Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In one of the recent sittings, I spoke of a constituent, Rebecca, who emailed me about her deep concerns about the dire state of the job market. Rebecca is well educated and, like many Australians, is doing everything humanly possible to find work, particularly stable, secure work. She attached an email she received in relation to a job she applied for which said that there are currently 1,178 applicants for the position. Rebecca added: 'Thought you might be able to use this as proof of how bad the situation is on the jobs front. The LNP have no plan in place to improve the situation.' Just this weekend The New Daily reported on the state of the jobs market and included a similar example: 2,792 applicants for a job.

It's been clear to those on this side of the House since the onset of this crisis that there was an urgent need for government intervention in the labour market to protect jobs and keep as many employees as possible attached to their employers. It was Labor that called for wage subsidies at the beginning of the pandemic to support vulnerable workers, businesses and communities, and we have been calling for broader labour market programs to encourage job creation and kick-start the recovery. We understand the importance of these programs, having implemented our own in response to the nineties recession and the GFC. It is important to note that the government initially was not going to have a wage subsidy in response to the economic shock at all. It was going to rely solely upon JobSeeker and closed the parliament until August.

It did change its collective mind, and we welcome that. Labor welcomed that change of mind and change of heart by the government. But we pointed out the deficiencies in the JobKeeper subsidy and continue to do so. Too many people, including casuals, are left out and left behind, and it's been cut too deep and too soon. We don't want these Australians to continue to miss out. The government's budget was an opportunity to set out a plan for recovery and reform, but, unfortunately, what we got was a wasted opportunity. The budget racked up $1 trillion of debt but failed to include a comprehensive plan for jobs and locked in damaging cuts to JobKeeper in the face of rising unemployment. Australians can't afford a slow, jobless recovery caused by a government too eager to rip money out of the economy before the recovery takes hold. It is crucial that the government develops a comprehensive plan to get Australians back to work.

The JobMaker hiring credit was one of the Morrison government's key budget policies. While we welcome the concept of wage subsidies, federal Labor are concerned the government will rip away substantial support for businesses and workers by ceasing JobKeeper and JobSeeker, replacing them with insufficient measures in the form of the JobMaker hiring credit. For reasons I'll outline later, under this new policy too many Australians are left behind.

But, first, I want to make an important point. This bill does not create or implement the JobMaker hiring credit. Sure, 'JobMaker hiring credit' is in the bill title, but Australians are become increasingly aware of the market based approach of our Prime Minister. He's there for the photo-op, not the follow up. With this PM, a bill by any other name would be just as much spin. Not one single detail of the JobMaker hiring credit as announced on budget night is in this bill. The legislation does not specify any of the parameters or safeguards the government has publicly stated apply to the subsidy in the budget papers, the budget speech or the Treasury fact sheet. Instead, the legislation makes an amendment to the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Payments and Benefits) Act 2020. This is also the JobKeeper-enabling legislation that authorises the Treasurer to make rules to provide payments for financial support to those directly or indirectly affected by the coronavirus. This bill, as drafted, allows the Treasurer to create payments—not just the hiring credit scheme but any new scheme—with the stroke of a pen. The only constraint on such amendment payments is that they are 'primarily for the purpose of improving the prospects of individuals getting employment in Australia' and 'increasing workforce participation in Australia'.

Unsurprisingly, the opposition, businesses and stakeholders have not been presented with a copy of the draft regulations. Whilst similar powers were conferred on the Treasurer to create JobKeeper, those powers were narrowly time limited and were reasonably argued for on the basis of imminent economic collapse at the onset of the pandemic. The proposed two-year blank cheque for undefined employment and workforce participation programs under the same legislation is incongruous to the budget claims about an economy in recovery. The Prime Minister's press team have been busy nonetheless providing background information to The Australian and Sky News, demanding the bill be passed this week. Never mind the reality that the bill has been referred to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee to report on 6 November and that Senate estimates is happening this fortnight. And never mind the fact that the Senate doesn't reconvene until 9 November. There's probably a good reason for that. This is a Prime Minister that loathes scrutiny, a Prime Minister that cut funding for the office that uncovered sports rorts and uncovered a payment to a Liberal donor for land at 10 times the market value, a Prime Minister who does everything in his power to avoid implementing a federal anticorruption watchdog with teeth and a Prime Minister who wants to give this government a two-year blank cheque to use taxpayer money up to and beyond the next election with no parliamentary scrutiny.

The government will argue changes to regulations are disallowable by a Senate vote. However, the process of passing a disallowance motion in the Senate gives the government an extra vote, in effect, compared to normal legislation. A disallowance vote requires an additional vote to pass, like an amendment. In this bill, there's nothing stopping the government handing itself a blank cheque to distribute to whatever businesses in whichever electorates it sees fit. A two-year blank cheque for undefined employment and workforce participation programs under this legislation does raise serious concern. What is to stop the government from directing payments to specific and politically favourable companies, donors or electorates? We know the government has a terrible track record when it comes to doling out taxpayers' money. I remind you again of the sports rorts. It is important that this new wage subsidy scheme is designed properly and with integrity, and we will continue to ask to see details of the proposed scheme from the government.

The Senate committee and Senate estimates processes will delve into the detail—or lack thereof—in this legislation. Even without details on the legislation, without seeing the draft rules, let's discuss the hiring credit as it is announced in the budget. The government will provide $4 billion over three years from 2021 to accelerate employment growth by supporting organisations to take on additional employees through a hiring credit. The JobMaker hiring credit will be available to eligible employers over the 12 months from 7 October 2020 for each additional new job they create for an eligible employee. Eligible employers who can demonstrate that the new employee will increase overall employee headcount and payroll will receive $200 per week if they hire an eligible employee aged between 16 and 29 years or $100 per week if they hire an eligible employee aged between 30 and 35 years. The JobMaker hiring credit will be available for up to 12 months from the date of employment of the eligible employee, with a maximum of $10,400 per additional new position created. To be eligible the employee will need to have worked for a minimum of 20 hours per week averaged over a quarter and to have received the Jobseeker payment, youth allowance or parenting payment for at least one of the three months prior to when they were hired.

The Treasurer's budget speech stated that Treasury estimates that this will support around 450,000 jobs for young people. This is a misrepresentation. Of course it is spin: Treasury has not actually done any modelling on the number of jobs this makes. Where did the number come from? If this figure is anything like other budget announcements—a big-dollar headline and no delivery—then Australia will almost certainly be disappointed. What we have been advised is that the 450,000 is those who are eligible for the scheme; it doesn't necessarily mean they will receive a job. There is a view within the media, and certainly among stakeholders, that there will be 450,000 jobs created. On a closer look, that is not what is intended by this legislation. If this figure is anything like other budget announcements—a big-dollar headline and no delivery—then Australia will almost certainly be disappointed. One need only ask bushfire victims about the promises that were made to them and the lack of follow-up.

The Senate process will get to the bottom of this, we hope, and demonstrate that 460,000 is not the total number of jobs created, just the number of jobs that could receive the credit. Again, we'll obviously pursue that in Senate estimates and then, if there is a good reason to do so, propose potential amendments to the bill to provide an improved set of options available to the government if they take up those amendments.

We need to see the Treasury's modelling—should it exist—of the distribution of types of jobs. For example, are they full-time jobs, part-time jobs, casual jobs? Is it more likely, because of the way the scheme is developed, that there will be more part-time jobs? The fact is that if you employ two people aged 29 or under, on 20 hours a week each, then you are going to get twice as much money as you would if you employed a full-time worker. Is that a deliberate provision that acts as a disincentive to employ full-time staff? We should hear from the government as to their intentions on these sorts of things. There is nothing wrong with casual, full-time or part-time work. But what is the government's expectation of what will be delivered in the labour market for businesses and workers by introducing this legislation? That's not really understood fully and it's something the government should consider explaining to businesses and the many other stakeholders. We need to see Treasury's modelling of how many people will lose their jobs at the end of the 12-month credit period. What is Treasury's modelling on the number of businesses overall, and by entity size, that will be eligible? How many workers who are currently on JobKeeper, which expires in March, are let go by these struggling small businesses while big businesses, who have done well through the crisis, continue to collect a large number of hiring credits?

Certainly, Labor does not want to see anything other than increased employment growth. If we've got businesses that are fully recovered, or that haven't been impacted by the pandemic, it is absolutely a good thing that they could employ young people, people under 35, if it's additional. But I think one of the real potential weaknesses of this bill, given its initiative is seeking to stand in the stead of JobKeeper, is that many businesses currently using JobKeeper as their wage subsidy will not be in a position to employ additional staff when they're in recovery. Take, for example, a business that might have 10 employees, seven of whom may be on JobKeeper. They are not eligible for this new initiative until they've removed JobKeeper. By removing JobKeeper it's very hard for them to maintain the employment level at 10, let alone add an extra headcount, to 11, and then get any support from the government. So what Labor sees as possible here is that, once you strip away JobKeeper, many, many businesses that are in recovery are not going to be in a position to have a net additional amount of employees in their business. That's just not feasible for many businesses in recovery. For that reason, our fear is that replacing JobKeeper as the main support for many small businesses and medium enterprises, and indeed larger businesses, will not be fit for purpose for recovering businesses, whilst it might be perfectly suitable for those businesses who can add, in net terms, to their workforce. I think that's something the government should explore.

Our concern is that businesses are going to fall between the stalls here, between a subsidy that goes direct to them when they're in need of recovery, as in JobKeeper, and then the new initiative, which really means that you have to be able to increase employment beyond what you had in September this year. I think it really is a great leap of faith to assume that the businesses who could recover would be sufficiently recovered to be able to employ a net increase in headcount of their staff. The government should (1) explain why they believe it would work; and (2) identify the businesses that are in recovery that will not get support as they will not be able to add to their headcount because of the design of this initiative vis-a-vis the design of JobKeeper. And I don't see any modelling or explanation by the Treasurer about that fundamental intersection between JobKeeper and this initiative, the so-called JobMaker hiring credit. It's something I think is really fundamental to the efficacy and effectiveness of this initiative that the government has to explain for Labor to be confident that this in any way will provide sufficient support for recovering businesses, whether in Victoria or across the country, in the many sectors of our economy that have been absolutely adversely affected by this pandemic.

It's true to say that Melbourne has gone through harder times dealing with the second wave and that more businesses have been affected. But you only have to go and look at the tourist precincts of every other state to know that many of those areas are very badly affected too. Not being able to have people from Sydney and Melbourne go to Far North Queensland has meant those economies have been really affected. So, when people think it's just all about Victoria or Melbourne, that's not true. It's about sectors that have been damaged—aviation, hospitality. Even now they're damaged in a number of ways, because the restrictions have eased but haven't ended and because, even when consumers are in a position to patronise a business, they still do not go there, because they are going to be very cautious, even if we allow them to go there. People are not just going to return to certain businesses, certain cafes and restaurants, just because the restrictions ease.

I think it's fair to say that there are sectors in our labour market that have been very hard hit. We don't believe JobKeeper did enough to support them, paradoxically, because the sectors most affected have a high proportion of casuals who hadn't worked 12 months, and yet those sectors didn't receive the commensurate support. So, too, we're worried about the way this initiative will operate and whether it has been thought through. Looking at the design of JobKeeper, there are flaws. It has been critical for so many businesses, without a doubt, and that's why we support it going forward, at least for a temporary period, beyond March next year. But because we saw the failure of the government to even think of a wage subsidy, then a government who excludes people and then a government who had some design flaws with JobKeeper, we are sceptical that they've got it right here. There needs to be a proper examination of those matters, which we'd expect to happen through Senate estimates and the Senate committee that will be considering the bill—which, by the way, will not delay one day the enactment of this legislation, because the reality is it can only be enacted when the Senate reconvenes in the second week of November. This whole charade today has been a stunt by the government. We're happy the matter's brought on. We moved the procedural motion to do so, but, again, we say to the government: stop playing games. If you put more effort into looking at the design of an initiative for businesses and workers, rather than playing stunts in the parliament, frankly, I think we'd all be better off.

There are those questions that I have asked. I hope the Treasurer and the other relevant ministers consider some of the questions that I'm putting on this second reading speech, including: how many workers who are currently on JobKeeper, which expires in March, will be let go by their struggling small businesses while big businesses who have done well through the crisis will continue to collect a large number of hiring credits? As I mentioned earlier, what is the interaction between JobKeeper ending and the hiring credit?

Buried near the end of the Treasury fact sheet is the caveat that you can't receive both JobKeeper and the JobMaker Hiring Credit. That's an important point, because in the six page brochure it took the last page in the second last paragraph for me to find the fact that they were not eligible if they've got JobMaker. So I imagine there will be a lot of small businesses who will listen to the announcements by the Treasurer on budget night, and the comments subsequently by the Prime Minister, about this initiative and not fully understand that they're not going to get a cent unless they get off JobKeeper. Then they're not going to get a cent unless they can employ additional staff or indeed increase their payroll. So the fact is these are tight conditions. Frankly, additionality in normal circumstances is absolutely critical. To that extent I think that's a conventional approach, but are we in a conventional situation? I would always push additionality as critical. But I'm worried that there will be those businesses who will not be able to get to that point. They'll be consigned to the dustbin, because they will not be able to recover, and yet with support they would.

The fact sheets then detail an illustrative example of a firm that was struggling in one quarter and was eligible for JobKeeper. In the next quarter he's part of an economy going gangbusters, growing at such a rate that they not only keep their staff who were on but expand to get a hiring credit—all the while unemployment is forecast to rise to eight per cent in the government's budget forecasts. This week Deloitte estimated it will peak at 8.6 per cent. The government either doesn't care or doesn't want to know how many firms, if any, will one quarter go from struggling and needing JobKeeper to actually be able to expand their employment. They don't want to know about the firms that will face a cliff in March as JobKeeper is ripped away.

The Prime Minister also needs to explain why there are 928,000 Australians who have been deliberately excluded from the Morrison government's new hiring subsidies in a move which will keep the unacceptably long jobless queues even longer. If Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister, was serious about driving down unemployment and kickstarting the recovery he would not be excluding almost one million Australians aged over 35 on unemployment payments from this new wage subsidy scheme.

There are many questions about the operation and integrity of the scheme that need to be answered by the government. The eligibility criteria raises questions, including: narrow eligibility, for social security recipients below 35 there's no requirement for employment to be secure or permanent and the potential for contrived arrangements and unfair dismissals to maximise the credit. Australians over 35 are rapidly approaching the JobSeeker Christmas cliff with no certainty about the future of their support payments and will now find themselves competing with the subsidised, young workforce. That's not an easy thing to avoid, but our concern is that you'll have people over 35 possibly sacked unfairly and replaced by younger, subsidised workers. We want to know what the government is doing to ensure that doesn't happen and what would happen to a company that did that to workers over 35 who were working for them that couldn't be subsidised.

As we did with JobKeeper we will work through the detail of the hiring credit through the upcoming Senate committee. We'll want to constructively point out the problem areas with the legislation to ensure Australians get bang for their buck. The government has a consistent approach to policy: give a big announcement and get the headline but fall on the detail and then forget to follow up on the program. It's a bit like the spin today about Labor stopping the debate. We moved the motion to actually bring on the debate, and the government took about 15 minutes to work out what they wanted to do because they didn't really want to do what they said to the gallery over the weekend that they wanted to do. That's the way this government operates.

This government has a terrible track record when it comes to labour initiatives and employment programs, including the failed and exploitative Youth Jobs PaTH program. That program is widely criticised for a lack of outcomes, with little to no training and with it delivering wage subsidies to firms like Coles and Hungry Jack's, I might add, without additionality in those circumstances.

The government seems to have just discovered young people. The hiring credit will not make up for all the damage done to them over the seven years of this government, with their cuts to TAFE and universities, cuts to penalty rates and exclusion of casuals, predominantly young workers on JobKeeper. And there's the damage done by early access to super—that is, people's retirement incomes.

