Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This coronavirus has exposed many of the fault lines in our society and shown us how, going into the crisis, we were in many respects far too unequal as a society. We've found that many people are in so much debt and without any savings or buffer that they are only a week or two of job payments away from real distress and the poverty line. We have discovered that so many people in this country don't have a roof over their head and, again, are in so much rental stress that if something happens to their job then they risk being turfed out onto the streets in the middle of a pandemic. And as the health restrictions have been imposed, rightly, to make sure that we all stay safe and that this terrible virus takes as few lives as it possibly can, we've also found that the burden of dealing with the crisis has not fallen fairly across society. Young people have lost their jobs at record high rates. Going into this crisis about three in 10 young people either didn't have a job or didn't have enough hours at work. That number rocked up to nearly four in 10 within the first month or so. Not only that, we're seeing that more women are losing work than men are and that the industries that are hardest hit are the ones where young people and women work in greater numbers. They are the industries that are going to take a long time to get back on their feet, because we may, certainly in Victoria, be dealing with these social-distancing restrictions for some time.

That's why in this time of crisis we need government to step in to ensure that no-one is left behind. That has been the Greens mantra from day one. Others have picked it up since, which we welcome, but the Greens mantra from day one has been 'no-one left behind'. However, the government, in its response, has chosen to leave people behind, which is turning up the dial on inequality in our society and widening, rather than seeking to close, the cracks that were there at the start of the crisis.

When the crisis started to hit, the Greens were the first party in parliament to call for some form of wage and job guarantee. We made it very clear that the government's initial response—shovelling billions out of the door to help business—was only part of the response. If money was going to business without any guarantee that people were going to stay on in work then we were going to see massively high levels of unemployment, and that's what we saw with those terrible dole queues snaking around the corner, including in my electorate at Abbotsford at a Centrelink office that the Minister for Government Services tried to close in the middle of the pandemic while there were those massive, massive queues of people waiting for assistance.

When the government decided to adopt a wage guarantee we were supportive of it, because we were the first ones to call for it, but it left a lot of people out and a lot of people behind, and we are continuing to deal with the fallout from that. In a world of insecure work that this government has allowed to run rife, so many casual workers were cut out. Over a million casual workers were cut out unfairly by this government. They have been forced to go without JobKeeper, which is such a lifeline for so many people.

In sectors like the arts and the creative industries, where people might not be engaged in full-time, continuous employment in the way that government thinks is the norm, so many of those people might work from project to project. They missed out because they weren't employed on the magic date of 1 March.

We have now seen childcare workers have the subsidy pulled out from under them even as the crisis continues, especially here in Victoria. They don't get JobKeeper anymore.

We have seen so many temporary visa holders who are in real distress because they have very little support to fall back on. The government is happy to take their taxes when times are good, and then it turns its back on these temporary visa holders when times are bad. All of these areas have been doing it tough under the government.

Say nothing of universities. The government say they are concerned about jobs, jobs, jobs. They are overseeing tens of thousands of job losses in the university sector. In the time of a pandemic, what the government should be doing is making sure that employers who are dependent on the public sector are keeping their staff, not shedding them. Instead the government is deliberately adding to the unemployment figures by overseeing mass carnage in our university sector.

The government come with this bill to extend some elements of JobKeeper, but, of course, not only do they fail to close the gaps that they've created, not only are they going to continue to leave many, many people behind, but they come here with a sting in the tail as well—a surprise package in this bill. There is a very welcome extension of JobKeeper. Again, the Greens were the first ones to call for these wage guarantees. We have said that they should continue at their current rates for as long as they are needed, so we welcome the support and the extension of those payments. It is going to be a huge lifeline to millions of workers and many businesses across the country. So we support the continuation. But this government can't help itself. For the government, the approach seems to be 'never let a crisis go to waste', because they come in here with a surprise package built into this bill that is going to hurt many, many workers.

The government, under this bill, wants to create a new category of employees. These are the employees of a business that is doing so well that they can no longer get JobKeeper, but, apparently, according to the government, the business is doing so poorly that the employer can now turn around and cut their pay. In other words, under this bill there will be a category of businesses that, on the one hand, the government thinks are doing so well that they don't need to give JobKeeper to their employees but, on the other hand, are apparently doing so badly that they can cut their employees' pay. This is critical. Those employees then won't be able to get JobKeeper. In other words, in the middle of a pandemic, the government wants to allow some employers to cut their workers' pay without those workers then being able to get JobKeeper. That is an appalling and cynical move by a government that is showing its true colours day by day.

