Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

The first thing that strikes me about this debate on the Independent Contractors Bill 2006 and related bill is the incredible lack of speakers on the government side. Once again we have the Labor members of this House standing up in the dozens to represent the people in their electorates—standing up for the rights of workers in their electorates. The government side, which introduced this bill, is just missing in action. This was a major policy announcement during the last election. You would imagine that the government members who were there cheering John Howard when he made this announcement would be here telling us how great it is going to be and how many hundreds of people in their electorates—hundreds of workers—are just lining up, not being able to wait to cash in their rights as employees and embark on their wonderful careers as independent contractors.

It says a bit that there are not too many government speakers saying any of those things. In fact, it is left to the Labor Party members to speak on behalf of people in our electorates to say how difficult this is going to make life for many people in a range of occupations. It is estimated that there are between 800,000 and two million independent contractors in Australia, which makes the lack of government speakers even more noteworthy. Surely not all of those people are in Labor electorates. Some of them have to be represented by coalition members. But where are the coalition members speaking up on their behalf in this debate tonight?

The minister, Kevin Andrews, was, typically, very excited about all of this. He was expounding his view of this brave new world of independent contractors out there in Australia and how exciting it was all going to be. In his second reading speech he told us:

Independent contractors are entrepreneurs, and the one-person micro-business of today is often the employing small business of tomorrow.

For many, the attraction of independent contracting is to operate independently, not to work as an employee. The flexibility that independent contractors provide the workplace is an important component of a modern and dynamic economy.

All those workers out there getting their pay packets every week must be wishing they could be independent contractors. That is all they want. They must be saying: ‘No, no; don’t give me that pay packet. Don’t tell me when I’m working next week. Don’t tell me that I’ve got guaranteed hours or a roster that I can rely on when I’m making my family budget or planning child care for my children. Don’t tell me those things. Don’t give me a pay packet. I want to be an independent contractor. I want to be out there on my own in this exciting new world of everyone wanting to be an entrepreneur.’

Again, if it is so exciting—if people are embracing this in their thousands, as the government would have us believe—where are the coalition speakers telling us all about it? We need to know what people in our electorates are missing out on. If they are not getting it, maybe we need to understand it so we can go back and tell them what they are missing out on in this new dynamic world of being an independent contractor.

But it seems like a bit of reality might have set in. Those of us on this side of the House who are actually in touch with workers in our electorates are getting a sense that they are not really that convinced about the government’s brave new world of no security and its ‘look after yourself’ attitude. Perhaps some reality is actually setting in on the government side because on 23 August this year the minister actually conceded that perhaps existing private contractors and small businesses are not all that excited about utilising the changes in this bill. The minister was quoted on that day as saying:

... as a result of independent contracting legislation there won’t be, I believe, any change in the number of independent contractors.

If it is so exciting, as the minister would have us believe, why is he now saying that it is not really going to make any difference to the number of people wanting to be independent contractors? That is quite telling in terms of Australians’ pretty understandable scepticism about the government’s great promises of a brave new world in this legislation.

If there are not the numbers of people, as the minister has admitted, wanting to be independent contractors, what is this legislation really all about? Again, it was all in the minister’s second reading speech. He practically had only said the name of the bill before he launched into his usual attack on the union movement, which has a proud history in this country of protecting and making sure that there is fairness for working people. The minister made it very clear that as far as the government is concerned this bill is all about the usual attack on workers.

The Labor senators on the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Committee’s inquiry into these bills decided it was about that too. They said:

The basic policy aim of the Independent Contractors Bill is to turn as many employees as possible into contractors. In the Government’s view, and more particularly in the view of employer organisations close to the Government, industrial relations are greatly simplified by arrangements which put employees onto either Australian Workplace Agreements, or turn them into contractors. Work Choices is intended to encourage the first of these trends, and the Independent Contractors Bill is intended to encourage the latter development.

That was the view of Labor senators who served on that Senate inquiry—that this bill is really about turning as many employees as possible into contractors.

The question, of course, is what kind of contractors these workers are going to be. Many people are in genuine arrangements, where they have chosen to be independent contractors because it suits their occupation, it suits their skill set, and they have identified a particular niche market for their services and their skills. They are operating as genuine independent contractors, genuine microbusinesses. But that is not the case for an awful lot of Australians who are forced into contracting arrangements which are far from genuine.

I said earlier that it is estimated that between 800,000 and two million people are classed as independent contractors in this country. Of that number, 400,000 are contracted by one employer. So as many as half of the independent contractors are employed by one employer. They are more correctly categorised not as independent contractors but as dependent contractors.

The situation of dependent contractors in Australia got quite a bit of attention in the Senate inquiry. One submission came from the Australian Institute of Employment Rights, which is part of Monash University. They devoted part of their submission to looking at the very vulnerable situation of dependent contractors. They said that the bills:

... fail to recognise and distinguish dependent contracting from independent contracting. In so doing, they will enable the continuation and expansion of dependent contracting and disguised employment. Research has consistently identified negative outcomes associated with these practices. These include:

Absence of minimum employment entitlements designed to protect workers’ economic, social and health wellbeing, including a satisfactory work/life balance;

Excessive working hours without commensurate remuneration;

Higher risk of occupational injury to contractors;

Higher risk of occupational injury to those working alongside contractors;

Shifting the cost of injuries away from workers’ compensation systems onto injured workers and their families, and onto the general health system; and

Absence of investment in skills and training.

