Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the adoption of the Senate amendments and the passing of the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023. Those opposite, clearly, are going to vote against it. That's what they do. They just don't like workers getting a fair go. They don't like workers being properly paid. What is scary about this bill? What this bill provides for is common sense, decency and fairness. It is stopping companies underpaying workers through the use of labour hire. It is criminalising intentional wage theft. It is introducing a new criminal offence of industrial manslaughter. It is better supporting first responders with PTSD. It is better protecting workers subjected to family and domestic violence from discrimination at work. It is expanding the functions of the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency to include silica. It is closing the loophole in which large businesses claim small-business exemptions during insolvency to avoid redundancy payments to people who've lost their jobs.

This is one of those times where the Australian interest is quite clear. This is a balanced industrial relations legislation designed to also make sure that it benefits those businesses that are doing the right thing. If you have two companies competing and one of them is using labour hire loopholes in order to drive down their costs and gain an unfair advantage against a company that is sticking to enterprise agreements and paying people proper wages and conditions, then what you do over a very short period of time is get a race to the bottom. We know that that was their conscious policy. A deliberate design feature of the coalition's economic architecture was low wage growth.

When we passed the first tranche of legislation, do you remember what they said? November 2022, the Leader of the Opposition: 'Labor's laws will revive the crippling economy-wide strikes.' Maybe I've missed them! Industrial disputes and days lost are down, not up, from when they were in government. The shadow minister, Senator Cash, said it would return Australia to the dark ages, would close down the economy and would leave supermarket shelves bare.

The truth is that there are now more than 14 million Australians in jobs for the first time, there are a record number of women in full-time employment, real wages have grown two quarters in a row and there are record participation rates. We have had an unemployment rate with a three in front of it more times since we have been in government than previously since records began, by many times. There have been fewer days lost to industrial disputes. It was 128,000 in their last quarter; the most recent quarter was 10,200.

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