Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020—and, gee, for the gazillionth time we find ourselves arguing about industrial relations! It's hard to come up with a new angle. We were hoping that in the midst of COVID there would be a new angle from this opposition, which would be a focus predominantly on job creation and total hours worked. We saw 436 million hours worked in January this year, up by about five per cent on the previous month. The first priority, of course, is more hours worked in the economy and, secondly, that those hours are fairly spread throughout those working-age Australians. Obviously, if we could distribute working hours perfectly then we wouldn't have any unemployment. We know that's not possible, technically, but to make those hours available means flexibility in the system.

That's something I guess we've always argued about. It's not that there are ogres on that side or greedy people on this side; fundamentally, it's about how much you believe in flexibility and maximising the number of working hours available to an economy. What we recognise is that the clear and present threat right now is that employers don't feel comfortable with the Fair Work Act as drafted by Labor to create as many working hours as they otherwise would. There is no counterfactual, of course—no-one knows what happens if there is no Fair Work Act or how many bosses would change their behaviour—but if we think about it as a bell distribution there'll always be both employers and employees at the tails who don't bargain or barter in good faith. We absolutely accept those criticisms from the other side that, in many cases, the power imbalance means that it's the employee that we must protect most first.

But this legislation says that we can take an even-handed approach to both. It's been consulted incredibly broadly by the Attorney-General. I don't think there has ever been coalition legislation in this area which has been more carefully and assiduously shown to the Labor Party and unions, allowing them to have a say. Let's also not forget one very important point while we're all here: the outrageous attack by overfed and overpaid union lawyers on the principle of casual work, implying that no definition existed, without recognising that it was Labor legislation that failed to do it.

This attack on WorkPac, a completely honest and law-abiding company in this country—putting before them up to $2 million in legal fees just for them to fight the good fight and convince Australia that we do need casual workers—is a real shame which the Labor Party will have to carry on their shoulders. That union attack was the most deconstructive way of solving the problem. The problem here was just to define casual workers in a way that was noncontroversial. We could have done that, but Labor and the unions elected not to. That attack, that legal boondoggle, inflicted on an honest Australian company was a great disappointment. I'm so happy that the Commonwealth agreed to join with WorkPac as a related party in this matter. The end result was this amendment. It accepts that there will always be full-time and permanent work, part-time work and casual work. And now we're seeing platform work, which we debated just an hour ago.

It's remarkable: again, just like clockwork, in came Labor, trying to regulate the platform economy when they know that simply can't be done without throwing so much grit in the wheels that it would just kill off jobs, hours of work and opportunity. What we need to accept is that platform work is highly mobile and not fully controlled by government. You need to allow platforms to drive as much employment as possible. Sometimes that leads to less-than-certain work and sometimes that leads to precarious work, but it's often that work or no work. But precarious work leads to non-precarious work leads to casual work leads to permanent work, and at the margins there will always be that need to accept that there will always be a need for workers who aren't employed full time and permanently.

A flexible work system is what Australia is famous for. You can go and borrow other methods from Europe, but you have to accept that you'll have five per cent, six per cent or eight per cent long-term unemployment rates. We've got to give employers more confidence, because, fundamentally, in that relationship between the employee and the employer—the chicken and the egg—you first need an employer. You start with an unemployed person and you need the employer and you need to give them as much support as possible to create an employee. I think this is what Labor fundamentally don't understand.

When Labor come in here, they are taking that unionised, rigid, lignified approach to employment because it pays them. It's their bread and butter, and I accept that. We don't resent that. We understand where they're coming from. But nor do we, on this side, represent employers. We simply want a flexible system that maximises opportunity and a fair work safety net. It's remarkable that the minute they lose government this Labor opposition suddenly don't trust Fair Work or the commissioners—all of whom were initially employed out of the union movement. You had the former IR minister and former opposition leader actually designing the process, but of course the minute they were in opposition, 'There's no safety at all for workers!' And yet it was actually your government that designed the entire system.

We need to streamline and improve enterprise arrangements and we need to do it now, in the middle of COVID. We've got to strengthen compliance and enforcement, and we've got to provide a pathway through for statutory full-time work for casuals if they are interested in transitioning to that. Of course Labor come up with these incredibly banal and sometimes puerile oppositions to this by going to the absolute 0.1 per cent case of: 'What happens if this breaks down and that breaks down and this breaks down? How do you guarantee that no-one will be worse off in the entire Australian economy?' You're fundamentally misunderstanding that this is about moving a workforce of over 10 million people to make the most of every employment opportunity when and where it arises. This is a highly dynamic system of matching need and expertise, supply and demand. Jobs are disappearing here; they're reappearing over here. The skill sets of those who live over there don't necessarily match the needs over there. This is a complex system. It's a mobile system. It's very difficult to either compartmentalise or generalise.

What we need is an opposition who's prepared to look at some of these simple solutions that are inherent in the legislation. It's almost like the minute we touch IR it has to be a third rail. Labor has to go berserk and go into a meltdown and tell everyone that their income is going to be wiped out. We know that never happens. How many times do we have to have this discussion, where even these tiny sensible improvements can't be agreed upon and you have people like the previous speaker, the member for Scullin—a gent that I highly regard—coming out with the same old, same old, that the world's going to fall apart, and you've got to pay your union membership. So you find your 20 bucks every fortnight, no matter how low your wage is, and as long as they get your union membership of course it's all okay, it's all fine. We can all stop worrying as long the childcare industry is moved into unionised workers. As long as everyone on the platform economy pays a union fee to the STAs, there's actually no problem, right? As long as everyone is unionised.

This deconstructive approach is something that will go on long after all of us in this chamber have left the place, but what is going to happen is that 95 per cent of employees and employers are going to get on with it. They're going to do the enterprise bargaining. They're going to do what's right for both parties. And if ever someone's not happy, they're going to wander off to Fair Work, they're all going to burn time and money they probably don't have, and, in general, the employee will be rewarded, because it's designed that way, and the world goes on.

Right now, in the middle of COVID, we need a bit of constructive dialogue from the other side. Blocking everything, changing nothing, making these lunatic claims that never actually eventuate once the legislation passes is just increasingly disappointing. It is increasingly saddening to everyone listening to a Chicken Licken party that keeps saying the whole thing is going to go into a meltdown if you change one part of the system. The reality is that, like any garage sale, you've got to be constantly updating your legislation, moving out what doesn't work and bringing in the new ideas, and responding to the new economy.

I have to say that, when it comes to IR, back in the old days 10 years ago—Deputy Speaker Vasta, you will remember this—we used to say: 'Don't get the debate onto health or education; we always lose those. Don't get the debate onto IR. If it's an IR election, we always lose those.' Let me tell you what has happened in the time that the Deputy Speaker and I have been here. We continually win education and health debates. On balance, I'd rather be in those and winning them. I have no fear of that debate with a Labor Party that simply can't engage social sector reform anymore.

It's so sad that this once-great party can't even engage IR reform anymore. It's all about holding out, getting painted into the corner with your diminishing union membership and fighting blind, bringing nothing to this chamber by way of good ideas. When was the last health reform brought here by Labor? When was the last education reform or employment services reform brought here? You're just living in the age of the CES. This is a party that stopped thinking about social sector reform sometime in the Howard era, when they all just gave up. It's some sort of vestigial organ in the Labor system. It's just sad. There's no constructive discussion. As long as everyone's getting bulk-billed and the spending's going up, it's all okay. In IR, as long as it's all about the industrial relations rights of workers, it's all okay.

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