Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

Australians have a right to work, and it's pleasing that 96.4 per cent of our population are exercising it. You have to go back 49 years, to 1974, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, to find a lower unemployment rate in Australia. In my electorate of Mallee, the unemployment rate is even better, lower than the national average, at 2.4 per cent in the north-west of Victoria. The right to work I mentioned is a fundamental human right, including the right to choose to work in the way individuals want to. Australia's employment diversity includes the gig economy, casual, labour hire and independent contractor arrangements, but these non-employee arrangements are anathema to the union movement that controls the Albanese Labor government. So, in light of Australia's near full employment, Labor chooses now to bring this bill forward for a radical industrial relations shake-up—not at a time of double-digit unemployment, not at a time of mass retrenchments, sackings or redundancies. This is when Labor bring this awful legislation to parliament. Perhaps the unions fear their wholly owned subsidiary the Australian Labor Party won't be in office for long, so it's best to get on with the real agenda.

Minister Burke tries to sell his new industrial relations bill, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023, by describing it as 'very modest'. As my colleagues on this side have mentioned already, the same description of 'modest' is the selling point for the radical constitutional change proposed for the referendum on 14 October. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

One of my constituents is a building company owner, Paul Locke, who says: 'The bill takes the gloss off running a small business. It is typical of Labor policies, more red tape. They're putting the brakes on the building industry, and what we need is a stable economy, not the roller-coaster we are experiencing. The fact is, if you get a good worker, you pay more to keep them, especially in light of our unemployment rates. We don't need government controlling everything. Business can work it out themselves. Small business is the backbone of the nation. Why try and chop them off at the knees?' To be clear, when I'm talking about small business, I'm talking about 2.5 million businesses in Australia, over 97 per cent of all Australian business with fewer than 20 employees, according to the ABS. As the provisions in the Fair Work Act apply to those with 15 or more employees, to say the least, it is confusing for those simply trying to run a business.

This bill affects builders like Paul at a time when the building industry is in dire straits. The housing construction industry is on its knees due to rising interest rates, ongoing supply challenges, energy costs and workforce shortages, and there is a huge need for housing to address housing affordability and homelessness. Let's remember, today's news that the mortgage interest rate bill of $83 billion this year has doubled in the past financial year, cooling home building activity. In fact, the Master Builders Association told me that, of the five major reforms to industrial relations law in the past 30 years—30 years—this bill represents the worst. The Minerals Council are horrified at what this bill could do to Australian businesses and productivity and ultimately to Australian jobs and the cost of living.

Those opposite say this is scaremongering, but that's not true. Business owners need to know that this bill will expand the right-of-entry powers by union officials to exceed police powers. Under the ACTU's policy, which is part of this bill, unions will have more powers than police to engage in searches and seizures, including in private homes, and to interrogate individuals. And, in business offices, to gain immediate entry—no warning—the union only needs to assert that they suspect, without evidence, mind you, a case of wage underpayment. By contrast, police can only enter premises or access documents with a warrant. They cannot go fishing for information. But the union reps, regardless of their criminal record I might add, can waltz in under this bill.

I represent regional communities where for most farmers their workplace is also their home. Union thugs should not be able to storm into people's homes unannounced, threatening and intimidating farming families not to mention posing biosecurity risks. Livestock producers have already faced animal activists entering their farms. Now the union activists are coming too. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chief Executive, Andrew McKellar, hit the nail on the head when he said:

…the only winners in this are union chiefs.

The only loophole this bad legislation is looking to close is that of plummeting union membership.

That brings me back to my opening point about unemployment. Labor is holding the union knife to our productivity.

About 2.7 million Australians choose the flexibility and higher rates of pay that come with being employed as a casual worker. This bill's new definition of casual employment is actually three pages long. A business breaks the law if it cannot tick the boxes of a 15-factor test, even if the employee wants to be a casual worker. For farmers and horticulturalists and other seasonal businesses like tourism that abound in my electorate, the implications of this are staggering. They don't have the capacity to keep employees for 12 months of the year. That's a fact, in seasonal work. They will be letting go of good workers after 5½ months.

Farming, for instance, is reliant on weather and seasonal needs. How is the government assisting farmers? By further restricting their workforce. As I said, unemployment in my electorate is just 2.4 per cent, leaving more work on farms and in small businesses to be done by mum and dad and, if you're lucky, your mum doing the books, and dad on the tractor, or your father and mother-in-law, or perhaps even your children, roped in to do even more work on farm, just to bring the harvest in.

