Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

If there's one thing that has become clear during the pandemic it's what insecure work means for people. The first people to be joining the Centrelink queues were people who did not have permanent employment. The first group to discover that they were ineligible for JobKeeper were a million casuals. For a long time in Australia, the situation for casual workers has been getting tougher and tougher and their numbers have been growing. We now have, throughout Australia, across all the different definitions, three million people who don't have leave attached to their employment, and 2½ million of those are in employment relationships and are employed as casuals—2½ million Australian workers.

The Rossato decision that came down a few weeks ago, which the government tried to prevent—the government had joined the case and had argued against the decision that the court ultimately took—was a really significant win for casuals. It did not give rise to some of the fear campaigns that had been put out there. It did not say that every casual suddenly is entitled to leave entitlements. What it did say is: where there is a 'firm advance commitment', then what you have is a permanent worker—when you have a 'firm advance commitment'.

Let's have a think about what has become all too common in the Queensland coal industry for a whole lot of coalminers and, in particular, what were the circumstances of this worker, Mr Rossato. Here you've got somebody who is working a full-time roster, who doesn't just happen to have turned out to have full-time hours week by week but was given a full-time roster 12 months in advance, a complete commitment that he would be working full-time. He was working side by side with people who had the benefits of full-time employment, but he was employed doing the same job on the same full-time basis by a labour hire company. So what was happening for Mr Rossato? He gets told, 'Well, because you're employed by a labour hire company, you've got a lower base rate than the people working beside you doing the same job. But we'll claim that you're a casual, so you're not going to accumulate any leave, even though even after the casual loading's added on, because you're on a lower base rate, you're being paid less than the people you're working beside.' Those were the circumstances of this case. So, for people who've said, 'Oh, but they were being paid the casual loading,' the casual worker was earning less each hour than the full-time worker doing the exact same job beside them.

The government never should have been involved opposing this decision. The government never should have been arguing against the rights of someone who was being given full-time hours at less than the ordinary full-time rate for the workers he was working side by side with, yet they wanted to deny him all leave times entitlements.

Employers should not be allowed to double dip. They should not be allowed to take all the benefits that come with having a permanent workforce, and think they get those benefits and they, in return, can offer none of the obligations that you would owe to a full-time employee. Employers should not be able to double dip—taking all those benefits and providing none of the obligations. What we had with Mr Rossato was somebody who effectively was being paid a little bit above the award but a whole lot less than his fellow workers. And then they say, 'Oh, but he was a casual because we defined him as a casual.' No; the definition of a casual is how you are rostered. The definition of a casual is whether or not you are given a 'firm advance commitment' and it falls above those part-time minimum hours. He had a full-time job. It was a complete rort for him to be defined as a casual. Out of this crisis we've got to be in a situation where we realise people who are going to work every day on permanent rosters deserve security, because those who weren't given security were left behind, not only in their employment but by the JobKeeper package and the benefits that the government then cut them out of.

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