Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022. There's a problem for households and working people in Australia—it's that everything is going up except people's wages. This is what this legislation is designed to deal with. When we take away all the sound and the noise and the fury and the rhetoric of the opposition, they fail to address the question: how will they get wages moving in this country?

The fact of the matter is that the bargaining system is broken—or, if not broken, then on its last legs. The number of enterprise agreements being signed each quarter is falling. Agreements are now too easily terminated, with workers in collective bargaining being presented with, 'You'll either go to the award or you'll cop a wage cut.' The pendulum has swung too much to wage reduction in this country. Wages have stalled. The previous coalition government presented budget after budget where they promised that wages would move at a certain percentage, and they never succeeded once; it always came in under that.

There is a gender pay gap in the country. Productivity has stalled. The working person's share of national output is frozen. Irregular employment is at an all-time high. And we saw under the coalition government institutions like the trade union royal commission, the Registered Organisations Commission and the Australian Building and Construction Commission used as political weapons to diminish rights to freedom of association. Furthermore, if we don't pass this legislation, the share of real wages will fall further against inflation. So, this is not a consequence-free vote where the opposition can say that if we pass this then certain things will happen. I say to the people of Australia, if we fail to pass this legislation then certain things are guaranteed to happen. Real wages will fall further.

This bill tackles all the issues that contribute to the fact that everything is going up except people's wages. It is well past time to deal with this issue. There has been a cry by those opposite, who failed to take a wages policy to the election and have failed for a number of elections to do so, that we are now rushing. How long do working people in this country have to wait to be able to get a wage rise? When is the right time, for this coalition, for a wage rise? Do we truly believe that if we wait another three months they will somehow change their mind? I think not.

It is not a surprise that this government is putting these policies forward. At the 2015 ALP National Conference, at the 2018 National Conference and at the 2021 National Conference these policies and similar policies were debated. At the 2016 election, at the 2019 election and at the 2022 election wages policies were put forward. This area of wages policy has been discussed by Labor and the new government in a much more authentic, detailed and credible fashion than many policies have been debated in the national parliament in the past 10 years.

And let's talk about timing. I couldn't interpret the speech by the member for Kennedy, but let's look at the rest of the crossbench speeches. They say we need more time. What I say to them is, when inflation is low, the previous government said, 'Now's not the time for wage rises; we need to help dismantle the bargaining system.' Now inflation is high, and that apparently is not the time when we can debate wages. To Australians listening to this parliamentary debate, the truth is that for the critics of this bill it is never the right time for us to debate wage rises in this country.

This bill is not going to create the wages tsunami which is apparently going to increase the price of everything. This is not the early 1980s. In the early 1980s we had a clumsy industrial relations system, we had an economy that was very highly based around manufacturing, and there were different problems in the wages system and the productivity system than there are now. The fact also is that the unionisation rate in this country is far below what it was in the early 1980s. We are not going to return to the early 1980s, and it's spurious to offer that as some sort of prediction of the future. The reality is that employers today, business today and people today have different challenges. The truth is that what's holding back productivity in this country is a lack of skilled staff; it's not how much you're paying the skilled staff.

What we see in this bill, when we strip away a lot of the angst, the pearl clutching and the finger pointing of the now opposition, is that it will essentially provide greater access to bargaining and arbitration for feminised and low-paid sections of the economy. This union bogeyman rubbish is just what I said: it is rubbish. History repeats. I say to the new members of the crossbench: if you read the parliamentary debates for the last 120 years you will see that whenever there was an effort to increase standards for working women and men in this country—unpaid maternity leave, the 40-hour week, the 38-hour week, four weeks leave, occupational health and safety standards, award increases, compulsory superannuation, three per cent superannuation, nine percent superannuation, 10 per cent superannuation—the coalition has always said, 'Now is not the right time' and that the sky will fall in.

What is the actual trauma that the coalition is so worried about? The union that they love to hate, the CFMMEU, already has multi-employer bargaining. It doesn't change. The problem is that they seem to be worried that award increases will somehow change the economy. The truth of the matter is that in many sectors of the economy, even with the award increase, we're not going to catch the market rates that are currently being paid—but we will increase the safety net.

People who have never argued for a wage rise in this country are now arguing that they want more time not to argue for a wage rise for Australian workers. At the end of the day, people clothe industrial relations in the great issues of communism, capitalism and blah, blah, blah. The fact of the matter is that workplace relations, which I have been proud to work in for all of my adult working life, is a lot more simple: employers need employees and employees need employers. Industrial relations is not the World War I battlefield or the black-and-white television images that this opposition wants to present. The biggest problem for employers is actually getting staff. The biggest problem for employees is being able to get enough wages to pay the bills. These laws, when you take away the sound and the fury, are actually sensible and moderate.

I will tell you who doesn't need these laws: surgeons—they set a rate; lawyers already have rates and barristers already have rates; doctors already have rates across employers; plumbers already have rates; electricians already have rates; and the C-suite of directors will always tell you that we must pay directors and CEOs more to deal with international standards of competition. They have industry standards and multi-employer bargaining. The fact of the matter is that this is for the disability carers who tonight will be looking after people with dementia; it's for the students riding through the rain to deliver food so we can have some takeaway food; it's for the women overcoming the motherhood tax, where they've had to have broken income; and it will be for the people of our COVID experience—the drivers, the shop assistants, the regional workers who managed to help keep supplying food to the cities, the cleaners, the security and the aged-care attendants. The fact of the matter is that we have a two-speed wage economy in this country. If you're strong enough to bargain then you already get the good gear. But if you don't have access to the bargaining system then you fall further and further behind.

I say to the people of Australia about this bill: the simple fact is that the sun will come up tomorrow, the chickens will still lay eggs, the dogs will still bark and business will still continue in this country. This law is a continuation of the great Australian experiment of a fair go for all. Australian workers—Australian people—are not commodities; they can't just be left to market forces. Australian workers are entitled to a system which respects their labour much more than a bare minimum. I look forward to this legislation being passed in the form it's in and I encourage the crossbench to pause and reconsider. After 10 years of argument, why should Australian workers who are doing everything to help the economy wait a bit longer while those who hate wage rises continue to hate wage rises?

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