Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Laws Amendment (Proper Use of Worker Benefits) Bill 2017. Any time you see a title like that the red flag goes up. It takes you back to 2004, when there was a piece of legislation called Work Choices that didn't actually deliver any choices to the workers. Whenever you see an Orwellian title like that—a 'doubleplusgood' sort of title—being trotted out by the Turnbull government, you know to pay attention, because it is going to be something that attacks workers and attacks low- and middle-income groups in Australia.

This bill is another part of the Turnbull government's relentless attack on Australia as seen through its attack on unions. Not only is it an attack on unions; it is an attack on the workers who form unions for protection, the workers who voluntarily joined unions and paid their fees because they believed in unions and the benefits that come from unions. The Turnbull government is attempting to ram this bill through the parliament without proper consultation and scrutiny. Labor wanted this bill to go through the proper committee process, to be thoroughly examined by the Senate Education and Employment Committee. Instead, this Orwellian-titled piece of legislation is being rushed through that process with a reporting date of 10 November, making it almost impossible for stakeholders to prepare detailed submissions and to give any considered, useful or meaningful evidence to the committee. People like Jorgen Gullestrup from the plumbers union, who is in the chamber, would have a lot to contribute if they had time to prepare submissions to the Senate committee. He and the plumbers union were a great help to my campaign to win Moreton for the Labor Party.

This bill increases the governance requirements and the financial reporting and disclosure requirements of worker entitlement funds. The purpose of worker entitlement funds is to ensure that the entitlements owed to workers are protected and to provide services to workers like training, which is crucial in the plumbing, the electrical trades and the construction industries. We know so many deaths are linked to workers not receiving proper training before they go onto the worksite. We also know the benefits of counselling support, and I know that Jorgen has a great role in that side of the industry. There is suicide prevention and the funding of occupational health and safety officers, a role that has saved thousands and thousands of lives over the years.

This bill proposes to prohibit enterprise agreements from allowing contributions to any fund other than a superannuation fund, a registered worker entitlement fund or a registered charity. So forget about things like suicide prevention and the like. It would prohibit enterprise agreements from allowing employee contributions to a union election fund, even though we have so often stated the benefits that come from the political arm of the trade union movement, which is the Australian Labor Party.

This legislation would prohibit the coercion of employers to pay amounts to a specific worker entitlement fund, superannuation fund, training fund, welfare fund or employee insurance fund. I notice the term they use is 'coercion'. Obviously coercion would not be legal in any event, but I am aware that many employers and employees agree on certain superannuation funds and training funds. It would also mean that you would put additional financial management and disclosure obligations on registered organisations, and this Turnbull legislation would introduce new penalties for non-compliance by registered organisations with those financial management, disclosure and reporting requirements.

It is crucial that worker entitlement funds are able to continue to provide safety, training and wellbeing services such as suicide prevention. I can't believe that the government would be attacking that process, not to mention mental health and drug and alcohol counselling. It is an important role of unions to provide these types of services to their worker members, particularly in the construction industry where, sadly, we see higher rates of suicide, health issues and drug and alcohol abuse because of the nature of much of the work.

It would be alarming if the Turnbull government intended to stop unions from providing these services to their members. It would be alarming but not surprising. This Turnbull government has an ideological obsession with attacking unions. Week after week in this House the government produces yet another piece of legislation solely aimed at attacking unions. It has been relentless in this parliament, the 45th Parliament. The Prime Minister really needs to see a counsellor, I think—maybe one of those could be provided from those funds that the unions have contacts with—because he is quite obsessed. We saw the coalition government call a royal commission to further their pursuit of trade unions, and we saw what the results were: nowhere near the results of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the number of convictions that have been sent off. It was a completely different approach.

This is an out-of-touch government. It's hard to believe that, at a time when wages are growing at record lows, in some cases even going backwards, and Australian households are facing cost-of-living crunches due to record levels of debt and rising energy costs, at a time when Australian workers are facing financial stress and when even the Reserve Bank Governor—not exactly a well-known leftie—is promoting the benefits of trade union enterprise bargaining, the government, in spite of all of that information, is relentlessly attacking the very organisations that are trying to give ordinary workers a fair go, and that is unions. I should declare that I have been a member of many unions but I've also worked for a union and have done enterprise bargaining. I have sat down with only two or three members in a workplace of 100 people and negotiated. I know what it's like to negotiate from positions of power, and I know what it's like to negotiate from positions where you have only one or two members in a workplace. That is not an experience that many on the government side of the chamber understand. They do not understand what the modern union movement is about.

The government's policy agenda, which has seen the establishment of the ABCC and the Registered Organisations Commission, is shifting the balance of power in a workplace where Australians are already suffering. This is an agenda that saw the Australian public at the double-dissolution election boot out a dozen coalition MPs. There was hardly a ringing endorsement for this agenda at the double-dissolution election. Look at Tasmania—not a single coalition MP, yet we have the Turnbull government trying to roll out its agenda there. In Western Australia quite a few Liberal MPs were booted out. We saw that across the nation, with the Australian people saying, 'We do not agree with this government's double-dissolution agenda.' Yet the Turnbull government seems to be obsessed with attacking unions despite the great role they play in keeping the Australian fabric together. Sadly, the Turnbull government is allowing unscrupulous employers to engage in practices that avoid Fair Work Act obligation, like sham contracts and dodgy labour hire companies. We haven't seen a great investigation of 7-Eleven, the Myer cleaners or some of the other dodgy practices that are taking place around Australia. This is unfair. Sadly, it is entrenching the already increasing inequality in this country.

