Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed. The fact is that the labour market is changing. We've seen significant changes. We've seen the misuse of labour hire, where you have labour hire workers standing next to direct employees and being paid up to $200 a week less but still doing the same work. We've seen the abuse of casualisation, where people are working on permanent rosters year in, year out yet not given any sense of permanency at work. They're not provided any security of employment. That is unfair. We're seeing sham contracting arrangements, where workers are deemed to be businesses so they don't have to pay them the minimum wage. They actually pay them $7 or $8 an hour to deliver food from one outlet to a consumer. This sort of behaviour, this problem that's besetting the labour market, is not being attended to by this government. They can continue to boast about wage increases, but the reality is they're not happening and more needs to be done to help workers in this country. (Time expired)

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