The government's wage subsidy for workers over 50 is just as much of a failure. In order to cover for their failure to include any support for older Australians in their budget, the government touts this failed program as a signature policy. But let me reiterate: the program has been an utter failure in getting older people into work. Not only has the program been unsubscribed but the federal government has spent less than half what it wanted to on this program. And it doesn't effectively help people into employment, with 40 per cent of workers under the program without work within three months—far from long-term, sustainable jobs. Only $254 million was spent to help 51,190 mature-aged people into work, despite the coalition promising in 2014 to spend $520 million to help 30,000 older Australians find a job every year. That has not happened.

We don't want to see the same flaws in the hiring credit program. It's vital that this new wage subsidy scheme be better designed, better implemented and better monitored than JobKeeper, Youth Jobs PaTH, Newstart and many other programs. The hiring wage subsidy does nothing to encourage secure jobs, particularly at a time when we're facing record-high underemployment. The design of the subsidy encourages a company to double their subsidy by hiring two workers for 20 hours instead of one full-time employee, encouraging more casual and part-time work. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer need to assure the Australian workers that they will not be sacked and replaced by younger workers or have their working hours cut so that an employer can access the hiring wage subsidy. There are no new reporting requirements to prevent wage theft and other endemic exploitation that does disproportionately affect younger people.

To date, proper regulatory oversight and integrity measures have not been made clear. We don't trust the government to put workers' interests first in this instance. The government has presided over insecure work and underemployment for too many years. The Prime Minister is leaving Australia with $1 trillion of debt, but unemployment and underemployment will remain too high for too long, with the jobless rate not expected to get back to pre-crisis levels even after four years.

As I mentioned previously, anyone aged over 35 will now find themselves competing with a subsidised younger workforce. There are no plans there. This competition comes in the face of a deepening jobs crisis, with the government forecasting another 160,000 Australians expected to join unemployment queues by the end of the year. That's 160,000 workers and their families facing a very bleak Christmas. That's the government's forecast: an additional 160,000 workers losing their jobs.

This government has a track record of making an announcement but failing to substantiate it. We have concerns there are major design flaws with the JobMaker hiring credit policy that will prevent businesses even taking it up. For that reason, we are glad for the matter to be brought on. We want this debate. This should be a matter of urgency. It should be about what we can do now that the government has announced the end to the cuts to JobKeeper. I'm not suggesting for a moment that this is the right initiative. We're going to support the government making the lives of businesses and workers better, even if the plan of the government is imperfect.

Our job is to suggest improvements to a scheme that is deficient or to point out facts about the scheme if we do not believe, on evidence, that it will lead to the things the government says it will. That's our job. With JobKeeper and other initiatives of this government, yes, Labor have been constructively critical and at times we've disagreed with the government, but during this pandemic we have always supported Australian businesses and Australian workers and we'll continue to do that. In the meantime, we'll also do the job of holding the government to account, making sure they are doing what they say they're doing and making sure they're providing sufficient support for our economy—businesses and workers—in an unprecedented time. The worst recession since the Great Depression requires a lot of investment and a lot of dedication to tasks that we don't see the government exhibiting, frankly.

Enough of the games! We have this matter before us. We should debate it today. It should be examined by a Senate committee. It should be examined rigorously in Senate estimates. We'll have another debate in the Senate, but what we won't do is put this on the backburner. This is a priority for Labor because it's about looking after working people and businesses. We just want to hold the government to account, improve their policies if possible and make sure there's sufficient support and succour for businesses and workers doing it very, very tough at the moment.

I'll just finish on this, even though I might be repeating myself: the government has said there are 160,000 workers and families who are going to be lining up in unemployment queues before Christmas. That's tragic, and we in this parliament should be doing everything we can to make sure that we prevent that happening where possible and provide opportunities so that we can improve our economy and get out of this recession as quickly as possible. It doesn't have to be deeper than it need be or take a day longer, but it requires the government to focus on the issues, not play stunts as they've done with this matter.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The bill before the House today, the Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020, is going to have a very significant impact across the country in every community and every business sector. Nationwide, it's going to help support up to 450,000 jobs, and I believe that few places will see more benefit than in my electorate of Fisher. That's because two of the largest industries in my electorate are tourism and construction. Both are sectors which employ more young people than most, and both are sectors which were particularly hard hit by the worst of the COVID-19 crisis. This measure is particularly well targeted by the government to support these impacted sectors, and, as a builder, I am focused on the difference it will make to the construction industry. It won't just be the construction industry, but that's the one I have a very significant connection with.

I'm sure that all of us who have a connection to the construction industry in Australia, given that it employs over 1.2 million Australians, will remember how it felt to watch the events of March, April and May this year play out across the country. Housing Industry Association figures show that sales of new homes fell by more than 20 per cent in the three months to May. Project cancellations hit 26 per cent. Master Builders Australia's April COVID-19 survey indicated an average reduction in forward contracts of some 40 per cent. The picture for many on the ground was devastating. In those weeks, I received phone calls from many builders, some of whom I'd known for decades. They're builders with successful businesses who plan prudently and who ordinarily maintain a strong pipeline of work. These builders were telling me that come August, when their current jobs were finished, they would not have one project to go on with. Builds were being put on hold or cancelled, and the industry was on the brink of grinding to a halt. I knew that the government needed to act, and act quickly, to prevent this unthinkable outcome. I spoke with the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Housing and I was very pleased to find that he shared those concerns. I'm proud to have worked closely with the minister on the development of the government's response—that is, HomeBuilder.

The impact of this policy has been dramatic. The same Queensland builders and finance brokers who contacted me in May, saying that they were facing an economic cliff in the second half of the year, have been in touch with me since to say that they are now receiving more inquiries than ever before. This is the same HomeBuilder package that those opposite ridiculed. On the Sunshine Coast, the demand for new land and for construction has been described as a feeding frenzy. As of 20 September, one development in my electorate, called Harmony, has sold 400 new lots since the grant's June announcement. Buyers were camping out overnight outside the sales centre to get the blocks that they wanted. HIA new home sales data for the three months to August 2020 shows that nationally sales have risen 61.3 per cent compared to the quarter in which HomeBuilder was announced. In August 2020, the number of loans for the construction of new dwellings increased by 22.9 per cent. Private sector house approvals are at their highest levels since February 2019.

Thanks to the government's intervention, things are better in the construction industry than any of us could have expected at this point. However, there are still significant challenges facing the construction sector, which could derail the national COVID delivery. One of the most important challenges that lie ahead is the issue of workforce development, and it is this which the bill before the House will go so far to supporting. In order to service its growing pipeline of work, the construction sector must have the skilled workers that it needs. At the moment, that workforce is simply not there. The Australian government's most recent skills shortage report for the construction industry in Queensland noted that only half of available positions in the sector were being filled—just half. Bricklayers, plumbers, glaziers and tilers are in especially short supply, and the problem is so much worse in regional Queensland. Without these skilled workers, builders have to turn away jobs, projects experience lengthy delays and cost overruns and prices become inflated, reducing further demand.

This federal government is alive to these challenges. We've introduced billions of dollars in incentives to encourage Australians, at this difficult time, to train in a new trade and to make it easier for businesses to employ people, particularly new apprentices. As part of our COVID-19 response, the government invested an additional $1.5 billion, expanding our Supporting Apprenticeships and Trainees wage subsidy. Under this scheme, from now until March 2021, small and medium-sized businesses with fewer than 200 employees who retain an Australian apprentice can apply for a wage subsidy of 50 per cent. This measure alone will support approximately 90,000 small and medium-sized businesses, employing around 180,000 apprentices. In the 2020 federal budget, we went even further. The Treasurer allocated a further $1.2 billion for an expanded Boosting Apprenticeships Commencement wage subsidy. This applies to new apprentices taken on between now and the end of September 2021. There is no maximum cap for the size of the company, and the only requirement is that the apprentice is not already receiving any other type of government support. Once again, this new scheme will pay 50 per cent of the apprentice's wages, up to $7,000 a quarter, until the end of September 2021. This scheme's 100,000 anticipated new apprentices, combined with the 180,000 supported under the government's COVID-19 wage subsidy, represents a significant boost to the skills base in the sector over the coming year.

The government is also acting to ease skills shortages by additional training of existing workers in construction or other related sectors. The government's $1 billion JobTrainer package is going to pay for 340,700 job training places, which will be delivered at low or no cost to the trainee. Importantly, the specific skills and industries covered by the fund are going to be set by agreement between the states and territories and the National Skills Commission and will be based on data gathered by the commission on skills shortages in the economy. I'm confident many courses relevant to construction will be included in this package. I'm also pleased to say that the federal budget expanded this program too, adding another $252 million for up to 50,000 new short courses in sectors where there will be high demand for jobs in the future.

Anyone who's worked in the construction sector knows that, in terms of training and workforce development, there is no substitute for on-the-job training and experience. We need to get motivated young people with good foundational skills into the industry and give them the opportunity to learn by doing. That is what this bill helps to deliver. The JobMaker hiring credit will make it much easier over the next 12 months to give young Australians a start in the industry.

The $4.5 billion program enabled by this bill will help to create up to 450,000 new jobs not just in the construction sector but across all industries, including the construction sector. Eligible employers will be able to claim $200 a week for each additional eligible employee they hire between the ages of 16 and 29 and $100 a week for each additional eligible employee aged 30 to 35. Employers will receive the JobMaker hiring credit for up to 12 months from the date the new position is created. The eligibility criteria are very generous, with almost all businesses not currently claiming JobKeeper eligible. As long as the job is in addition to a business's existing payroll and the individual employed was previously on JobSeeker, it's very likely that the role will be supported with up to $10,400 from this government.

Members opposite have decried this measure, but I expect it to be a critical boost for construction businesses and businesses right across the economy looking to increase their capacity, develop the industry's workforce and help this country to grow its way out of this COVID recession.

This bill, alongside the budget's billions of dollars of other economic measures, will make a huge difference for this country's construction industry and many other industries too. I believe that, in response, the construction industry needs to work on its own initiatives to meet its critical challenges and to live up to its responsibilities to help us build Australia's recovery.

Among other measures, it is time for the sector to help us make the most of the billions we are investing in apprentices and training. We all know where the skills shortages are. The funding needed will be available with the passage of this bill and others. The construction industry has a responsibility now to use the government's apprenticeship funding and JobMaker incentives and work with training providers to put on more young people and ensure that they are being given the foundational skills they need to deliver when they get into the workplace.

Equally and importantly, it is time for the industry to work with the government seriously on industrial relations reform to protect the futures of those new young workers and stand up to the militant unions. This government has been rock solid on trying to get the criminal aspects of the CFMMEU under control. We held a royal commission. We reinstated the Australian Building and Construction Commission. We have brought forward laws like the protecting vulnerable workers act and the ensuring integrity bill. We have presided over a system that's handed down more than $17 million in fines to the CFMMEU. However, infrastructure projects continue to cost the taxpayer 30 per cent more than they should because of the misbehaviour of militant unions and, frankly, the weakness of the sector in dealing with them. I'm sad to say that, while the Labor Party continues to take more than $1 million a year from the CFMMEU, the construction industry will get no help from Labor. It's time for the industry to work more closely with this coalition government, follow the lead of Master Builders Australia and their CEO, Denita Wawn, stand up to the CFMMEU bullies and be a stronger ally with us in the ongoing process of industrial relations reform.

The construction industry will be central to helping build our economic recovery, brick by brick. To do that, construction businesses will need a significantly expanded workforce of young, fit Australians ready and eager to learn a trade. This bill will facilitate the delivery of this government's JobMaker hiring credit and it will provide a pathway for thousands of young Australians into not just the construction industry but across all sectors of the economy. It will form a foundational pillar of Australia's economic recovery. I commend the bill to the House.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A little while ago when I was watching the farce unfold on that side of the House when they couldn't decide whether to support the passage of their own legislation, I was trying to remember what it reminded me of and it came to me that it was a lot like one of the really great episodes of Seinfeld. What happened in that episode was that Jerry is with Elaine and they go to pick up a hire car that Jerry has booked. They go to the hire care place and Jerry says, 'Do you have my reservation?' The person at the hire car place says: 'Yes, we have your reservation; we just don't have any cars.' Jerry then says: 'You're quite good at taking the reservation but you're just not very good at holding the reservation. It's the holding of the reservation that matters.' The reason that reminded me of those opposite is that they are really good at making the announcements, they are really good at getting around the press gallery scurrying in and out of the bureaus up there telling people: 'We're going to put lots of pressure on Labor today. They've got to pass our legislation for the hiring credit through the House of Representatives and the pressure is going to be on them.' They were all around the gallery and we read and saw all these stories about how the government was putting pressure on the Labor Party to support the speedy passage of their hiring credits. They did all that really, really well. They did all the spin really well.

But where they fell over was that they weren't actually ready to pass their own legislation through the parliament. They were able to spin that they were going to put pressure on us to pass the legislation through the parliament. But nobody thought: 'Hang on a second. If that's the case, we probably should be in a position to actually put the legislation to the parliament.' The Manager of Opposition Business suggested quite fairly, quite graciously, that if the government was that keen to pass the legislation through the House today—though they hadn't actually thought to put it before the House today—we would facilitate that. And we watched the absolute farce unfold as the member for Petrie and others tried to work out whether they would support the speedy passage of their own legislation. I think this speaks to a deeper truth about the government. This is a government which for more than seven years now has put all of the emphasis on the big announcements and none of the emphasis on actually delivering on the commitments and promises they have made. They are notorious for overpromising and underdelivering.

We saw that again today when they said they were going to pass that legislation today but they weren't even ready to put that legislation before the House. The reason why all of this spin fell over with just a little bit of scrutiny is that the government can't get beyond one inescapable truth about this legislation, and that is that, whether it passes in the next couple of hours or tomorrow or on Wednesday or even on Thursday, it can't pass the parliament until the Senate reconvenes in November. So with all this pressure about the speedy passage, no genius on that side of the House thought: 'Hang on a minute, no matter what we do in the House of Representatives it can't pass the Senate until next month.' So all of this rubbish that we had to read, see and listen to has been exposed. It's fallen over at the very first hurdle. No matter what we do here today, it cannot pass the Senate until next month.

What we've tried to do—and I think what the Manager of Opposition Business did a short while ago is of a piece with our efforts—is be as constructive and helpful as we can when it comes to implementing. If there's a good idea or something that the government needs help getting through here into a Senate inquiry and considered by the Senate then we have been prepared to be constructive throughout. But that doesn't mean just being meekly acquiescent. It means pointing out where the government may not have got things exactly bang on. It means asking questions about whether there are unintended consequences and whether there is the capacity for ideas like what the government is proposing to actually fall over in the implementation.

That's why we want the senate inquiry. We've actually got the time. We've got a few weeks until it can be put before the Senate, so let's use that time wisely. Let's use that time to have the Senate inquiry and look at the detail of what's being proposed here. As the member for Gorton eloquently explained a short while ago, there are a few areas in this legislation that concern us. We will be voting for it here in the House this afternoon, but there are issues that we want a Senate inquiry to look at because there are some things that concern us. We are worried that there is the capacity to rort this. We are worried about the way the tests have been set up. We are worried that it might be possible—and the government hasn't adequately convinced us that it's not possible—for an employer to sack an older worker and replace them with two part-time younger workers in order to receive the hiring credit twice. It would be incredibly concerning if that were the case. So we want a Senate inquiry to look at that.

We want the Senate inquiry to look at whether or not this policy will actually make a contribution to secure work or whether it's just kicking the can down the road, creating even more churn in the labour market, which has been defined not just in the last seven months but for the last seven years by insecurity, underemployment and a lot of precarious work—all of the things which have led to suboptimal wage outcomes and all kinds of other issues in our economy around consumption and the like. So we want to get to the bottom of that as well.

