Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

The story of flatlining wages in this country is a story of insecure work. The government thinks insecure work is not a problem. Just the other day, the Minister representing the Minister for Industrial Relations in this chamber described same job, same pay as a made-up issue. Insecure work has changed fundamentally in Australia. As we grew up, we all knew there would be jobs you'd have as a student that would be casual or insecure job—it might be when you were at school—and unless you did further study afterwards you would have insecure work.

Those parts of the industry have always been around. But the change is that, increasingly, we now find people who are supporting families in insecure work. We find people who are relying on being able to pay the bills on their own in insecure work. We used to see insecure work in parts of retail and hospitality; we now see insecure work in the mining industry and in the aged-care industry. It's not just students in insecure work; we now have teachers in insecure work. We have people working at universities in insecure work. What does it mean for your payments? Your mortgage isn't casual. Paying the rent isn't casual. The grocery bills aren't casual.

Supporting a child isn't casual. Being a carer for someone isn't casual. And, yet, this government thinks it's a made-up issue. The issue there is real.

But we also need to remember that the government can act. It is within the capacity of government to fix this problem. If there was ever a moment when we showed that when government want to change things they can, it was during the pandemic. We have actually proven that this can be done. We had a situation where face masks weren't going to be manufactured in Australia. So the government investment came in, the direction came in, the support came in and it happened. We weren't doing hand sanitiser very much in Australia. We realised as a matter of sovereignty we needed to do it, so intervention happened and the change occurred. We had a wage subsidy going across the Australian workforce. It required legislation. It required government action. It wasn't done perfectly by any means, but in terms of a level of support it can be done. The pandemic showed that, when government wants to act, it can.

But the story of insecure work is one where the government does not want to act. When it comes to the evidence that they don't want to act, the person who gave the game away ages ago was Mathias Cormann when he was finance minister, making clear that low wages were a deliberate design feature of this government's plan for the economy. You deliver low wages by having people without job security. If you don't have job security, you don't have the same capacity to speak up and negotiate. It's hard enough getting people in insecure work to speak up about safety issues, let alone their entitlements.

But we also know from the pandemic not only is it possible for government to act; we also know that the Prime Minister, when it's time to act at different times, will just wander off. When we needed vaccines to be brought into Australia and brought in quickly, he just said: 'No, it's not a race. We are at the front of the queue. It's not a race.' We have just had economic figures today that would have been different were it not for the lockdowns—lockdowns which only occurred because we were not vaccinated early enough. That's the only reason they happened. Just like he went away during the bushfires, he walked away during the pandemic. And now he is walking away when it comes to acting on insecure work.

There are real consequences to this. 'Same job, same pay' is not a made-up issue. Can I tell you about two meat workers working at the exact same abattoir, both doing the same job, one working directly for the company and the other working as a labour hire casual. Those of you who've worked in retail or hospitality remember the concept that if you are working as a casual you get paid a loading. Have a think on this. The casual working for labour hire earns $500 less a week. The casual is on the lower rate of pay because of what labour hire is being allowed to do to insecure work. It's not that labour hire doesn't have a place. There can be times when it's appropriate for labour hire when there is surge employment or when you are employing people that the business normally wouldn't and you need people for a night or a short period of time. There's an appropriate role for labour hire, but that role is not to undercut wages and take away secure jobs.

In the same way, how many times do we hear them talk about mining, but we never hear them talk about mineworkers? Take two train drivers at Pacific National coalmine in the Bowen Basin, both doing the same job, with one working for the company, employed by Pacific National, and the other doing the exact same job but employed by a labour hire firm. The train driver employed by the labour hire firm is, once again, a casual. Does the casual get a loading? Does the casual get paid more? No. On the payslips, the casual gets paid $300 less every single week.

When we look at the fact that real wages are going backwards, it's not some accident. It's by design that the government has deliberately decided to not bring in legislation to close down loopholes as they've arisen. The other loophole we have seen is with respect to gig workers. Who would have thought we would be in a situation where earlier this term the previous minister for industrial relations was asked by the Leader of the Opposition whether or not every Australian worker should be paid at least the minimum wage?

That should not be a difficult question to answer. There's a link between the words 'at least' and the word 'minimum'. They sort of go together. What was the response from the government? It was: 'It's very complicated.' There is a direct link between the fact that the government has refused to act on the gig economy and the fact that this is an area where we see, right through to horticulture, people being paid in the order of $3 an hour, of people riding deliveries for us during the pandemic, getting food to people 's homes during the pandemic, and dying on the way there because they had to try to keep pace with an algorithm that was their employer. They are not earning the minimum wage. And the government 's response to all of these issues—whether it's this or whether it's endless consecutive contracts that people are on—is: 'Oh, but it's Labor 's legislation.' First of all, the gig economy and Uber were not that big in Australia in 2013. The Amazon model that's emerging now? It wasn't that big in Australia eight years ago. Tell me another piece of legislation where, when it is gamed, they don't come in with new legislation saying, 'We need to fix the loophole.'

We have the Assistant Treasurer, who will bring in legislation all the time when there is a new tax loophole, to say, 'We need to shut this down.' With the minister of immigration, there will be a court case and some loophole that he thinks has opened up, and new legislation will come in here. But, when it comes to workers having secure jobs, they want the loopholes to be there. They want the loopholes to cause people to have insecure work, because that puts downward pressure on wages. I will tell you, the safety net doesn't exist if you can be paid less than the minimum wage. The safety net does not exist if you have an enterprise agreement and the employer can just undercut it by bringing in labour hire. The safety net doesn't exist if you can endlessly be on one short-term contract after another so you effectively are never off your probationary period. People are now qualifying for long-service leave before their job becomes a secure job.

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