The government got dragged into having to give the important wage and job guarantee in the form of JobKeeper. Now it is using the extension of this vital measure as an excuse to attack working people. In many respects, it is a form of corporate welfare that workers are being asked to pay for in the middle of a pandemic. Big corporations are now being told, 'You can cut your workers' pay and they will effectively help nurse you back to profitability.' No, it shouldn't be up to workers, in the middle of a pandemic, who have their pay cut. And it is not going to be a pay cut of just up to 40 per cent. The employers, under this provision, can cut workers' hours by 40 per cent. But, if those hours happen to be hours working late at night or on weekends, where you might be earning penalty rates, your pay could be cut by much, much more than 40 per cent. Make no mistake, on the one hand the government is saying, 'Look, we are extending this JobKeeper payment,' which is very welcome, but on the other hand they are saying, 'Your employer can now cut your hours of work by up to 40 per cent, cut your pay by more than 40 per cent and you won't get JobKeeper.' There is absolutely no justification for that. The Greens will be opposing that. The Greens support the amendments that have been moved by the opposition here to excise those provisions from the bill. We announced yesterday that we would be moving those same amendments in the Senate. Those provisions have no part in this bill. We don't need to extend these emergency industrial relations powers that are allowing businesses to change work to people who don't get JobKeeper. We don't need to do that in order to pass this bill. We can pass the extension of the JobKeeper payment and even pass the extension of the emergency IR powers for the people who continue to get JobKeeper payment, but we must not create this new category of people in this country who can have their pay cut by over 40 per cent in the middle of a pandemic and then not be able to get JobKeeper. We will support the amendments to remove those objectionable provisions from the bill. We will move them in the Senate.

We should also use this opportunity to ditch the austerity agenda that Liberal and, sadly, Labor have been pushing, with respect to people who are earning JobKeeper and who previously earnt less than $1,500 a week. There were many people who were under employed in insecure work in this country. They were working low hours per week, not by choice, but because a shift here and a shift there was all that was available to them. When JobKeeper came in at $1,500, many of these people who were stuck in insecure work and stuck in low-hours work were, for the first time, getting something close to a living wage. It's the weekly minimum wage, so they're not exactly living high on the hog. They're getting something close to a living wage—that is, the adult weekly minimum wage. Then Labor came along and, astoundingly, spent the last few months saying this was a wasteful spend and that it was adding to debt. For goodness sake! They're worried about adding to debt because we're supporting low-paid workers in the middle of a pandemic—what a ridiculous proposition.

Labor spent months goading the government into trying to cut payments for people who previously earnt less than $1,500, and the government, unsurprisingly, has agreed. The government now wants to introduce a two-tiered system, which I presume will also have Labor's backing, where people who are working less than 20 hours a week are now going to get their payments cut in the middle of a pandemic. I can tell you something about the people who are going to get their payments cut: they are twice as likely to be women. They're the people who work less than 20 hours a week. As I said, many of these people have been stuck suffering in insecure work. They're not necessarily working these hours because they want to—of course it works for some people, but not for everyone. Many of these people are underemployed and stuck in insecure work. We should not be cutting people's income in the middle of a pandemic, certainly not the people who are on low hours and low pay on insecure work. We should use this as an opportunity to ditch the idea that there should be a two-tiered system.

I'm glad that Labor has started to walk back on some of its calls for cuts. I hope it now extends that to this ridiculous idea that we should cut the payments for people who were previously earning less than $1,500 a fortnight. That $1,500, for people in the middle of a pandemic—especially as the restrictions get extended in Victoria and especially for such a visitor-centred economy like ours, where so many people work in the hospitality and arts and creative sectors with low-hour jobs from time to time. It is going to take us a while to get back on our feet in Melbourne. It is going to take us a long while. The social distancing restrictions that are going to stay in place may make some of those previous businesses unviable for the foreseeable future. We've got to work out how to deal with that, but the one thing that we do know, as we're suffering through that, is that people who were on low hours and in insecure work going into this pandemic should not have their payments cut. I hope that Labor reverses its position on that so that we can get the government to change their mind on that as well.

There are some good amendments coming from the opposition to get rid of the legacy employer concept. Given that I'm not physically in the chamber due to the coronavirus restrictions here in Victoria, I want to place on the record that I will be supporting Labor's amendments when there are divisions. They are good amendments, but it's time now to say, 'Let's not cut anyone's payment.' We need to keep JobKeeper where it is. Not only do we need to extend it—and I welcome the move to extend it—but we need to keep it where it is for so long as it is needed. We need to make sure that people who were previously earning less than $1,500 don't have their payments cut, and we need to extend JobKeeper to all of those groups, as I said at the start, who have been left behind by the government in this pandemic, because what we are seeing day by day is that it is taking longer than expected to respond to this crisis. People across the country, but especially in Melbourne and Victoria, are suffering. We need continued government support, at least at the level that it was, extended to everyone who needs it. Now is the time to give support and come up with a proper recovery plan that is going to get us to full employment on the other side—not cut, cut, cut. We can't cut our way out of this crisis. If we try and cut our way out of the crisis then people are going to suffer and the economic recovery is going to take even longer than it otherwise would. So support the extension, but please, Labor and Liberal, don't cut people's payments in the middle of a pandemic.

See this speech in context