Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications and Cyber Security) Share this | Hansard source

Australians know that we debate this bill, the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020, in uncertain times—Victorians, in particular. We aren't through this pandemic yet and we still have a very long way to go in our economic recovery as we navigate the path ahead. But, at this point, it's worth looking backwards for a moment to those people who have gotten us through the most acute stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, those frontline workers we have relied on as part of this health crisis.

In Victoria, where I myself was locked down for over 100 days with my family, we gained a very firsthand experience of how much we relied on people who weren't able to do their jobs from home during the lockdown but whose presence in the workplace during a health crisis, during a pandemic, was necessary to enable our society to continue to function. Obviously, there are the frontline health workers—doctors, nurses, epidemiologists and GP clinicians who are running respiratory centres in my electorate. But also there are the workers who were involved not in the health response but in the logistics of keeping the society operating—people working in the logistics sector, people working in our supermarkets, people stacking shelves overnight to ensure that people had what they needed to get through the pandemic.

I have spoken to many of these people during this pandemic. It was tough going out into the community, particularly at the height of the second wave in Victoria, concerned for their safety and concerned about what would happen if they became sick. These concerns were particularly acute because many of these retail and hospitality workers, those we relied on the most during the crisis, are in insecure work. They don't have the benefits and they don't have the security that many of us take for granted. We were relying on them, the heroes of this pandemic, at a time where they were confronting incredible insecurity. This bill will see them worse off. It is a sad reality that the government is now using this pandemic as a smokescreen to pass a bill that could reduce the conditions, pay and job security of these workers, these heroes, when they can least afford it.

Labor approached this bill with a fairly simple test. We asked: will it create secure jobs with decent pay? The answer was certainly no in December and the answer, unfortunately, is still no today. While the Attorney-General has removed the most extreme part of this bill, with the suspension of the better off overall test for two years, even without this the bill represents a fundamental attack on the rights of workers that hasn't been seen since John Howard's Work Choices. These are the workers who got us through the COVID-19 pandemic, the heroes of the pandemic. We relied on all of them and we owe them better than the bill before the House today. The Attorney-General has removed the most politically contentious part of this bill, the extreme better off overall test provisions. He said they detracted from the rest of the bill, so he'll remove them and then we can focus on the rest of the bill.

Unfortunately, the rest of the bill is still bad. It still makes jobs more insecure and can still lead to pay cuts. It makes it easier for employers to casualise jobs that could have otherwise been permanent. It makes bargaining for better pay and conditions more difficult than it currently is. It allows for wage cuts, takes rights off blue collar workers on big projects, many of whom are in my electorate, and weakens wage theft punishments in jurisdictions like Victoria that led the way in deeming this most repugnant of acts a criminal offence.

We shouldn't be surprised by this, as shocking as it is, because this government has form on the way that it is engaging with workers over the last 12 months. They've been trying to erode the rights of workers and make things worse for working families in Australia throughout this pandemic. They've already cut penalty rates for many workers in Australia. They had to be dragged by Labor and the Leader of the Opposition to implement the JobKeeper program at the height of the pandemic. Can you imagine where this country would be today if the Prime Minister had stuck with his original insistence that we did not need JobKeeper in the face of a global pandemic? It was similar for JobSeeker at the start of the pandemic, and now they're letting both JobKeeper and JobSeeker fall off a cliff in March.

As a Victorian I can tell you that we're not through COVID, and withdrawing and cutting the rates of JobSeeker and JobKeeper will have significant impacts. The newly pre-selected Liberal candidate for Menzies, in a recent interview—maybe he's more in touch with the community than his colleague who is already in the chamber—noted that the cuts to JobSeeker and JobKeeper would create an extremely challenging period for Victoria going forward. Well, that's a challenging period created by a decision of the government. They don't have to do it. This government has told young people they should mortgage their future by raiding their super if they found themselves struggling during the pandemic. And now they're using the cover of the pandemic to introduce a bill that can cut wages, undermine conditions and create more insecure work.

They haven't seen a workers' conditions and pay package that they don't want to cut. We saw it on full display in question time yesterday. The Prime Minister was asked on three separate occasions whether he would guarantee that no worker would be worse off under this bill. The Prime Minister is a renowned expert in marketing and he knew that he couldn't say the words. He refused to make that guarantee not once but twice. He had a very simple opportunity to say that, regardless of all the political controversy you hear about this bill, no worker will be worse off as a result of this bill. He refused three times. The third time was in response to when we put the question to the Minister for Industrial Relations, and the minister—maybe his marketing savvy isn't as sharp as the Prime Minister's—waded into it. He said:

Members of the opposition and their claims that anyone will be worse off under the government's bill are absolutely 100 per cent wrong.

He didn't read the room there, the Minister for Industrial Relations. So, in the next question, the Labor leader put it to the Prime Minister, saying:

Now that the Minister for Industrial Relations has been prepared to guarantee that the industrial relations legislation will leave no worker worse off, will the Prime Minister give the same guarantee that his legislation will leave no worker worse off?

