Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Laws Amendment (Proper Use of Worker Benefits) Bill 2019. It is yet another Orwellian nomenclature from the ministry of truth opposite—unbelievable! This isn't legislation; this is 'wedgislation'. I mean, fair dinkum, we've dealt with this before, yet here it is back again. What do we have? We have a government focused on union bashing—that's their favourite pastime—rather than actually looking after the national economy and the best interests of the nation. Those opposite don't care about the terrible conditions that employees have to put up with. No, they're trying to wrap the representatives of working Australians in red tape so that they can't actually do their job.

What do unions actually do? They go out and fight for better pay. They fight for better conditions, they fight for safer work places and they fight so that everyday Australians have a secure job. We see from the government opposite and the legislation that they bring forward—the 'wedgislation' they bring forward—that they don't care whether worksites are safe. This bill is not going to make any worker safer, and it's not going to give workers better pay or any better conditions. This bill is just going to make it harder for unions to do their job by putting new restrictions around worker entitlement funds and the financial management of unions.

This is a political strategy, not a plan to protect workers, and I say this having worked for a union in the past and having been a proud member of two unions. In fact, I will do a call out to the Independent Education Union that I used to work for, which had its 100th birthday on Friday night. It was great to go along and join Terry Burke, Brad Hayes and all those people connected with that union, a union for private schools. I don't think there were any Liberal MPs at that function for some reason. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's their obsession with making things difficult for unions.

This bill will effectively shut down worker-run funds, while allowing employers to set up and run their own funds. It will create an unfair playing field, with one set of rules for workers and another for corporations. The measures in this bill far exceed the rules that apply to corporations, and it's not like we haven't seen unscrupulous corporations ripping off workers. For those opposite, who seem to be asleep at the wheel, I remind them of 7-Eleven—it wasn't back in the dark ages; it was just a few years ago—Domino's pizza and Michael Hill Jewellers; the list goes on. Meanwhile what is happening opposite? We have tumbleweeds blowing in front of us, with a deafening silence coming out of those opposite.

The government's not worried about the employers or the impact their behaviour has on the employee—the lives they can wreck and damage. They are only fixated on unions. If a business earns interest off workers' entitlement money, they pocket that and the government says, 'No problem; that's fine.' But if workers want to have a say in how that money is spent then all of a sudden we get all these new regulations and restrictions. Worker entitlement funds are there to ensure workers' entitlements are protected. They're used to provide important services to workers, such as training, counselling support, suicide prevention and the funding of OH&S officers. Commissioner Dyson Heydon during the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption conceded that training funds provide a public good. Commissioner Heydon made that clear. Even the royal commission, which was just a political witch-hunt, basically, did not recommend restrictions this onerous.

This bill does nothing to protect hardworking Australians, but it gives more power to the Registered Organisations Commission. Remember, the ROC was the body discredited over its role in the AWU raids scandal. It was an absolute joke that such a body could be so politicised and yet still be operating under this Attorney-General's watch. The ROC should be abolished, not made even more powerful. This bill is just a continuation of the Morrison government's obsession with unions, and that obsession knows no bounds. It's a disgrace that this government just does not actually care about workers.

The Australian Labor Party, with its long history of standing up for workers and of working with the union movement with collective groups to make sure we look after workers, took to the election a suite of policies to protect workers and make sure building companies cannot avoid their obligations to employees, to government, to home owners and to honest businesses. I have a particular interest in this, with three brothers working in the building sector. What did those policies include? The tradie pay guarantee: a requirement for large Commonwealth construction projects that would ensure that if tradies do the work on time they get paid on time so they're not carrying that debt; a $7 million tradie litigation fund, to give the Australian Securities and Investments Commission the ability to run more difficult court cases without draining the corporate watchdog's resources; and a director identification number so that all company directors would be required to obtain a unique director identification number with a 100-point identification check, as well as increased penalties associated with phoenix-like activity. And there is name and shame, that would allow the Commissioner of Taxation to name individuals and entities as a penalty for the most serious tax offences.

They are policies that would make a real difference to working Australians, and I would ask the Morrison government to embrace them. Here they are, in their seventh year in office; they've had all that time to turn the economy around, to fight for workers and to ease the cost of living and what have they done? What's their legacy? So far, we've got economic growth at the lowest level since the global financial crisis; we've got household living standards declining under the Liberals, with real household median income lower than it was in 2013 when they came to office; and wages are growing at one-sixth the pace of profits, with the government presiding over the worst wages growth on record. What a legacy! We have 1.8 million Australians looking for work, or looking for more work; household debt has surged to record levels, increasing by $650 billion under the Liberals to 190 per cent of disposable income; business investment is down 20 per cent since the Liberals came to office and is now at its lowest level since the 1990s recession; and consumer confidence is down over the year and consumption growth is weak. Productivity, one of the greatest measures of what the economy is actually doing, is declining. Australia became one of the two fastest-growing economies in the OECD under Labor and the eighth fastest when the government changed hands in 2013. But what's the record now? We've dropped to 20th. Gross debt has risen to over half a trillion dollars, with net debt more than doubling under the Liberals.

