Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Higgins for the question. We've had a system of minimum wages and awards in this country for more than 100 years, but for the last decade there's been a growing section of the economy where none of that applies. We have a minimum standards and awards system because we decided in the 20th century that we would not have 19th-century working conditions; we decided in the 20th century that we would not be a country where wages were simply a race to the bottom. We made a decision, as a country, that we would not be a nation where you had to rely on tips in order to make ends meet.

But in the last decade there has been a growing section of people who are doing the exact sort of work that minimum standards were always there to help but who get no minimum standards at all. We have minimum standards for the people who pick the fresh produce, who transport it to the warehouse, who transport it to the restaurant and who make it in the kitchen at the restaurant; but the person who brings that food and delivers it to your home has no minimum standards at all. And they have no minimum standards because, at the moment, they are classified, somehow, as being small businesses.

I know what it is to be a small business; I grew up in a small-business family and I've run a small business myself. Someone delivering a pizza on the back of a bicycle for less than the minimum wage is not running a small business; they're the exact sort of person that minimum standards were always established for. And so what we need to do is accept that those individuals do not want to be transferred into employees—

See this speech in context