Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022. I want to put on the record that I rise to support this bill not just because I sit on this side of the House and certainly not because I am any kind of apparatchik, as the previous speaker seems to think. I rise to speak in support of this bill because of the dozens and dozens of early childhood educators that I've met with and the dozens and dozens of young people who are in insecure work that I've met with over the past few months. Over the past few months I think I've had around eight round tables with early childhood education workers and, on top of that, met with some in their workplaces. And I've held around the same, maybe eight or nine, round tables with young people aged 12 to 25, but predominantly of working age, about their experiences in work and the impact of insecure and casualised work on them and their families. Through those discussions, talking to those people, I have become entirely convinced that this bill addresses the modernisation of the industrial relations system that is needed to give these young people the security they need in their work to address the issues they're experiencing in work as well as giving early childhood education and care workers the power they need to ensure that they are fairly paid and that their pay reflects their level of expertise and the important work they do.

I also have become more and more convinced about this bill—if I wasn't already convinced, but even more so—in listening to those opposite and their arguments against this bill. Every argument they've got against this bill is purely about fearmongering—a Chicken Little style 'sky is falling' scaremongering that this bill is somehow going to lead to union thuggery and strikes and whatever. Those opposite can come and meet with the 30 early childhood education workers who are here today, who were up in the gallery when the Prime Minister was up on his feet speaking about this bill, and tell them to their face that they're union thugs. Have a look at the kinds of people who are fighting for this bill. They are not union thugs. They are early childhood education workers who are trying to make ends meet, who are dedicated to caring for and educating our most precious asset: the children of this nation.

I want to start with the young people, though, and I'll come back to early childhood education workers, because I want to thank Desmond, Norby, Deanna and Asra, who met with me last night, along with a group of around 30 or 40 young people, to talk about their experience. I want to thank them for being willing to raise their voices and share their experiences so bravely and so openly. And I've no doubt that any of the other members who attended the event last night with these young people and heard from them understand from those discussions, from those stories, that the system is broken and that urgent action is needed to address it, and this bill is the urgent action that those young workers need. They were telling stories of being offered $10 an hour to work in hospitality—$10 an hour is what they were being offered to work in hospitality—as well as the conditions under which they were working, the insecurity of their work, and how difficult it is to make ends meet when you have to choose between going to university or taking on an extra shift just to make ends meet.

Anyone who's spoken to any low-paid worker in this country should understand that the bargaining system in our country is broken, and we need this bill. We need urgent action to get wages moving. That is why I am proud to stand here as a member of the Albanese government that has brought this bill forward, delivering on our election commitments.

I want to turn to elements within the bill that are particularly relevant to early childhood education and care workers. As I mentioned earlier, I have had some round tables with them, and every single one of them is excited about this bill and the ability for multi-employer bargaining that this bill will bring to them, making it easier for them to access the benefits of multi-employer bargaining. We have seen this with the Melbourne example, where 70 early childhood learning centres were able to come together and through multi-employer bargaining achieve, for their workers, 18 per cent above the award rate. They are the most well-paid workers in early childhood education and care in Victoria. But in order to do that, they each had to go through individual negotiations. Allowing for multi-employer bargaining will really improve the lot for early childhood education and care workers and enable them to get some of the pay rise they need to acknowledge the importance and significance of the work they do.

Beyond that, there are elements in this bill that fulfil our commitment to reducing the gender pay gap across a number of industries, particularly feminised industries. These include the early childhood education and care sector, where over 90 per cent of the workforce is women; strengthening the ability and capacity of the Fair Work Commission to order pay increases for workers in low-paid female dominated industries; and making gender equality an objective of the Fair Work Act, embedding statutory equal remuneration principles to help guide the way the commission considers equal remuneration and work value cases. I've heard from early childhood education workers who've taken equal remuneration cases to the Fair Work Commission and those cases have failed. This bill will help to rectify that.

We stand here for those people. Those opposite love to talk about the cost of living. Here is something that will really make a difference to the cost of living: lifting wages for our lowest paid workers. Rather than carrying on like 'Chicken Little' about the sky falling down, and some kind of scaremongering and fearmongering about unions, perhaps those opposite could go and talk to some of the lowest paid workers in their electorates and consider just how much our system is broken and how much this bill can deliver on fixing a system and delivering, for those low-paid workers, at least an avenue for wage increases. On that, I commend this bill to the House.

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