We want to understand why the government chose the 35-years cut-off, recognising that 928,000 Australians who are on unemployment benefits will be excluded from the hiring credit that we are debating in the House right now. So we want to understand the impacts of all of that. As the member for Gorton again mentioned in his contribution, we want to understand where the government got this 450,000 people promise where they say the hiring credits will get 450,000 Australians back into work. That sounds to us to be a made-up number. So we want to get to the bottom of that. We want to understand it. We want to understand how that is actually additional people employed and not just part of the natural recovery in employment that you would expect to see after such a deep and damaging recession. So these are the sorts of issues that we want to get to.

We also want to get to the implementation of an expensive policy. It is $4 billion, and we want to make sure that the government does it right. Even the most objective observer would conclude that the government's got form in stuffing up these kinds of big policies, particularly in the labour market. One of the reasons why the Treasurer will become known as the butterfingers of Australian politics is that he takes ideas like this and drops the ball. He drops the ball repeatedly. When the government has form, I think it's our responsibility on this side of the House to try and understand where things could go wrong and to try and help prevent things from going wrong. So that's the issue here—the government has form.

Just think about that Restart Program. When the government were rightly criticised for excluding almost a million workers on unemployment benefits from the hiring credit, they said, 'Don't worry; we've got this thing called Restart for the over 50s.' We said, 'Okay, we'll have a look at Restart.' Restart has been hopelessly and woefully undersubscribed. It's nowhere near the commitments that the government made for the impact of Restart for workers over 50. It's hopelessly undersubscribed. We now know through the good work of Paul Karp at TheGuardian and others that so many of those workers on the Restart Program didn't even have a job three months after they had helped their employer get the hiring credit. So Restart has been a farce, and we don't want to see this go down the same path.

Speaking of paths, what about the Youth Jobs PaTH program quietly cut back in this year's budget?

The government doesn't want people to know that PaTH has been cut back. The funding has been cut back as part of a $1.4 billion cut to employment services in the budget handed down just a couple of weeks ago—another farce in the labour-market programs: Restart; PaTH.

And there's JobKeeper of course—the $60 billion blunder; the biggest blunder in the history of this federation when it comes to the budget. It was $60 billion out. It excluded millions of workers on the basis that the program was full, only to have to fess up, in quite a humiliating fashion, that the Treasurer was $60 billion out in his calculations. So it's a government that has form in not getting these things right.

There are parallels here between this hiring credit and the JobKeeper legislation, because this legislation that we're considering doesn't set all the rules; it doesn't set the eligibility or the rates and all that sort of thing. It basically gives the Treasurer a blank cheque to implement as he sees fit—to tweak the rules with the stroke of a pen on who gets it, how much it is and how they'll tighten it up if that's necessary. He hasn't been successful at doing that with JobKeeper, with so many people excluded and some companies receiving it that shouldn't need it—all of those sorts of things. So, once again, I think we've got a right to be sceptical about the Treasurer's capacity to implement this $4 billion program.

This is a deep and damaging recession. It's the deepest, most damaging recession in almost a century. It's the first recession at all in almost three decades. We're in the teeth of a full-blown jobs crisis. Almost a million are unemployed already and another 160,000 are expected to join the unemployment queues between now and the end of the year. Thirty thousand jobs were lost in the last month alone. So this requires us to do the best we can to get people back into work.

With a trillion dollars in debt and $98 billion of new commitments in the budget, we need to recognise that the country doesn't have a choice at the moment between borrowing or not, but we do have a choice about whether we get value for money from that borrowing or not. We measure that value for money by what it means for jobs. We measure that value for money by whether or not we actually have anything to show for the debt which has quadrupled on the watch of those opposite, despite them having spent much of the last decade running around Australia talking about debt and deficit disasters when debt was a tiny fraction of what it is today on their watch. So we want to get that value for money.

The best way for us to do that is to carefully examine what's being proposed here, to hold it up to the light, to make sure that we do what we can to prevent the Treasurer, the butter-fingers of Australian politics, from getting this hopelessly wrong once again. That's our responsibility to the Australian people. Every single dollar here is borrowed. We want to get maximum bang for buck. The government has got this wrong too frequently for us to just roll over without this Senate inquiry to have a look at what's happening here. If there are amendments required in that process, that's fine. We'll be supporting it through the House today, to get it over into that Senate committee. It can't be passed until next month anyway, so let's try and get it right.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] On the Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020: I'll be corrected if I'm wrong by those on the opposite side, on the government benches, but, as I recall, this was one of the Morrison government's key budget policies. So the manner in which we've had to bring this forward for debate this afternoon after question time tells you everything about how this government operates. We're talking about the Prime Minister's office—or the marketing department, which is probably the entirety of the Prime Minister's office—working overtime to pitch to the media that Labor might not support this bill; they're trying to get all the smoke and mirrors happening and the sleight of hand, to play the political wedge. It's not about the actual substance of the bill; it's not about having it brought before parliament so we can debate it, so we can look at it and bring it up to the light, as the previous speaker, the member for Rankin, has rightly pointed out. No—they just want to play politics on this. And it tells you everything about this government that one of the key policies in their budget was used in this manner to play a political game in the Press Gallery corridors.

In many respects, during this pandemic we have seen a very substantive argument made by our side of politics to be constructive around the packages put forward by the government—to hold them up to the light, as was said by the member for Rankin—but also to be supportive of what is necessary to get Australians through this once-in-a century tragedy and this once-in-a-century pandemic that has caused such devastation around the globe. Yet, the government wants to play politics with these packages. We have been calling for wage subsidies from the start of this pandemic, to support our vulnerable workers, businesses and communities. In fact, the member for Rankin was arguing for this back in March and February.

I remember the Prime Minister was reluctant even to go towards a wage subsidy. Maybe he saw the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, go there and thought, 'Oh well, I better go there too.' Maybe it was the so-called national cabinet, where the premiers made the strong argument that we had to have a wage subsidy for this pandemic. But he was reluctant—let's not forget that—and he was pulled towards that policy package by those other factors that I mentioned. Of course, what do we get? We get a cookie-cutter package and a cookie-cutter approach. And the cracks that we've seen formed over the last several months have become chasms. The Grand Canyon of policy packages swallowed up a million casual workers, who are left behind. It swallowed up people like carers, people in the arts sector and people like temporary migrants—so many demographics have missed out or been left behind because of the way that the government has designed their JobSeeker and JobKeeper packages.

I said to myself early on: 'It must be because they rushed it. It must be because they went headlong into this and it was all about responding to the pandemic.' You give them a bit of the benefit of the doubt, but when you look closely at the cracks that formed and the chasms that formed from them, it all adds up. It's clearly an ideological set of decisions to leave out big chunks of the Australian population—big numbers of people in Australia have been left out. It makes no other sense to me. In many respects, not only has the Morrison government's response been slow, reactive and somewhat uncoordinated; there's been a deliberateness in the manner in which they have made decisions about who gets support and who doesn't. And that deliberateness, for me, is what we have been arguing against: the decisions they made to leave out people.

With JobSeeker, for example, we know that unemployment is on the rise. In my electorate, we've got 11½ thousand members of my electorate who've been relying on JobSeeker to get by, and another 26½ thousand in my community who've been reliant on JobKeeper through this pandemic. Again, we supported the packages for those very reasons. And there'll be more jobless as we head towards Christmas. Those numbers are going up. When we look at this JobMaker package—as the previous speaker alluded to—it has some similar problems in structural set-up to JobKeeper and JobSeeker, in the manner in which they've left people out. There are 928,000 Australians over the age of 35 on our unemployment benefits who were deliberately excluded from those hiring subsidies. They were deliberately excluded. Us pointing that out as an opposition doesn't mean we don't support the support package for young Australians. We know how hard they've been hit by the pandemic. We know that this is a generational issue for them. So of course we support those elements of it. But that doesn't mean we should ignore this or we shouldn't focus on this issue. The government is once again deliberately leaving out a big chunk of Australians from these packages. We don't want these Australians to miss out. The government's budget was a real opportunity to set out a plan for economic recovery and reform that actually tried to be as inclusive as possible for as many Australians as possible. They missed that opportunity, and I can only surmise it was for those ideological reasons that they deliberately left out certain numbers of people—excluded them.

Everyone's been going on a bit about how the government is great: 'Look how much they've spent—we've gone a trillion dollars into debt, with $507 billion spent in the budget.' Hold on. It's not just how much you spend, right? They've never taken the lessons of understanding this. In relation to the manner in which the previous Labor government dealt with the GFC, they were very critical of the spend. But it's how you spend that money. It's how you go about putting stimulus into the economy to cover the most vulnerable in society, to make sure that you hit those sectors, those industries, those areas, to give those people a chance to recover. That's what it's about. That's what it's about for us as a social democratic party, where we intervene to make sure that we support the most vulnerable and those who need it, and to stimulate the economy so that, based on their hard work, they can keep going and survive and then flourish. But those opposite criticised us for that, for the selective spending that we made. Apparently that wasn't good enough all those years ago. Yet they've gone and spent money. We use the old cliche of a drunken sailor. It wasn't that at all—they were sober when they were making these decisions. There was a deliberateness about the manner in which they left certain people out of these packages, and they're doing it again. They are doing it again with respect to the JobMaker hiring credit.

There is no comprehensive plan for jobs across the economy. The cuts to JobKeeper and the cuts to JobSeeker in the face of rising unemployment beggar belief. Again, the government are not understanding the need in the community. As the previous speaker, the member for Rankin, said, we're going to work through our own assessment of this particular bill as it goes through the Senate committee. But there are a number of issues with it which we have raised and will continue to raise. This get-the-headline approach that I noted—this big announcement with the big headline, the sleight of hand, the marketing department working overtime to win a headline in the papers or on the radio without any substantive follow-up—is one problem, of course. Let's look at the substance as well. It's not just all talk, no action.

The government have alluded to their track record. Even this morning I heard members of the government talk about the Youth Jobs PaTH program or the Restart wage subsidy. Let's have a look at those. The Youth Jobs PaTH Program was widely criticised for a lack of outcomes. There was little or no training and there were wage subsidies to big corporates like Coles and Hungry Jack's. The Restart wage subsidy program, which they point to when we say, 'You've left people over 35 out of this' is another failure. It failed to get older people back to work and is undersubscribed. The government spent half of what it was meant to spend on the program, and 40 per cent of workers on the program were without work within three months. So we really hope beyond hope that we don't see the same flaws in this hiring credit program, but I won't hold my breath, given their track record.

There are a number of questions that need to be answered around this bill. That's why we will be holding it up to the light. It will be examined as forensically as possible around the operation and integrity of the scheme. Again, looking at the track record of this government on some of this, I don't hold my breath. Let's start by looking at the eligibility criteria. For social security recipients below 35, there is no requirement for employment to be secure or permanent. It does nothing to encourage security at work and security of jobs. We know that this government has presided over an increase in insecure work and underemployment for many, many years—in fact, the seven years the government's been in power. We know the design of this subsidy encourages a company to double their subsidy by hiring two workers on 20 hours each instead of one full-time employee, encouraging more casual and more part-time work and more insecure work. And there are no reporting requirements to prevent wage theft and other endemic exploitation that disproportionately affects younger workers. We know that. The evidence base is there. The regulatory oversight to date and the integrity measures have not been made clear. And we don't even trust the government to put workers and their interests first.

The government really love to point out that they are doing something for younger people. What they're doing, in fact, is once again pitting one demographic—one generation, if you like—against another, making younger Australians compete with older Australians. What's the plan for older Australians, apart from those opposite pointing out they have the Restart program, which I've discussed? The competition that's coming in the face of a deepening jobs crisis is real. The government themselves are forecasting that another 160,000 Australians will join the unemployment queues before Christmas. We know that. That's in their own data, their own statements.

Another matter that is disturbing about this bill is the blank cheque element of it. Nothing is stopping the government handing out a blank cheque to distribute to businesses in whichever electorates they see fit. The two-year blank cheque for undefined employment and workforce participation programs under this legislation does raise concerns with us. Why? It's not rocket science. Again, we've seen the government's track record on this with sports rorts 2.0. We've seen how they go about it. It's important, then, that this new wage subsidy scheme be designed with integrity, to avoid the temptations the government have all too often succumbed to with respect to these types of rorts. So we're going to continue to ask questions around that and around the way the government implements this.

Looking at the design of JobMaker as well, are there design flaws that will prevent businesses even taking it up? The intersection of JobKeeper and the hiring credit is of real concern as well. The hiring credit takes over from JobKeeper, and its design stipulates that a business has to have additional workers in order to receive a subsidy. The businesses that are reliant on JobKeeper will ask the question: will we have recovered enough to take on more staff beyond the JobKeeper-supported staff levels? I'm from Victoria. I don't think businesses in Melbourne are yet ready and able. Once they lose JobKeeper they are more likely to lose staff, not add them to their payroll.

It's like this government—the marketing department in the Prime Minister's office—has suddenly discovered young people: 'Oh, wow, there are people under 35!' After seven years they've discovered them and they've gone out and tried to pitch a story that suddenly they have a concern for them. Again it's the sleight of hand, the smoke and mirrors. When you scratch the surface you see the cracks, and the cracks become a chasm. The flaws are so evident, and they really show what this government is about. Do you really have a care for the future of young people? It's not much of an ask. Australians can't afford to have this government play politics with their future, and that's why we'll continue to forensically examine this bill. (Time expired)

Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to start my contribution to this debate with a short lament for the disappearance of an old-fashioned concept. It is the importance of parliament—the importance of parliamentary debate and a democracy where the citizens of Australia can be assured their parliament is giving oversight to the legislation and the actions of the government of the day; that the government of the day is taking its responsibility to legislate and conduct parliamentary debates in good faith; and that, in the end, measures that are adopted have been through processes.

We are debating this bill right now only because the opposition moved a suspension of standing orders to bring it on. It's an extraordinary thing for an opposition to do, really. Why did we do it? Because we have a government that briefed out some media and dropped to the media stories—which, it would seem, were reported in some cases without any scrutiny as to whether the facts bore out the story—that the opposition were blocking this piece of legislation going through. What is even more insidious is that, my colleagues have told me, people have been contacting them and saying that the government was briefing out in their electorates, telling young people in their electorates they were going to be stopped from getting the JobMaker subsidy because their member was blocking the legislation. No such thing is true. In fact, this legislation wasn't listed for debate today. It was listed for debate tomorrow, if we got to it. We all know what a moving feast the daily bills list is. Even more galling was that the government should have been well aware that, even if this legislation passes the House today, which it will because the Labor Party is being constructive, not destructive, it can't pass the Senate until November, because the Senate is currently conducting estimates, and it is not sitting.

It's pretty easy to see why the Prime Minister and the government have a reputation for being all spin and no substance, for being very good at announcements and very bad at delivery—for being marketing, men predominantly. That's pretty much right, but there's a deeper point to all of this that should disturb all of us who have the privilege who serve in the parliament, let alone Australians, who need a functioning democracy. That point is that this is a government that appears to treat the privilege of governing this country and the responsibility of governing this country in a time of national and global crisis as if it is somehow a game, as if getting up stories that make the Labor Party look bad in the media is more important than devising legislation that is well crafted, is well written, is based on strong policy and has had the opportunity for the proper parliamentary processes of scrutiny to be engaged in. That is a corrosive attitude for democracy. That is a corrosive attitude for our communities' faith and trust in our parliamentary system and our democracy. It is no wonder that trust in politics and politicians has absolutely plummeted over the last two decades. It is no wonder that the green shoots of belief and trust in government and politics that we've seen during the COVID pandemic—because of the attitudes of most people about working together cooperatively and collaboratively to deliver for people in stress, which gave Australians a bit of confidence that, maybe, we politicians could do it—are browning on the ground today.