And, come in spinner, the Prime Minister replies:

I completely reject the assertion that has just been made by the Leader of the Opposition.

It's not often in question time that the fish jumps onto the hook or jumps into the back of the boat, right? The marketing man knew that he couldn't get away with explicitly guaranteeing that no worker would be worse off under this bill, but he also knew that he couldn't allow the assertion that his industrial relations minister had led him into stand, because it's not true.

You really can't believe what many members of the government say about the way that this industrial relations bill works. We've seen it earlier in this debate. Government members can't even seem to understand the way that the casual conversion provisions work in this bill. The member for Dawson, in particular—a lion in his local electorate, a mouse in this chamber—suggested that, just because someone can request to become permanent under this legislation, casuals will automatically become permanent employees, as an absolute right. He was discussing these provisions and he said that the legislation 'will ensure that it is an absolute right for those workers'—that is, to convert to permanent work. He said:

I've heard all these stories that come up. They say, '… It's unenforceable.'

They're presumably stories from people who have read the bill and understand the way it works.

That's nonsense, nonsense and more nonsense.

The member for Dawson went on to say that, if a casual made a request to be converted into a permanent role and that wasn't acceded to by the employer, the worker would 'have the backing of the Fair Work Commission'. You don't. There is no arbitration process; there's no Fair Work involvement in that process. The member for Dawson is completely wrong, and what he is telling his constituents about this bill is completely wrong.

The member for Dawson says that, as a result of this, the boss will have to offer permanent employment to that person. That is just not right. There is no provision for Fair Work Commission arbitration. The only option for a worker confronted with that situation will be to go to the Federal Court. It's just one of those things that you do on every day ending with a Y: get the financial resources together to mount a Federal Court challenge. These are casual workers, remember—workers whose hours and conditions are contingent on their relationship with their employer. They would risk that relationship by mounting costly legal action, apparently, and then they will be able to convert their casual position into a permanent position, if they are able to convince the Federal Court. This is fantasy-land stuff. Government members do not understand the provisions of their own bill.

I also want to make a brief comment on the wage theft provisions in this bill. I've spoken about wage theft in this chamber many times since I was elected in 2013, because I think it is one of the great scandals that have been allowed to emerge in our society in this period. Exploitation, particularly of temporary migrant workers and international students, has become endemic in a range of industries—hospitality, services et cetera—and that does not just have impacts on those workers who are being exploited. I can tell you: I've had many conversations with temporary migrants, and I've heard of the most appalling exploitation you can imagine—not just working at half the pay rate they're entitled to but exploitation of their visa status, the most appalling sexual abuse and the most appalling threats towards their family in their home country. These are vulnerable people being treated in the most reprehensible way. That's why I was extremely pleased when the Andrews Labor government moved to criminalise this, and the Palaszczuk government has taken action as well, because this is literally taking money out of the back pockets of the most vulnerable workers in our community.

This bill purports to create a compliance and enforcement framework for wage theft. It purports to increase penalties for wage underpayments and job ads that advertise below the minimum wage. It prohibits employers from advertising jobs specifying a rate of pay less than the national minimum wage—I see these all the time, particularly in languages other than English, targeting particular communities. Acting on this issue is good, but again you get to the detail about the operation of this, and that is when the catch comes. This bill inserts a definition of 'dishonest' requiring that for wage theft to be criminalised, 'the employer dishonestly engages in a systemic pattern of underpaying one or more employees'. That definition of dishonest is a twofold test:

(a) dishonest according to the standards of ordinary people; and

(b) known by the defendant to be dishonest according to the standards of ordinary people.

You don't have to be a lawyer to know that's going to be a very high bar to meet. Trying to prove that level of intent—although I can tell you, there is plenty of it out there—will be extremely difficult. The Victorian legislation gets this; it only includes that first provision, 'dishonest according to the standards of ordinary people', an objective test. That's where the bar should be, but unfortunately this bill, whilst purporting to act on wage theft, undermines the existing state based wage theft provisions. It's just not good enough.

Labor, on the other hand, is on the side of working Australians and their families. While the government is trying to make it look like they have got a plan that will help workers in Australia, Labor actually has a secure jobs plan released by the Labor leader in recent weeks. An Albanese Labor government is on the side of workers and working families and we want a recovery from COVID-19 built on secure work, better conditions and local jobs. We want a recovery built on job security that means that workers can plan for their future and have confidence to spend their money; a crucial part of the recovery. We want workers to be able to get a loan to buy a house and have their super so they can retire with dignity. Our plan will mean that those currently in insecure work will get better minimum pay and conditions and that workers can't be on a rolling fixed-term contract for years. Our plan will give an objective definition of 'casual', not the unbalanced agreement that this bill provides. While the Morrison government is focused on cutting workers' pay and conditions, undermining job security, Labor is focused on delivering good, secure jobs for the reconstruction after COVID-19.

See this speech in context