Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

In summing up, I note the comments from the member for Melbourne. Labor will be supporting these amendments—and, as I said, I give credit where it is due. I also give credit where it is due to the member for Hughes, who is at least in the chamber for the debate, although I disagree with him on matters such as the effect on unemployment in this country—we have never seen higher levels of unemployment than we do today in Australia—and his arguments about the unfair contract terms in the Australian Consumer Law. Let's remember that these were provisions that Labor brought in. Labor brought in the definition of where contract terms become unfair. It is exactly as he was saying about a significant imbalance in parties' rights and obligations, where provisions were not reasonably necessary to protect the legitimate interests of the party who would be advantaged by that provision and where it would cause detriment, whether financial or not, to a party who applied or relied on these provisions. These were all Labor amendments that were brought in for the reason of protecting small businesses.

As I said, I will give credit to the member for Hughes. I went through his speech in this place from 17 August. I note that he talks about the threshold—firstly, the business can only have fewer than 20 persons by headcount, and the consideration that the contract has disclosed must not exceed $100,000, or $250,000 if it is more than one year in duration. He did make the point that these are debatable provisions, and he repeated some of the words he said just then. I also would concur with him on the relative ineffectiveness compared with the promise of the provisions in relation to unconscionable conduct in small business that arose out of the Bruce Baird review, which went on for some time. The provisions that were enacted then, under the Howard government, were touted as having the ability to solve many of the problems that this very bill is seeking to address now.

It is quite clear that those provisions either were not adequate or, as I have argued previously, have not had the opportunity to be litigated to a significant extent to determine whether they are effective in practice. So, I will give the member for Hughes credit where it is due. What I will not give credit for is some of the misinformation that has been coming out—and, again, the independent contractors have used words such as 'trickery'. In this quote from 11 September, in relation to this very issue, Independent Contractors Australia noted:

The Abbott government is engaging in the worst of political double-dealing against the interests of Australians—

with their refusal to budge on the issue of the thresholds and the amendments. ICA said further, on 17 September, in terms of the contract protection threshold limits being increased to $300,000:

In fact, its (Senate) amendment to move the contract protection limit to $300,000 was based on a pragmatic assessment (by the Senate) of what the government might accept. We wanted no limit, so we didn’t get what we wanted, but the Senate outcome is a big improvement.

Amazingly, the government rejected this outright.

As I said, Labor supports these provisions. It is a bit rich for the small business minister to come in here and talk—and also put out a media release a week ago—about how this government had delivered for small business. They did have to come here, after voting against these provisions in the Senate. We are pleased that these amendments are coming back here and will be supported—it looks like they will be supported unanimously—because ultimately this is about addressing not only the asymmetry of information but also the power imbalance that inherently exists between big interests and small interests. We know that a majority of Australian small businesses are sole traders. They do not have any employees. These are people who rely on their own judgements, on their own assessments, and in many cases cannot afford the complex legal advice that is so readily available to big business. So, I endorse the amendments that have come before us here, and Labor will, as I said, be voting in support.

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