This piece of legislation—or 'wedgislation'—is just an attempt to distract from their long list of failures. Labor actually has a positive plan to stop dodgy bosses ripping off subbies, workers and taxpayers—policies that would make a real difference. In contrast, the coalition took tax cuts to the election—and that was it. And now we've seen that since they brought in their tax cuts Australian retail turnover fell by 0.1 per cent in July. And who was the hardest hit? The poor old cafes, restaurants and takeaway services—they fell 0.6 per cent. The tax cuts certainly weren't the panacea that the government expected. Consumer confidence is weak and Australians, who are already worried about their wages and job security, are cutting back on spending. And what's the government's response? They have no response. They have no economic plan. They've just got some political wedge tactics—not anything that will actually increase or boost wages or create jobs and increase consumer confidence.

So rather than creating a positive plan to get the economy going again, the government brings on another attack on the good old whipping boy, the union movement—the mighty union movement that only does good things for working Australians. Shame on this Morrison government! Trade unions have such a proud history in Australia. Workers rely on the union movement, even if they're not a member and paying actual union fees. All Australian workers deserve to earn a fair day's pay for a fair day's work and at the end of the day return home safely to their families. It would be a very different working environment if trade unions did not exist.

Let me give a list of all the things spontaneously provided to workers by employers. That's it; nothing! If it weren't for unions we actually wouldn't have these things: annual leave; industrial awards that underpin pay, terms and conditions of employment for millions of workers; penalty rates, although they're also under threat from this Morrison government; maternity leave; superannuation; equal pay for women; health and safety and workers compensation; sick leave; long service leave; redundancy pay; allowances for things such as uniforms; meal breaks and rest breaks—workers once had to get through the whole day without a break; collective bargaining; and unfair dismissal protection, and that's just the beginning of the list.

If ever there was a time when workers needed fearless union representation it is now, and I say that particularly for the construction industry. There has been significant slowing in the annual rate of growth in average weekly earnings for adult men working full time in the construction industry between November 2013 and November 2018. For all employees in construction during that period, there was annual average growth in average weekly earnings of 0.8 per cent, considerably below the annual average growth of 4.7 per cent achieved between November 2008 and November 2013.

But the growth in average weekly earnings is only one measure to gauge how crook the economy is. As I said, arguably, the best measure of wage growth by industry is the wage price index. Using this measure, the average annual growth in wages in the five years to December 2018 was more subdued in male dominated industries such as mining and construction. The growth in those industries was 1.6 per cent and 1.9 per cent, respectively. The all-industry average growth was 2.2 per cent. What is most telling is that in the previous five years, from December 2007 to December 2013, the average annual growth in mining and construction was four per cent and 3.5 per cent, respectively. So it's absolutely clear that wages in those industries are stagnating.

On top of stagnating wages, on the Morrison government's watch we've got dodgy building firms deliberately avoiding paying workers. We have spoken about phoenixing on many occasions. It is the practice where dodgy directors deliberately burn companies in an attempt to avoid their obligations to the employees, to government, to homeowners and to honest businesses who work with them. Phoenix activity not only hurts hardworking Australians, their families and their communities but costs the economy billions of dollars. One estimate is that it costs the Australian economy in excess of $5 billion per year, more than $200 for every Australian, but the Morrison government is doing nothing to stop these dodgy companies from ripping off hardworking Australians. Instead, it attacks the very organisations that do stand up for workers and their families.

It's clear that the Liberals are driven by a hatred of unions to the point where their blinders impact their ability to see clearly. They only exist to attack unions. Unions make sure work sites are safe for workers. Union officials need to be able to enter work sites to carry out inspections. The very lives of workers depend on union officials being granted access to work sites. I've mentioned many times the lives that have been saved by preventing people from accessing asbestos laden material. Surely no-one would argue that shutting down an unsafe work site until it can be made safe is not a life-saving function of the union movement.

Is the Prime Minister tightening up the laws and penalties against this despicable behaviour by dodgy builders that endangers the lives of working Australians? No. Is the Prime Minister tightening up the laws around corporations who rip off workers' entitlements? No. The only industrial relations laws the Morrison government has brought into parliament are focused on attacking unions, and the government should be attacked for so doing.

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