Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

The only thing the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023 responds to is the fact that the unions didn't have a government that would do everything at their beck and call to promote their interests above the interests of everyday Australians, and in particular not only everyday Australians but small businesses right across our nation. That is why we are opposing it. I've been out and about in my electorate over the past three weeks while we weren't sitting, and what we are starting to see—and it was reflected in today's national accounts—is the economic climate is getting harder and harder. We know that the cost-of-living crisis for individuals is apparent.

We know that every commitment this government has given about dealing with that cost-of-living crisis hasn't been delivered. The commitment of $275 off your energy bill hasn't been delivered. They made a commitment that your real wages would go up, but your real wages are going down. When you look at something like labour productivity, labour productivity has dropped 4.6 per cent. That is the biggest drop that we have seen in decades of labour productivity, and this bill is going to make that bad situation even worse. This bill has nothing—nothing—going for it, and all we've seen is absolute trickery from the minister in the lead-up to him presenting this bill into this parliament. We had the headline on Monday that small business would be exempt—not true, absolutely not true! As a matter of fact, the minister should come in here and admit that he misled people on Monday in saying that, 'Oh, yes, we are going to exempt small business,' when the exact opposite was true. Sadly, it's going to be small business, the engine room of our nation, that is going to suffer the most from this legislation. When small business suffers, sadly, the Australian people suffer. As we know, what we're going to see is the cost of living rise as a result of this bill because it does nothing to ensure that small business can continue to grow, can continue to employ people and can continue to pay good wages to the people that they employ so that those people can then afford those basic things that they need to see their standard of living improved.

What this bill will do is, sadly, see people's standard of living reduced even further, and what they have seen under this Labor government is their standard of living drop since Anthony Albanese became Prime Minister. We did warn that things wouldn't be easy under Anthony Albanese, and the sad reality is, where a lot of us were hoping, 'Just maybe something might happen so that isn't true,' well, the sad reality is that it is true.

What this government continues to do is not put the legislation in place which would make the Australian economy begin to grow in a sustainable way and see wages grow in a sustainable way. Nothing in this bill, and there's no commitment from the government, says it will lead to real wages going up. We see the minister come to the dispatch box and say wages are increasing. He never mentions what's happening to real wages. It's all very well to say wages are increasing. But if they're not increasing above the rate of inflation, that means they're actually going backwards.

The Australian people know that because they see it in their hip pocket every single day. They see it when they're faced with the choice: can I put the heater on tonight, or do I go to the supermarket and therefore, because I'm going to the supermarket, I'd better not put the heater on. What will this bill do when it comes to food prices? What has the horticultural sector said? What has the National Farmers' Federation said? It's going to make the cost of living worse because the price of your food is going to go up. What's it going to do to having that food delivered to you? It's going to make the cost go up. Everywhere you look when it comes to the bill, costs are going up.

What the government doesn't understand is it's not only the cost to the consumer but the cost to small business as well. I mentioned in the last three weeks I've been out and about and in particular focusing on going around and talking to small businesses in my electorate. What they're starting to see is a couple of things. They're starting to see the red tape burden go up and up and up. They've had to, in Victoria, deal with a lot of extra red tape burden because of the Andrews Labor government. But now what they're starting to see is that there's an additional layer going on top of that. You've got the state-level bureaucracy red tape there already and increases usually every day or every week in Victoria from the state government, and now you've got a Labor government, the Albanese Labor government, putting more and more regulation and red tape on business as well. They're saying enough is enough.

Yet what is the government doing through this bill? They're adding more complexity to those small businesses and, not only that, they're providing uncertainty and extra cost. What happens when the small businesses are faced with extra costs? The sad reality is they have to start letting people go, and the last thing anyone needs in this nation at the moment is to lose their job in a cost-of-living crisis. It's hard enough when you're earning a wage, and the last we want to be doing is putting extra complexity and cost into small business, the engine room of our nation, our largest employer, at this time. We don't want to be seeing anyone losing their job at the moment, yet that is what these laws have the potential to do.

