Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023, this so-called closing loopholes bill, because the only loophole that Labor appears to be closing here is the collapse in union membership. This is a radical reordering of Australian workplace laws, which every business in the country has been pleading with the government not to go ahead with. But they are resolute because there are big bills to be paid, and I'll come back to this point in a moment. Aside from complexity and uncertainty, this is a bill that will hurt our economy and, most importantly, will hurt the real wages of hardworking Australians. After over a year of this Labor government, we see an economy right now that is shuddering to a halt. Of course, we're in a GDP per person recession, real wages are going backwards—I'll outline that a little more in a moment—and Australians are paying a very high price for this government.

This bill will only make this difficult situation worse. It will mean additional costs for businesses, especially small businesses. They're the lifeblood of our economy, and those small businesses are suffering extreme pain right now. It will make Australians pay more in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. It will drive down productivity, and there is no surer way to drive down real wages than to do that. It will reduce competition, and we on this side of the chamber are deeply concerned about competition. The last speaker said that we aren't concerned about undue or poor behaviour by corporates. I think we've been pretty clear in the last little while about what we think about airlines and some of the practices that we have seen in recent times, and we think those practices are unacceptable. Competition really matters, and this bill will reduce competition and, worst of all, it will weaken our economy. Everybody pays for that because we'll be making a bad situation worse.

What could motivate those opposite to want to proceed with this legislation? They like to talk about debt, but I can tell you that the biggest debt in this country is the debt between the Labor Party and the funding of the Labor Party by the union movement. It's about Labor looking after the most important constituency to them, the one that gets them elected, and that's union officials. It's about the welfare of those union officials, not the welfare of Australians. We won't support reforms that will undermine prosperity and aspiration, which are so central to this country and so central to the economy. We don't need more complexity, more costs and more confusion. This is the last thing we need across Australia right now.

It's extremely important to understand the economic context behind our objection to this bill, and why we believe this is absolutely the wrong legislation for the time. As I said, it's a radical industrial agenda at a time when the economy is struggling, at a time when we need a resumption of the great reforms that were pursued across this parliament—by Hawke and Keating and then Howard. There was a very simple insight right at the heart of those reforms: the idea that, if employer and employee can sit down together and work out how to make a business more successful, they can pay workers more and, in the process, everyone is better off. It was a simple idea, a powerful idea, and it worked. It was supported by all sides of this place, and we are now moving away from that.

Right now, as I said earlier, we are in the midst of a per capita recession. What's a per capita recession? It means every Australian is being made worse off by the economy, on a person-by-person basis—and that's what the economy is about; it's about people. They are worse off. Productivity in this country is in freefall. We've seen labour productivity collapse by 6.6 per cent in the last five quarters. We have never seen this before. This is a diabolical disaster. Those opposite like to say productivity doesn't matter, but it's uncanny how, when you look through the historical data, productivity and real wages are correlated. Right through history, right across the world, we see the same pattern. Guess what! With a 6.6 reduction in labour productivity in the last five quarters, guess how much real wages have gone down for working Australians over the last year—six per cent. That's how it works, but those opposite just don't seem to understand this.

Let's go through those numbers. The member for Parramatta got this all wrong the other day. It's very important to understand this. Over the last 12 months, working Australians have seen a 9.6 per cent increase in their cost of living. The employment living cost index, which is put out by the ABS on a regular basis, shows that working Australians are 9.6 per cent worse off. I have great respect for the member for Parramatta—he's a PhD economist, unlike our 'doctor of spin' Treasurer—but he didn't understand that that's the pain being felt by working Australians. Perhaps he doesn't spend enough time with working Australians to understand this, but a 9.6 per cent increase in the living costs of hardworking Australians is monumental.

Those opposite like to crow about a nominal wages increase of 3.6 per cent. I'm sorry, but that's buying six per cent less in a year. They're worse off under those circumstances. This is at the heart of the economy. Real wages are going backwards, and they're not just going backwards a little bit; they're going backwards at a ferocious rate. The truth of the matter is that hardworking Australians are now in a position where they are struggling to pay for the groceries. They're struggling to pay energy bills, which they were promised would go down by $275, though we've seen them go in exactly the opposite direction. Hardworking Australians are paying 15 per cent more in income tax than they were just over a year ago. Labor loves that! More tax is always a good thing for a Labor government. People are paying 15 per cent more in tax and monumental increases in their mortgages, with 11 interest rate increases under this government. A typical Australian family will pay a couple of thousand dollars more in mortgage costs each month—each month! That is the crisis that we have in our economy right now. The solution to that crisis is simple. It is: let's work together, collaboratively, between employers and employees, to make our workplaces more productive.

