Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

I'll take the member for Lalor up on a few of the points that she made. The member for Lalor actually belled the cat when she talked about team leaders calling teachers at 9.30 at night. Team leaders aren't the employers. Team leaders are not the principals. If, in fact, it does become illegal for a boss to call a worker after the said appointed hours, what happens when a team leader who is not the boss, who is not the employer, who is not the person paying the wages, does that? Do they go to jail? Is there a term of imprisonment? That's what the Greens would have us do and say, because the Greens have hardly ever—I don't know of too many Greens who have run small businesses. Yes, there would be some, granted. But this is dangerous territory which we are entering and which we are navigating, when employers, who pay the wages of employees, are not allowed to call them after hours.

What it's going to see is a reverse effect. The employer who is allowing the employee to work from home and to do all sorts of things, like have haircuts and that in the boss's time—all that will stop. We'll get very hard and fast rules about what people can do and when they can do it and how they can do it. This is dangerous territory—not thought through.

All the Manager of Opposition Business wanted was for this to lie on the table until the next sitting. That's all we were debating in the House of Representatives, because this is complex legislation. It is a bad bill. It is a terribly bad bill. It's impossibly complex and intricate. There is way too much uncertainty for those small businesses who, during COVID, struggled so much. Although we provided JobKeeper and the other arrangements that kept their doors open and kept people in jobs, this mob came to power and said, 'What have we got for a trillion dollars worth of Liberal Party debt?' It wasn't a trillion dollars; it was nowhere near that. What we did was we saved livelihoods and indeed we saved lives. That's what we did in the time of a global pandemic. Indeed, we were credited with being one of the very best in the world for the provisions we put in place to keep business doors open, to keep people safe and to keep people alive.

This bill adds huge costs to businesses. Businesses are already struggling. They're struggling because there is a cost-of-living crisis. They're struggling because there are inflationary pressures on everybody. Labor have the levers which they could pull to ease the situation, and yet they are not, unfortunately. Instead, it's just he who pays the piper calls the tune, and, unfortunately, the unions are calling the tune, and Labor, well, they're just going along with what the union paymasters say they need to do. As the member for Casey pointed out in his eloquent remarks, it does nothing for productivity. It doesn't increase productivity.

And I take exception to the member for Lalor's remarks that we on this side don't want people to be paid more. We do, but what we want is for people to be able to keep more of what they earn. At the moment, whilst wages might be slightly higher in certain sectors—aged care and others—people are taking home less because their disposable income has been far reduced by the policies and measures put forward by those opposite, who quite frankly don't give a tinker's cuss about businesses. It shows in this legislation. They don't care so long as the union members are getting what they need and what they want. This risks jobs because, if you are an employer, if you are a boss in a small business, you will think twice about putting on, particularly, that young person. You will think twice about putting on a person who doesn't want to go above and beyond.

It's all about balance. It's all very much a balance as to whether an employer is going too far by calling somebody after hours, and it works itself out. Bad bosses are quickly recognised and quickly identified, and they just don't cut it. This institutionalises conflict in our workplace. That's something that we want to avoid at all costs. Government says it's made concessions for businesses. I tell you what, the business community doesn't like it, and they will remember this at the next election. It weakens our economy. It reduces our effectiveness as a nation to be able to pay people the right amount of money, for people to take home more of what they earn and for the economy to grow.

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