Small business don't want to see that. They're saying to me for the first time they're not out hunting CVs; they actually have a pile of CVs which they can choose from when it comes to putting some additional staff on or getting people to work some additional hours. That balance has changed in the economy, from small business out trying to seek people wherever they can to get people to work for them, to now having CVs sitting in the top drawer that they can draw upon. If you put extra costs on them at the moment and extra complexity on them at the moment, don't enable them to plan for the future with certainty and don't enable them to invest for the future with certainty, then they are going to pause on that hiring. That pause could not come at a worse time and, as I mentioned before, comes at a time when we've seen from the national accounts today that we're in a per capita recession.

The only thing driving the economy at the moment is migration, and this bill will do nothing to add to the engine room of our nation. Nothing. So what the government is going to be relying on is more migration. What's that going to do to our housing crisis, our rental crisis, the congestion issues we're facing and the environmental issues that we are facing at the moment? It's going to put even more pressure on them—I will digress a little for a moment—because the government has no plan when it comes to their Big Australia approach. They're just continuing to use migration as the means to try and drive economic growth without any sort of plan. What this bill will do is make sure that there isn't that lift in the standard of living that Australians are wanting and looking for. As a matter of fact, there is no commitment from the government as to what this will do to employment, what costs it will add to small business or how the regulation burden is going to strangle people. There are no commitments from the government whatsoever when it comes to that.

What we need is for the government to really have a look at this bill again, to go back and consult with people again on it and to go back to the drawing board. The only group that this bill benefits is their trade union friends. I would have thought that the government over the last few days would have learned the lesson of just doing things for their mates. We've seen from the Qatar incident what happens when you just do things for your mates. When you don't consult properly, when you don't follow the proper processes of governing, and when you just look after your mates, it doesn't work out well for the nation. The sad reality here is that that's exactly what the government is doing. They haven't followed proper processes. They've hoodwinked business, especially small business. The minister coming out and saying small business is exempt from this bill is as close as you can get to telling the biggest porky, or one of the biggest porkies, that ever has been told by a minister. There is nothing good about this bill apart from the fact that it looks after the government's union mates. The sad reality is that the minister should have known that for nine years the union movement have been waiting to have the Labor Party deliver for them. Having won government, the Labor Party—this is what the minister should have had the fortitude to do—should have been able to say, 'No, we're not here to govern for our mates; we're here to govern in the interests of all Australians.'

That is why we strongly oppose the bill. We think proper consultation should occur. We think that a proper assessment of what is potentially a $9 billion hit to costs of living in this nation should be properly examined. We think that what we need to do is look at how this bill will lead to higher prices for consumers, making the cost-of-living crisis even worse. We think that the government needs to look at whether or not, especially when it comes to small business, it will lead to people being let go, losing employment at a time when they can least afford to lose it, during a cost-of-living crisis. We think the government needs to be able to say quite clearly how this will deal with one of the greatest drops in labour productivity that we've seen in decades, a 4.6 per cent drop in labour productivity. There is nothing in this bill that is going to fix that issue. We think that the government needs to come and be able to say what this bill will do to raise people's standard of living. We all know that it won't be able to do anything to raise people's standard of living, but the government should step back and think again. These are all the markers, all the things, that need to be considered.

When it comes to consultation—and the minister for workplace relations has form on this—proper consultation needs to take place. You don't have consultation by silencing people, making them sign a non-disclosure agreement, and showing them a bill and then saying: 'Well, that's it; take it or leave it. But the non-disclosure agreement lasts for weeks,' so they have no ability to come out and say: 'What you're leaking to the paper is absolutely wrong in fact.' That is not how you consult. You consult by sitting down and engaging across the board, not only with your union friends but also with employer groups and with those individuals who will be impacted by the cost of living increases that we will see.

So, in summary, this bill will hit the cost of living, not only for everyday Australians but also, sadly, for those people who, potentially, might lose their jobs as a result of the complexity, the costs and the red tape that this bill is putting in place. But also what it will do is to drive labour productivity further down in this nation, making sure that what is happening to people's ability to sustain their living in such a way that they can look forward to the future, diminishes, rather than increases.

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