Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Attorney-General and the Minister for Industrial Relations. Will the Attorney please update the House on how, as part of the JobMaker plan, the Morrison government is bringing together key stakeholders to address known problems with our industrial relations system so we can create jobs and strengthen our economy?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his interest in this part of the Australian economy and for his question. From 24 March through to 31 March, so in seven days, the Hospitality Industry (General) Award, the Clerks—Private Sector Award and the Restaurant Industry Award were all changed in very substantive ways. Those three awards covered workers in industries with over two million employees. They were all changed in a matter of seven days for one purpose and one purpose only, and that was to save Australian jobs.

Without those changes, the rigidity in the award system would absolutely have cost tens of thousands of jobs. Rigidities in the award system at that point in time made it incredibly difficult for employees to be directed to work from home or to have their duties changed by direction. So all those cafes that transitioned from in-house service to takeaway and delivery models would have had huge problems under their relevant ward had that not been changed. And that intensive period of cooperation was of course a commonsense, good-faith approach to an unemployment crisis that has seen us lose 600,000 jobs and millions more people having decreased working hours. But those cooperative changes were of course temporary, and one thing I think is absolutely clear now is that the fastest path out to a better Australia with growing employment is not going to happen without enormous effort and a willingness from all parties in our economy to try new approaches.

Looking at the enduring nature of that challenge: Australia has seen as many jobseeker claims processes since mid-March as there were in the previous two years. The enormity of the challenge before us is such that we must cooperate in a way we have never done before. What we are looking at now is a level of fresh start and an attempt to garner that cooperation between employer groups, industries and unions as part of our broader JobMaker plan to try and retool key features of the Australian economy so we can achieve what will be the single greatest challenge of any of our political lifetimes, and that is to grow jobs.

There will be five working groups split up to look specifically at known problems in the industrial relations system: complexities and inefficiencies in enterprise agreement making; uncertainty and confusion in the employment of casuals and those with fixed term contracts; inflexibility in awards applying in key distressed industry sectors like hospitality and restaurants; compliance and enforcement; and greenfields agreement—which area may hold the key to tens of thousands of precious Australian jobs and related mining and construction investment. What's clear is that business as usual won't cut it with the enormous challenge that we are facing. But we hope that there will be a path to improvements in these key areas through consultation and the cooperation that we're about to embark on.