Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Many of us have enjoyed the benefits of the gig economy. Getting food delivered at home through apps on our phones has made a big difference to our lives, and many of us do it regularly. Especially through the pandemic, it was something that, for many people, was a literal lifeline. Now it's something that, for many people around the country, has become a regular part of every week and we enjoy the convenience that it brings. We know that the big names of the corporations behind the apps are making an enormous amount of money off the food delivery services. They often charge a markup compared to if you went into the shop itself to get it. They make an enormous amount of money off the people who deliver it to our doors as well.

We don't often think about the wages and conditions of those people delivering that food to our doors. What are they working under? What do they actually enjoy? You probably think that, in a country like Australia, people who do that should be entitled to, at a bare minimum, the minimum wage and get a number of protections you'd get in an office job or a factory job. But, because of the way our laws have been structured up till now, many of those people bringing food to our doors and also increasingly working in other areas like aged care, or in care in general, or in disability care, where they're turning up to do a bit of work perhaps at the start of the day and at the end of the day, are in many instances not caught by things like minimum wage laws. Why is that? It's because our laws have allowed big corporations to say that those people aren't employees, that they're just independent contractors who happen to be running their own business, as if there was somehow some level of parity between Uber Eats and the rider delivering the food from the restaurant to our home. They say: 'That person could basically be a business. We'll treat them as a business, and they're responsible for looking after their own minimum wage. They're responsible for looking after their own insurance. They're responsible for looking after their own pay if they get sick.'

Most people, if they were made aware of the conditions that a lot of these delivery riders and increasingly many more people in the country work under, would be shocked and horrified, and would think it's absolutely unfair that someone could get paid less than the minimum wages and conditions that apply to employees simply because the big corporation that engages them has used a clever legal team to call them something else—to call them a contractor, to call them a standalone driver. These people aren't independent businesses in their own right; they have to do whatever the delivery service tells them, they have to do it in certain times and they have to do it according to certain directions. If they don't do that, they lose their work. In many instances, for all intents and purposes, they're employees but they don't get the benefits of employees.

The convenience that comes from the gig economy shouldn't come at the cost of the exploitation of the workers doing the work, who then deliver massive profits to the corporations that employ them. For a number of years this is something we've been concerned about. We've been concerned about this Uber-isation of work—it's not only Uber Eats; it has been creeping into other areas of the workforce as well, especially the care workforce. For many years this is something the Greens have been concerned about. I brought what I think was the first bill to this place that said it was time to put a hard floor under the wages and conditions of the Australian workforce, so that, no matter what the employer calls you, you get the minimum. I think that should go even further to some conditions. They should be able to bargain as if they're employees or workers. We need to stop the incentive for big corporations to use clever legal labels to call someone something that means they get fewer wages and conditions, which is what's happening to lots of delivery drivers and lots of care workers at the moment.

When I brought that bill into, I think it was, the last parliament, it didn't get support from the government at the time because we know that the Liberals are on the side of the big corporations and the Liberals want to do whatever they can to drive down wages and conditions for people. They don't care if a big corporate profit comes at the expense of the delivery driver who, in many instances, is risking their life and safety in having to navigate streets on their bikes through danger and through all weather. Tragically, we've seen too many of them get injured or lose their lives. It's good that now we're taking steps towards redressing that.

The government's bill doesn't go as far as the bill that I brought to this place to ensure that we get a hard floor under wages and conditions, so that there's no incentive for big corporations to find even more loopholes. But it is good that it addresses the decision of the High Court in which the High Court came to a very different position from what many people had understood to be the law and said, 'No, actually, if you put a label on someone's contract to call them an independent contractor then that's what we're going to give primacy to.' That just ignored the reality of the modern workplace, and it's good that that's going to be addressed. Part of the test for the government's provisions is going to be whether, at the end of it, we see fewer people falling through the cracks. We've got to make sure that these provisions work. If they need to be tightened, they should be tightened. As I say, it would have been good if the government had gone further on this front.

Likewise, on casual work, one of the things that we've seen in this country is a rise in the casualisation of the workforce. The first thing I spoke about was corporations using clever legal techniques to label someone as not being an employee, even though, for all intents and purposes, they are. The second thing that is rife in this country is the casualisation of the workforce. Casualisation, especially when you put it together with the uberisation of work, is destroying people's lives. It makes it impossible to plan for your life and your family if you don't have regularity and guarantee of work.

