Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Laws Amendment (Proper Use of Worker Benefits) Bill 2017 once again demonstrates a bitter irony when it comes to this government's approach to changes in the world of work. We know, as Australian workers know and as their representative organisations—unions and the ACTU—know, that it's time to change the rules which govern power at work. But the government is determined to change the rules to reinforce inequality and inequity, not to address it. At the core of Labor's agenda is confidence in Australians, confidence in Australians' capacity to do more, particularly at work. This government is bereft of that confidence and is further determined to constrain the capacity of Australians in the workplace and around the workplace when it comes to skills, when it comes to schools and when it comes to university.

What this bill demonstrates is that, once again, this government is prepared to put forward its ideological obsession with constraining the rights of individual workers, and in particular the rights of unions to represent workers in workplaces, in defiance of the evidence. On this side, we understand—as international bodies like the IMF and the OECD have made very, very clear—that increasing inequality is a constraint on economic growth. It hurts all of us as well as individual workers, and this bill is just another demonstration of this preference, this determination on the part of the government, to continue to tilt the playing field in workplaces in favour of employers and against working people and their representatives.

So I am very pleased to join my Labor colleagues, and, in particular, the shadow minister, in opposing this legislation and supporting the amendment which deals with a small but very significant aspect of this debate. At the moment, we understand that wages growth continues to be at a record low and the wage share of the economy continues to be in consistent decline. I think this is the problem, and I think we should all take stock of a couple of facts that characterise the Australian economy today. We all congratulate ourselves on 26 years of consecutive economic growth, and that is a significant achievement, but focusing simply on this ignores some deep realities that shape the lives of too many Australians. At the moment, we have record company profits at a time of record low wage growth. This is a gap that we, as lawmakers, should be trying to close, but the government is determined to exacerbate that gap. We see it most obviously in the insane giveaway of an increased push for more corporate tax cuts, and we see it in the continued insistence on further seeking to diminish the rights of workers in their workplaces to bargain.

Today we find that growth is at a 26-year low, the same time span as that period of continuous economic growth for the economy as a whole. That demonstrates, again, why we need to change the rules in the opposite direction from that which is contended by this government and exemplified by this legislation. Wages, real wages, for too many Australians are simply going backwards. Of course, this is wage growth in the formal economy. It doesn't account for those Australians pushed into informal and even more insecure forms of work. Living standards for these people aren't simply under pressure; they are being squeezed. And that's why it's more than a little bit rich to hear the government talk about cost-of-living savings when they talk about their National Energy Guarantee—or national energy aspiration, as it probably should be called—because the big issue with the living costs of Australian working people and working families is this anaemic wages growth. The cost of living isn't just what you have to pay for things; it's the money you have at bank to be able to pay for things, and it is extraordinary that the government continues to ignore this pretty fundamental fact. We need to change the rules to give workers and their representatives more power in workplaces, not less.

I mentioned briefly the amendment on penalty rates. The government's consistent attack on penalty rates is simply abhorrent, and it doesn't reflect the choices that are being forced on too many working Australians: to work antisocial hours and to discount their life to maintain their income. A pretty fundamental proposition that Australian governments of all sides of politics have accepted is that penalty rates are fair compensation for a drag away from time with family and time with friends—the ability to engage in social life and cultural amenity. This government talks blithely, through the Prime Minister, about a 24-hour economy, but has no regard for those forced to pay the price, because there isn't a 24-hour society, is there? People's capacity to engage with family and friends is constrained by working patterns that don't reflect the Prime Minister's confident view of how the economy should work.

In supporting the amendment of the shadow minister, the member for Gorton, I want to make very clear that I'm standing in solidarity with 700,000 Australians who are having their penalty rates cut, having their standard of living cut and having their sense of dignity and sense of agency cut. But I also stand in solidarity with those many, many more Australians who aren't directly affected by the current decision, but whose penalty rates are affected. I know that many nurses, in particular, and other shift workers in my electorate are deeply concerned by the signal that has been sent by an unfortunate decision of the commission and an abhorrent refusal of the government to remedy it. I guess the crux of the problem is this: we have a government that talks about the cost-of-living issues in energy and flicks the problem off to the states, whilst claiming to have fixed the issue, but, in an area of direct legislative competence of the Commonwealth parliament, it does nothing—or, in this case, it does less than nothing.