Labor have moved a second reading amendment to this bill. We have done this to make it abundantly clear to this coalition government that Labor will always stand up for workers. We'll stand up for all Australian workers but in particular the 700,000 workers who are going to see their wages fall in real terms as a result of the penalty rates decision where the Turnbull government was silent and complicit in these cuts. Workers in the retail and hospitality industries—not exactly an overpaid part of the community—have already had their wages cut from 1 July this year. The Turnbull government supported those cuts and has backed the decision to cut penalty rates by its silence and inaction. The Turnbull government has refused to support the private member's bill moved by the Leader of the Opposition that would have prevented those cuts.

When we talk about tackling inequality we can't ignore the fact that this coalition government, under Prime Minister Turnbull, is prepared to allow the real wages of the lowest-paid workers in the country to be cut at the same time as it is delivering a $65 billion bonus to the top end of town. We can't ignore the fact that this government supports cutting penalty rates which, sadly, will disproportionately affect women. We can't ignore the fact that this government supports cutting penalty rates which will see regional communities, the bush, suffering because people in the regions will have less money to spend in their economies.

This Turnbull government is completely out of touch but Labor will not stand by and watch ordinary Australians be treated so unfairly. Labor will not stand by and watch inequality in this country get even worse. Workers in the retail, pharmacy and fast-food industries have already had their take-home pay cut—the penalty rate cuts that took effect from 1 July. The next group of workers to be hit will be those working in the hair and beauty industry. We all know people who work in that industry. Obviously I don't spend a lot of time at the hairdresser's, but I will give a shout out to Pete the barber who runs Franco's at Moorooka. We know the people in that industry are not super well paid. We all get our hair cut somewhere, or most of us; some might even get our nails done and others might get that healthy youthful orange glow through a spray tan—if you go in for that sort of thing, that's up to you; I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that at all, and I'm not mentioning any MPs on the opposite side of the chamber.

What would you notice most about workers in the hair and beauty industry—putting aside Pete? Statistically, they are most likely to be young and female. It is a familiar pattern from the Turnbull government: constantly attacking the vulnerable minorities. They are in their fifth year of government, and I have lost count of the number of times their legislation has adversely targeted a minority group—young people, women and migrants. What heroes they are in this government! All those minority groups have been unfairly targeted in legislation put forward by the Turnbull-Abbott government.

Sadly, this is at a time when, in Australia, inequality is going through the roof. Inequality is at a 75-year high. Young people are being continually attacked by this government's policies, such as: making them wait five weeks before they can access Newstart; putting 22- to 24-year-olds on the lower paid youth allowance, meaning a cut of about $48 per week, which they can't afford; making young students pay up to $100,000 for their degrees; forcing students to take on bigger debt and then making them pay back that debt even sooner; and doing nothing about housing affordability so that many young people have little hope of ever owning a home—or getting NBN connected to it. We have a Prime Minister who just said, 'Why don't you move to an area where there is NBN?' Where's that? New Zealand?

As a society we should be nurturing our young people and bringing them on. They are our future. We should be encouraging them to get the best education they can. We should be doing everything we can to help them succeed and not give up in despair, because they'll be looking after us before too long. We should make sure our young people can have the same dream that many Australians enjoy: the dream of one day having a home of their own to raise a family in. I believe in fairness. That's why I joined the Labor Party. It is not fair to cut the take-home pay of low-paid workers, especially when many of those people are young and are women. That is fundamentally unfair and un-Australian.

I know people care about penalty rates, and I know people in my electorate of Moreton care about penalty rates. I hold street stalls every month across my electorate, and I talk to people about that exact issue. We had street stalls in 10 locations. I spoke about penalty rates in Acacia Ridge, Annerley, Fairfield, Moorooka, Rocklea, Runcorn, Salisbury, Sherwood and Sunnybank. Volunteers came out in force, generously giving up their own weekend to support the weekends of others and the take-home pay of our lowest-paid workers. So many signed my petition to protect penalty rates that we ran out of paper at some of the stalls. Southside locals care about penalty rates. Thanks to the Turnbull government, one in six local workers in Moreton have had their pay slashed this year.

Labor will not sit back and do nothing to protect vulnerable workers. We have already presented a private member's bill, the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill 2017, which would have stopped the cuts to penalty rates. The Turnbull government, sadly, chose not to support it. And there is more than just the immediate effect of that decision; there is also 2018, 2019 and 2020. Because the Turnbull government did not stand up for our lowest-paid workers who rely on penalty rates to pay their bills, those workers will not get a pay increase for four years. We should not be surprised. The Prime Minister and many others in his government support cuts to penalty rates. How do we know? Because they've told us many times. The Prime Minister even said, way back in 2005, that he believes there should be a free market so that the cost of labour will be as low as possible. How un-Australian and out of touch is that?

In 2014, on ABC Radio, the Prime Minister said it was nuts that cafes and restaurants closed on weekends because penalty rates were so high. The Minister for Employment, Senator Cash, said on Sky News in 2015 that, in many industries in Australia, the seven days of the week are now basically the same day. Senator Cash also said we need to cut penalty rates to be globally competitive. They are not the only ones. Senator James Paterson, the member for Grey, the member for Mallee and the member for Hasluck have all made comments supporting cuts to penalty rates.

Sadly, the Turnbull government support scrapping penalty rates. They do not support low-paid vulnerable workers keeping their take-home pay. Inequality is at a 75-year high, wages growth is at a historic low and underemployment is at a record low. Inequality needs to be tackled, and only Labor will do that.

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