Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When this Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020 came to parliament—when it was first spoken about and introduced—Labor had a simple test for the government. Will this bill create secure jobs and decent pay? It's a pretty simple test. The answer back in December was no. It was no then and it's no now, whichever way you look at it. There is the way we've heard government MPs fluff things up today—and I heard the member for Griffith's contribution, which was a brilliant contribution, about the la-la land of people on the other side saying, 'Oh, all employers work for the best of their employees.' That's absolute rubbish! The reason we have the Fair Work Commission, the reason that we've had industrial relations commissions and the reason we have courts is because people are treated unfairly by bad employers.

Unlike those opposite, I'm not going to say that all employees are good or all employees are brilliant. They're not; there are always bad ones in there. Part of our job as legislators is to make sure that we have laws which protect the good ones and prosecute the bad ones. It's not rocket science; it's what we're about; it's what we should be doing. We see, day in day out, employees who are being ripped off and underpaid. Recently one of the great big franchises—the one with a clown—was even saying, 'Well, maybe we could pay our employees with chippies and cheeseburgers rather than actual cash.' I don't know about you, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, but I know when I go to pay my electricity bill that Energy Australia isn't going to accept a happy meal to cover my power bill for my property. And nor should they!

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