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

You can tell that the government hadn't thought this through when their only defence from the member for Page, who we just heard, or from the Treasurer during question time is to say: 'It must be okay, because we're spending a lot of money. It must be okay, because we're spending all this money, so how could anyone complain?' Well, if you're spending enough money to hurtle us towards a trillion dollars of debt and you're still leaving this many people behind, you're probably not spending a lot of it that smartly, and that's what became clear today, because, when we raised the problem with how they've designed the hiring credit, the arguments that came from the government were just breathtakingly weird.

First of all, let's just remember the order of what happened. When the amendments were first put, the government opposed them in the Senate. Then, when they had to deal with the bill as a whole in its amended form, they voted for it. So yesterday every member of the government, even though the bill wasn't in exactly the form that they'd thought of, was willing to vote yes for this legislation. Overnight, the Prime Minister has decided, 'Well, we can't agree to something that was someone else's idea,' even though most of the items on that list from the previous speaker were suggestions from Labor or previous policies that Labor had that the government abolished and then brought back. Overnight, the Prime Minister decided that the Senate must have made a mistake when they voted for the bill in the amended form and the government had to change its position.

They've ended up wanting to deny something that is obviously true: workers who get a wage subsidy will be preferred over workers who do not. Of course that's going to happen. Of course it's going to happen that workers who get a wage subsidy will receive a preference over those who do not. The concept from the Minister for Industrial Relations is, 'Well, they can just notify a dispute with the Fair Work Commission; that'll fix it.' Do they have any understanding of how the real world of rostering works? This isn't only if people are dismissed; it's also if they have their hours cut. Do they actually think that, in the real world, when someone gets their hours cut because the employer is favouring new people who get the wage subsidy, every worker's going to say, 'Well, I'm not going to stand for that, and I'll notify a dispute with the commission'? Among those who are in unions, some will, but a whole lot, even of those who are in trade unions, will think: 'Look, I'd rather not cause a problem. I don't want to rock the boat. They'll come at me another way.'

If you set the incentives this way, the outcomes will follow. Businesses will act commercially rationally. If you tell them, 'The best thing for your business, the way to reduce your wages bill, is to shift your roster in favour of people who are cheaper,' then they will do it, working against new employees who are over 35 and against anyone who is in the existing workforce. Some of those people themselves will be under 35, but of course they'll be competing with people who get the wage subsidy. This can be fixed. This is fixable. It's not the only problem that the government has with the way it's designed this program, but I'll tell you: it's a big one; it's a really big one.

The people who have been spoken about are real. We heard from the member for Sydney, the shadow minister for education, about the example of Felicity, an admin worker at a university. What chance does she have on the next job when the other people she's competing with all get a wage subsidy and she doesn't, having been deliberately excluded by this government from JobKeeper? Brian, a dnata worker who I had a long conversation with and whose real-life experience I listened to, lives in the seat of Banks, in Lugarno. What did the government have to say in response to his case? They went through a whole lot of other examples and said, 'Oh, well, we're spending a whole lot of money.' These people are real, the damage that is going to be inflicted is real, and as we head into Christmas this government is allowing an attack on job security to occur by the direct design of this legislation.

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