Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I don't think anyone in this chamber doubts that support for younger people who are out of work is an absolute necessity at this time. A wage subsidy is a concept that we have welcomed. In fact, I think it was our idea! We know the government had no intention of doing any wage subsidy a few months ago and were prepared to push through the consequences of needing to close the borders and close down businesses in order to put health first. They were prepared to push through and rely solely on unemployment benefits—in fact, by increasing JobSeeker when they did they sent a strong signal to employers to lay off staff—and they saw delivering assistance through Centrelink as the sole support that would be needed. That was until they saw the queues, of course, which reflected the consequences we were facing. Those queues exposed the assumption that the Morrison government had made, that there would be a short, sharp recession and then a snap back, remember that?

So we were the ones who'd seen the signs of recession. We'd learnt from history. In fact, the Rudd government was the most effective in the world at beating the global financial crisis and sparing Australia from recession. We knew what that involved. We urged the government to move faster and do more. I would still be urging the government to do more than it is in this piece of legislation, the detail of which is still quite thin.

The contrast between the government's attempts to support the economy and the approach that the Rudd government took was stark. When we were in government, trying to pass legislation to prevent Australia going into recession, they called on votes, for hours, against every measure that we proposed, and that urgent GFC stimulus package didn't get through till three in the morning.

Their attitude, of making it all about political point-scoring, is not one that we have chosen to copy, because we're different from them—fundamentally different—and we do care about Australians and their jobs, not just our own jobs. We know what the priorities need to be, and we take that attitude into this debate on this legislation. But we won't just wave it through without trying to make it better—better to meet the needs of businesses and better to meet the needs of those who so desperately need a job and need to see jobs being created. So we will highlight the concerns and the questions that we have.

I think one of the fundamental questions is why 928,000 unemployed people over 35 have been deliberately excluded from any new hiring subsidy. If the Prime Minister were serious about kickstarting the economy that he closed down, he wouldn't exclude them. There would be a genuine job creation plan that targets the needs of all the different workers who are impacted. You tell me why a travel agent who's not going to be able to keep their workers on—well, if they've been able to keep them on till now, they're doing an incredible job—and those workers, and all those employers who would really love to keep those workers on, aren't being given the incentives that they need to do it, with JobKeeper being scaled back so hard.

Those opposite seem to think they've ticked the box on older workers, with their 2014 program, and that program, the Restart wage subsidy program, can really only be defined as a failure. The program has not resulted in significant numbers of older workers getting back to work. It's undersubscribed, and the government has spent less than half of what it planned on the program, which doesn't effectively help people into employment. Forty per cent of the workers under the program were without work within three months. That is far from long-term, sustainable jobs being created. We don't want to see the same flaws in the hiring credit program, and it's really important that the new wage subsidy scheme is better designed, better implemented and better monitored than JobKeeper, Youth Jobs PaTH, Restart or many of the other programs.

Let's talk specifically about how this will help young people—and I should point out that the government's track record on helping young people into education and employment is not a fantastic one. The hiring credit doesn't make up for the damage that's been done to them over the last seven years, with the cuts to TAFE and universities; the cuts to penalty rates; the exclusion of casuals—predominantly young people and women—from JobKeeper; and the damage done by early access to super, really hurting young people's super for the future.

I want to talk about the eligibility criteria, because, if you're an employer and you want to use this scheme, you have to employ someone who's already on social security. But there's no requirement for that employment to be secure or long-term or permanent. So there is a potential for contrived arrangements to be made, and we are concerned about that. Fundamentally, one of my concerns is around the way this may encourage insecure work, with people who have permanent full-time work and possibly older workers laid off and two other, younger, workers put on for only 20 hours a week, which is the minimum required. That is really just encouraging more casual and part-time work, and this pandemic has shown us what the flaws are in relying heavily on a casualised workforce. So I think workers need assurances. Older workers need assurances that they won't be sacked so that they can be replaced by two younger workers.

There are no new reporting requirements in this legislation to prevent wage theft. We need to see how that will happen and what the checks and balances will be. We also need to make sure this isn't a two-year blank cheque for an undefined employment and workforce program under this legislation. We don't want to see a repeat of the sorts of things we saw with sports rorts. When I look at this from a small business perspective—and I've been in small business for 25 years—I worry about the requirements. As a small business, you have to be off JobKeeper before you can access this subsidy. I've got a lot of businesses in my electorate, in the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury, who are worried about the cut-off of JobKeeper. They've been surviving, but they really worry about what will happen to their cash flow when they come off JobKeeper. To then be told that the only way they can access any extra support is once that happens is going to put some stumbling blocks in people's way. We really want to understand better how that will play out.

The other key concern is: if a business has been reliant on JobKeeper, how ready are they going to be to invest in new staff, with the extra costs, time and energy that takes, and how much of an incentive will this be? We really need to be able to explore those ideas. While the government said it was absolutely urgent that this be passed through today, it is good that the Senate will not be meeting until November and that we will have time to explore these issues in a little bit more detail.

This bill, which was so urgently required, does demand more scrutiny. That's what we should be doing in this place. We don't really have the opportunity to do that in a lot of detail, not having had access to many details of the program, but I look forward to the Senate being able to do that. Quite frankly, I don't trust the government to do the right thing. There's nothing that leads me to think that those opposite will make this a perfect scheme. I hope that they will listen to input from our side, from unions and, importantly, from businesses, particularly small businesses, about how to make this work. I look forward to hearing discussions and debate on those matters.

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