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

These amendments must be supported because they will stop people getting sacked and they will stop people losing hours of work. The Greens moved these amendments together with Labor and they were supported by a majority of the Senate. We had to do it, because the government bowled up a very thin bill that contained absolutely no protections for workers in this country. That's because the government fundamentally doesn't understand how government intervention can create jobs. The government should be using their purse strings to directly invest in job-creating, nation-building projects in this country. But they're not. Their mentality is 'we'll write blank cheques for big corporations and hope that some of it trickles down'. The Greens know that that doesn't work.

When the government comes along and says, 'Nonetheless, we are going to insist on our plan to just give billions of dollars to corporations and hope for the best,' then we are entitled to say, 'Where are the protections to ensure that this just doesn't make insecure work even worse?' The government's bill, unamended, would allow an employer to sack someone who's got a decent wage and decent hours of work and then put on two people at the minimum wage in low-hours jobs. That is not good for anyone. It is not good for the people who get sacked, it is not good for the people who might have their hours of work reduced and it is not good for the young people who will then be thrown into a world of insecure work.

This protection does no more than what the Prime Minister said on radio was already prohibited by the bill. So if the government agrees with what the Prime Minister has been saying publicly—namely, that you can't sack someone or reduce their hours of work to take advantage of this credit—then they should support this amendment that the Greens moved in the Senate. It is really, really simple.

The Greens tried to fix the bill in the Senate in a number of other ways. We tried to stop money being given over to corporations that engage in wage theft; unfortunately, that wasn't successful. We tried to stop billions of dollars being given to corporations that are profitable and paying dividends, because the Greens believe that public money shouldn't be going to companies that are already profitable to part-pay some of their wages bill. What is the case for that? If a company is paying dividends, why should the public be asked to then assist in paying its wages bill? We weren't successful on that. But we were successful, as the Leader of the Opposition has said, in getting a whole range of people from across the political spectrum to support a really straightforward amendment to enshrine a really basic protection in this bill. Let's just be really clear about the amendment that we're voting on and what it does: it says that an employer cannot cut an existing employee's hours of work and it cannot sack someone who's already got a job in order to put someone on to take advantage of this credit.

That should be completely unobjectionable. What is astounding is that the government didn't even bother to get up and speak to explain why the amendments were wrong. The government cannot find any fault with these amendments. It is going to rely on the brute force of numbers to try to stare the Senate down. I say to the government: we've got a lot of concerns with this bill because in many respects it is just corporate welfare dressed up as job creation, but, when you have a majority of the Senate across the political spectrum standing united to say the path to job creation is not to sack other workers first so you can take advantage of a government subsidy, the government should listen. If the government here can't even be bothered to offer one speech in defence of its unamended bill, then it should accept the amendment. The Greens were very proud to move this amendment to enshrine some minimal protection in what was an otherwise weak bill, but the fact that it has been supported across the political spectrum should send a very clear message to the government.

If the government can't even be bothered to get up and defend its unamended bill, then it should accept this amendment. It should here, today, allow this amendment to be incorporated into the bill to enshrine at least some minimal protection to people who may, as a result of the government's negligence, stand to lose their jobs.

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