hoped that the government would be entirely successful in striking down the award system in New South Wales and in turning every one of his employees into independent contractors? It was very clear and very stark. His argument was simple. What does the government promise to people who become independent contractors? What do some in the industry promise? They promise that independent contractors will get a higher income, that they will be able to access benefits of the taxation regime because they are independent contractors and that they will be better off, as people are in other states.

Not a single person I spoke to in Villawood believed that that would be the case. As owner-drivers, who are employees, all of them were under immense pressure—and this was some months ago now—because of the costs of running their businesses and the increased costs of fuel, which have risen to extremely high levels. That is impacting on them very significantly. But they also know that the pressures are such that, if this legislation were to be entirely approved without having any special provision for them, they can see themselves going to the wall. It was completely apparent from what they told me that their concerns were about not only surviving, in terms of running their businesses, but also the impact that that would have on their families.

This is at one with the government’s general approach in terms of the wider workforce. Translate those people from award conditions to Australian workplace agreements—a minority situation at the moment, but something the government hope will become a majority after the next election if they survive. In the course of time, as awards come up for renewal, they hope that people—through the exercise of the Workplace Relations Act and the force behind that for moving broadly to Australian workplace agreements—will be moved onto that, so that one single individual, the atomised human being, will be there to face the panoply of power that an employer can display, without the benefit of collectivism, without the benefit of being able to join with their mates to put a case and without the benefit of a union or other representation. They will be left entirely on their own.

Or they can cop this act, where although they are owner-drivers who pay a great deal of their costs for themselves and although they are employees of companies at the moment—and rightly so, under New South Wales and Victorian law, because that is in fact what they are in all of their ramifications; they carry higher costs but they still have some protections from the awards system—they will be deemed to be independent contractors. If the Treasurer walked into this joint and put this kind of legislation in place, as the person responsible to the people of Australia, through this parliament, for the protection of the revenue against sham acts that could be entered into by people setting themselves up as independent contractors even though they are not, then he would be laughed out of the parliament. He would be laughed out of the country. And yet this is a central piece of what this government is trying to do.

This legislation is very significant. It is as significant in its own way—as part of the puzzle that we have looked at—as the original Workplace Relations Act that Peter Reith, the then member for Flinders, tried to put in when he was the minister for workplace relations. After he did not succeed, it was broken into 12 parts. This is one part of the government’s mosaic for reshaping Australia. What are the fundamentals in this? Why are they pursuing it? The fundamental reason, I think, is locked up in the psyche of the Prime Minister, in his experience as Treasurer and in the fundamental ideological imperative that drives a number of people in this government. Take the member for Corangamite. I mean, Stewie is a nice bloke, with respect. But the member for Corangamite in this is utterly and totally ideological. He sat with the member for Bennelong and others in 1985—21 years ago—and conjured up this set of workplace relations arrangements and the arrangements that are in this bill. He spoke on this bill earlier tonight, and if it is achieved it is nirvana for the member for Corangamite. He is such a nice and personable fellow you would not think that that outward exterior would hide the fact that there is a drive for ideological purity and a drive to hunt down workers’ conditions and their incomes.

At the dispatch box, day after day, the Prime Minister attempts to put the argument that everyone is better off because there are more people who will get more jobs. He parades this during a $29 billion minerals boom time. The fact that this boom time eluded Malcolm Fraser led to another conditioning factor for the member for Bennelong. There was no minerals boom, but what we did get was wage-push inflation as a result of the metal workers seeking 20 to 30 per cent increases and the other strong unions trying to do it. And there was a recession in 1982-83 on the back of what the then Treasurer achieved—double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment rates and double-digit interest rates. All of those pressures combined, together with the wage-push inflation, led to a very significant recession in Australia. This was something that took us many years to climb out of when we came to government.

But the key driver in this, from that point on—if you think of 1982-83 and its conditioning effect—is that just three years later, in 1985, the member for Bennelong sat down with the member for Corangamite and started crafting the new world—the utopian vision—for the coalition of what workplace relations should be like. Those workplace relations are based on smashing the unions and leaving individual employees at the mercy of employers when they put their cases to them. Thank you very much, I would rather go to the Remuneration Tribunal than front up to the Prime Minister, or anyone else, trying to get an increase in this place. There is safety in a collective approach, as members of parliament know. And there is some safety as well for those who are otherwise relatively powerless in dealing with tribunals, commissions or other things.

