Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on behalf of my electorate of Mallee on the bill which has been overshadowed by Labor's destructive industrial relations changes. I was gagged, as were the collective voices of over 10 million Australians, by the Albanese Labor government in a gag-and-guillotine powerplay on industrial relations. These changes, now beyond parliament's control, are part of the package formerly known as 'same job, same pay'. When the employer sector rightly exposed the injustice of the laws, particularly the way people could do less work and get the same pay as hardworking employees, the monicker 'same job, same pay' went out the window, and it became 'closing loopholes'. And yet what we saw this month was a government running through the Senate negotiation minefield, and—look!—instead of closing loopholes, they created a loophole. To close loopholes, they created a new one. It is a loophole that sees employers facing imprisonment or a significant fine for calling a member of their staff after their designated working hours. It feels like a deja vu of the 1970s—power to the unions.

Labor has bulldozed the industrial relations landscape, where all you can see is the barren land of union-controlled employment monoculture. Employment diversity and flexibility are gone. A bulldozed landscape isn't as simple as it sounds. Going forward, Labor's latest bill and those before it and perhaps those to come will be like legislative Roundup pesticide—used to kill off the emergence of anything but one kind of employment: permanent, expensive and union represented employment. Labor's IR agenda reverses decades of history, where Australia had moved away from centralised wage fixing towards pay and conditions that were based on productivity and reward for effort. What a great idea. This bill is a victory for the slackers. Labor has reinstated the age of entitlement.

In my electorate of Mallee, our farmers and small business owners are the casualties. One farmer in my electorate said, 'The obstacles that could be put in the way of small family farms and businesses by this legislation are nothing short of catastrophic and naive, written by those who have no experience of how small communities are the backbone of the Australian way of life.' That sums up the feeling in my electorate. But there's an overwhelming, overarching feeling, and that is betrayal.

It is now impossible to believe anything this government promises, given the Prime Minister and the Treasurer collectively told us 100 times they would stand by the stage 3 tax cuts. Labor's recent backflip is evidence of the lies and untrustworthiness that permeate everything this government touches. Remember this: the policies implemented in the recent industrial relations bill were unexpected and unannounced; they were not included in the government's 2022 election policies. An Albanese Labor government that swore repeatedly that it wasn't going to change stage 3 tax cuts was plotting to also bring in these radical IR changes without a mandate. Can you trust them? Can we trust that this government is done with bulldozing the employment landscape into a jobs monoculture? No, you cannot. We cannot trust that this government is downing tools in industrial relations.

I call out the smirking, modest changes claimed by the industrial relations minister. The latest bill and its predecessors have been anything but modest. This bill is regressive, and there's every chance that, if the constellation of crossbench senators align for Labor again, more radical changes could be on the way. Labor's IR agenda will hit my Mallee constituents at a time when Labor has experimented on our farmers. Horticulture is dominant in my electorate, and the labour shortages have been particularly acute for fruit, vegetable and nut harvests. The skills shortage is endemic across agriculture—we are talking tens of thousands of labourers—and it is also acute across regional Australia. Labor robs regional Australia by design to achieve their political goals in the cities. Let's review the 600-plus days of destruction in industrial relations in regional Australia alone. Labor took away piece rates, which paid reward for effort on the basis of how much fruit was picked, and forced farmers to pay workers an hourly wage. Same job, same pay—the lifter and the slacker paid the same with no incentive for productivity or efficiency. We're back in the age of entitlement.

Labor binned the ag visa that the Nationals fought for and established when in government. Labor imposed a higher salary for migrants on the temporary skilled migration income threshold, or TSMIT, lifting it from $53,900 minimum salary to $70,000. Labor imposed a 30-hour-a-week pay requirement for workers brought into the country on the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility, or PALM, scheme. On that front, I quote another constituent. A farmer from Cutri Fruit in the north of my electorate said:

We currently use the PALM scheme and have consistent problems getting the staff to come to work. Between being hung over, sick, or just not wanting to work, the new laws enforcing minimum hours when the reason for the worker not getting the hours is outside the control of the employer and often in the hands of the employee are just another burden added to the Australian grower. This comes when we compete on a global market in which our labour is significantly more expensive than our competitors. These rules feel even more unjustified when we source the PALM workers from Timor Leste where the average income is around USD $1 per day.

That's the scorched earth of regional Australia that is, I repeat, by design under Labor.

Labor have bulldozed the employment landscape. Casuals who have worked for six months—or 12 in the case of small business—and have a regular pattern of shifts will be able to convert to a permanent role. The new definition of casual is three pages long. It includes around 12 factors to determine if an employee is actually a casual. Farmwork is seasonal, and casual workers are important for Mallee farmers to have flexibility, particularly during harvest. Indeed, I spoke with Andrew Murdoch on ABC Local Radio earlier today. After I spoke to him, he put to an AWU representative that a local farmer had told Andrew his workers prefer to work as casuals rather than be permanent. Under Labor's changes, a casual worker can convert to permanent when there may not be any work on the property, costing farmers who are getting no income in downtimes and making it impossible to pay them.

