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

I move amendment (12) as circulated in my name:

(12) Schedule 2, item 22, page 13 (after line 30), after paragraph 789GJA(1)(c), insert:

(ca) the jobkeeper enabling stand down direction will not result in the amount payable to the employee in relation to the performance of work for the employer for a jobkeeper fortnight that is within the jobkeeper enabling stand down period that is less than the amount that would be payable to the employee if the employer were entitled to a jobkeeper payment for the employee for the fortnight; and

I want to draw to the attention of members of the House that this is the amendment that puts in place a safety net so that we don't end up with a situation where we end up paying people more for not working than for working and where, for an employee, the result of the business that they work for doing better and recovering is that their take-home pay goes down. As I said in my speech earlier today, we suspect this anomaly has not been put there deliberately, and we're constructively putting forward one of the ways that this can be fixed

Effectively, what we're saying here is that—while, as was reflected in the previous amendments, our position is that we don't think the case has been made for the legacy companies at all—this is the specific instance where somebody who starts on a modest income would find themselves, without mutual agreement, potentially having their hours cut by 40 per cent. If you do those calculations for someone on average weekly earnings or on a higher income, you'll end up well above the JobKeeper rate, but, if you do those calculations for someone who's on a lower award rate—a hospitality worker or a retail worker—you'll end up with a situation where their hours can be cut to lower than the JobKeeper rate.

To give some quick examples of the numbers and what we're talking about—and bear in mind we're talking about people on very modest incomes—a full-time retail employee on the minimum award earns $813.60 a week, and a 40 per cent cut to their hours, without the safety net, would mean they could lose $325 a week. That takes them lower than the current JobKeeper rate and even lower than the new, lower JobKeeper rate—in fact, $111 lower every week than what they would be getting if their company were more distressed. So we end up with a circumstance where, as the company does better, the worker potentially goes backwards to the tune of more than $100. A full-time cleaner, on an award just slightly lower than for retail, earns $804.90, and a 40 per cent cut to their hours could mean they lose $330.70. This means they could earn $125 a week less than what will be the new JobKeeper rate.

I accept that in the course of where we are right now—this having been raised for the first time with the government this morning and the legislation having been presented to us for the first time at the beginning of the week—we're not going to be in a situation today where the government's going to vote for the amendment. I get that. What I'm saying is that after this division, before this gets to the Senate, there is time to fix it, and we should fix it. We should not have a circumstance where, as a company improves, we have allowed, for people on the lowest wages, for their personal circumstances to go backwards.

The examples that I've given presume that someone only works Monday to Friday. If, for example, as a retail worker you're on a Wednesday-to-Sunday roster, and the Saturday and Sunday are the days that you lose, because what's allowed is a 40 per cent cut in hours, that could amount to a cut of almost 50 per cent in your pay, again taking you down to more than $100 lower than the new JobKeeper rate.

There's a really simple principle that this safety net would protect, and the principle is this: if the company that you work for is doing better, you should be doing better with it. You should not be in a circumstance where somebody who's in a distressed company receiving the JobKeeper rate, who's not turning up to work at all, will get more than a person in a company that's improving who's been subjected to these new industrial relations rules, which have been put in without a safety net. So I simply urge those in the government to fix this. We are not presuming malice with this, but we are saying you've got to fix it. You really have to fix this, because we aren't just talking about how some people will take a hit; we're talking about how the people who will take the biggest hit and will fall most behind are the people who are already on the most modest incomes. The bizarre nature of that—

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