Let's hope that this is a lesson for the Prime Minister, his ministers and everyone else who sits on that side of the chamber that this is not a time for political games and spin. This is a serious time for making sure that unemployed Australians don't stay on the dole queue for the rest of their lives, for making sure that the young, unemployed people that this legislation, this wage subsidy, is supposed to help don't face an early adulthood of no jobs, of insecure jobs or of low-paid jobs and for making sure that the older Australians who we know had lost their jobs before the pandemic and the recession, in addition to the some 900,000 who have now lost their jobs, haven't seen the end of their working lives. We know that when you're over 50 and you lose your job it is so hard to get another one. At least, we all should know that. When I doorknocked before the 2016 election and last year's election, I couldn't go a single session of doorknocking without coming across someone who was 50 or older, usually a woman, occasionally a man, who would talk to me in despair about how they had been retrenched. They'd lost their job through no fault of their own and they couldn't find employment. One woman told me about how she started putting in resumes without her age on it and would get interviews—she hadn't got them before when her resume had her age on it—and then never get past the interview stage. This was not someone who wasn't qualified for the jobs she was applying for.

We in this country cannot let 2020 and all of its disasters and challenges mean that our younger generation might be the first generation in living memory, really, to face a future less positive than the future faced by their parents, and that our older Australians—and the closer some of us get to 50 the more we realise that 50 isn't that old!—face unemployment in what, for many, is the most productive part of their working lives, and then face a significant proportion of their retirement in an underfunded, underscrutinised, under-resourced, broken aged-care system. That is why this debate is important, why this legislation is important and why calling out the government for the way it has behaved today is important.

The wage subsidies that are in this legislation are of course supported because the intention is to help younger people get into work and help younger people who have lost their jobs get back into work. Wage subsidies are something Labor are very familiar with, having implemented many of our own in times of crisis when we've been in government, and of course wage subsidies more broadly are what Labor called for time and again earlier this year, before the government finally agreed to introduce them in the form of JobSeeker.

This so-called JobMaker wage subsidy is a measure that could be very successful, but it's our job here in the parliament not to assume it will be successful just because this government says it will be but to scrutinise it to make sure that it will be—because, unfortunately, this government has a history of employment policies that sound good in the announcement but don't deliver. We know that the previous attempt to help unemployed young people into work, called Youth Jobs PaTH, has been the opposite of success, and we know that the Restart program, which this Prime Minister has pointed to time and again as this government's so-called successful program to help older Australians into work, is also almost the opposite of success. It is not helping most older people get into work, and those it is helping get into work are often only in work for about three months. So it's really important that we make sure this legislation does what it says it will do.

It's also very important—harking back to where I started this speech, on the role of this parliament and democracy—that this legislation be looked at because it gives this Treasurer a blank cheque in deciding what to fund, what employment programs to go with, over the next two years. That's not how things should work in the Australian parliament. Before this year, there had been a creeping and now there's a galloping move to put more and more legislation into regulations, which means less scrutiny, which means that governments are making more and more decisions that citizens don't even know are being made, because regulations are done simply by tabling, rather than introducing a bill; having a parliamentary inquiry, allowing citizens to make submissions; and really scrutinising the legislation—not to mention the increasing habit of not putting out exposure bills for consultation. COVID is an exception; we understand why legislation was rushed during COVID.

So Labor isn't holding anything up. We are doing our job, and it is beyond high time that the citizens of Australia knew that their federal government was more focused on advertising itself than on doing its job.

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Debating this legislation, the Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020, today really just demonstrates how much this government is all about the headline and not about the action. We are here today debating this legislation that the government said is vitally important to get through this House so the Senate can debate it urgently. It's urgent that we debate this legislation in here! It was all over the papers. Why is it urgent? Because the Senate needs to consider it—in November!

But, taking the government at its word and wanting to be constructive and cooperative, making sure that we assist the government to make the best supports available to the people of Australia, we, the opposition, have made sure that this vitally important piece of legislation will actually be debated today. It's not because the government decided to bring it on for debate, no. It's because the Labor Party decided to bring it on for debate, because we understand that, when the government says to the Australian people that a piece of legislation is vital and urgent and important, we need to act cooperatively with the government. We understand the importance of these things, unlike the actual government, who decided to talk to the newspapers and talk to journalists but, when it comes to what they're actually going to do in the parliament—and the minister in the chair knows this all too well—had no plan whatsoever to have this legislation debated today.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Burt will resume his seat. The assistant minister on a point of order?

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's one minute 30 and he hasn't said anything about the bill. I ask that he be relevant to the bill.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind the member for Burt to be relevant to the legislation.

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the minister so much for that erudite contribution to this debate. I know it's a difficult concept to understand that the circumstance in which the legislation was brought on for debate today is relevant to the issue under debate. I understand that's a difficult concept for him, so I will move on and remind the minister and all of the members of the government that this piece of legislation is part of a broader suite of packages that have been about supporting Australian businesses and Australian workers, starting with Labor's call for a wage subsidy scheme. This was a call that the government ignored. It then had to resume parliament urgently so that we could pass the legislation that we told you a month earlier you probably needed. But, no, you ignored us—why would we ever have a good idea on this side of the chamber?—and then decided to come back with JobKeeper. That was excellent. We were glad that you did that. But, again, did you listen when we pointed out a number of flaws, like the groups of Australians that would be missing out because of the design of the scheme? No, you didn't take that advice either. You were quite happy to let childcare workers, local government workers, university staff and casual employees all miss out on the supports that should have been made available through a properly designed wage subsidy scheme during this deep, deep recession.

But we move on. It's important to recognise, as I said, the benefit that is being created here and to put that in contrast. Around 4,000 businesses in my community have relied on JobKeeper. They employ around 15,000 people, and they have all been grateful to receive the support that the JobKeeper supplement has provided during this recession. The thing that concerns them, though, is that the rate of that supplement is reducing, the availability of it to business is changing and the government is continuing to roll these reductions out. The government has said, 'Well, the economy's coming back, so businesses don't need the support.' If a business doesn't need the support, it won't qualify for JobKeeper; its revenues won't be 30 per cent down. If its revenue is still 30 per cent down, chances are pretty high that it still needs JobKeeper at the rate that it was being delivered.

This legislation is emblematic of the approach that the government outlined in its budget. Despite the fact that we are in a deep recession, the government talks about coming out of this recession quickly. But it's not going to be able to deliver on that if it keeps removing demand from the economy. I know aggregate demand is a difficult concept for you on the other side of the chamber to understand; you just want to work on supply-side economics, but the reality is, as small businesses in my electorate tell me frequently, that people in the community will have less money to spend in those businesses, which will ensure that their turnover remains at below 30 per cent. They're going to have that reduction, and that's why they need JobKeeper in the first place. This is a self-fulfilling negative prophecy that the government is legislating here and moving forward in its approach to the budget.

When the government stands in front of us, as the Treasurer did on budget night, to say that this budget is about delivering jobs, let us quickly check the facts. What this budget is delivering is 160,000 fewer jobs before Christmas. You can't go around and say, 'This is a job-creating budget,' when your plan is literally for 160,000 fewer jobs. But, if you listen to what we've been trying to tell you for months now, which is that you can't go around reducing demand like this and you can't go around reducing supports when the economy is still on its knees and instead should provide that support, maybe—just maybe—we wouldn't be faced with that sort of situation, we would see some job growth and we would see some wage growth in this country, which would, of course, support the economy to grow, which is what you keep telling us is what you are trying to do.

Then we get to the JobMaker hiring credit, which is supposed to effectively take over from the end of JobKeeper. Let's look at what you've designed there. Oh, hang on a minute, members of parliament; we can't look at what you've designed there, because this legislation doesn't actually include it. You've explained to us what you think you are going to do. You then presented a piece of legislation to the parliament which is fundamentally a blank cheque to the Treasurer to provide support. So we can't look at what you're actually going to do, but we will rely—because that's all we've got—on what you've told us you are going to do.

So let's have a look at this. You're going to provide a hiring credit to support the employment of people aged under 35. As someone who represents a community that before the COVID recession had youth unemployment at a rate of around 15 to 20 per cent, I'm very thankful that this government has finally realised that young people have trouble getting employment in Australia. It's taken you seven years to get to this point, to realise that this is a problem and to try to do something about it, but I suppose we should at least be grateful that you have recognised it. But what you are also doing in creating this scheme is creating an incentive for people not to employ people over 35.

As the member for Dunkley just explained in talking to her constituents—and I have had very similar circumstances in my electorate of Burt, where I have been out doorknocking or had people approaching me in my office my mobile offices to talk to me about the concern they have. Largely, people over the age of 50 who have either become unemployed or have been retrenched because of the recession we are in now are very concerned that they will literally never have a job again. This was a problem before COVID. This was a problem that was made worse by this government in its 2014 budget cutting the support program that helped people over the age of 50 get into employment. This government's solution was to remove that program. Now, when we're confronted with the first recession in nearly 30 years, the government's response is a program that will only help people aged under 35.

I don't take anything away from helping them, because they desperately need it, but what about the 928,000 people aged over 35 who are unemployed? That is nearly a million people that you're not going to provide support to to re-enter the workforce.

We combine this situation with the JobSeeker Christmas cliff. If there were ever an example of a government being the Grinch, it is this government here. This government's current position is that, when we get to just after Christmas, for those who are unemployed—that's the 928,000 people aged over 35, for example—not only will there be no further assistance to try and help them get back into the workplace; they will return to a situation where they are only receiving $40 a day in JobSeeker payments. That is a situation that not just welfare agencies, not just community not-for-profit organisations, not just peak welfare organisations but nearly every economist and business organisation in this country has been telling this government for years is fundamentally flawed and wrong. And the government says, 'Oh, well we expect unemployment to reduce; therefore, we can reduce the amount that is paid for JobSeeker.'

I think the government needs to wake up to what it is really telling people when it says that. What the government is saying is that it wants to solve a political problem. It's more concerned about the rate of JobSeeker, not whether it will mean that people live above or below the poverty line, not whether they're able to put food on the table for their children, not whether they're able to support themselves and pay rent. No, they're just concerned about how, if there are too many people on unemployment, it may mean that it becomes a political problem for the government.

It's a welfare system. It's a safety net. Make sure it's an actual safety net. Having a safety net under the ground doesn't stop you hitting it. It is supposed to catch you when you fall. So the government has said in its budget to say to the Australian people, 'We know that it delivers a result under the poverty line, but we will still reduce it down to under that as we see things progress—in fact, just after Christmas.' As I said, this government is the Grinch when it comes to JobSeeker.

Then of course all of these things are on top of the other support you would expect might be there to help people get back into work. So they have suddenly worked out that maybe they should do something for TAFE after they have been cutting funding from TAFE. They want to make getting into university more expensive at a time when people are going to be more interested in retraining and getting a qualification to give them better prospects of getting a job.

As I mentioned before, because I know the minister at the table was very concerned that I stay very tightly relevant to this legislation, this particular piece of legislation is also effectively an admission of failure of the previous programs that the government had in place to support young people back into work. I know that as a fact because, when I go around my electorate, as I said, 15 to 20 per cent of young people are unemployed. So clearly what you were doing before was not working. But, in addition to that, you've designed a system—and I really want to focus on and belabour this point—where you haven't told us what the design of the system is. You assure us that this system will not result in employers sacking older workers to employ younger workers, but you haven't told us anything about how you're going to police that. You tell us that it won't create perverse incentives in the labour market, but you can't tell us how it is going to do that or not do that. And you have set up a system, like JobKeeper, where you've asked for our support. You said, 'Can you write us a blank cheque so that for the next two years we can do whatever we want to try and support these different employment credits?'

It was understandable in the heat of a crisis, as we were with JobKeeper—when you were a month late and we'd told you to do it before—that instead of tying things up in legislation when there was a critical question mark over whether this place could meet we gave the Treasurer the power to write the Treasurer's rules on JobKeeper. We are not in that situation now. We could literally debate detailed legislation on this for the next two weeks and not hold it up, because the Senate doesn't meet until November. Yet you want us to write you a blank cheque. Seriously! King Henry would have been galled to see what you are trying to get through this parliament to that extent. If a Labor government walked into this parliament and said to a Liberal opposition 'We've got a great idea: we want to be able to provide additional support for hiring of Australian workers, but we're not going to tell you how much it is going to cost and we can't tell you what the rules are going to be, but that's okay; just give us all the power,' I don't think you would see anywhere near the goodwill that we are giving to you as a government, because we understand the importance of trying to support workers and unemployed people back into work.

For all of the rhetoric from this government, it is actually continuing to fail to deliver. It all comes down to this fundamental point. While Labor want to see young Australians supported, we want to see all Australians supported through this crisis—through the health crisis and through the economic crisis. We want to see a return to employment in this country. But what we have been delivered by this government, time and time again, is that they are all photo-op and no follow-through.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the next speaker, I would remind the member for Burt to direct his remarks to the chair. There was a very liberal use of the word 'you' throughout that speech. I take it you were referring to the government of the day and not the Deputy Speaker.

Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to make a contribution on the Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020 or the JobMaker wage credit bill, which is effectively what we are debating today. I will ask people listening to parliamentary proceedings on the net to remember these five numbers—2½ million, 1½ million, 160,000, 20,000 and 17,000. They are five very important numbers that have guided my consideration of this legislation and my approach in this House. Two and a half million is the number of Australians who are out of work or in work but desperately needing more hours. That is the highest number of underemployed Australians this country has ever seen—2½ million. There are 1½ million people in this country currently in receipt of the JobSeeker payment, formerly Newstart. The government predicts that 160,000 people will be added to the unemployment queues by the end of Christmas. So we'll have almost 1.7 million Australians receiving the JobSeeker payment. In Shortland, there are 20,000 residents in receipt of the JobSeeker payment and 17,000 in receipt of the JobKeeper payment. Those critical numbers are 2½ million, 1½ million, 160,000, 20,000 and 17,000. They point to the current weakness in the economy, the once-in-100 years recession, and the fact that the government is not doing all it can to get us out of it.

An example of that is the 20,000 residents of Shortland who are on the JobSeeker payment. A few weeks back, they suffered a cut that took $6 million a fortnight out of the Shortland economy. And JobSeeker will return to its unacceptable $40 day on 1 January, so there'll be millions more dollars pulled out of the Shortland economy then and 20,000 Shortland residents will be returned to an unacceptable level of poverty. The 17,000 Shortland residents on JobKeeper payment saw the JobKeeper payment cut a few weeks ago as well, pulling another $15 million a fortnight out of the local economy—$15 million that could be keeping cafes, restaurants and local businesses afloat. Again, we have the JobKeeper cliff early next year, where we'll see that payment disappear.

Those two payments disappearing, impacting incredibly negatively on 37,000 residents in Shortland, is symbolic of the philosophical approach of this government embodied in the budget delivered two weeks ago. It is really about passing the baton of the recession response from the government to businesses and consumers. It is a return to this government's fundamental ideology of small government. They are putting this country into net debt of $1 trillion and gross debt of $1.7 trillion and pumping that money into the economy through businesses and consumers in the hope that they will spend money to get us out of this once-in-100 years recession.

This is an incredibly risky philosophy for a few reasons, and that is the context for the JobMaker wage credit that we are debating today. Firstly, it's risky because businesses will not spend if they don't think they've got customers who will buy the products that the investment will produce. They will not buy new capital equipment if they don't foresee a new stream of customers to take advantage of that new piece of capital equipment. Businesses won't spend the investment allowance readily unless they are very optimistic about the state of the economy, and the latest business confidence figures released last week indicate that businesses are very gloomy about prospects for recovery.

