Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

To me, this Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing the Loopholes) Bill 2023 is deeply personal. It will change lives. It's a big deal for employees, employers and for broader society.

When my parents came to this country more than four decades ago they had little formal education and spoke very little English, but they were able to find manufacturing jobs with good conditions. The success of our family was possible because of those jobs. They gave our family financial security and the foundations from which my brother and I have been able to thrive. Having a good job with good conditions and decent pay goes to the very heart of our egalitarian society—the idea that if you work hard you can get ahead in this country. But under those opposite the ideal was getting harder and harder for so many families. If I think about what jobs my parents would get if they arrived in Australia today, they most likely would not have been able to find secure work with good conditions.

In many respects, Australia has a pretty effective industrial relations system. It is what has set our country up for success. In 2007 we resoundingly rejected the Howard government's attempt to deregulate our system by removing collective bargaining. We saw it as being unfair and a step too far. Instead, the country chose a Rudd Labor government, and employees and employers across this country benefited from the Fair Work Act. These changes were fundamental in enshrining key workplace rights, including minimum entitlements, flexible working arrangements and the principles of antidiscrimination.

Throughout Australia's workplace relations history, there has always been a battle between the needs of businesses and the needs of workers. We have an industrial relations system that seeks to strike a balance between the two. It's something that we should be incredibly proud of and which is a major source of strength. There aren't that many countries around the world which have the word 'fair' in the title of their primary piece of employment and industrial relations legislation, and that's not a mistake. The concept of 'fair' goes to the very heart of what Australia is about—the fair go, fair dinkum, a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. We can add to that the Fair Work Act.

It's not perfect but it's a system that allows dynamism and innovation to flourish in businesses. It also gives employees a sense of financial security as they go about their work and life. But like any piece of legislation, it requires updating so that it more accurately reflects the circumstances of the time. When the Fair Work Act came into existence, Uber and Deliveroo didn't exist and Mable was a cute name for a baby girl, so we have to update and modernise our employment and industrial relations system to hold on to that precious concept of fairness. As with all great pieces of nation-building architecture, it's left to the Australian Labor Party to do it, and that's what this bill does.

It's aptly named the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill. One of the principle loopholes this bill seeks to close is the labour hire loophole, and there's a simple way of describing what it does: same job, same pay. This bill says that, if you are a business that has an enterprise agreement with your employees, you can't bring in a whole, different workforce through a separate labour hire agreement to undercut wages and conditions. It's not about banning surge workforces or banning specialist workers. Employees will still be paid more if they have expertise and skills to offer. What this bill is about is making sure that people on the same site doing the same job at the same level receive the same pay. It's a simple concept. It's a proposition that even my seven-year-old would understand, and it is what is fair. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single person in this country who would disagree with this concept, except for those opposite, because they just don't get it.

We are closing the casual loophole exploited by so many companies. There are some workers doing the same hours on an ongoing basis, sometimes working the same roster for years and years and years. It's an employment arrangement that looks like a permanent role, yet they are hired as casuals, and continue to be hired as casuals year after year. Those casual workers will have the opportunity to ask their employers to convert to permanent roles and gain job security. They will finally be able to get job security. Casuals who are eligible may not want to convert, because they want the flexibility and the loading that comes with being a casual, but for those who do, like Ashley, whom I met while doorknocking in Lidcombe, this will make a huge to their lives. Ashley's partner has been working at the same company for 27 years as a casual and has never been offered a permanent role. While her partner's employment was casual, the bills and expenses for Ashley and her family were not. The job insecurity meant that they were not able to plan for the future. They were working hard but unable to get ahead, because everything was stacked against them. It's right that families like Ashley's are given the opportunity to gain financial security and job security.

There's a group of workers who are in the most precarious form of employment: gig workers. Many people think that gig workers—Deliveroo riders, Uber drivers, those who work for Hungry Panda—do it for a bit of extra cash on the side. But that's not the case for most.

Analysis by the McKell Institute and the Transport Workers Union found that 81 per cent of respondents depend on the money they earn from ride share, food delivery or parcel delivery to pay bills and survive and that their biggest concern is low pay. Of those drivers working more than 40 hours a week, 66 per cent earn less than the minimum wage. And that is not to mention the constant threat of 'deactivation', which, for those not well versed in Silicon Valley doublespeak, means 'sacking'. When you combine those three factors—being a gig worker as a primary source of income, being paid less than the minimum wage, and being at constant risk of income being terminated—it creates an underclass of workers because of a loophole that the large tech companies have exploited. They engage gig workers as 'independent contractors', rather than 'employees', which means they are denied basic protections at work. I hope we can all agree that, in Australia, we don't ever want to create an underclass of workers because that tears at the very fabric of the fair go in this country.

There's a very human story to all of this as well. Ching Hang Yong and Zhouying Wang are both gig workers from Burwood in my electorate of Reid. They've both been working as delivery drivers in the gig economy. Both reported low pay. Ching Hang Yong says he often doesn't make any money after all his expenses for the day are taken out. Both have suffered significant accidents at work. Zhouying Wang was knocked off her bike by a car while out on a delivery. She was left with chronic pain in her legs, with no sick pay and no workers compensation—just the offer of free food through the food delivery app as compensation. It's an absolute disgrace. Yet they work with these delivery companies full time, with the threat of deactivation constantly hovering over their heads.

When this bill passes, it will give gig workers basic minimum standards. Both Ching Hang Yong and Zhouying Wang hope that the increased financial security will allow them to break the cycle of living pay cheque to pay cheque. That's why this bill is so important to me. When I think about the jobs my mum and dad would likely have taken up if they had arrived in Australia today, they may have been stuck in casual employment arrangements for years and years, like Ashley's partner, or they may have had precarious work in the gig economy, like Ching Hang Yong and Zhouying Wang. When I was a teenager, my dad was badly injured at work. It was through the support of his union that he was able to be guided through the workers compensation process, and his union worked with management to find a role that would accommodate his injury. That's the way it should be. If you are injured at work, you should get help, but, sadly, Zhouying Wang was left on her own. That's not right; it's un-Australian.

I say to those opposite: you should think about your position on this bill. You're voting against basic financial security for some of our lowest-paid workers. You're against people who do the same job at the same level of experience being paid the same. You're against fair competition between businesses who negotiate enterprise agreements and stick to them. You're against ensuring that deliberate wage theft is a crime. For nine years those opposite were happy to let an underclass of low-paid gig workers flourish for the benefit of a few very large tech companies.

Ingrained in this country's DNA are some basic standards of fairness, including the idea that, if you work hard in this country, you'll get ahead. That's what this bill is about. I'm proud that this government recognises the importance of working collaboratively with the employer to get good outcomes across all workplaces in Australia, and I'm proud of the trade union movement, particularly the mighty Transport Workers Union. You have always been on the side of workers. Thank you for standing up for all working people who want a better life.

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