But of course the Howard government is not letting any of those extremely negative consequences for dependent contractors dissuade them from their ideological crusade in these bills.

Looking at that analysis and the negative consequences for workers who are in reality dependent contractors—they are contracted to one employer—what would the response of a responsible, caring government be? We know what the response of a responsible, caring government would be because the state governments in Australia have addressed this situation through deeming provisions in their laws. States have recognised that there are workers who are in vulnerable situations, particularly workers who are in these sorts of sham contracting arrangements and are deriving their income from, and are contracted primarily to, one employer. They are in a very vulnerable position and need protection.

There are state and territory laws which deal with this situation. Due to concerns about worker welfare, state governments have introduced deeming legislation to ensure that such workers have protections under their industrial relations legislation. They consider that many of these workers are dependent contractors or disguised employees, which we have just heard defined in an earlier quote from the Monash submission.

As a Queenslander, I take particular interest in what the Queensland government is doing in this area. In their submission to the House of Representatives Making it work inquiry, the Queensland government states:

The increasing move away from the conventional employee/employer relationship towards workers engaged under labour hire arrangements and under dependent contractor status, has effectively taken these workers outside of the industrial relations system and the benefits and protections associated with being defined as an employee under relevant industrial laws.

Under the Queensland legislation, persons or workers that this deeming applies to include outworkers, lessees of equipment or vehicles, drivers who wholly or partly own their vehicles and persons working as partners in a business or association.

Those state laws have been made for very good reasons. They were made with the welfare of workers in mind. They were made to prevent workers from being unduly exploited by these sorts of dependent contractor or sham contractor arrangements. But the bills that we are debating now seek to override these state laws that seek to uphold workers’ rights and uphold some security. As a result of these laws, genuine employees will be pushed out of the employer-employee relationship and into sham independent contracting arrangements. That means a huge shift in responsibility from employer to individual. The responsibility for statutory items such as superannuation, PAYE taxation arrangements and workers compensation cover moves from the employer to the individual.

We are seeing more and more evidence of sham contracting arrangements with workers who, under traditional definitions of ‘employee’ and ‘independent contractor’, are in every way correctly considered to be employees. Ads in the papers for cleaning jobs are calling for applicants to have their own ABNs. We are seeing some extreme examples of people being forced into acting as independent contractors when traditionally they would have been considered employees. State legislation has been in place to protect those people, but these bills are out to end those arrangements. In these situations, the employee—or former employee—also has reduced bargaining power because of reduced access to union assistance or collective bargaining to protect wages and conditions. We know what this is all about. It is about reducing people’s wages and conditions. That is what this government is always about. Work Choices was the end of a long campaign by the Prime Minister to attack unions, to take away protections for workers and to reduce wages and conditions, but he was not content with that and we are now seeing this additional piece of legislation, which will achieve the same thing for certain groups of workers.

This attack on people’s security and protections is happening at the same time that they are struggling under the weight of many additional costs for their families. Petrol prices are at record highs, interest rates are on the way up—we have had seven successive interest rate rises in the last few years under this government—and the costs of health care and child care are rising. The amount of money people need to meet their obligations is making life harder all the time. People must be reeling out there, not just from the added pressures coming with the increases in the cost of living but because this is happening under a government that promised them it was not going to be this way. This is the Prime Minister who promised that, during his term, people would be relaxed and comfortable and that no worker would be worse off and who promised, at the last election, that interest rates were not going to rise. People must be feeling incredibly betrayed by this government, and that is certainly the message that I am getting as I get around my electorate. The facade that John Howard has had up for many years, particularly since the last election, is crumbling. The world that people thought they were living in under this government is not slipping away; the government is basically smashing it to pieces, and people are feeling very insecure.

I want to take a couple of minutes during this debate to talk about a particular trend that is occurring in the mining communities in my electorate. It is very much of a piece with what we are talking about where, in the new workplace that this government wants to create and encourage and is presiding over, responsibility is shifting more and more away from employers and onto individuals. In the mining communities in my electorate, the mining companies, when coming in, investing in mines and setting up operations, traditionally provided accommodation. They supported the towns and communities, because they were quite remote or rural areas—they were often created on what were originally cattle properties—and people moved from their homes to work in the communities. The mining companies accepted the responsibility of creating homes for people, creating communities, providing services and making sure that there were schools, medical facilities and housing for the communities and for the miners who worked there.

Once again we are seeing an incredible boom in the coalmining sector in Central Queensland, but this time it is completely different. If you want to work out there now, you are on your own. If you go out there and work a 12-hour shift for the company, the company could not care less about what happens to you after that—whether you live in your car, as some people are doing, or whether you sleep in a donga for 12 hours and then another person comes in off their shift to sleep for 12 hours while you are working.

I wanted to bring to the debate that this is where the encouragement of employers to abrogate their responsibility for employees takes us, and it is what we are seeing in Central Queensland, particularly in the mining towns. Where once the companies took responsibility for their workers’ lives outside of work, they now no longer accept that, and we are seeing some pretty dreadful social conditions in the towns as a result. It is about time the Prime Minister took up my invitation—I wrote to him a few weeks ago—to come to Central Queensland and see it for himself. (Time expired)

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