Secondly, the investment allowance is a very blunt instrument. The industries most impacted by the COVID recession are not capital intensive. Five employment categories have had 50 per cent of the job losses during the COVID recession. No. 1 is retail assistants, No.2 is hospitality workers, No. 3 is retail and hospitality managers, No. 4 is personal service workers and No. 5 is plant operators. So four of the top five employment categories are in industries that are not capital intensive. An investment allowance may be attractive and important to some businesses. It will encourage, for example, a metal manufacturer to spend $1 million on a new laser cutting machine. But it is not really attractive to a cafe, whose biggest capital investment might be a new coffee machine, a new pie cart or a new van to deliver food. So a capital investment allowance is not the most focused way of getting businesses to spend money, even if you think businesses will spend money in the expectation that customers will buy.

The second issue with the government's philosophical approach is putting the money in the hands of consumers and hoping consumers will spend that money. Well, consumers quite naturally, at this stage, are very cautious. I am very cautious myself. When you've got an economy where you've got 2½ million people out of work or desperately needing more hours, people are going to be very frugal, so a lot of the tax cuts, as embodied in this budget, are going to be saved. So there's a real question mark about whether this $1 trillion of debt we're going to be in because of this government's spending will actually achieve the stated economic stimulus impact. So it is a very curious decision to, at the same time, withdraw aggregate demand by cutting JobKeeper and JobSeeker, which is what this government is doing.

That's the context for the JobMaker hiring credit that we are talking about now: a wage subsidy for those under 35. Look—this will obviously help get young people back into work, if the detail comes as promised. And we do recognise that young people are impacted by the recession. They are in the industries disproportionately impacted by the particular nature of this recession, in terms of the industries that are cut down. But the issue with this legislation is not who's included in it; it's who's excluded. Nine hundred and twenty-eight thousand Australians are excluded from this wage subsidy. Two in three JobSeeker recipients are excluded from this wage subsidy. Everyone aged over 35 is excluded from this wage subsidy. And this leads to huge issues.

Firstly, the single biggest cohort on JobSeeker is that of women aged over the age of 45. There is a huge cohort on JobSeeker of Australians aged over 45. So they are going to be massively disadvantaged when this wage credit gets passed by this parliament because, if you're an employer and you're doing a job interview and you've got two people to hire, and they have equal skills and decent levels of experience, and one's 29 and you're going to get the $200-a-week wage subsidy to hire the 29-year-old, versus a 49-year-old person, who do you think they are going to hire? They're going to hire the 29-year-old, therefore excluding that 49-year-old. That's on top of issues around age discrimination that we know affect huge numbers of Australians aged over 45 in this country. So the targeting of this wage subsidy is problematic.

I support young people getting into jobs. Assistance is desperately needed—all the assistance we can give—to help young people find new jobs. But it should not be at the expense of older Australians. So the question for the Prime Minister is: Why exclude 928,000 Australians? Why hasn't he designed a system that gives a wage subsidy to hire every single unemployed Australian in this country?

The second issue with this wage subsidy is that it provides a perverse incentive for an employer to sack someone aged over the age of 35, particularly if they're in an industry where they've got weakened industrial-relations protections under this government. There's a huge perverse incentive for them to sack someone who's 37, hire a 29-year-old to do exactly the same job, and pocket a $200-a-week wage subsidy. Most employers won't do that. Most employers will do the right thing. But there are always dodgy employers that will do the wrong thing. And this has a perverse incentive.

The other issue with the implementation of this is: the way the legislation is constructed, an employer has a much greater incentive to hire two part-time workers than one full-time worker, because he or she gets a much greater wage subsidy, per hour worked, if they do it on a pro rata basis. So, again, while part-time employment is very important and is attractive to many people in the economy, we should be encouraging full-time employment as much as possible, and that's why the way this is constructed is problematic.

It also reinforces a huge issue this government has presided over, which is the rise of insecure work in this country. Last year was the first time in the economic history of this country where we had more than half of Australian workers performing jobs that weren't full-time with leave entitlements such as sick leave and paid annual leave. That points to huge economic insecurity in this country. It points to huge issues around trying to take out a loan to buy a house or take a holiday, and this legislation reinforces that particular rise of economic insecurity. The other issue with this legislation is the complete lack of detail. As previous Labor speakers have highlighted, this legislation is very light on detail. The government is effectively saying: 'Trust us and we will deliver.' I don't trust this government. Time after time they've demonstrated their complete inability to manage the economy and to manage administration of government programs. They've overestimated the cost of JobKeeper by $60 billion. They've bought a piece of land at Badgerys Creek for $33 million when it was worth $3 million. You've got the sports rorts affair. You've got issue after issue, highlight after highlight of this government's maladministration, so with this government 'trust us' is not an answer I feel comfortable with.

This legislation is incredibly problematic. It has some things going for it. It is useful. I support anything we can do to help young people get into employment. We need to fight the scourge of unemployment. It is the greatest scourge in this land at the moment. We have 2½ million people out of work or needing more hours in this country. There are 20,000 residents of Shortland on JobSeeker at the moment. We need to get them back to work. We need to get out of the once in a century recession. We need to get out of a recession that this government, under the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has deepened and lengthened, because he was slow to act and he's prematurely removing government stimulus. This legislation is important, but we need to place it in the context of this government continuing to mismanage the economy.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] This government is contracting out the recovery from the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus. Their whole approach, of which this bill is another example, is to take billions of dollars of public money that could be going into direct investment in jobs and services and instead give it to big corporations and just hope that some of it will trickle down to everyday people. We saw with the budget, the centrepiece, which Labor waved through as quickly as it could, was giving above $20 billion to corporations in the hope that they would go and use that money to buy things that somehow stimulated the Australian economy when there were no conditions put on it. For all we know they could be going out to buy cheap office furniture from China or cheap computers that won't do a thing to get people in jobs, and won't do anything to support Australian manufacturing, but will just be another handout to big corporations. This bill continues that approach. This bill is going to give $4 billion to big corporations to help with their wages bill, many of whom may not need it at all.

There are absolutely no strings attached on this bill. This is a blank cheque that taxpayers are giving to big corporations to part pay their wages bill. This could be a slush fund for wage thieves. We have seen many large corporations being brought before the courts, the commission and the media for underpaying workers, many of whom have been young. People have systematically been denied their penalty rates. People have systematically been underpaid, sometimes less than the award. It's taken some very brave unions and some individual workers speaking up, and some courageous journalists to do some digging, to uncover some of that. What we have learned through all that is that some of Australia's biggest corporations are wage thieves and they make their profit in part by underpaying workers, and doing it systematically.

Under this bill those same corporations may now be able to get a taxpayer subsidy to part pay their wages bill, because the government doesn't care about which big corporations they are going to give billions of dollars to. They come with a bill that's only a couple of pages long, that says: 'Trust us. Let us give $4 billion to some of Australia's biggest corporations. They may pay no tax and they may underpay their workers, but we want to give them an extra handout.' Corporations who make their profits by doing the wrong things should be on the government's blacklist, but instead the government comes forward and says, 'Let us give them money to potentially part pay their wages bill.' Whilst the pandemic has clearly been a time of great difficulty for many businesses in Australia, including many small businesses in Melbourne, there have also been some that have done extremely well. Australia's 25 richest people have increased their collective wealth by $25 billion during this pandemic. A couple of weeks ago many of those people earning $1 million a year, thanks to the Liberals and Labor, got a tax cut. The Liberals and Labour said: 'Yes, let's give those people a tax cut. Don't put the million unemployed first. Let's put the millionaires ahead of the million unemployed.' That's what the Liberals, with Labor support, did previously, and it's now going to continue with corporations as well.

What we have seen over the recent times of the pandemic is that, while many of us were, and in some instances still are, under lockdown, some of Australia's richest corporations got richer. The billionaires got richer. The top 25 increased their wealth by $25 billion during the time of the pandemic. What does this bill do? This bill says that, even if your corporation did well during the pandemic—say you were in charge of making the cardboard boxes that everyone is getting things shipped to their homes in during the pandemic because we can't go to the shops and we've ordered online; or perhaps you're a mining billionaire who's continued to make billions because state governments like the Queensland government give you a freeze on mining royalties every time you ask for it—and even if you are a company that has been paying dividends, you're going to be entitled to a subsidy to part pay their wages bill. Just think about that for a moment.

This bill isn't just aimed at helping businesses that are doing it tough. It's going to go to businesses that are in rude financial health and that continue to make a profit during the pandemic. If a corporation is able to make a profit during the pandemic, why should the public be part paying their wages bill? That should not happen under this bill.

This bill deserves the highest level of scrutiny. Instead, we've seen the strange spectacle today of the bill coming forward. It's only a few pages long. It's got next to nothing in it and no safeguards. The Greens have been demanding the release of the full scheme and the regulations before we vote on this bill, but the government hasn't done that. They've just said, 'Trust us.' Now we're debating it today because, oddly, the Labor Party has said this bill, which is only a few lines long, with no scrutiny and no protections, needs to be rammed through and gagged, if necessary today. With an opposition like that, no wonder the government feels happy that its budget is going to get through and they're going to deliver on their $99 billion a year in subsidies to the big corporations, including with this bill. Anyway, here we are.

We're debating this bill today with next to no information about how the bill is going to work, because the government is just after a blank cheque to let corporations—some of whom might be underpaying employees and some of whom might be turning a profit already—now get part of their wages bill paid for by the public.

The bill being put forward contains no safeguards. The purpose of the bill is supposedly to assist with young people being unemployed, but I'll come back to that in a moment, because that is a crucial issue. For all we know, this bill could result in young people being sacked. Why is that? It's because the detail in this is so thin that so much is left up to the minister on a 'trust me' basis. It says, 'Let me go away and write the so-called protections in afterwards.'

Under this bill there seems to be nothing stopping a corporation sacking someone who's employed now, including a young person, and then rehiring two young people at the minimum wage on part-time hours. That way the corporation gets two lots of the subsidy, versus keeping one person on who might get zero lots of the subsidy. The way that this bill is drafted, because it contains no protections or safeguards, might actually work against people, including young people who've got a job at the moment.

We shouldn't be, in this parliament, party to passing something that might result in people getting sacked. Why are we in this situation when we know that, with some of these schemes, if they don't have proper protections and processes built into them, they don't do the job that the government says they're going to do? When we have got record levels of unemployment—certainly in living memory for most people—and when young people are being hit extra hard, and young people are in the industries that are going to take longer to recover from the corona crisis as well, why are we in a position where the government's bowling up something that might actually work against young people getting a job in this terrible, terrible recession that we find ourselves in? It's because the government has an ideological opposition to doing the one that thing would create jobs and help us tackle the other crises that we're facing at the moment, like the climate crisis, the inequality crisis and the jobs crisis that is working against young people and women.

The government, right now, should be directly investing in public schools, in public hospitals, in doctors and nurses and in university education. The government should be directly investing in aged care. The government should be directly investing in building more public housing. The government should be directly investing in public manufacturing to kick off a manufacturing renaissance in this country. That way, we would grow jobs, we would be able to do it quickly, and we would tackle the climate crisis and the inequality crisis that we're facing as well. When you go to the doctor and the doctor says, 'You've got three things wrong with you, and I can give you medicine that fixes one, or I can give you medicine that fixes all three,' you take the medicine that fixes all three. That's what a Green New Deal—investment by the government in public projects that would build the economy—

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member will resume his seat. Minister.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just on direct relevance: the government is already investing in all of those things the member for Melbourne has just spoken about, and I'd ask that he bring his attention back to the bill.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Speaker, that is not a point of order.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, it's not a point of order. The member will continue.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government are so sensitive that, the moment that you suggest that there might be something better to do with the money than give it to big corporations who might be wage thieves and who might be making a profit already—the government are so sensitive and have such a glass jaw—that they jump up. We are talking about what is wrong with this bill, and what is wrong with this bill is that it is shovelling billions of dollars into the pockets of big corporations and asking for nothing in return. Instead, that money could be used to create jobs and help tackle the climate crisis and the inequality crisis, if we had the guts to invest that money in building public housing and expanding free education and putting it into aged care and having free child care in this country. That is the way to get young people into work. That is the way to give young people some hope in the future. Instead, this government just kicks it off into the long grass and says, 'We'll write out a cheque for McDonald's and Hungry Jack's' and anyone else who wants to come forward—any other big corporation that might be donating to the Liberal and Labor parties come election time: 'Here, let us write you a big cheque to part pay some of your wages bill, even though you might be making some of the biggest profits you've ever made in your life.' When you dare to call them to account, what do they do? They jump up to the dispatch box and say, 'No, you can't talk about this and you can't talk about that, because that is not relevant.' What a narrow level of understanding from this government about how to recover from an economic crisis.

History tells us one thing, and that is that, if government cuts areas like universities and childcare and the public sector during a crisis, it takes longer to recover from a recession. We should be directly investing to create jobs and to lift wages. In the last budget, the government basically baked in a decade of low wages growth. It wants six per cent unemployment, and then it'll start cutting again. Six per cent means two million people in this country either without a job or without enough hours of work, and the government says, 'That's a fine target—once we reach that, we're going to cut even more.' This kind of approach to the recession is going to make the recession last longer, and it is going to hit young people and women the hardest. What would be a better approach? A better approach instead would be direct government investment, because when you directly invest in free education and free health care and in manufacturing and building public housing, you create jobs and you meet community needs. But instead this government, because of its narrow ideological blinkers and because it takes money from the very same big corporations that are causing the problem that we're in at the moment, can see no other solution than to write blank cheques back to those corporations, and that is what this bill is about.

This bill, like so much of the government's budget, which contains $99 billion in subsidies to big corporations, is payback to the big corporates who donate to this government and donate to the opposition. Now we get bills like this instead of direct government investment, which is what we should be doing. We are in an economic crisis, and we face a lost generation of young people if we don't have the guts to invest directly in nation-building, planet-saving projects that are going to provide a job guarantee for young people. We need not subsidies to big corporations but large-scale, nation-building, planet-saving projects where every young person in this country is guaranteed a job working on them, if they want one. That's what would help get us out of recession. Instead, the government by its own admission in the budget papers is locking in and choosing a high-unemployment future.

As many commentators have said, much of the government's spending is based on borrowing. We've got a choice. What are we going to do? Are we going to borrow to give tax cuts to people earning over a million dollars, as the government with Labor support wants to do, or are we going to borrow to invest directly in public services that will give people jobs and meet needs? That is what young people in this country want, a government that's got the guts to stand up to the big corporations and invest to tackle the climate crisis and the inequality crisis, not the slush fund for wage thieves and already profitable companies that this bill could well be.

Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We know that the Prime Minister has a marketing background, and never has this been clearer than when the Treasurer announced the program we're debating tonight. The Treasurer's budget speech stated:

Treasury estimates that this will support around 450,000 jobs for young people.

Support 450,000 jobs: what would most people take that as meaning? I imagine most people listening thought, 'Beauty, 450,000 more jobs!' But, no, that wasn't what the Treasurer meant. The Treasurer meant that the total number of people who could be eligible for this program is 450,000. The maximum possible number of applicants is 450,000. Putting aside the fact, that, obviously, some of those people would have found a job absent the program, you have another example of the government's marketing spin over policy substance.

The fact is we're not going to see 450,000 new jobs created. Just because 450,000 people are eligible for the program, it doesn't mean that that's actually going to be what happens when the rubber hits the road. Labor's concerns over the gap between the government's rhetoric and their actions goes to another wage subsidy scheme, the Restart Program, which pays a subsidy of up to $10,000 for hiring new employees over the age of 50. When it was announced in 2014, the coalition promised to spend $520 million to help up to 32,000 older Australians find a job every year. Yet, over the time it's been in place, just $254 million has been spent to help 51,190 mature-age people into work. Of those 51,190 people, only 30,000 remained in employment for 13 weeks or more and there were 21,000 who lasted less than six months. So the government has a very poor track record on follow-through with programs of this kind.

The fact is young people have people have been hurt by this downturn. That's undeniable. We have evidence from Treasury which talks about the scarring effect, which suggests that the damage to the careers of young people graduating into a recession can be seen in their CVs up to a decade later. Treasury research, written by Dan Andrews and others, finds that the scarring effect of recessions on young people might have grown larger over time. But it doesn't follow from that that you want to do nothing to support older workers. It doesn't follow from that that you want to suddenly turn the tap off for anyone who passes the age of 35.

