Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the closing loopholes bill, which concerns a radical reordering of Australian workplace law. There are four areas particularly around this legislation that I'll address: the massive increase we see in this legislation around union interference in the workplace; the disbenefits of penalising casuals in the way that this law does; the way that this is going to impact on the gig economy and gig economy workers; and, particularly, the ways in which Labor has the right-to-disconnect laws completely wrong. These are four elements that all form part of the so-called closing loopholes bill.

This is a move back to a very centralised industrial relations system, the like of which we haven't seen since the 1970s and 1980s. To say this is closing loopholes is disingenuous. In this place we all want Australians to have safe, high wages. We want them to have sustainable jobs and to be rewarded for their hard work and experience. Primarily, with the closing loopholes legislation the government has failed to identify how this legislation will increase productivity within our country—how, in the long term, it will create more and more jobs for Australians. If those opposite cannot understand the importance of increasing productivity within our workplace relations system then perhaps they will accept the words of their former prime minister Bob Hawke: 'The only way in which we can lift real wages in the longer term is by lifting productivity. If we don't lift productivity, we can't afford increased real wages.' Again, from Bob Hawke, 'Productivity is the key to improving living standards.' Bob Hawke again, 'We have to look at productivity as the means by which we can secure better living standards for Australians into the future.' This closing loopholes legislation, though, is silent about productivity and how any part of Labor's policy is going to lead to further long-term jobs. It is an attack on the gig economy; on casual employment; on owners and drivers—those who want to be their own boss; and it gives unions unprecedented rights-of-entry into businesses.

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