Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 7) Bill 2021 and, in particular, to support the second reading amendment moved by the shadow Assistant Treasurer. As speakers on this bill have pointed out in the debate so far, this bill has three schedules. I wish to focus my remarks today on the first of those schedules, which deals with a new requirement for gig economy companies to provide information on transactions made through their platform to the Australian Taxation Office. In particular, I want to draw attention to the first element of the second reading amendment, which is that this government 'has driven growth in insecure work, including through the gig economy, leaving Australians earning less and suffering worse conditions at work'.

I want to focus on schedule 1, which received the most comment of all of the schedules in this bill when this was reviewed by the Senate committee. Most were in general agreement with this schedule, but I think where the opposition stands is with those who made the observation that this schedule doesn't go anywhere near far enough. The Tax Institute of Australia expressed the view—and this was a view shared by the committee—that, as digital native companies, electronic platform operators are well placed to collect the data required to comply with this schedule. They indicated that the sharing economy platforms 'are well equipped to collect, store and report the data required under the TPRS'.

Labor senators and indeed members of the opposition in this place support this measure, but we have made the broader point that it is a missed opportunity to examine the way in which legislation and regulation more broadly deals with the gig economy. Everybody should of course be paying their fair share of tax. And, of course, the ATO requires sufficient information to be provided to it in a timely way and information of a sufficient quality in order for it to do its job. But there is a broader and fast-evolving issue that relates to a burgeoning number of workers in a part of the economy where there are too many people who aren't benefiting from flexibility but rather are experiencing poor wages and poor conditions and all too often are experiencing these poor wages and poor conditions outside of the visibility of regulators and indeed outside of the visibility of this place. If the government is willing to take steps to regulate the gig economy when it comes to taxation and when it comes to providing better information to the ATO, why isn't this government willing to deal with the very substantive issue of worker pay and conditions in the gig economy—an issue which members on this side of the House have raised time and time again over recent years but which the government has not seen fit to look at at all?

I want to quote a couple of the organisations and individuals that provided evidence to the Senate committee, because they provide a very compelling insight into some of the downsides of the gig economy. Later, I will make some observations on its productivity gains, because there are many upsides to the gig economy. But, while accepting those upsides, we have to deal appropriately with the risks that can also come with technological innovation and that can all too often fall on those least well placed to deal with it.

The secretary of the Transport Workers Union made the following observation:

… this bill …is like a kick in the guts to the thousands of workers in the food delivery, rideshare and parcel delivery sectors of the gig economy.

He continued:

This bill does nothing to limit the ability of companies to evade tax responsibilities in our country. What it does do is set a tragic double standard…

Again, what we see here today is a sensible enough measure on its own, but, when looked at in the broader frame of government regulation, it is a failure to address the need for broader regulation of the sector.

The committee heard from the Australian Services Union, who shared this broad perspective, saying that the bill fell short in examining at all the need to deal in a more functional and effective way from a regulatory perspective with wages and conditions in the gig economy. The secretary of that union said:

We are supportive of the taxation law amendments being proposed to create greater regulation and transparency of the gig economy … We just wish that there was similar regulation and transparency about minimum wages and conditions in these platforms.

Workers who work in the sector made some very compelling statements to the Senate inquiry. Indeed, one doesn't need to look too far to find similar observations being made in a range of other forums. One person was Ms Rosalina Pirozzi, a rideshare driver, who described the lack of action on a broader scale as 'heartbreaking'. She said:

I don't think it's fair … it's very unfair… Workers' rights are not being addressed at the moment—

and—

I've got no super, no sick pay and no workers comp …

That sums it up. There are too many workers who are taking on a great deal of risk and a great deal of regulatory burden onto their own shoulders, by essentially setting up their own company, but who, in doing so, are having to lose core conditions that so many of the rest of us take for granted.

Again, in very compelling evidence, Mr Ashley Moreland talked about his experience. He said:

I actually found myself in an accident—I sustained an injury—only 2½ years ago … because of the … high feelings of pressure that you're under to make these deliveries as quickly as possible, knowing that every single step of the way—from the time you accept the trip on the app to the time when you race into the restaurant, making do with traffic rules if you can—is monitored and noted against your profile and recorded.

So, yes, there are gains from these platforms for us, the users—and I've used Uber Eats extensively over the last months of the lockdown—but we should of course always bear in mind that there is a person on the other end who is adding to our comfort and who is providing all of these goods and services to us. The committee also heard from Mr Jason Ward from the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research, who suggested:

While CICTAR supports the concept of this legislation, there are concerns that the reporting requirements will be unfairly passed on to workers. In many cases, so-called 'gig workers' are already struggling to make a decent income. As is already the case in several jurisdictions, the Australian Government needs to take a closer look at regulating platform companies to ensure basic labour standards and increased transparency of multinational transactions.