The fact is the government's proposals need to be considered in their entirety. This holds true when we think about the government's accelerated depreciation measure—the instant expensing measure. I'm a strong supporter of innovation; I believe that we need to have more innovation in order to sustain productivity. But it's vital that that innovation go alongside investment in education. In their terrific book The Race Between Education and Technology, Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz argue that inequality is a function of how quickly innovation and education advance. When you have education accelerating alongside innovation, you get growth with equity. When you have technological advance but educational stagnation, the gap between the haves and the have-nots grows wider. That's because, as economists have long argued, technological change is skill biased. Skill-biased technological change means that automation tends to increase employment opportunities at the top end and decrease employment opportunities at the bottom end. It means that, as you have computerisation, that makes the most effective lawyers more productive but a robot vacuum cleaner can take the job of a human who is cleaning the office.

That's why at the last election Labor had significant policies for investing in education alongside our proposals for accelerated depreciation measures. We recognised that those two went together and that, when you invested in schools, in vocational training and universities, at the same time you can encourage firms to invest in automation.

But the budget didn't do that. In the face of the biggest human capital crisis in a generation, the budget encouraged investment in physical capital instead. In an article for the Australian Tax Forum, the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute's regular updates, Michael Coelli, from the University of Melbourne, warned of the risk this might engender. He pointed out:

But many capital goods installed in Australia are purchased from overseas.

He pointed out:

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures, Australia imported nearly $79 billion in capital goods in 2018/19, while total private investment in new machinery and equipment in Australia was $83 billion …

He also noted:

Many new capital goods use new technologies which require fewer workers to run than outgoing assets based on older technologies.

He said:

In some cases, new capital goods directly replace workers via automation. This includes industrial robots in manufacturing, automated warehouses, specialized software and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and driverless vehicles, among others.

He concluded:

The end result of bringing forward investments in new capital assets may well be fewer jobs in many cases.

That means that it may be the case that the government's encouragement of firms to invest in new capital without commensurate human capital policies could lead to a bias away from jobs rather than towards them.

Michael Coelli also said of the wage subsidies:

We must wait to see whether these subsidies come at the expense of new hires among unemployed workers 36 and older, at the expense of full-time jobs by encouraging jobs just reaching the 20 hours a week threshold, and whether the jobs remain beyond the length of the subsidy program (one year).

And that's a real concern for many of us given the government's track record on the Restart Program, given the fact that, when we looked at the Restart Program, we found that many of those who were assisted by the program did not remain in the program beyond 13 weeks.

We also have a government which is rolling out loan schemes at a time when other countries are going for equity injections. A new paper by the OECD titled COVID-19 government financing support programmes for businesses notes that many other countries are choosing equity injections, recognising that there is limited appetite for borrowing among SMEs. They give examples: the German Corona Matching Facility, a two billion euro package; the Lithuanian Aid Fund for Business; Finland's investment stabilisation financing program; the British government's convertible loans program, which is able to turn into an equity injection; the Irish Strategic Investment Fund; and the Italian special fund for capital strengthening investments. The OECD's paper even argues that it might well be the case that the government return is greater for equity injections than it would be for low-interest loans. We can see this in the take-up of the government's SME loans program. During the course of this year, we've seen an increase in lending to large firms but an eight per cent fall in lending to small businesses. Small businesses aren't taking up those SME loans. The facility has been massively undersubscribed, and the government is failing to look at other alternatives, such as equity injections.

We also have the misuse of the JobKeeper scheme, to which the government is turning a blind eye. We have seen at least three Australian billionaires receiving significant dividends when their firms received JobKeeper support. JobKeeper was meant to be a program to support the jobs of battlers, but, instead, it has ended up helping to line the pockets of billionaires. Overwhelmingly, Australian firms have done the right thing. Indeed, one firm reached out to me recently and said: 'We don't want to be named, but we were eligible for JobKeeper and we chose not to take the money. We decided we didn't need that money'. They might well have pointed out that, with 160,000 people slated to lose their jobs between now and Christmas, it makes sense for scarce taxpayer dollars to be spent where they're needed most. At a time at which the New Year's Day presents for a million unemployed Australians will be JobSeeker snapping back to $40 a day, it's not appropriate for firms to be receiving JobKeeper and paying out large executive bonuses.

That's my view, but it doesn't appear to be the government's view. It is, however, a view that's shared by the Business Council of Australia. Their head, Jennifer Westacott, told David Speers on ABC's Insiders program that she didn't think it was appropriate for firms getting JobKeeper support to pay out executive bonuses. Yet, a slew of firms have done so, just as a large number of firms have used JobKeeper to pay dividends. As a recent example, just last week we saw bullbar-maker ARB getting $18.3 million dollars in JobKeeper. They qualified for JobKeeper because of an early downturn in their revenue. But, over the course of this year, they've seen an uptick in profits. Their profits are up on last year's, yet they're continuing to receive JobKeeper subsidies from the government. And they have paid a hefty dividend to shareholders. All this is happening at a time when the government is saying they can't afford to extend JobKeeper to a million casuals, they can't afford to extend JobKeeper to the university sector and they can't afford to extend JobKeeper to arts workers. It's all happening at a time when Volunteering Australia has said of the federal budget that it allocated no new funding to reactivate volunteering, at a time when many charities are feeling like they are the Liberal Party's forgotten people.

Labor supports wage subsidies. We took a wage subsidy program to the last election. When the crisis hit, we looked around the world and saw that many other countries were putting wage subsidy programs in place, because that connection between employer and employee is harder to build than it is to break. Employment relationships, like romantic relationships, snap quicker than they are built in the first place. So it is important that government maintains that connection to work. We called on the government to implement a wage subsidy scheme, and they were slow off the mark. The Prime Minister initially said it wasn't necessary, but, eventually he came around and acquiesced to put in place the JobKeeper scheme. According to Treasury, that's now accounted for some 700,000 more people maintaining a connection to work than would have been the case otherwise.

But we've criticised the government for excluding more than a million people from their JobKeeper scheme. In the case of universities, they changed the rules three times to exclude the university sector from JobKeeper. The result has been 11,000 job losses, with possibly another 10,000 to come. Universities are being brutally hit by the government at a time in which a clever country would be investing in education, at a time in which a clever country would be saying, 'We have fewer overseas students; let's ensure that every school leaver who has the smarts to study at university has a place there waiting for them.' Why would we want young Australians to be languishing, receiving unemployment benefits, when they have the smarts to go to university and where the university can take them on? That would be a smart play that would boost Australia's productivity in the future and would avoid the scarring effect of unemployment.

And yet we have this hodgepodge of programs. We have capital subsidies without education investment. We have wage subsidies with a sudden cut-off at 35. We have a government which has a poor record on its youth PaTH program, which has been widely criticised for a lack of outcomes, little to no training and delivering wage subsidies to firms like Coles and Hungry Jack's. The fact is that young people have done it tough under the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government, and this program is not the comprehensive support for young people that their generation so desperately needs.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] It is my pleasure to follow the member for Fenner, who as ever gave us a detailed critique of the piece of legislation before the parliament. I will begin by suggesting that, with what we saw happen today with headlines this morning suggesting that Labor were going to be blocking this piece of legislation only to then find ourselves in the House with no legislation before us and in fact the legislation being brought on because of the contributions from the members for Watson and Gorton, we find ourselves now with a government sitting across from us in this chamber who misunderstand the difference between critiquing or seeking to improve something and blocking something.

This government has a history of thinking that its first draft of anything is better than anybody else's thoughtful contribution might make it. It is years now that I have stood in this place—although today I am standing in my office in Werribee!—and listened to the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government try to tell us that its first brush at something will always get the best outcomes for this country. Rather than work with the opposition, particularly in this incredibly difficult time of a global pandemic and a recession, this government insists on playing political games with things that are incredibly important to the lives of all Australians, not least of which the lives of the community that I represent in Lalor.

Of course Labor supports wage subsidies. Labor called for wage subsidies, and this government eventually came to the table and introduced the JobKeeper subsidy. This is a point of pride for Labor members. It is a point of pride in my community that Labor called for this. It is a point of pride in my community that the government took this action. It's an absolute point of pride that my community thinks that those of us who work in Canberra to represent them care about their day-to-day lives.

That brings me to this piece of legislation. This piece of legislation, so quaintly named 'JobMaker' by the Prime Minister, needs caveats put on it already—'It's the JobMaker if you're under 35.' It doesn't speak to the people in my electorate who are over 35. It doesn't speak to the high number of now unemployed, becoming long-term unemployed, women over 50 who live in my electorate who face financial crises every day, who in this pandemic and this recession have now almost given up hope of ever working again. It gives them nothing. It makes no jobs for them. We want to critique this particular measure from the most recent budget exactly around that point: if you're going to call something a universal name like 'JobMaker' then make it work for everyone.

Let's look closely at who this locks out, because it mirrors some of the people who were locked out in the first place, who were locked out of JobKeeper. Casuals—people who were working casually—who had not been employed for 12 months were locked out of financial support from this government. The university sector was locked out of financial support from this government. Dnata workers in my electorate were locked out of support from the JobKeeper program because, although they'd worked for Qantas for years, the company had changed hands and was now owned by a foreign company. They were locked out of JobKeeper by this government. Let's look at the New Zealanders who live in my electorate, who are still locked out of JobKeeper. Let's look at all of those people whom the government ignored then, and then let's have a look at their latest effort, which is JobMaker. What we see in this latest effort is that they have 'seen the light', if you like, in terms of youth unemployment and the impacts the recession will have on young people and people up to 35, but they have failed to see that this will be a doubling-down of loss for people over 35—people in electorates like mine, with very high numbers of people reliant on JobKeeper.

The government need to go back to the starting place. They need to go back and review what they found with their own Restart program, which was aimed at finding employment for people over 50. They need to have a look at the figures they've managed to produce there. They need to acknowledge that they've spent only $254 million of a $520 million budget and they haven't helped the number of people they thought they would help with that program. They need to figure out why these things are occurring. They need to look deeply into their PaTH program, which was supposedly about youth unemployment but hasn't met the huge expectations around it; in fact, it has been widely criticised. And they have to look at this program—not just at who it excludes automatically but at what the impacts of its implementation might be, particularly around insecure work and the creation of part-time opportunities, not full-time opportunities, for the people who are going to find work here. What are they saying to young people? 'It's okay; you'll only be partially blocked out of your financial future, because companies will be able to get this for people who work 20 hours a week.' Well, a full-time job in this country is not 20 hours a week.

Like other members on our side of the House, I hope the government look at these things seriously. I hope they don't walk out of this parliament, this piece of legislation having been passed at some point, think, 'That's the job done,' wipe their hands and keep moving. They are a government who need to learn the lessons of review and revision. They are a government who need to learn the lessons about listening. They need to listen to the people who are already critical of this, including those in the opposition.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

(   We're in the middle of a recession. If you are under the age of 30, this is going to be the first recession in your lifetime. You probably have to be over the age of 45 to have a living memory of the last recession, so for many members of this place the concept of a recession is an academic one. It's not one they can personally remember; it's not one they've lived through. I'm not one of those people.

I left school in 1983. That was the height of the second-last great downturn. I don't need to be lectured by anyone on the impact of a recession on young people and young people's life opportunities. I fully remember the young men that I went to school with. I remember their capacity as they made their way through year 9, year 10, year 11 and year 12, and I remember the discussion that would go on in the schoolyard about what they were going to do when they left school. If their dad or their brother worked in the mines, they wanted to go and work in the mines. If their dad worked in the steelworks, they were going to go and work in the steelworks. If their dad was a chippie or a sparky or working in building and construction, they had hopes and aspirations of following their father or their brother or their uncle into one of those trades. But the recession of 1982-83 ended all of those hopes and aspirations. In one 12-month period, the steelworks, then the largest employer in town, went from a workplace of 23,000 employees—engaging all of the ready, willing and able young boys and, in later years, girls of a generation into an apprenticeship or a traineeship—down to 13,000 employees. The downturn, the recession, had hit, and it hit the hopes and aspirations of all of those young boys. I talk about young boys because they're the ones that I grew up with, they're the ones I went through school with.

So many of those young boys had lots of talent and ability, but their view of the world—the world that they knew—meant leaving school in year 10, 11 or 12 and following their dad, their uncle, their brothers and their mates into a trade or into employment in one of those places. When that was smashed, their capacity to envisage a different world, a different pathway, went with it. It wasn't that they lacked ability. It wasn't that they lacked aspiration in their lives. But the traditional pathway from school to work was no longer there. I keep in contact with all of the guys that I went to school with, not as much today as we did in the years immediately after. I see lots of guys who, but for the lottery of the year they left school, would have gone on to much different lives, having much different—dare I say better—outcomes in life than the ones they have. Two years earlier, they'd have been well into their apprenticeship. Two years later, the economy had started to recover and the support the government had put in place had started to kick in. But, for that group, their life course was irrevocably altered because of the lottery of the year that they left school.

So I don't need to be lectured by anyone in this place about what it means to be a young person attempting to enter the workforce in the middle of a recession. It was the story of my generation. That's why we come to this debate focusing not on what is in the bill and what the bill seeks to do to assist young people—of course we support that. Of course we support government doing everything it can to ensure that we smooth that pathway, for young men and women, from school into employment so that they don't hit that dead zone of having months, if not years, of no training or employment and not engaging with the workforce. Of course we support that and of course we will do everything we can to support the government not only to pass this bill but to improve it. We want to ensure that the manifest shortcomings within the legislation itself are remedied so that, when it passes through the other place, hopefully at the end of this week, it does a better job of assisting that generation of young men and women leaving school. Of course we want to support them.

It's not so much about what's in the bill but about what's not in the bill. And, if you truly are a government which is attempting to bring the country together, you wouldn't, through one piece of legislation, set up a dynamic that literally does the opposite. It sets up a dynamic where we have one group of potential workers pitted against another group of potential workers, one of which is going to be significantly disadvantaged, because the government will be saying to one group, 'Here's a subsidy,' and to the other group, 'You're on your own.' Now, maybe we wouldn't be so concerned about this if those workers over the age of 35 were a small and insignificant group. But they're not. They're not. As of today, there are 928,000 workers over the age of 35 on unemployment benefits, seeking work or more work. These are the workers whom we would disadvantage by the very measures that the government is putting in place to attempt to assist workers to get into the workplace. So it's not about what's in the bill; it's about what's not in the bill.

I want to say something else. This Prime Minister is incredibly keen to convince the Australian population that history started in March 2020—that nothing that happened before March 2020 is relevant. It all started from March 2020. Now, he didn't have a good Christmas. We acknowledge the fact that he did not have a good Christmas, and, if it were just that, we might be more focused on the measures that are coming through the parliament. But it's not just that. This Prime Minister—and this government—has an absolutely appalling record when it comes to apprentices and assisting young people into trades. In the six years that the coalition has been in power, we have lost apprentices at the rate of 60 a day—60 a day—with total apprentice numbers plummeting from 403,000 in 2013 to 272,000 in 2019. The Prime Minister is always keen to claim credit for the good news and find a scapegoat for the bad news. On this one, he need look no further than the mirror, because it is on his watch that we've seen a devastation of the institutions that were put together over decades to support young people into trades, into vocational education and into work. I'm talking, of course, about the cuts to vocational education and training. The Prime Minister wants to convince Australians that history started in March this year and that nothing he did on vocational education and training or youth employment matters before then. That's because of the devastating assessment that has been visited upon his government and his decisions for everything that led up to March 2020.

