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

by leave—I move amendments (1) to (8), as circulated in my name, together:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"the House:

(1) notes the billions of dollars in climate damage that the gas industry has already inflicted through turbocharged bushfires, floods and a 23 per cent reduction in agricultural profits, representing $29,200 in losses per Australian farm; and

(2) acknowledges that the Australian Taxation Office has labelled the gas industry as 'systemic non-payers of tax'; and

(3) notes that the Parliamentary Budget Office has costed the potential revenue from repairing the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax at $94.5 billion over the decade; and

(4) resolves that gas companies earning super profits from war should no longer avoid payment of super profits taxes; and

(5) calls on the Government to amend the bill to ensure a minimum doubling of revenue from the Government's proposed changes to the gas super profits tax".

These amendments seek to clarify some matters in the bill and also make some changes that will mean that workers in this country get greater protection. At a time of a significant cost-of-living crisis and also where wages and conditions need to be protected, these amendments will deliver some real benefits to workers, which is something that the Greens have been keen to secure.

There are three sets of amendments here. The first set deals with the question of casual employment. In the bill introduced by the government, there are factors around casual employment where the bill talks about seasons. On an initial reading of the bill—and some concerns have been raised about this, including during the inquiry process—there was a concern that 'season' could have been taken to include people who work in fixed defined periods in universities or schools—so teachers or lecturers.

There was a concern that a school term or a university semester could count as a 'season'. These amendments clarify that by including a note to make it clear that teachers don't count as seasonal workers, just because they're working on a semester basis. We know that this is a significant problem because many people in universities and schools have been called casuals or put on short-term arrangements, and, come the end of the semester, they find themselves out of a job and out of an income. Of course, we need teachers and lecturers from year to year, and, simply because there's an end to a semester, you can't somehow call that seasonal work. 'Seasonal work' is meant to deal with other matters that the government has outlined in the bill, but it's not lecturers and it's not teachers. These amendments will clarify that.

The second set of amendments deliver a really important protection to workers, and that is to include in the wage theft provisions the nonpayment of superannuation. We know that this is a massive problem for many workers. Their superannuation just doesn't get paid. Most employers do the right thing, but, in those instances where they don't, it's that the employer doesn't see it as a serious enough obligation to do it. In the bill, the government is making wage theft an offence, and, although superannuation might not technically be paid to employees—it's paid to a third person on the employee's behalf—nonetheless it's for the benefit of the employee. Workers, particularly young workers, who often find themselves without superannuation, really shouldn't have to go to court to get that remedied. It should be up to the employer to the right thing from the beginning. So, in the same way that the government has introduced a new offence with respect to wage theft, the amendment that we're moving will expand that to include superannuation.

The last set of amendments deal with an issue that I think was probably an unforeseen consequence of a previous government piece of legislation. The government previously did a very good thing, which was to say that employers can't use the threat of terminating agreements during negotiations as a way of getting leverage, which is something that many employers were doing. One of the things the government did was introduce provisions to enable protracted disputes to be arbitrated. What has happened since then is that some employers, especially in the university sector, have picked this up and are advising some of their members, 'We can wait out negotiating periods and just go to the commission to get the claims arbitrated and potentially get the same result via a backdoor way.' I don't think that was the intention of the first legislation, and so this just closes the loophole. It means that, if you end up in arbitration, you can't go backwards. It doesn't provide a way of going forward, but it does mean that people can't go backwards, which maintains the spirit of the underlying principle of the act, which is that agreements remain in place until a new one is negotiated. (Time expired)

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