This is not about working harder; this is about getting more from the same number of hours. Or, indeed, getting the same amount for fewer hours. That's what productivity is. If I said to any Australian: 'Look, we can do something here. We can make some changes here that mean we get more per hour, and you get paid more as a result. Or, indeed, you can work fewer hours a week and we'll be able to produce the same amount because of the changes we're making in the workplace,' that sounds like a pretty good deal for everybody, including the workers. They should be paid more for that, and they will be paid more for that. That's how the system under a proper enterprise bargaining regime works, but we are moving sharply away from that under this government.

There is no shortage of those out there who are prepared to say that this is absolutely the wrong direction for our industrial relations system. Robert Gottliebsen put it well when he said:

But if anything like the complexity of the proposed legislation passes the Parliament it will dramatically lower productivity in Australia. And that lower productivity will start at the base of household contract services and extend through transport, IT, banking and manufacturing to mining.

Nothing will escape the clutches of those 784 pages of complex legislation and memorandums.

Business groups and employers have also pointed out these changes will smash productivity. I thought the ACCI chief executive, Andrew McKellar, put it well. He's concerned, as he should be, about consumers struggling with the cost-of-living crisis. 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 …

  … … …

"The government has not made a case for these changes. It has not been able to outline how this legislation will enhance productivity, lift wages, or make it easier to generate more jobs.

Jennifer Westacott, chief executive of the BCA, has said:

"We need a system that drives productivity, not stifles it, because that will stifle wages growth.

We know this. If you stifle the ability of employers and employees to sit down together collaboratively, work together to work out how to make the workplace a more productive place, then what happens? Real wages cannot go up—and it's real wages that count. It's what your money, your wage can buy that counts.

The Treasurer doesn't seem to understand this. That shouldn't surprise us. He's a doctor of spin, the walking talking point. He focuses on the talking points, not the substance of the issues—the spin, not the substance. But the truth is the only thing that matters to an Australian worker is what their wages can buy, and right now that is going backwards fast. They are all paying a very high price for this government.

I do want to make a final comment about competition. We heard from the member for Maribyrnong a moment ago. I said earlier he thinks that we're not concerned about competition, that we're not concerned to make sure that businesses are in a position where they are competing. They have to compete and they should compete. That's the way we ensure that those productivity gains are passed through to wages. That's the way we make sure that Australians are better off, that they can buy more with the money they earn. The thing about competition is that it doesn't work if you're listening to vested interests, if you're supporting pork-barrelling. We still have absolutely no explanation from those opposite as to why they blocked extra flights to Australia.

I will take the interjection from the member opposite. He has not explained, nor have any of his colleagues, why Australians should pay more for their airfares. He can't explain it. We've heard all sorts of bizarre explanations, and those opposite crow and carry on about how business needs to be disciplined. I'll tell you what: the greatest discipline of all for business is competition. There is no greater regulator of any business than a customer. Put the customer in charge—that's not the thing that those opposite will ever do; they'll put the union officials in charge—and you will get a good deal out of businesses every single time.

They are happy to see airfares up to 50 per cent higher than they were, and they have given no explanation that even begins to get to the heart of why they blocked these flights. Who knows how much of this kind of corporatist stuff we're going to from Labor? Big unions working with big government and big business—this is the Labor way. We had a period back in the eighties when they realised the error of their ways, in letting this get out of control, but not now. They're back to their usual practice of the bad old days.

This bill, with its 284 pages and 520-page explanatory memorandum, will make things harder, not easier, for businesses and all Australians. It will do nothing to improve the freefall we've seen in labour productivity in this country; indeed, it will push it in the wrong direction. It will drive up prices. It will undermine the prosperity of Australians, which is what we all care about. It will undermine the centrepiece of our economy we on this side of this place all want to see, which is aspiration, the ability for Australians to get ahead. That's what we stand for and what we'll always stand for. That's not what this bill is about. The coalition will not be supporting this bill. (Time expired)

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