In late 2019, the National Centre for Vocational Education Research showed that the Morrison government funding cuts were equivalent to almost 11 per cent of total federal funding in the vocational education and training sector. In that year alone, $325 million was slashed from vocational education and training—in particular, from TAFE. It did not stand alone in that. Also in that year alone, $3.9 billion was slashed from the vocational education and training Education Investment Fund. So, when you put it all together, you see it approaching $6 billion that's cut, underspent and slashed from training opportunities and from training facilities. Is it any wonder that we have lost apprentices at the rate of 60 a day under this government's watch? I can understand why the government wants to try and convince people that history started in March this year. I can understand why the government bristles when we say, 'This is the Morrison government's recession.' The simple fact of the matter is this: Australia is less resilient, Australia is less able and Australia is less capable of employing, training and facilitating more apprentices, more traineeships and more young people, smoothing the path from school to the workforce, because of the very decisions of this government. Is it any wonder that it is young people who have been most vulnerable to losing their jobs over the recession of the last six months? It's because of the very decisions the Morrison government has taken.

I want to give a shout out to those older workers as well. If you are a worker in your late 50s or early 60s and you have lost your job in the last nine months, there is a sense of desperation. There is a sense that you, like so many before you, have been thrown on the scrap heap. It is the role of government to reach out to these people, in some of the most desperate times of their lives, and say: 'We are not going to leave you on the scrap heap. We are going to assist you back into the workforce, because we believe in you'. You'd think a government that was going to do that might start in its own backyard, and yet they have done the very opposite.

Over 14,000 public sector workers were slashed, cut, axed or removed from their jobs over this government's time in office. The vast majority of these workers weren't in their mid-20s. They weren't in their mid-30s. They weren't even in their mid-40s. The vast majority of these workers were in their mid to late 50s and early 60s. They were thrown on the scrap heap by this government, which says all the right things but does the very opposite.

We've actually seen it happen in the last few months, when the ABC slashed hundreds of workers from its workforce as a result of direct decisions of this government. The vast majority of these workers were older workers as well. The government says one thing but actually does the opposite. It's trying to convince us that history started in March this year, but we know it's very different. I don't need a lecture from this government on what it's like to leave school in the middle of a recession; I've lived through it. I don't need a lecture from this government on the fact that we need to do more for younger people. What I want to see from this government is a commitment to those older workers as well. It's about bringing the country together, not leaving people behind.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking on this amendment to the Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020, having just gone through 14 days quarantine and 100 or so days before then under a restricted lockdown in Melbourne, what is most important for COVID-19 recovery in my electorate in Melbourne, Victoria, and nationally, is jobs. It has all got to be about jobs, jobs and more jobs—that is, saving jobs, training jobs, creating jobs and looking after the people who have lost their jobs.

Labor led the debate by calling for wage subsidies at the beginning of the pandemic to support vulnerable workers, businesses and communities. We've been calling for broader labour market programs to encourage job creation and to kickstart recovery. There is one task of this government: to help COVID-19 recovery. And in Victoria COVID-19 is not past tense. It is something affecting five million of my fellow Melburnians right now.

We've pointed out deficiencies in the JobKeeper subsidy, and we continue to. What on earth did early childhood educators in Melbourne ever do to deserve this government cutting off their JobKeeper? There are too many people who have been left out by the rules, such as casuals, and too many people left behind, such as people who might have started a company founded within 12 months of COVID-19. The cliff coming in December and the further cliff emerging in March make many people afraid.

But, in speaking to this amendment, I want to talk about one group of people. If they are not the hardest hit, no other group is any harder hit. I talk about the small and medium-size businesses of the travel agency sector. They've been terribly hard hit in Australia, in Victoria and in my electorate of Maribyrnong and they are concerned that, without proper, targeted support, it will be the death knell for their businesses. I listen to this government sickeningly regurgitate a claim to be the party of small business, but I hear them not talk about travel agents. If it was Helloworld, maybe, but as a general rule the travel agency sector—we've heard about them, haven't we, over there in the government? If it was the travel agency sector more generally, they have been ignored.

I recently met with a group of travel agents from my own electorate and Mr Darren Rudd of AFTA, their peak body. They made the directness of their plight very plain emotionally, truthfully, factually, painfully. Let's consider how the travel agency industry was travelling even just a year ago, with 12 years of consecutive growth, helping Australians travel for commerce, culture, leisure, family, friends and fun. Travel agents in Australia employ 40,000 Australians in metro and regional locations. Thirty thousand of the employees in the travel agency sector are women. They are the fabric of each community. They sponsor the local clubs and the local high street traders. They are part of our landscape.

But let's have a look at what's happened to the industry since COVID has struck. The federal government rightly closed the borders eventually to save Australian lives—right call. But, of course, in doing so, they closed the ability of travel agents who deal in international travel to make an income. Australians cancelled $10 billion worth of travel where funds were sitting offshore with suppliers like airlines, cruise lines, tour operators and wholesalers. The refund machine—a machine that has only ever been designed to go one way—had to be put into reverse. Of the $10 billion in refunds the travel agents have spent their working days getting back, they've managed to get $6 billion back to the people who paid for their holidays at a time when no-one was paying them. There's still a further $4 billion to get back for Australians. But, in giving back this refund, the travel agent invariably has been asked to give back not only the price of the ticket but the income in the form of the commission. So the travel agent has the sunk cost. That is what the commissions paid for. It pays the rent. It pays the bills. But, in getting the refund, it's all had to go back, so the travel agent has been getting back the money not only for the portion of the holiday which hasn't been utilised but their own portion and refunding it. The federal budget assumes that travel won't recommence internationally until the last quarter of 2021.

Let me put this story very directly. In the travel agency sector, payroll is down, hours are down, unemployment is up, international sales are dead, job ads in the industry are down and the mortgages that people working in the travel agency industry have to pay still have to be paid. The rent which travel agents have to pay for offices or franchises still has to be paid. I met with AFTA, and they have asked for sector-specific funding in the form of grants—a 12-month bridge back to business of $250 million plus concessional loans. That's AFTA's ask. The government will have to work out if they can afford it, which I suspect they can.

But let's talk about what the government hasn't done properly for travel agents whilst taking the credit and saying they're the friend of small business. The loss carryback provision in the budget will help only 14 per cent of the large travel agents, but that's not until next year. Bad luck if you are a travel agent who is a unit trust, a family trust, a sole trader or, indeed, a partnership. AFTA estimates that there are 1,300 travel agents who are sole traders. There is nothing for them in this. Many have made losses last year and this year. The peak body of travel agents predicts: 'If no funding is provided, special sector assistance, we will lose over 50 per cent of our valuable travel agents, including 15,000 women from the sector who will lose jobs.' This, of course will lead to a flow-on for Australian consumers and travellers. You might remember that there is still $4 billion in refunds to claw back. And if the travel agents can't keep their doors opened, can't employ staff, that's $4 billion gone for Australian mums and dads, pensioners and holiday-makers. This will leave Australian consumers out of pocket tremendously. It is not as if the government is going to get this money back for them; it's been hard enough to get them to bring Australians back. So if you've paid for a holiday, good luck getting that out of the government!

Some of the travel agents in my electorate have stories that are worth hearing. One said to me: 'Bill, in the 21 years that I've managed and owned a business, I've employed many Victorians. I've taken people straight from school. I've taken on an accountant who discovered her passion for travel at 50. I've even had several of my staff leave and open their own businesses, all travel agencies from the same franchise. I've paid tax every year and I've paid it in full and on time. I've paid my staff leave entitlements fairly and always on time. I've looked after my staff because without them I have nothing. In my team, three of us receive JobKeeper and two do not. If it were not for JobKeeper, there would be three more people looking for work. Although I have to be honest: as the JobKeeper rate is about to drop, I'm now considering, for the first time in 21 years, looking for a job. Yes, I receive JobKeeper. I don't get any of it. It tops up one of my worker's wages and it pays superannuation for her and another worker. It pays for the phone and the internet to keep us connected. It pays for our reservation system so we can keep cancelling flights for our clients and keep records of what we've cancelled. It pays for the bank fees on my overdraft, which has $3 in it for me to draw on. It pays the EFTPOS monthly fee. My JobKeeper pays for my bookkeeper, although not my accountant. That's a concern because I need to have my company financials done. It does not pay my rent, the outgoings. It does not pay me a wage.'

Another travel agent wrote: 'Our sector has been very hard hit. With a 90 to 100 per cent loss of turnover, and having to refund most of our income, it is disheartening that the federal budget has not addressed the travel sector. Many industries have been hit hard. JobKeeper, tax cuts and the Victorian business grants have been very welcome and saved many businesses in the short term with their broad measures. Many sectors that have been able to continue in the last six months will be able to trade again in the coming months as we hopefully come out of restrictions and lockdown. But the travel sector, which includes travel agents, tour wholesalers and tour operators, has been one of, if not the, hardest hit. We been denied the ability to trade and due to ACCC regulations we have to pay back most of our income.' That's the commissions they have to pay back. 'We were the first industry hit in late January 2020. It will take years to recover, yet we are expected to chase refunds and credits on behalf of our clients, and trade with zero income. The airline aviation sector has received specific funding. So has retail, hospitality and tourism. But we're the travel sector.'

And the stories go on. Another travel agent wrote to me: 'While JobKeeper has helped me offset some of the impact, the reality is that I simply don't have the losses in financial year 2020 to make the loss carryback provisions meaningful. This is because I did the responsible thing as a business owner and moved, immediately on the closure of the international border, to reduce as many of our overheads as possible. Additionally, not only has income been severely reduced, but the travel sector is the only industry that's had to give back last year's earnings in the form of commission.'

This is why the travel industry deserves some support. Their particular payment structure means they've had to pay back not just the unused portion of the holidays but also their own commissions. People are desperate. They're getting knocked back. I think we need to be creative in this space to keep the sector alive. I've spoken with Labor's shadow minister for tourism, Don Farrell, who rightly believes the government can do much more in this space. And it's not just an issue for the federal government. State governments, local governments and any federal bodies should use domestic travel agencies, not multinationals. Governments should assist travel agents to change their business focus from international to domestic travel. The Australian Tourism Commission needs to redouble its efforts, refocusing on domestic travel.

Senator Birmingham is doing finance and he's doing trade—busy man. He can't afford for tourism to be the unloved, forgotten child here. It needs more attention—perhaps a promotion for the minister at the desk. Let's get someone to give tourism more attention. State and territory governments need to ensure that travel voucher schemes work for agents. They do in the Northern Territory but not in South Australia. Again, I must stress, and this is not just a federal issue, where governments are using travel platforms—Expedia and the like—perhaps we could use domestic travel platforms. And if they don't exist, we could work with the Federation of Travel Agents to help give work to domestic travel agents—not extra money, but just using our money smarter.

I was quite moved when I met the travel agents. Some of them fell into travel agency work coming out of school. For some it was their first job and it's remained a lifelong passion. Others have started businesses. They're all very committed to their staff. If you close your eyes, you can't think of a single shopping centre or high street in the nation which doesn't have a travel agent. They do their work. They turn people's dreams into memories and experiences. Now is not the time for spin. It is the time for substance. I think the fairly haphazard, ramshackle approach taken by the government belies their real priorities.

We need a good JobKeeper scheme. There's nothing wrong with telling people what's going to happen to them next year rather than keeping them waiting until December. That's just cruel. What's wrong with recognising that the economic implication in certain industries is going to continue long past March of next year?

We all like our holidays. We all like our travel. I think it's come as a shock to multiple generations of Australians that we can't simply get on a plane and go somewhere. But I think it will also come as a shock if, when the borders reopen internationally, we don't have anyone to help organise our trips and our memories. We can go to work every day, and what we do is important, but the things that our families remember in our working lives will be the holidays that week take them on, not necessarily the minutes we took or the meetings we attended.

These travel agents, these small and medium sized businesses, deserve imagination. They deserve passion. They deserve a bespoke approach. They deserve respect. Forty-thousand people who helped make the rest of us have a much more enjoyable quality of life. Let us, who have benefited from the travel agency industry, not abandon the travel agency industry, because certainly if we booked with them they wouldn't do that to us.

Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020. The JobMaker Hiring Credit will give businesses incentives to take on additional young JobSeekers. This is designed to help young people access job opportunities as the economy recovers. The JobMaker Hiring Credit will be available to employers for each new job they create over the next 12 months for which they hire an eligible young person aged 16 to 35 years old. I do have some questions around the delineation of 16 to 35 years old, but I will discuss that in a moment—this age bracket could lead to some serious discrimination.

The government has estimated that around 450,000 positions for young Australians will be supported through the JobMaker Hiring Credit at a cost of $4 billion from 2021 to 2022-23. I welcome a focus on youth. There is no doubt that they need it. The majority of the job losses in this recession have been lost by youth, with youth unemployment rising to double the official headline unemployment rate nationally. On the Northern Beaches the youth unemployment rate is 12.2 per cent—nearly triple the official rate of 4.5 per cent.

The businesses most affected by social distancing restrictions throughout this COVID pandemic are those most likely to employ young people: restaurants, bars, retail outlets, gyms, recreation and tourism businesses. The Grattan Institute points out:

Youth unemployment is always higher than general unemployment. The gap tends to widen during economic downturns and narrow when employment markets are strong. Young people tend to be the marginal employees – when employment demand is soft, employers are more likely to keep their existing (older) employees and not hire the same number of new (younger) employees.

In the 1980s and 1990s youth unemployment soared. We saw that for fresh, out-of-school or uni youth with no experience it was almost impossible to find a job. The longer they were separated from studies in their chosen field to landing a job the less chance they had. We simply can't afford for that to happen again. Both recessions became known as a lost decade for a generation of young workers, consigning many to lower paid positions and sporadic employment for the rest of their working lives.

This legislation aims to avoid that dire outcome for our youth in this recession, and I do welcome it—especially as a mother of teenagers in this very category. But the legislation could be improved through a number of mechanisms. More detail of the wage subsidy rates and eligibility could be included in the legislation itself, rather than putting it into a delegated instrument. More attention should have been paid to women in the budget, especially older women. And more attention could be paid to the industries that have most been impacted and that employ youth, rather than just a blanket program across the economy that discriminates against other age groups.

This bill does not prescribe the rate of the wage subsidy or the eligibility criteria. The lack of substance in the bill itself is becoming an increasing trend in this government and it is giving greater discretion and flexibility with the implementation of the policy. The Scrutiny of Bills Committee raises this repeatedly. This bill has such little substance that it is difficult to assess the merit of the program. The budget papers, Treasury briefing documents and media announcements give only the detail of the rate of the subsidy or the eligibility. There's nothing in the legislation to guarantee against a variation of the rate or eligibility.

I've been meeting with businesses such as Budgy Smuggler locally in Warringah. They are all asking me how this will apply, how they can apply and whether they will be eligible given their particular circumstances. I simply can't answer their questions. The Australian Taxation Office website itself says:

We will provide further information on eligibility criteria and how employers can register for the JobMaker Hiring Credit as it becomes available.

So in the interest of transparency and accountability I urge the government to give the detail required as soon as possible.

We can't talk about this recovery without talking about the impact this recession is having on women. I would have to say they have been completely forgotten by this government. It's been stated many times that women, like youth, have been hard hit by this recession. Yet there was no tailored approach in the budget to addressing female unemployment in sectors as we are now seeing with youth through this bill. The response that has come from government has been, 'Well, ladies, you also get to drive on the roads.' With due respect, that's just not good enough. The budget was silent on measures to specifically address female unemployment, apart from the extension of the previously announced Women's Economic Security Statement. The response from the government is simply not good enough. Many women who have suffered job losses as a result of this recession work in sectors such as retail, hospitality, tourism, fitness and caring. They are essential service workers in child care and nursing. They will be competing against youth who will have subsidised wages as a result of this legislation. So I fear that this will result in discrimination against women who are over 35, and that will mean a range of consequences from this policy. I fear for women, particularly older women, as we progress through and emerge from this recession.