But think of the impact of this on the textile, clothing and footwear people in my electorate of Blaxland—those people who are at the very margin of the workforce, who are represented by the Textile, Clothing and Footwear subsection of the Transport Workers Union. Those two unions have aligned themselves into one group under Barry Tubner, who is doing a very substantial job of trying to protect Australian jobs, to lift standards, to help the people who work for piece rates—who have historically been exploited and who still are being exploited in Australia—and also to protect those industries against the competition they face from overseas. They are at one in this legislation with their comrades in New South Wales and Victoria who are driving trucks, except that they feel the full force of this legislation when it passes through this parliament.

There is 12 months grace for the truck drivers in New South Wales, but inevitably and inexorably the review after that 12 months grace will result in a harmonisation of this Australia wide. Four states have independent contractors. Despite the relative smallness of such operations in New South Wales and Victoria, those two states will inevitably, because of the drive and what is in the head of this government, also end up with these sorts of workers being independent contractors. The Commissioner for Taxation should then pull this piece of legislation to pieces. He might as well do it now. If that vast bulk of people who want to stay under award conditions are incorporated into this legislation with a set of sham provisions that say, ‘We’ll make sure that this is properly done and that we won’t be conned or gulled,’ the whole thrust of this legislation will be to gull the Commissioner for Taxation into believing that these arrangements—so transparently sham like—should be accepted as the norm for Australia. What depths have we reached in this Commonwealth of ours that any sane, normal person—in the parliament, in the courts or in the polity at large—could believe this is true and real? I do not think very many could do so—certainly not the people who will be at the end of this.

At that dispatch box, day after day, the Prime Minister has been scuttling from the considerable number of barbed arrows that have been launched against him in the past few sitting weeks with regard to his history of double-digit inflation rates, interest rates and unemployment rates. His government now is responsible for increases in interest rates and, where it has encouraged and pushed along a massive increase in the amount of investment in property, we have exorbitant amounts of debt within this country. That means that every small increment places immense pressure on people. It places pressure on the owner-drivers who have to run their rigs and pay for most of the costs of those rigs—not just the diesel but the tyres, the insurance and the rest of it. To take from them the range of provisions that make their position relatively safe and sure from now into the future and to put them at hazard with this legislation means that there will be even greater pressure on them, and they know the likelihood is that more of them will fail.

Do this government and this Prime Minister really care about that? Not a jot. Not a tittle. Why? Because this is the fundamental design of this government. There are a whole range of other areas where you might say they are doing the right things in terms of the national interest. But day after day at this dispatch box we get the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations arguing a national interest case in relation to the dismemberment of what we have known through more than a century of utilising the Industrial Relations Commission to try to realise the notion of a fair go for most of Australia’s workers. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations simply argue that, if you look at Australian workplace relations and the key targets for the electorate and workers at large, their approach has delivered tremendous results in higher wages and all the rest. The reality for ordinary working Australians is that it has delivered, as in the Spotlight case, lower wages and lower entitlements—and that is the whole point and purpose of it. Why? Because this is a government driven by on costs.

This is a government that takes pride in saying that Australian businesses should be entirely delivered from all the normal attachments that are legislatively incumbent upon them—that is, the normal responsibilities you have if you have an employee. You have responsibilities in terms of the superannuation contribution—they would like to get out of that if they could—long service leave, sick leave and a range of things which, from 1974 on, the member for Bennelong has argued should be stripped down and cut away in order to make business more effective.

If you take away all regulation, which is one of the things this government wants, you might be able to make business more effective and more efficient, but it will not be an Australian business environment that you are dealing with; you will be dealing with a ‘Thailandised’ business environment, one in which the workers are stripped naked in the face of the economic forces that they confront, one in which the Master and Servant Act of the 19th century is transplanted again into Australian soil. The effect of this Independent Contractors Bill is exactly the same as the effect that is sought in the workplace relations legislation: to put one individual up against the might of a company, to allow that company the full freedom to run away from its responsibilities, past, present and future, and to say that such companies will be a lot better off because they will not have all of those extra costs and they will be more competitive as a result.

When we were in government, we did a pretty good shake-up, transferring to Australian companies the burden and the benefit of their profitability and allowing them to dramatically expand and take themselves to the rest of the world. But we did not create a position in which the ordinary working person was then impelled to take all of those on costs onto themselves. This bill is about making bunnies of the people who are currently employees, making them not only take on the costs of, in this instance, replacing the tyres, doing the insurance and buying and maintaining the rigs, but take on all of those costs which have, since the beginning of our system and through its fundamental development, been the responsibility of an employer. This is irresponsible government and this is disgracefully conceived legislation which is an utter sham in its conception and an utter sham in practice. The Commissioner for Taxation should be brought to look at this and should throw it out as a contrivance of the first order. (Time expired)

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