Andrew Charlton (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is an important piece of legislation. It's important because the Australian economy is changing, and this bill updates our industrial relations system to respond to those changes by offering Australian workers more flexibility and more fairness. This bill ensures that our industrial relations system responds to changes in worker preferences and business practices. It closes loopholes in our workplaces, including asymmetric penalties for theft and loopholes in labour hire and casual employment.

This bill is necessary because Australia's workplaces have changed dramatically over the last 25 years. In that time there has been tremendous technological change as well as massive growth in the participation of different categories of workers, in particular working parents, students and older Australians—three cohorts whose workforce participation has grown over the last 25 years at twice the rate of all other Australian workers. The growth in these groups has contributed to a massive change in what people want from their workplace. In particular, it has driven a significantly increased demand for workplace flexibility. Almost six in 10 Australian workers today want jobs that would allow them to juggle other responsibilities in their lives: study, parenting, side businesses, travel plans, health constraints, semiretirement or caring responsibilities.

These additional responsibilities are a common part of the workplace for the increasingly diverse Australian worker. These are workers who, as I said before, now include millions of working parents, students and older Australians. For these workers, the gig economy is an important source of flexible jobs, and the gig economy has grown to meet the demands of these workers. The workers in the gig economy greatly value the flexibility to work when and, in some cases, where they like. A study of the experience of these workers in the gig economy conducted by AlphaBeta, my former business, in partnership with Uber and published last year found that nearly four in five Uber drivers say that they value the flexibility of gig economy jobs. In fact, more than three in five Uber drivers say that they could not work in traditional roles that did not offer this type of flexibility.

This statistic in the report has been used by some to suggest that the study concludes that gig economy workers are happy with flexibility and prefer it to jobs with security or entitlements. But that's not the conclusion of the report at all. Yes, Uber drivers do value flexibility, but they do not believe that it should come at the expense of security, safety or entitlements. These Australian workers don't want flexibility instead of protections; they want flexibility as well as protections. Flexibility is important to gig workers because many of them have chosen this type of work to accommodate other priorities in their lives. Nearly two-thirds of Uber drivers have other jobs. Half have significant family caring responsibilities. Fifteen per cent are developing their own business, 10 per cent are studying, and six per cent are semi-retired. Flexibility enables these people to manage work around other priorities in their lives. But this is the crucial point. There is nothing inherent in flexible jobs that prevents them from also providing workers with basic protections and entitlements. Flexibility and workplace standards are not mutually exclusive.

Gig workers don't believe they should be forced to choose between flexibility and basic entitlements. The same study found that, while most gig workers appreciated flexibility, they were less satisfied with the pay and conditions of their work. Hourly pay rates for Uber drivers were highly variable. On average, drivers earned above the minimum wage, but many workers earned less or more than the average based on when they worked—for example, you earn more if you work on weekends, nights and in peak months—and where they worked—you earn more if you work in busy areas around city CBDs. Workers in the gig economy also did not understand why they had to forgo rights and entitlements that come with traditional employment. Most gig economy workers have no sick pay, no parental leave, no minimum hourly pay and no superannuation. This situation is untenable, especially for the 14 per cent of Uber drivers who derive their primary income from the gig economy and who work hours comparable to full-time work. These workers are effectively employees, just without the rights and entitlements that are normally attached to that employment.

This is the issue in Australia. We have enormous growth in preference for jobs with flexibility and security. That reflects the changes in our modern workplace and the increasing demands on workers juggling a range of different responsibilities in their lives. They want flexibility and they want security. But, unfortunately, the Australian economy is not generating enough jobs with these two traits. Since 2008, the number of jobs that have both high security and high flexibility have increased by just five per cent despite rapidly rising demand for them. There has been slow growth in jobs with high security and low flexibility. Those jobs have increased by just three per cent since 2008, due in part to the decline in occupations such as factory workers, which are down by 13 per cent, and machine operators, which are down by six per cent. Unfortunately, the fastest category of growth in the Australian labour market has been jobs with low flexibility and low security. These jobs have increased by 29 per cent since 2008, many times faster than jobs with high security and high flexibility. This is in part due to the growth of occupations such as carers and aides, which are up by 66 per cent, and hospitality workers, which are up by 41 per cent. Our modern workforce is crying out for security and flexibility to manage their lives, but the economy is giving them jobs that have neither. To support our modern workforce, Australia needs to urgently create jobs that do give Australians both flexibility and security. This legislation does precisely that. It accepts the flexible work practices in the gig economy, but it adds basic standards and protections to them.