I want to make some broad observations on the gig economy. I do believe that the gig economy, on balance, is a significant gain in productivity across our society and across our economy. Robert Wright described the gig economy as 'the biggest change in the American workforce in over a century'. It's already a huge part of the economy and it is forecast to grow significantly. Mastercard estimated that the global gig economy generated approximately US$204 billion in gross volume in 2018 and that this would more than double to US $455 billion by 2023. Of course, Australia will be caught up in these broad global trends. In 2015, the World Bank found that, by some measures, 40 per cent of US workers would be in non-standard jobs by the year 2020.

What are some of the productivity gains? Of course, the gig economy, the share economy, can see shared infrastructure and infrastructure utilisation at high rates. This can be a good thing in that it allows scarce resources to be used more efficiently. It can allow for greater individualisation of services, and of course any of us who have used share platforms, gig platforms, knows that the service standards for individuals using those platforms can indeed be significantly higher than was able to be offered by the means with which companies connected with consumers under old platforms. It can provide for more timely services and on some occasions for an effective surge capacity.

But it's important to note that all of these platforms which rely upon incredibly sophisticated IT, which rely upon incredibly sophisticated artificial intelligence, which rely upon incredibly sophisticated telecommunications, in addition to all of this science fiction technology rely upon people. In addition to all of these incredible AI algorithms housed in Silicon Valley, in addition to all of these telecommunications signals being bounced around the world, being bounced out to space and back, we should never forget that, at the end of all of this incredible technology, there is a person who is actually delivering the pizza from a restaurant to our house or there is a person who is actually taking us on a car trip from point A to point B. I feel that all too often we talk about the incredible productivity gains of this sector—and it is true that there are gains—but we forget about the person who is just as important and just as integral to making all of this work as the incredible telecommunications and AI and computing advances. Without that person actually physically delivering the meal or driving us around, this would essentially amount to nought. That's why it's absolutely critical that we as a society and, indeed, as a parliament think harder about how we share the benefits of all of this technology, because at the moment we don't really think about that at all.

What are the downsides of the gig economy? At the moment the downsides can fall under three broad categories. One I would classify as risk transfer, another would be wages and conditions and the third would be a lack of transparency. On the first, risk transfer, I would argue that a large part of the gig economy is transferring risk from these major multinational corporations to individual workers, who essentially have to set up what are small businesses and take on an incredible amount of demand-side risk themselves. That's all well and good if it's done in a fair, balanced and voluntary way. But all too often we find people are doing that work in a way that makes them incredibly stressed. Sometimes they're earning less than the minimum wage and are having to bear incredible regulatory burdens themselves, so one has to seriously question whether the risk transfer is appropriately balanced in the way that it's set up at the moment.

The second, wages and conditions, is clearly another downside. It takes two forms, in my opinion. One is that basically gig workers all too often, in the way that their employment arrangements are structured, are denied sick leave entitlements, automatic payments into pension schemes, appropriate occupational health and safety protections, portable entitlements—many of the things that we take for granted. Again, in some contexts it's appropriate for people maybe to trade off some of these benefits for greater flexibility or for greater hourly remuneration. But one has to ask whether the balance is right in the gig economy. The other component of working conditions is the remuneration, but there's not a lot of transparency of this component. If one looked at a study by the Economic Policy Institute in the US, it estimated that Uber drivers earned an average of US$9.21 per hour after netting off expenses, which was less than the minimum wage in many jurisdictions in the United States. In evidence provided recently by Uber to a parliamentary inquiry, they indicated that, at peak times in Sydney, Uber drivers could expect to earn around $21.55 an hour, and it was pointed out to them at that inquiry that the minimum wage for casuals was $24.80. Uber responded by saying that people who were earning $21.55 could be doing other things at the same time in between jobs. How realistic is that given that somebody would be working at peak time trying to fight traffic conditions to deliver as many meals as they possibly could?

That dovetails into the third problem at the moment, which is that we don't really know what's going on in too much of the gig economy. Whenever we ask ministers in this place questions about minimum wages and conditions in the gig economy or more broadly, they say, 'Oh, it's complicated.' Well, it's complicated and non-transparent because of the way that we've chosen to deal with it. What we find is that it actually takes academic studies even to make a guess of how many workers are earning the minimum wage. What we find at the moment is that regulators, frankly, can't pin down how many workers are earning the minimum wage and, for those who aren't earning the minimum wage specifically, what trade-offs they've made and how voluntary and meaningful those trade-offs were.

I want to reiterate that I do believe the gig economy is a significant gain for our society, for consumers. I do believe that it is a technological marvel. I do believe that it is going to grow and that on balance that's a good thing. But, as I said earlier, this technological marvel that combines incredible advances in computing power, artificial intelligence and telecommunications, and that spans so many fields of technology, ultimately requires a person to provide a service. It requires a person to deliver a meal, to drive us from point A to point B. We need to make sure that we respect their role in the economy and that we have a full understanding of the deal they're getting.

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