Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is my great pleasure to rise in support of the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020, this particular package of changes. It is so important. I listened to the member for Griffith's speech just now, and what strikes me is the way that she and all the other Labor MPs speaking on this bill haven't let the detail of what is in the package get in the way of what they're truly about—another good old-fashioned Labor scare campaign. It simply isn't going to work. The fact they have to dust off scare campaigns from previous elections doesn't make it any less so; in fact, it simply shows a lack of imagination on their side of the chamber.

We on this side of the House want to provide an industrial relations system that creates jobs and puts upward pressure on wages. If the member for Griffith spent less time on Twitter and more time talking to everyday Australians, she would know that that is what they want too and that, as we move around our electorates, average Australians know that, after all the support this government has provided to keep them in jobs, to keep jobs going, to support them while they find another job, that is what this government is about too.

After the year we all went through last year, in 2020, with the sacrifices that every Australian made as we tackled COVID, quite rightly there is a feeling out there in Australia—there certainly is in my electorate—that we must not let this opportunity go to waste. We must take this opportunity. Don't get me wrong; I'd wish COVID away if I could. But having had to go through it, having made the sacrifices that so many Australians have made to adapt their businesses, to adapt their families, to be resilient and to overcome, let's not waste that opportunity. Let's channel that resilience, those changes and that need to adapt into meaningful reform going forward that will benefit all Australians and, most importantly, will create secure jobs going forward. Everything in this bill is designed to allow workers and businesses to collaborate better and to deliver more jobs. It is at the centre of everything we do—not politics or political pointscoring, like the Labor MPs on the other side of the chamber do, but wages and jobs for the people we represent.

I have seen, and we have seen it in speech after speech on this bill from the Labor MPs on the other side of the chamber, that Labor are about politics over people. They are about road blocking, not road building. They are about political jibes, to get themselves on TV, over jobs. What they fail to recognise—

Mr Perrett interjecting—

The member for Moreton is interjecting right now about his Facebook page—I'm not sure why that's important to Australians. The point I'm making, Member for Moreton, is just that: if you spent more time off Facebook and spent more time actually reading this legislation, you would find out that what we're trying to do with this legislation is, importantly, to fix Labor's failures. We are fixing the failures in Labor's Fair Work Act, and we're providing some important improvements for working Australians. I just do not understand why they won't support this when, in the same breath, they claim they want to support workers. Clearly their actions don't fit their rhetoric. And not only are we fixing the shortcomings of their Fair Work Act, but we've done it in consultation with industry, with unions, with all stakeholders—that's what good governments do. So, despite all that consultation, it's still surprising that Labor don't support it. I understand why they don't recognise a consultative process when they see it, like we have undertaken.

By defining what it means to be a casual employee and giving eligible casual employees a pathway to permanent full-time and part-time work if they wish, we have provided certainty to both the employee and the employer. And, as we know, certainty is so important for the jobs market. Streamlining the enterprise agreement making will drive wage growth and increase productivity as a result of the increase of agreements. And strengthening the compliance and enforcement framework—I want to come back to this point later as it's very, very important; it's something that this government is particularly focused on, the compliance and enforcement framework—in the Fair Work Act, as this bill does, will protect workers from wage underpayments.

For Labor to continue this farce, that they are for workers and yet oppose this bill, is totally ridiculous. They have lost all touch with Australian workers. They have been calling for tougher penalties for wage theft, they have been calling for a better pathway from casual to permanent work. We consulted with unions, which are at the core of the Labor Party supporter base. And, with the support of the unions, here it is, enshrined in this bill. They have been calling for it, and here it is, but now they will oppose these changes simply on ideological grounds. They are stranded on this ideological island, unable to save themselves from playing politics—even when the bill in front of them achieves things that they claim they fundamentally want.

I want to circle back now, because it's important that Australians understand the consultation that has gone on behind these changes. It is significant. The changes represent hours and hours of extensive consultation with unions, employers and industry. They tackled issues from job growth to underemployment, job security, underpayment of wages and the failure of Labor's enterprise bargaining system to drive wages and productivity growth. The Morrison government said that we wanted to see some good come out of the COVID health and economic crisis, and that we were going to put all these things that I just mentioned on a table populated by the unions and industry groups and we were going to hear everybody out and work with them. A lot of people said it was folly. Labor MPs opposite said it was folly. Yet here we have a collection of improvements that have come out of just that consultation that demonstrate not only how serious we were, not only the opportunity we can now realise out of the COVID crisis, but represent an agreement like we haven't seen before across all of these stakeholders for some time, and we have this opportunity in front of us. We genuinely hoped that 2021 would see the Labor Party adopt a more mature approach to industrial relations than we have seen and that they would recognise this opportunity in front of them and, instead of reaching straight for the old playbook to dust off some scare campaigns from many elections ago, would see and assess these changes on their merits, because they are changes that they have, indeed, called for themselves—to give them their due credit.

