Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

You just can't. I was talking to one young man who worked on the docks, on the wharves. He told me he was at the beck and call of his employer. For his girlfriend's birthday, he told his employer that he was unavailable for a long weekend so he could take her camping. He was penalised for that. He didn't get any shifts for a whole month, and they let him know that that was why. Try renting a house and say that you are casually employed. Try getting a car loan. Life is tough. You miss Christmas Day. You miss sporting events with your kids because you have to take that shift just in case there's not another shift. I've heard people tell me they sit by the phone panicking, hoping, waiting for a call to say that they're going to get a shift. That is not a good life. It simply isn't. So we are closing the loophole that leaves people stuck, classified as casuals, even though they work permanent regular hours. It means they can get a job like any permanent employee and all the benefits of job security. We're going to legislate a fair, objective definition to determine when an employee can be classified as a casual.

I did hear some speakers on the other side of the House and on the crossbench say, 'One big thing we're worried about is that the unions are going to come in and force all the employees to be made permanent, and this is going to be terrible and a disaster.' That is just rubbish. That is not true. This can only happen if the employee wants it to happen. No-one will be forced to do anything that they don't want to do.

I understand the need to have casual workers. I come from a small-business family. We were publicans. I know that you cannot know, 'Are we going to have a special function on Saturday night where we're going to have 300 people, or are we not?' I understand the need for a casual workforce and the role it plays in those industries. But there's still a place for people to be permanent. We always employed a core group of permanent people in our pub. Cooks, managers, cleaners, deputy managers or a 2IC—there were always people there all the time that ran the business while the rest of the staff were casual. We get it. But there are so many instances you hear of where people work even five days a week, 52 weeks a year, and they're still casual, without all the benefits of being permanent. So we are going to fix that, and I think that that is a good thing.

On closing the labour hire loophole, again, labour hire has legitimate uses in providing surge and specialist workforces. We know that will continue to be the case, and that's a good thing. There are some good labour hire companies out there. But some companies use labour hire firms to undermine the hard-fought-for wages and conditions of the permanent workforce. You might have two workers working side-by-side doing exactly the same job, with one getting paid a considerable amount less than the other one. We've seen this across lots of industries. I personally have experienced it in my work with the union movement in the aviation industry. The minute an EBA was struck, that particular company disappeared, another labour hire firm would appear and the entire workforce would be moved across on lower wages and conditions. That is not fair, and that is a loophole that we are going to close, because this will give powers to the Fair Work Commission to make orders that labour hire employees be paid at least the wages in a host's enterprise agreement. That is not complicated. That is not hard. It will not reduce productivity. In fact, I could almost guarantee that it will increase productivity, because people will feel valued and they will want to do a good job. It's fair and it's right. If you can run a business, you can understand this. I think it will be well received.

In relation to minimum standards for employee-like workers in the gig economy, our government will extend the powers of the Fair Work Commission to include employee-like forms of work, allowing it to better protect people in this new and emerging form, the platform economy or the gig economy, where people, we know—everybody knows and everybody accepts—are being exploited and they are not being paid minimum standards. We're going to let them continue to work. We're not telling anyone they can't work as a gig worker. We're just going to say that they can have a decent floor of conditions, like any other worker in this country. As the minister says, we are living in the 21st century, and we do not like people to be employed under 19th-century conditions. Again, it will be through the Fair Work Commission, who will be able to set minimum standards for employee-like workers, including in the gig economy. I think that is absolutely a good thing. The bill provides a non-exhaustive list of content that minimum standard orders can cover, including payment terms, deductions, insurance—which is incredibly important—and cost recovery. That will not affect the business in any huge way, shape or form.

Finally, we are going to criminalise wage theft. This is so important, and I cannot believe that those opposite would not support this. We all know—and we've all heard it here from speaker after speaker—that if a worker steals from the till it's a criminal offence, but in many parts of Australia if an employer steals from a worker's pay packet it is not. We have heard terrible stories. You may remember the 7-Eleven scandal, where workers were actually taken to the ATM and made to withdraw money from their own bank accounts and give it to their employers. It was that blatant. But in a lot of other ways wage theft is much more subtle. It is simply underpaying, cash in hand, under the counter or not paying entitlements. My own stepdaughter found, after she left a job, that not a single cent of her superannuation had been paid into her superannuation account—not one single cent. She had zero superannuation after working there for so long, despite the fact that her pay packet said it was going in. I honestly don't think that to this day she has recovered that money. That is theft, and it shouldn't happen. Business owners who knowingly withhold wages should face the harshest penalties.

We must also ensure our new laws do not water down any wage theft laws already put in place by the states, so we are looking at that. The Labor governments in Victoria and Queensland criminalised wage theft because they got sick of waiting for previous federal governments to act on this. Australia does need a national wage theft system to end the rip-offs, and we're determined to deliver on our promise to Australian workers and make wage theft a crime.

I am very proud of these reforms. I think they show workers in this country that we are absolutely serious when it comes to their rights, to their standard of living and to making sure that they are treated with the respect they deserve in the workplace. I've got to say that when I heard the minister stand up and make the very first speech that introduced this bill I nearly cried. As someone sitting in the chamber, I had not heard a minister stand in this chamber and make a speech like that. He talked about workers' rights and he proudly talked about our connection with trade unions, who do an incredible job for workers in this country. He proudly said that this government, an Albanese Labor government, is going to make the world a better place for our workers and ensure they get the respect, dignity and pay they deserve.

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