Celia Hammond (Curtin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I want to talk about our need to remove barriers to employment, particularly those which impact upon small and family businesses. Over the course of our lives, many of us have experienced all manner of employment—casual, part-time or full-time. I've been a checkout chick, which is what we were called in the 1980s, a babysitter, a waitress, a receptionist, a lawyer, a university lawyer, a university administrator and a senior manager. I have been casual, part-time and full-time.

There are most definitely great bosses and wonderful mentors and inspiring co-workers and colleagues. There are also poor managers, difficult colleagues and difficult staff members for bosses to deal with. There are great workplaces—places where you really want to get up in the morning and go to. There are also bad workplaces—places where you dread going to and where you only go to out of pure, utter financial necessity.

We all learn a lot from the good and the bad experiences. Perhaps the most significant of these is that, when employment relationships go sour, it is more common than not for there to be fault on the part of both parties, with both parties feeling a sense of having been wronged by the other party. In many cases, the fault is not malicious. It's not necessarily intended; rather, it's a by-product of people having to deal with others who are different to them in very basic ways—different personalities, different styles, different skills, different expectations, different goals and different ambitions.

Of course, it is in the best interests of both employees and employers to try to make an employment relationship work. Employers need competent, committed and reliable employees that are capable of doing what is required of them to make the business successful, and this means that employees should always be treated fairly and respectfully. Their work should be valued and they should be appropriately recognised and compensated. Because continued employment depends on the viability of an employer, employees need to be positive contributors to the success of a business and do what they are employed to do, competently and reliably.

But even when both an employer and an employee know what is at stake, and both can realise and recognise the importance of building a long-term, positive employment relationship, it sometimes just doesn't work out, and the employment relationship needs to be ended. It is at these times that an effective, efficient, reliable and balanced process for ending the employment relationship must exist so that both parties can walk away as unscathed as possible.

At the present stage, our system for ending employment relationships, particularly for those relationships which have gone sour, is one which is laden with potential hazards for employers. Navigating the complicated terrain of unfair dismissal laws, adverse action claims and claims of discrimination can be extremely treacherous, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses without human resource departments or easy access to professional advice. Let's not forget that over 90 per cent of businesses in Australia are small or medium-sized businesses. There are over three million of them employing over seven million people.

All of the processes which currently exist to challenge the ending of an employment relationship can be initiated on minor, technical or weak grounds. Even if baseless, they can be so time-consuming and emotionally draining that employers are often tempted to cut their losses and pay the ex-employee additional and unearned money simply to have them go away.

Some would argue that, provided the system works for those employees who have genuine cases—and there are a lot of them—the fact that these processes can and are used for spurious claims should simply be the cost of business. But this approach is not right. The cost to business is actually a cost to all of us, because it can act as a handbrake on employment, particularly for small- and medium-size businesses, and particularly with respect to permanent or ongoing employment. This, in turn, leads to a handbrake on business growth and overall economic growth.

We need laws to ensure that employees are treated fairly and justly by their employers. We need to make sure that employees have access to efficient and accessible processes which can be used by them when employers do not do the right thing. But we also need to make sure that our laws ensure that employers are not held hostage to weak and baseless claims from ex-employees, remembering that over 90 per cent of the bosses of those employers are small- and medium-size businesses. There have been calls to change these laws in the past and, in relation to unfair dismissal laws, the suggested changes include options such as redefining 'small business' to mean fewer than 50 employees or reducing the cap on compensation able to be awarded to a minimum of three months pay, with a discretion for the Fair Work Commission to award a further three months pay in exceptional circumstances. Unfortunately, discussions on this issue have often become unstuck by people retreating to polemical and partisan corners and not even gauging in meaningful discussion. There is absolutely no question that this is a difficult balancing act, but at this point in time, when we need to stimulate our economy and encourage our businesses to employ people, we need to ensure that unnecessary barriers to employment are lifted. I repeat: this is particularly so for our small- and medium-size employers, who, despite being called 'small', are actually the largest employers in our country.

The five working groups which were established by the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General, comprising business leaders, union representatives and others to examine our IR laws and attempt to collectively undertake the delicate balancing of interests, is extremely positive. We should all embrace the opportunity to move away from polemical battlegrounds to sensible and balanced discussions and deliberations. I want to end with a commendation for the work being done by the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman in this space. This body is undertaking extremely useful research and inquiries and is regularly producing well-thought-out and sensible reports and recommendations. It is also a body which is providing invaluable advice and assistance to small businesses and family enterprises. Throughout the time of COVID-19, there have been significant increases in requests for advice. The reports and recommendations produced by the ombudsman are well worthy of consideration by everybody in our chambers and the five working groups which have been established, because they could certainly help take us further in this space to removing barriers to employment.