I think it is worth touching on some particular features of the bill that is before us now. This bill is a product of the Heydon royal commission—although, as is always the case with this government's law-making, it is important to be careful and test the claims. The claim here about it being a response to the royal commission is one that I think will be found wanting and, I suspect, is one of the reasons for the appalling failure of process which governs the introduction of this piece of legislation. The bill before us deals with matters that are quite technical—matters that actually do require this government, if it were serious, to attend to a problem. Perhaps we can come back and ask what problem this legislation is intended to solve. Unfortunately, we don't seem to be assisted by government member contributions to this debate, which is of itself rather telling. This bill would make very significant technical changes to entitlement funds, which play a very significant role in many industries. These are issues which, if there were matters to be addressed, should be properly ventilated through a Senate inquiry process. Instead, here we are in the Federation Chamber debating a bill—or perhaps not debating a bill but putting on the record—

Ms Bird interjecting—

Yes, as the member for Cunningham says, there isn't a debate here. It is disappointing that, once again, government members aren't here to show the courage of their convictions, are they? So we are putting on the record our concerns about this bill, and we do so at two levels. When we look at the government's broad attitude, there is its failure to respond to fundamental changes in the world of work which are disadvantaging workers, at a time when corporate profits are at a record high and at a time when the Treasurer adds insult to injury by mouthing words like 'inclusive growth'. If you want inclusive growth, how about looking to workers? How about looking at recasting the distribution of the national pie? How about paying some attention to those levers available to the federal government which can redress the imbalance of power and which are not only constraining the ability of individuals to earn an income but also constraining our wider prospects of economic growth and, with it, doing untold damage to communities and to our society?

This bill imposes a range of additional restrictions on the governance of entitlement funds and imposes further restrictions on bargaining, which is precisely the opposite of the approach that we should be undertaking. I hope that members opposite, if they're not going to participate in this debate, would have regard to the contribution of the member for Gorton at the National Press Club a couple of weeks ago, where he looked squarely at the questions that confront Australian workplaces and the Australian economy and set out some proposals that would address the problems. The member for Gorton was very frank in doing so, because he conceded that in our last period in government, in responding to the aggressive, antiworker, anti-union, anti-democratic Right agenda of the Howard government, we didn't pay sufficient regard to the changing nature of work in Australia—in particular, how a model of bargaining which initially served all Australians pretty well in the 1990s was losing pace with the demands of the modern economy, particularly the changes in the structure of work. The member for Gorton accepted that. He pointed to some examples, and some of those were around termination of agreements—in particular, at Murdoch University. There we have an attack on working people that not only is the government simply ignoring but the Minister for Education is encouraging other employers in the sector to follow. It's pretty clear that that is no way to deal with slow wage growth—quite the reverse. It's going to further depress wage growth, to no-one's benefit.

So here we have a bill that is all about imposing further prescriptions, a series of red-tape obligations, on important bodies. Again I recall at the start of the last parliament the great excitement that government members put on about their red-tape reduction exercise. Well, it's interesting: when it comes to their other ideological hobbyhorses, too much red tape is barely enough. Every week we get an amendment to the Migration Act and every week we get an amendment to the Fair Work Act. Those amendments are really all about doing one thing, which is constraining workers' ability to collectively exercise their rights and secure themselves decent outcomes.

I was really pleased to be in the chamber for the contribution of my friend the member for Shortland. He dealt with a critical aspect of this debate that is too often ignored in the wider commentary, and that is the impact of these imbalances of power that are being codified in legislation on workers' safety. I would have thought it a pretty unexceptional statement, for anyone who's concerned for their fellow Australians, to set out the proposition that anyone who goes to work is entitled to return home safely. It is simply appalling that this government is determined to strip away the capacity of workers to attend to that on their own behalf and on behalf of their colleagues and comrades in workplaces.

But no, this legislation is simply a reheat of tired ideological obsessions. They've found another device whereby unions have been able to offer some protection to workers in difficult times and have done the right thing to redress particular imbalances of power. But, again, the response isn't to recognise this or to look at how it might have broader application to deal with this fundamental problem that's characterising the Australian workforce and the Australian economy at the moment. It's simply to carry on down this blinkered ideological path of further constraining workers' rights and doing everything they can to deny unions their legitimate, democratic capacity to carry on their roles on behalf of their members.

Coming to the end of my contribution, I want to again raise this fundamental point: what is the problem that this bill is responding to? I thought members opposite were interested in leaving things alone from government, but instead they seem to simply want to interfere. We on this side of the House know that the time has more than passed to address some of these imbalances of power in the labour market. We do need to change the rules, but we need to change the rules to do the right thing by workers, to strengthen the capacity of unions democratically to work for them—not the reverse.

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