The gig economy has grown to cover passenger transport, food delivery, health care and many other industries, and it has created many positives, including flexible job opportunities and attractive customer propositions. But it is time to ensure that gig work comes with the securities and benefits that are fundamental pillars of the Australian industrial relations system and that this type of work reflects Australian expectations of what it means to work in a fair environment. This is not a challenge that Australia has been dealing with on our own. Many jurisdictions around the world, including France, Britain, Canada and several states in the United States, have already changed their laws to provide more rights to gig economy workers or to create new categories of employment for dependent contractors.

The Albanese Labor government is moving, too. This government is committed to modernising Australia's workplace laws to deliver jobs that are both flexible and secure. In the gig economy, that means ensuring that workers are entitled to appropriate minimum standards and protections—to take jobs that already have flexibility and retrofit security into them. Australian workers should be able to access flexible work without forgoing entitlements. As Minister Tony Burke has said, '21st century technology must not mean 19th century working conditions.'

Our friends in the union movement and members on the side of the House come from a long tradition, stretching back hundreds of years, of building a fair workplace, fighting for an eight-hour day, providing people with decent pay that can support a family and enabling basic protections. All the way from the provision of the weekend to the delivery of paid family and domestic violence leave just last year, there is a continuous thread in which this side of the House has sought to improve the Australian labour market and make it a more just and hospitable place for working people. But the technology changes associated with the gig economy threaten to wipe away those centuries of progress, to take us back to an era when there was no holiday pay, there was no minimum pay and there were limited protections and basic safety standards.

The opposition doesn't want this bill. They didn't support that two centuries of progress and they're happy to see technological change erode that progress in the gig economy to create a new class of workers that have none of the protections that have been built over centuries of struggle. We can't allow that to happen, and that's why this bill strikes a balance between flexibility and fairness. I commend the minister for taking such a sensible and practical approach to modernising our workplace laws. I acknowledge all the unions, especially the TWU, and the business and community groups that have contributed to the development of this legislation.

This legislation will ensure that one of the fastest-growing areas of our economy, an area that is creating more and more jobs, can bring more and more workers into the labour market and provide the flexibility that, in many cases, is badly needed to ensure that those jobs don't take us back two centuries ago, before we had basic protections and entitlements. By doing so, this legislation fills the great demand in the Australian economy: to create jobs that are both flexible and secure and that give people the ability to juggle all of their outside work responsibilities without having to give up basic protections and entitlements. That's why this bill is so important. That's why it is such a step forward for this country and why it responds to the demographic and technological changes of the last 25 years.

In addition to those in the gig economy, the government's Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023 also closes a range of other loopholes in Australia's industrial relations system. Firstly, it ends the asymmetry of wage theft, an asymmetry that meant that a worker stealing from a boss is committing a criminal act but a boss stealing from a worker is not.

We have seen over recent years time and time again cases of wage theft right across Australia, across many different industries. Wage theft in the millions is widespread, where in many cases it's intentional and systematised, and it's gone unchecked. This bill makes the intentional underpayment of wages a criminal offence. Of course, employers who make genuine mistakes will not be prosecuted, but those who do will face the appropriate and symmetric penalties that their workers face if they commit similar acts.

This bill also closes the casual employment loophole, ensuring that the 2.5 million casual employees across Australia and the 32 per cent of them who are on regular work patterns have another avenue towards changing their employment status. If they have been working in regular patterns, that will enable them to be offered a conversion. It also closes the labour hire loophole. For many companies, sure, there is a legitimate need for labour hire. But in those instances where labour hire is simply used to undermine wages and protections, this bill closes that loophole.

This is an important piece of legislation for Australia. It responds to changing demographic trends over the last 25 years, it responds to changes in technology and in consumer and worker preferences, it updates our industrial relations system to provide flexibility and security for Australian workers who badly need it, and closes loopholes to make our system fairer and more just. I commend this bill to the House.

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