This is why, a number of years ago, I introduced the first bill to this place to tackle the rise in casualisation and insecure work in this country. When we had the inquiry into that bill, we did not only hear from people who worked in the areas that many people in this country would think of as being traditional casual areas—perhaps in retail or in shops. We also heard from people who worked in our universities—which are publicly funded and are always going be there—who'd worked in the same department of the same institution for eight to 10 years and were never entitled to a day of sick leave during that time because they were put on rolling casual contracts for that whole period. How can it be that you're doing work that you know needs to be done and that is publicly funded, year after year after year, and yet being called a casual? This move towards putting people on rolling contracts, and the casualisation of work, is pushing people to the brink. We heard from university staff who said, 'I have put off planning a family and having a family because I just don't know whether I'm going to have any money.'

It's becoming very difficult in this country for young people to even rent a house, because of Labor's rental crisis, but owning a home is even further out of reach for them if they go to the bank manager and say, 'I've only got a casual contract for the next four months.' But that's the reality for many people, including people in publicly funded institutions in this country at the moment.

Again, I introduced legislation to address this rising scourge of insecure work in this country. Under the previous government, and even the one before that, we didn't get a lot of action or traction on that, especially because the Liberals aren't interested in giving people secure employment.

Again, this bill doesn't go as far as we would like. The test is going to be whether, after a period of time, there are fewer people employed in the insecure workforce.

If it doesn't turn out that way then we should consider revisiting it to tighten it up, because the rise of insecure work in this country, together with Labor's rental and housing crisis and the increasing cost of living, is pushing people to the brink. If government can't step in and ensure that people can get an affordable roof over their head, afford to pay for their groceries and have ongoing work then what is government for? What is government for if it can't put in place the basics so that people can have a good life?

I hope that we get to see some change on that front. It's welcome that we're starting to see some change on that front.

I hear someone from the Labor Party interjecting now to back Labor's push for unlimited rent rises. Labor members from all around the country, all the premiers and the Prime Minister, met and they decided to back unlimited rent rises at a time of a housing crisis. The Labor member is interjecting in support of that, saying it's okay to have unlimited rent rises in this country. It's an interesting interjection from the Labor Party. But that's their position.

They're coming in and talking about affordable housing in the electorate of Melbourne. In the electorate of Melbourne we have the gasworks development, and the state Labor Party has just told us that they're going to pause all the affordable and public housing. So perhaps the member who is interjecting who is from Victorian Labor might want to go and have a word with the Victorian Labor Party, which is in the process of knocking down public housing in Victoria and ending public housing in Victoria by demolishing towers, including in my electorate. Then when it comes to public land, where they could build housing, they're putting a pause on public housing. Now he's gone incredibly silent because he knows that Labor is not only backing unlimited rent rises but knocking down public housing as well. That's the Labor position.

One of the other areas of industrial relations law that we need to address and fix is on giving people the right to log off when they clock off. We need a right to disconnect in this country. For too many people, technology, mobile phones in particular, has meant that their work life is creeping into their personal life and their employer gives them an expectation that outside of work hours they've got to respond to texts and emails. Our industrial relations laws were designed in the pre-mobile-phone age and the pre-email age. We've got to update it so that people have the right, outside of work hours, to switch off unless they're getting paid for it. There will be some people who will get paid an allowance or paid some remuneration to be on call. If that's what people bargain for and that's what happens then that's good. But if you're not getting paid for it then you should be able to ghost your boss after hours. You should be able to say: 'No, this time is my time. I need this to relax. Just because he can contact me doesn't mean it's right to.' We're finding this happens far too often. Not only are there texts saying, 'Can you just answer a question for me?' that end up with someone having to work for an hour or so to find the answer to that question and get back to their employer but what's increasingly coming in is people having to check their phones to work out whether they're going to have a shift or not because the roster wasn't done before they left work and they've been left waiting. All of this contact outside of work hours is making it harder for people to recover and recuperate.

We need a right to disconnect. It's getting strong support through the Senate inquiry into this bill. It's something that the Greens are going to continue to push for because a right to disconnect in our industrial relations laws, a right to log off and switch off when you clock off, is something that contemporary workers need.

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