You see, Labor likes to ignore our farmers. In contrast, the Nationals stand with our farmers. We stand against Labor railroading farmers with transmission-line rollouts. We stand against ridiculous biosecurity levies, damaging water buybacks and wage hikes for migrant workers. Now we call out Labor's disastrous industrial relations laws, which will hurt our farmers.

Our fruit and vegetable growers need tens of thousands of pickers, but, on 1 July, Labor hiked the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold to set a migrant minimum wage of $70,000 per annum—a 22 per cent increase on what it was on 30 June: 65 per cent higher than the minimum wage and slightly above Australians' average wage. Labor also mandated that Pacific Australia Labour Mobility, or PALM, scheme workers, had to be offered at least 30 hours per week, as I've mentioned before—rain, hail or shine; harvest or not. These changes are not designed to assist the workers or the farmers. They are, at the behest of unions, designed to force farmers to recruit imaginary people, imaginary Australians, who supposedly exist, who are willing to work in the sun picking oranges or grapes or stone fruit. Labor also believes in imaginary farmers with deep pockets, who are immune to the elements and markets and who can pay a fortune for unproductive workers.

Labor talks about closing labour hire loopholes, but this is rebadged same job, same pay policy. It is unfair and unjustified. The dire shortages of both skilled and unskilled labour are a brake on our economy, as is the backlog in migration cases for workers to enter the country or remain here. It is reckless for the government to add to that pain with this bill that makes it harder for businesses to secure labour.

Labor's rebadged same job, same pay policy won't reward workers for hard work and experience. We saw Labor mint this approach in horticulture, taking away piece rates based on how much fruit you picked; you now get an hourly wage. Labor spurns productivity and loves entitlement. One man might sit on his haunches all day, barely lifting a finger, while his co-worker next to him works his fingers to the bone. If I may quote Labor's mates in Industry Super, 'compare the pair': the bludger and the hard worker; the leaner and the lifter. Under Labor's rules, under this law, they get paid the same.

When it comes to gig workers, the minister himself has admitted that these changes will make your food delivery and your ride home more expensive. Minister Burke has previously referred to the gig economy as 'a cancer'. Australians have embraced the gig economy, as have others around the world, because it meets a need in the market. Workers are choosing to do gig economy work—often as a second job, particularly for students and parents and retirees. Gig workers are innovating to take advantage of the work opportunities digital platforms offer. Some log in on multiple apps simultaneously to access gig assignments that optimise their time and minimise costs. These gig workers are self-managing when and how they work, giving them choice and new work opportunities. Labor's paternalistic policy approach in the workplace arena talks down the gig worker. Gig workers are not stupid. They leverage this business model to their own economic advantage. Labor can't stand the thought that people have self-determination and choose how to organise their own lives and working conditions.

Then come the elements of this bill that attack independent contractors, such as self-employed tradespeople and owner-driver truck businesses, forcing them into the IR system and taking away their freedom to be their own boss. A trucking business owner in my electorate, Anthony Dal Farra, tells me:

… big concerns with the 'same job—same pay' laws and the Fair Work Commission interfering with pay rates and conditions for owner drivers—it will spell the end of these guys being able to competitively tender their services and compete for work.

This bill will play into the hands of the big trucking companies, who, of course, the unions do deals with to recruit members far more easily than with the host of owner-drivers and small-business owners who are all over my electorate. The agenda here, as it always was with the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal before it, is the full unionisation of every workforce. According to the ABS and the Ombudsman, 60 per cent of Australian businesses are non-employing. They are sole traders or potentially independent contractors.

The Fair Work Commission will be given the power to approve agreements between big business and unions, and that in turn fixes prices in commercial contracts through the supply chain. Whatever happened to economic competition and the free market bringing prices down? How will this help the building industry or indeed a logistics sector that not long ago was crippled by the pandemic and flooding? As reported in the Financial Review yesterday, this all-encompassing omnibus bill will give huge, sweeping powers to Minister Burke to change laws to rope in more businesses over time. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar counted at least 32 cases where the minister proposes to give himself a new regulatory power in the bill. This legislation is anything but modest. It is radical, it is dangerous and it robs Australians of choice and their right to work in the way that suits them.

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