Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to talk today on this piece of legislation, the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020, because supporting Australia's jobs and economic recovery is really the focus of the government and this side of the parliament right now. COVID-19 as a crisis has really been like no other that has hit the world, at least in the modern era. It's been a health crisis, of course, but it's also been an economic crisis. It's had elements of a supply shock and also a demand shock, and we've seen this around the world.

Just to remind members of the House, the global economic contraction as a result of COVID-19 is estimated by the IMF, the World Bank and other international financial institutions to be in the order of 4.5 per cent over the course of 2020. Four point five per cent is a contraction such as we have not seen in decades. You have to reach back to, potentially, the global oil shocks, although they were shorter in duration, or, more likely, to the Great Depression. The most recent such event, of course, was the global financial crisis. In that period, the global economy contracted by 0.1 per cent. In this crisis, the COVID-19 crisis, the global economy has contracted by 4.5 per cent, so it's orders of magnitude bigger in its severity—almost 45 times as big, in fact.

Australia, of course, has not been immune to this. We've seen a large number of people lose their jobs or have their hours reduced to zero. One point three million Australians, at the start of this crisis or shortly thereafter, either had their hours reduced to zero or lost their jobs. We saw unemployment rise as well, of course. But, through the provisions and the support measures that the government has put in place—through programs and support measures like JobKeeper, JobSeeker and HomeBuilder—we have helped support the economy and get Australians back to work. I'm pleased to report that as of last week, of those 1.3 million Australians who had lost their jobs or had their hours reduced to zero, 93 per cent were back at work. We had 29,000 jobs created just in the month of January, and over the last four months we've had 350,000 jobs created. Unemployment now is at 6.4 per cent. So there's still further to go, but we're certainly heading in the right direction.

But I think members here would be conscious that this is not going to be a normal or straightforward or even, dare I say it, a linear economic recovery. COVID-19 is going to be with us for some time yet. The vaccine rollout is underway in Australia and also around the world, but it's quite likely that some of the restrictions we've had put in place on our lives—be it social-distancing restrictions, limitations on public gatherings or, most importantly, border restrictions and limitations on travel—will persist with us at least for some considerable time yet, until the vaccine program is rolled out, until we can see more data on how effective the vaccine is at suppressing transmission and until other countries are prepared to resume engagement with the normal world.

The purpose and intent of this bill—the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020—is not ideological, at least in my opinion; it's about solutions to problems. How do we get more Australians back into work? How do we support those Australians in jobs and industries that continue to suffer because of the necessary health restrictions that have been put in place because of COVID-19?

This bill seeks to do a number of things. It's designed to present practical solutions to the practical problems that have presented themselves through this crisis. The origins of this piece of legislation are when the government brought together unions, employer groups and industrial relations experts through the Industrial Relations Working Group process to identify some of these problems. What are the disincentives to employers hiring more workers? What can we do practically in the legislation to get employers to take on more workers? This bill seeks to address these in a number of ways.

The first is with definitions regarding casuals and fixed terms. It's clear that the current state of law in relation to casual employment is confusing and ambiguous and is causing mistakes and confusion for both employers and employees, and that has associated consequences and costs. The statutory definition that we put on casual employment in this bill seeks to incorporate key aspects of the common law as expressed in recent court decisions here and helps to ensure that casual jobs are genuinely casual and the nature of employment, whether it's casual or ongoing, is determined at the outset, as you would expect, rather than relying on periodic assessments of the relationship as it develops over time. Importantly, as well this legislation introduces a new entitlement to be included in the National Employment Standards, the NES, to allow regular casual employees to convert to full-time or part-time employment. It's providing them a pathway.

Clearly, employees should be characterised appropriately and receive the entitlements reflecting that characterisation at law. If they are casual employees, they should be paid as such and treated as such. If they are part-time or full-time employees, they should be given and afforded the protections that that status deserves. This legislation seeks to clarify exactly that, to reduce confusion and to give employers the confidence they need when taking on new workers to know what their status is and what they need to pay those workers. If we don't address and clarify this issue, costly and time-intensive court processes would be needed to determine the appropriate rights and obligations of individual workers in potentially every individual case.

This bill also addresses award simplification. As we heard through the Industrial Relations Working Group process, award complexity is a significant issue and a significant burden for many businesses, especially small businesses. It's critical in the industries that have been hit the hardest by COVID-19, particularly the hospitality and retail industries, that the government makes it as simple as possible for business to regrow jobs and to hire new workers. This bill adapts specific elements of the successful COVID-19 JobKeeper flexibilities for employers and employees covered by 12 identified awards in distressed industries for a further two years. As members would be aware, these flexibilities have already helped to save literally thousands of jobs during this pandemic, by allowing employers and employees to work together and negotiate details regarding duties and work location to help navigate some of the challenges of working through the pandemic and working in a post-pandemic environment.

This bill also addresses enterprise bargaining. Members opposite, of course, would know that it was one of their heroes—Paul Keating—who abolished compulsory arbitration and introduced enterprise bargaining as part of a suite of microeconomic reforms when he was Prime Minister in 1992. This is one of the reforms he's most proud of. Unfortunately, this signature reform by former prime minister Paul Keating—

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