I want to come back to the enforcement of laws against wage underpayment, because this bill strengthens these provisions and it's something that this government is particularly passionate about. I want to talk about why the changes in this bill are so important, because this is an issue that Australia has to confront. Don't believe everything that the Labor MPs feed you, Mr Deputy Speaker. As a government, we believe that the job market, and creating jobs, is better when employees and employers work together. But we know that not every employer does the right thing and, when they don't do the right thing, they should be held to account with everything that the legislation and the parliament can muster.

This is why. In the 2019-20 financial year, the Fair Work Ombudsman recovered a record amount of money for underpaid workers: $123 million, to be precise. That was, I might add, five times the amount of money recovered by the agency under Labor's last full year in office. So we have been stronger on this issue than Labor MPs ever were in government, when they talked a heck a lot more about it. The Fair Work Ombudsman issued 952 compliance notices, recovering $7.8 million in unpaid wages. That was a 250 per cent increase on the number of compliance notices issued from the year before. They filed more than double the number of court cases compared to the year before, close to 10 per cent more than during Labor's last full year in office, and they also secured 163 per cent more court ordered penalties compared with Labor's last full year in office. They issued 603 infringement notices, an increase of seven per cent compared with the 2018-19 financial year, and recovered over $56.8 million in back payments for workers from enforceable undertakings issued. That's under this government. That's under the Morrison government, doing more than the Labor government ever did to hold rogue employers to account and to make sure that workers get the entitlements they deserve for the work they have duly done. We are already stronger on it than the Labor government and the Labor MPs ever were.

What we are asking from the Labor members opposite is to go one step further and to allow us to continue to have zero tolerance and to improve the compliance and enforcement when it comes to this. I can't put it any more simply than this: the Morrison government, I and other government MPs, will not stand for the exploitation of workers, and that absolutely includes the underpayment of wages and entitlements by any employer. Our unprecedented action to date simply demonstrates this. The government is continuing to take strong action to protect workers from underpayments, with various reforms to strengthen and enhance the existing compliance and enforcement regime contained in the Fair Work Act changes which we have before us now.

What is worse than blocking these improvements is that the Labor Party actively want to reduce protections for workers by scrapping the ABCC, which has returned millions in unpaid entitlements to thousands of workers since being re-established in 2016. So not only are they failing to support the measures in front of them today, which would allow them to stand up and say to workers—just as we are—that they don't stand for the exploitation of workers, but their policies also demonstrate that they want to go further and they want to be even more detrimental.

I conclude by saying that, as has been very clear from the remarks I've just made, I very strongly support the bill. It improves so much of what was lacking, missing or undercooked in Labor's Fair Work Act. For that reason, it is so important. It will provide more certainty. It will allow us to be tougher when it comes to the exploitation of workers. It will give workers—and employers, for that matter, which is so important—more certainty when it comes to transitioning from casual to permanent part-time or to permanent employment. In that way, as well as promoting more agreements between employees and employers, it's going to create jobs and it's going to secure more jobs, and that's what this government is all about. Australians can be assured that every day we come into this place as a government we're thinking about one thing and one thing alone, and that is them. We know that when it comes to their priorities the No. 1 priority for their families is work so that they can provide opportunities for their families.

I will pick up on one last point from Labor members opposite. I don't accept that flexibility in the workplace is inherently bad. I don't accept it, because flexibility in the workplace means choice for families. Unlike the Labor members opposite, we don't believe in telling people how to run their families. People know the best choices that need to be made for their families, and to make the best choices for their families they need flexibility, choice and options. That's what we're providing in the workplace, to make sure that there are more jobs—that more jobs are created—and that they have certainty when it comes to underpayment and tackling rogue employers. We simply ask for the support of Labor MPs opposite to help us support all Australians, as we do every day.

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