Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023 is all about delivering fairer, safer workplaces and providing employers clarity about the government's expectations when it comes to business practice and relations with workers and contractors. It may well be the most meaningful piece of industrial relations legislation in a generation and, hopefully, will pave the way for a more moral business culture that values people as well as profit. We on our side of the House support business, but this bill makes it clear we want our business leaders to take their inspiration from George Bailey, not Gordon Gecko. Our message is: by all means pursue profits and grow your business, but do it in a way that doesn't rip off your workers or put your contractors at risk of injury or death.

This bill improves rights for casual and gig-economy workers, closes labour hire loopholes, criminalises wage theft, implements minimum standards for the road transport industry, introduces an industrial manslaughter offence and increases penalties for killing workers. It addresses silica related disease, protects workers suffering domestic violence from discrimination and improves bargaining power for franchisees, as well as some other things.

It is a big bill because there is a lot to do after a decade of wanton neglect by those opposite when they occupied the government benches, a decade in which wages were deliberately kept low, a decade in which workers' deaths on building sites were ignored by the Liberals' pet agencies while their mourning colleagues were harassed for having union stickers on their helmets and a decade in which wages were brazenly stolen, with only token penalties applied, sending the message that this was the way to do business in a Liberal-led Australia.

That greed culture, that 'anything goes' culture, that culture where workers are treated as an enemy to be corralled into submission and not as a partner to be embraced has no place under this Labor government. This bill provides a clear way forward for how we expect business to conduct itself, and at its heart are fairer, safer workplaces where workers are treated with respect and dignity. Employers who do the right thing have nothing to fear. In fact, employers who do the right thing have much to celebrate because this bill closes off avenues for their competitors to cut corners. This bill makes it easier for business to compete lawfully for customers. Since our election to government in May last year, the Albanese Labor government has got wages moving again and half a million new jobs have been created. We are proud of that achievement. This bill seeks to take the next step to ensure that loopholes are closed so more workers can enjoy the fruits of their labour.

I can think of no more important obligation for an employer than to provide a safe workplace. The more dangerous the work, the higher the standards needed to protect workers. It is unacceptable that any employer should be able to show a wilful and negligent disregard for safety. Measures in this bill strengthen the Commonwealth workplace health and safety regime by introducing an industrial manslaughter offence and significantly increasing penalties for killing workers. Under this bill, bodies corporate face fines of up to $18 million and individuals face up to 25 years in jail for killing a worker. Every 28 April, on International Workers Memorial Day, I visit the memorial in Launceston and I stand proudly with unionists, MPs—from right across the aisle, I'm happy to say—family members and members of the community to remember the workers who never came home. The mantra is, 'Mourn the dead, and fight like hell for the living.' It's my hope that an industrial manslaughter charge is never levied, because it is my hope that a worker is never again killed at work due to the negligence or culpability of their employer. But this bill is a wake-up call to employers. You disregard your workers' safety at your peril. You don't just face a fine; you face going to jail.

The criminalisation of wage theft is an absolute no-brainer. I simply do not understand why anyone with a shred of decency would oppose this measure. It is accepted that, if a worker puts their hand in a till and steals from an employer, it is a criminal offence. We accept that. It makes no sense that, if an employer steals from an employee by wilfully or negligently underpaying them, it's not a criminal offence. Following some egregious examples of wage theft by businesses like 7-Eleven and others and the pathetic penalties that applied to them, the former government made a half-hearted attempt to pretend to care by putting a bill through the House before the election. But a scorpion cannot change its nature, and, in the Senate, the Liberals voted down their own legislation. They just could not bring themselves to make wage theft a criminal offence. We see that again now, with Liberals lined up to argue against this bill, which will make stealing from workers a crime. You really do make it clear who you are for and who you are against when you are in a political party that deliberately kept wages low for a decade and then opposed making wage theft a crime. Wage theft doesn't just hurt employees; it hurts businesses that do the right thing because businesses paying their workers fairly are put at a competitive disadvantage. So criminalising wage theft isn't anti business; it's pro business. Criminalising wage theft is anti crime. Criminalising wage theft sends a message to the vast majority of employers out there who are doing the right thing—the supermarkets, hairdressers, real estate agents, servos and so many more; the wonderful people who took a risk to open a business and who look after their employees.

The Albanese Labor government is on your side. We are going after the crooks. We are going to drive them out of business, and then we're going to drive them into jail, so that decent people like you have the fair crack that you deserve for your hard work and the risk you've taken, for doing the right thing.

Closing labour hire loopholes will simply require an employer to pay rates that are already agreed to. The bill will protect bargained wages in enterprise agreements from being undercut by the use of labour hire workers who are paid less than those agreed rates. This bill does not attack labour hire's legitimate role as a supplier of specialist or surge workforce. It just stops it being used as an avenue to undercut already-agreed wage deals.