Employers' right to refuse a casual worker becoming permanent will depend on the Fair Work Commission's interpretation of fair and reasonable operational grounds, tying small and medium-sized businesses in Mallee up in yet more red tape. Are we surprised? Independent contractors will lose their competitive position if a court determines that in a legislatively defined 'reality' they are employees, forcing employers to backpay minimum wages and conditions. As National Farmers Federation president David Jochinke says, farmers are now left to grapple with how they engage employees through labour hire in the context of this new legislation during the busiest time of year. Minister Burke has got his way and will be getting a pat on the back from his union masters, but Mallee farmers will now struggle to get fruit off the tree or vine to feed the nation and the world.

It gets worse, far worse. Labor won't stop at bulldozing the employment landscape. They haven't eaten their fill gobbling up regional Australia's hard-earned prosperity for political gains. No, they want to come into the family-farming home as well. They are rolling the red carpet out for the most activist elements of the union movement right into the kitchen of family homes on farms. Labor's IR laws in this parliament have given unions the right to enter farms unannounced, intruding on people's privacy and threatening the personal safety of farmers and their families.

Labor's tin ear, their blind obedience to their union masters and their insatiable appetite to rob the regions means they have no care or clue about possible animal welfare implications. I recall when animal activists raided Luv-a-Duck in my electorate. Ducks were stolen from the paddocks and run under the arm to buses and, no doubt, back to Fitzroy and suburbs near there. The owners of Luv-a-Duck were distraught because they knew the ducks would die of fright and shock—so much for protecting animal rights. This new Labor legislation provides unions the right to stomp onto farms and conduct snap inspections of pay records or properties without notice. They don't have a clue about biosecurity. So my question to Minister Burke is: will this Labor government or the unions stump up if union rights of entry lead to an outbreak of a disease, lower food supply and higher food prices?

One of the heartbreaking impacts of Labor's IR changes is that Mallee was beautifully positioned to continue a trajectory of growth the coalition had set up for it going into the May 2022 election. We had weathered the worst of the pandemic and survived the needless suffering under the trigger-happy, statewide-lockdown-loving Premier Andrews. The Centre for International Economics predicted the Mildura and Swan Hill regions gross value of production GDP was expected to grow more than anywhere else in the nation to $2.2 billion per annum by 2029-30. Horticulture in the north of the Mallee is underpinned by irrigated horticulture, but Labor is behaving like a wrecking ball to agriculture, reintroducing devastating water buybacks after Victoria and the electorates of Mallee and Nicholls in particular have done most of the heavy lifting in the past buyback rounds and efficiency projects. Labor are taking away our water and now undercutting workforces where we already have dire shortages. Our economy was poised to grow. Now, it will contract under Labor's scorched earth approach to regional Australia.

Labor and the Greens are in cahoots to rob the regions to buy votes in the city. When you are next at the check-out trying to put food on the table or in your child's lunchbox, think how expensive Labor is making it for the farmers to produce the food you buy. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, these new laws are like putting petrol on a fire. For food delivery and rideshare services alone, Labor's legislation is estimated to see prices increase by up to 35 per cent.

I want to come back to the topic of criminal penalties for employers under the so-called right to disconnect. Mallee voters can't wait to disconnect from having a Labor government, frankly. What they are doing in gutting regional Australia is criminal, but I digress. The Greens are the architects of the right-to-disconnect legislation with the criminal sting in the tail. Let me say, Deputy Speaker, through you to the Greens: You don't have a clue. Your inner-city electorates wouldn't have the foggiest idea about regional Australia and, frankly, you don't have a business or economic bone in your green bodies. While the income rolls in from the regions, you spend it on pet projects and ideological posturing on what should or shouldn't happen in the regions.

Labor and the Greens are taking the regional golden goose and slaughtering it for short-term political gain. Regional Australia will remember at the ballot box. Regional Australia has had a gutful, and I will be reminding Mallee voters about it every chance I get. Labor want to treat bosses as criminals when in over 95 per cent of cases they are mum and dad small-business owners earning far less then Greens MPs or their senior advisers. They're just trying to earn a living.

The writing was on the wall for the business sector and lobby groups, and the coalition tried to warn them. Peak bodies played nice with Labor and bought into the social posturing and distractions. Meanwhile, I assure you, Minister Burke was madly working away with his union mates on this package of bills and nothing else. This is a distracted Albanese Labor government when it comes to the cost of living, but, while Labor was wasting taxpayer money on a half-billion-dollar doomed referendum, Minister Burke and his union mates were hammering out this awful legislation, negotiating with the Senate crossbench and talking to Canberra's Senator Pocock about bike paths to get his vote, all while the peak bodies were having a snooze. To their credit, they got Labor to change the name from 'same job, same pay', but that was a pointless victory. If 'same job, same pay' was a red-hot chilli pepper, Labor just chopped it up and fed it to the business community, twisted through 'closing loophole' noodles.

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