This has been a long time coming. Back in 2005, a parliamentary inquiry into independent contracting heard that Telstra had replaced up to half its call centre workforce, including in Tasmania, with labour hire workers paid less and with fewer conditions than permanent workers. If the law allows something to happen, then a human resources manager or corporate lawyer somewhere will use it to save money. This bill makes it clear, to human resources managers and highly paid corporate lawyers looking for shifty ways to cut costs, that workers' livelihoods are not in the mix.

Under this bill, it will be easier for casual employees who work regular hours to shift to permanent status, trading away casual loadings for leave rights and more job security. Many casual employees probably won't want to change. But some will, especially if their 'casual' jobs are longstanding.

The minister noted, in his second reading speech on Monday, the case of Sanjeev, who has been a pathology courier for five years, working 30 to 40 hours a week. By any measure, any of us would expect that to be a permanent role. Sanjeev has two children in high school. He has asked for conversion to permanent status but has been refused. This bill is for Sanjeev and others like him who are working effectively as forced permanent casuals, but without the security and entitlements that permanency affords.

Australia should not be a place where employees are expected to display loyalty to a workplace but not have that loyalty returned. Australia should not be a place where workers can work 40 hours a week for years on end, knowing they can be sacked at the click of a finger because they don't have the protections afforded by permanent status.

Now, there will always be a place for casual employment, to enable the flexibilities that are required in a dynamic working environment, to manage the cyclical surges and lulls. But, where people are working in stable, long-term, structured arrangements, casual status should not be used just because it's convenient to the employer to have a workforce that they can turn on and turn off at their whim like a tap.

The 'gig economy' is a 21st-century term for a 19th-century way of doing business; it's the Wild West when it comes to rates of pay and safety standards and rights at work—and we've seen that, with the tragic loss of life on our roads of gig economy workers killed while delivering food or parcels, desperate to meet delivery targets and customer satisfaction standards. We know that many gig workers like the flexibility that comes with the technology. So the government has chosen not to regulate the gig economy to such an extent that it fundamentally changes the way it operates. We have chosen to accept that gig workers are an integral and accepted part of our workforce milieu, but we want more protections for them. We know there's a direct link between low pay and poor safety. People who struggle to make ends meet take risks to make more money, and, when you are riding or driving in city traffic, that can and does have deadly consequences.

This bill establishes that an employee-like worker is someone who is not an employee but is also not an independent contractor. It means that the Fair Work Commission can set fair minimum standards for employee-like workers in the gig economy, tailored to individual circumstances.

In this bill, the added protections from workplace discrimination for family violence sufferers follow this government's implementation of 10 days paid family violence leave. Under this bill, it will now be unlawful to discriminate against an employee who has been, or continues to be, subjected to family and domestic violence. Many employers offer terrific support for workers suffering domestic and family violence. They really get around those workers with their co-workers, but some don't. And some are downright awful.

A worker, usually a woman, facing the trauma of family and domestic violence should not have to worry that they will lose their job because of the actions of their abusive partner or because of the steps they need to take to escape the violence. The amendments in this bill prohibit employers from taking adverse action, including termination of employment, against employees because of subjection to family and domestic violence, and that is a very good thing. This measure does not affect employers who do the right thing by their employees, but, to those who don't, it sends a very clear message: just be decent and look after your employees.

When it comes to sham contracting, under this bill the defence to misrepresenting employment as an independent contractor arrangement changes from a subjective test of recklessness to an objective test of reasonableness, which is very welcome. This will make it more difficult for employers to engage in sham contracting, as it will be more difficult to get off the hook once caught. To this, I simply say it's a good thing.

In my electorate, there are 18,000 people in a form of part-time work, and that includes casual employment and those working in the gig economy. The biggest occupation groups include technicians and trade workers, labourers, and community and personal service workers. Workers in these sectors and others will now have added protections and rights, thanks to this Labor government. In Tasmania, labour hire rates of pay are the lowest of any state, despite Tasmania no longer being a state where property prices, rents and mortgages are lower than the mainland. Having suffered under the dead hand of a Liberal state government for the past decade, Tasmania has not licensed labour hire providers to prevent unscrupulous practices, such as underpayment of wages. I note Rebecca White's Tasmanian Labor opposition has committed to enacting a labour hire licensing act, but it has not happened under the Liberals and it never will.

This bill is so important. It provides fairer and safer workplaces for tens of thousands of workers in my home state of Tasmania and for hundreds of thousands of workers across Australia. It's helping our government meet the objectives we set out before the election: for a better and fairer Australia where no-one is left behind. I commend the bill to the House.

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