Women over 55 years of age were already, prior to this pandemic, the fastest growing group facing homelessness in Australia. That is just a horrific statement to have to say to this parliament, and I simply don't understand why this is not resonating louder with the government. The Australian Human Rights Commission found that the number of women over 55 seeking support from homelessness services has increased by 55 per cent in the last decade. The Australian Bureau of Statistics found that the rate of homelessness in older women has increased by 31 per cent since 2011 alone. With them facing lower job prospects and without any tailored support for their demographic or the industries in which we know they work, I fear that older women will suffer further and this trend will be exacerbated.

There's no doubt that, in our response to the recovery, we should be looking at industry-specific packages. The packages presented in this bill are tailored to address a demographic trend. I would argue that a fairer and less discriminatory approach to the problem that has been posed by COVID would be an industry focused recovery package. The arts, retail, hospitality and tourism industries have been decimated by the pandemic. They are also the sectors where a disproportionate number of women and youth are employed. A program tailored to assist those industries, rather than just a demographic approach, would be much fairer than the blanket youth demographic subsidy.

There are many other programs that could have been considered and should have been the subject of the budget. Government could expand some existing programs, such as New Business Assistance with NEIS. They could expand the eligibility and assist those older people who might find themselves retrenched and without work, but far too young to retire. We've seen in previous budgets the government talk about encouraging people to work to an older age, but there are no measures to facilitate that. There is nothing to assist or encourage businesses to go down that road. So, while I welcome the government's efforts to address the impact on youth of this recession, I urge the government: to provide the parliament and the Australian people with the detail required to implement the policy; to do more for women, particularly older women, who could be even more disadvantaged by this legislation; and to do more for the industries impacted most by this recession.

I met with a number of travel agents within Warringah, and they are desperate. They are calling on Minister Birmingham to do something about their sector. They're desperate that there either be some travel corridors or something to address it. They are in a situation of no pipeline of work for some 12 to 18 months, as we face worldwide uncertainty over what is happening with the pandemic. We can't just assume that a vaccine will be available and it will be a return to business as usual. We must prepare and have a long-term plan. These industries are crying out for assistance but, for the moment, they're cries are falling on deaf ears. I urge the minister to take note.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to speak on the Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020, a bill that's designed to incentivise businesses to hire young people. The COVID-19 recession has hit Australia hard, and my electorate of Mayo is no exception. It's no secret that it's more challenging for young people in the regions to find employment than it is for their peers in metropolitan areas. Add to this regional disadvantage, the effects of recent bushfires and then COVID-19, and one can safely say that the unemployed young people in my electorate of Mayo well and truly need some support in finding employment opportunities in our region. Mayo has approximately 13,000 small businesses, many in retail and hospitality, who've had a very difficult year. Talking with my small business owners, already I'm hearing that JobMaker will provide them with the incentive and confidence to hire, and that's what we need to do; it's about reinstilling confidence.

In September this year, the national youth unemployment rate was 14.3 per cent, more than double the national unemployment rate of 6.8 per cent. These are not encouraging figures for young unemployed people, and the unemployment of young people has always been higher, sadly, than the main rate. When I speak to businesses in my electorate, such as in Myponga, Goolwa or Lobethal, their stories are deeply saddening. Some of these have made heartbreaking decisions to let their staff go and close their doors after pouring years of their lives as well as their life savings into their own businesses. Others are struggling just to hang on.

But, lately, there has been a little optimism coming back into our community. As the border closures have eased and the Victorian case load has fallen, people have felt like we might get through the worst of this awful year—that things might finally get better. You can see it in the retail stores, which are getting more customers through the doors, in the cafes that are getting busier and in the faces of small business owners who are looking a little less tense and a little more hopeful. It will take a long time for the economy of Mayo to get back to where it was a year ago. Trade increasing, even a little, is welcome news, but it will be a long time before businesses have the demand or the confidence to invest in hiring more staff or expanding their businesses. So I welcome the support of the government in offering to help businesses to take a chance to commit to hiring.

While this bill is about JobMaker, I often talk to businesses in my electorate about other supports available to small businesses to take on a new employee, including Restart. This program is not widely promoted, but it does offer subsidies of up to $10,000 for businesses who hire a mature-age worker. I know several small businesses in my electorate that have used this program, which combats unemployment among older workers, who sometimes face discrimination in their job search. NEIS, the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme, is another program that I believe should be promoted more. So many newly unemployed people dream of starting there own business but lack the courage or confidence to make the move to start a new business. The NEIS program could be the confidence boost that they need to take themselves from unemployed to self-employed with training, mentoring and financial support, including rent relief, to get a new venture off the ground. The government has recently relaxed the rules around NEIS so that part-time employees, people who perhaps have lost hours due to COVID and are keen to start their own business, also can access this program.

The JobMaker program is designed to support the cohort that most likely lost their job during the pandemic, and that is young people. It is a huge commitment for a small business to take on a person who needs training and experience. The program will give young people the chance to build their skills, develop experience and provide an employer with a wage subsidy. Treasury estimates that JobMaker will assist approximately 450,000 people over the next two years. That is indeed an extraordinary number. If just one in four of the small businesses in my electorate were to hire one new person under the JobMaker scheme it would equate to over 3,000 new jobs, and that would make a huge difference to the local economy of Mayo and to our local unemployment rate.

There is an age group where there are not a lot of incentives to employ people, and that is the age 35 to 50 group. Should this program get underway, I urge the government to consider extending the $100 wage subsidy to the age that Restart begins, which is 50. We need to look at greater training opportunities for older people to reskill. We have areas of critical need—aged care and the NDIS, to name a couple—yet getting into a certificate III to be qualified in aged care or NDIS is difficult. We should make that easier. This program is designed with flexibility and safeguards. The employer can utilise the scheme for either part-time, full-time or casual positions, but protections are in place to ensure new positions gained are not at the cost of others. For instance, in order to employ a new worker under the scheme, an employer must be able to show an increased staff headcount and an increased payroll, and the increase in the payroll must be greater than the JobMaker credit.

I understand that some members of the House have concerns. I'm sure that we can address those concerns in the Senate. It's important that we don't stop this bill from getting passed in this place, and I look forward to my small businesses in Mayo being able to access JobMaker and to young people receiving employment, possibly their first job.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't think anyone in this chamber doubts that support for younger people who are out of work is an absolute necessity at this time. A wage subsidy is a concept that we have welcomed. In fact, I think it was our idea! We know the government had no intention of doing any wage subsidy a few months ago and were prepared to push through the consequences of needing to close the borders and close down businesses in order to put health first. They were prepared to push through and rely solely on unemployment benefits—in fact, by increasing JobSeeker when they did they sent a strong signal to employers to lay off staff—and they saw delivering assistance through Centrelink as the sole support that would be needed. That was until they saw the queues, of course, which reflected the consequences we were facing. Those queues exposed the assumption that the Morrison government had made, that there would be a short, sharp recession and then a snap back, remember that?

So we were the ones who'd seen the signs of recession. We'd learnt from history. In fact, the Rudd government was the most effective in the world at beating the global financial crisis and sparing Australia from recession. We knew what that involved. We urged the government to move faster and do more. I would still be urging the government to do more than it is in this piece of legislation, the detail of which is still quite thin.

The contrast between the government's attempts to support the economy and the approach that the Rudd government took was stark. When we were in government, trying to pass legislation to prevent Australia going into recession, they called on votes, for hours, against every measure that we proposed, and that urgent GFC stimulus package didn't get through till three in the morning.

Their attitude, of making it all about political point-scoring, is not one that we have chosen to copy, because we're different from them—fundamentally different—and we do care about Australians and their jobs, not just our own jobs. We know what the priorities need to be, and we take that attitude into this debate on this legislation. But we won't just wave it through without trying to make it better—better to meet the needs of businesses and better to meet the needs of those who so desperately need a job and need to see jobs being created. So we will highlight the concerns and the questions that we have.

I think one of the fundamental questions is why 928,000 unemployed people over 35 have been deliberately excluded from any new hiring subsidy. If the Prime Minister were serious about kickstarting the economy that he closed down, he wouldn't exclude them. There would be a genuine job creation plan that targets the needs of all the different workers who are impacted. You tell me why a travel agent who's not going to be able to keep their workers on—well, if they've been able to keep them on till now, they're doing an incredible job—and those workers, and all those employers who would really love to keep those workers on, aren't being given the incentives that they need to do it, with JobKeeper being scaled back so hard.

Those opposite seem to think they've ticked the box on older workers, with their 2014 program, and that program, the Restart wage subsidy program, can really only be defined as a failure. The program has not resulted in significant numbers of older workers getting back to work. It's undersubscribed, and the government has spent less than half of what it planned on the program, which doesn't effectively help people into employment. Forty per cent of the workers under the program were without work within three months. That is far from long-term, sustainable jobs being created. We don't want to see the same flaws in the hiring credit program, and it's really important that the new wage subsidy scheme is better designed, better implemented and better monitored than JobKeeper, Youth Jobs PaTH, Restart or many of the other programs.

Let's talk specifically about how this will help young people—and I should point out that the government's track record on helping young people into education and employment is not a fantastic one. The hiring credit doesn't make up for the damage that's been done to them over the last seven years, with the cuts to TAFE and universities; the cuts to penalty rates; the exclusion of casuals—predominantly young people and women—from JobKeeper; and the damage done by early access to super, really hurting young people's super for the future.

I want to talk about the eligibility criteria, because, if you're an employer and you want to use this scheme, you have to employ someone who's already on social security. But there's no requirement for that employment to be secure or long-term or permanent. So there is a potential for contrived arrangements to be made, and we are concerned about that. Fundamentally, one of my concerns is around the way this may encourage insecure work, with people who have permanent full-time work and possibly older workers laid off and two other, younger, workers put on for only 20 hours a week, which is the minimum required. That is really just encouraging more casual and part-time work, and this pandemic has shown us what the flaws are in relying heavily on a casualised workforce. So I think workers need assurances. Older workers need assurances that they won't be sacked so that they can be replaced by two younger workers.

There are no new reporting requirements in this legislation to prevent wage theft. We need to see how that will happen and what the checks and balances will be. We also need to make sure this isn't a two-year blank cheque for an undefined employment and workforce program under this legislation. We don't want to see a repeat of the sorts of things we saw with sports rorts. When I look at this from a small business perspective—and I've been in small business for 25 years—I worry about the requirements. As a small business, you have to be off JobKeeper before you can access this subsidy. I've got a lot of businesses in my electorate, in the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury, who are worried about the cut-off of JobKeeper. They've been surviving, but they really worry about what will happen to their cash flow when they come off JobKeeper. To then be told that the only way they can access any extra support is once that happens is going to put some stumbling blocks in people's way. We really want to understand better how that will play out.

The other key concern is: if a business has been reliant on JobKeeper, how ready are they going to be to invest in new staff, with the extra costs, time and energy that takes, and how much of an incentive will this be? We really need to be able to explore those ideas. While the government said it was absolutely urgent that this be passed through today, it is good that the Senate will not be meeting until November and that we will have time to explore these issues in a little bit more detail.

This bill, which was so urgently required, does demand more scrutiny. That's what we should be doing in this place. We don't really have the opportunity to do that in a lot of detail, not having had access to many details of the program, but I look forward to the Senate being able to do that. Quite frankly, I don't trust the government to do the right thing. There's nothing that leads me to think that those opposite will make this a perfect scheme. I hope that they will listen to input from our side, from unions and, importantly, from businesses, particularly small businesses, about how to make this work. I look forward to hearing discussions and debate on those matters.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A couple of weeks ago I met with some workers who had recently been sacked by our national airline, Qantas. They, along with 2½ thousand of their loyal fellow employees, had been shown the door by Qantas, but, in the ultimate insult to them, it's likely that Qantas is going to bring in a foreign corporation to take these workers' jobs and pay workers on lower wages and conditions. Many of these people have been working for Qantas for well over 20 years, and some of the workers that I met with said that, basically, aviation is all they know. They're in their late-50s and early-60s, they've just lost their job during a pandemic, and they're thinking to themselves, 'What hope do I have in the labour market? How am I going to get a job when all I've done in the past is work for an airline? Aviation has been decimated, and there's no support at all from the government for me.' Last week's budget confirmed that.

This government has abandoned older workers in the budget. There's no support whatsoever for those that are going to find themselves without work, without employment, due to this pandemic. Let's face it: when it comes to making people redundant, it tends to be the older members of the workforce who end up in the redundancy situation when a business is shedding labour. That's going to be the experience in this pandemic. It's not going to be any different. Yet in this budget there is no support for older workers.

Those Qantas workers I met with a couple of weeks ago are saying, 'What is the government doing to support us?' They ask that particularly given the Treasurer and the Prime Minister have said the focus of this budget is jobs. Last week they were out spruiking the budget and saying it is all about protecting Australian workers' jobs. I'm sorry, but you're not about protecting jobs when you allow the national airline to get rid of 2½ thousand of its loyal employees and bring in a foreign corporation with lower wages and conditions. You're not about jobs at all. You're not about jobs when you cut the penalty rates of some of the lowest-paid workers in the country so that they take home less money to their families each week. You're not about jobs at all. And you're not about jobs if you abandon older workers, which is exactly what this scheme does. It's poorly designed and targeted and it doesn't deal with some of the inherent problems that we have in the Australian labour market at the moment, which were there before the pandemic.

I'm speaking, of course, of the increase in casualisation and part-time work: people not knowing whether they're going to have a shift the next day, whether they're going to earn an income that week and be able to feed themselves and their families, pay the rent or the mortgage, and continue to get by. I'm speaking of the chronic underemployment that we've had in Australia for many, many years now, which has caused such social problems and dislocation, with people feeling they've been left behind by the rest of the economy. This scheme doesn't deal with some of those problems. It doesn't tackle some of the issues we've had in the labour market.

This pandemic is an opportunity to try to deal with some of these issues. It's an opportunity for us to look at some of the problems in our economy and fix them. But, once again, the government have rushed this. They're very short-sighted and, really, all about just getting money out the door. They're making poorly designed schemes aimed at getting money out the door quickly but not actually sitting down and solving some of the problems that we have in the labour market. For instance, under this scheme it is technically possible for an employer to hire two workers on 20 hours a week and receive the job subsidy twice, rather than simply employing one person on a full-time wage, as a full-time worker—providing that security of employment—and receiving the subsidy once. There's a big question about employers abusing this scheme by contracting out to another corporation, another company, work that's being done by the group of people they currently employ. By contracting that work out and allowing a contractor to come in, they would be able to get the subsidy, because the contractor might be increasing their payroll. That's a key point with this subsidy: the employer needs to demonstrate that they are increasing the numbers on their payroll. A contractor may be doing that, but one group of Australian workers will be out of work because they've been sacked and a contractor has been brought in, probably with lower wages and conditions. That is another one of the problems that exist in the labour market in Australia at the moment: workers are losing their jobs to people on lower wages and conditions. It should be 'same job, same pay and conditions'. It's a principle of equity, of fairness in the Australian labour market, that has been ignored by this government. Again: they say they're about jobs when really they're not.

In the Treasurer's speech outlining this program on budget night, he said that it will support 450,000 jobs for young people, but the Treasury briefing points out that it could be 450,000. 'It could be' is very different to 'it will be'. That's something the Treasurer and the government need to come clean on with the Australian people, because this scheme has a cost of $4 billion. It's reasonable for us to ask—and this will be teased out in the Senate inquiry process—whether or not that $4 billion relates to the take-up of 450,000 employees or whether it 'could be' 450,000 employees that have been budgeted for. These are all of the issues that the Australian people deserve to know about and that have been rushed by this government and that really risk a good recovery for our economy and risk making sure that Australians are in good, decent work with fair wages and conditions post the pandemic. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer need to assure Australian workers that they won't be sacked and replaced by younger workers or have their hours cut so that an employer can access the hiring wage subsidy.

There are no new reporting requirements to prevent wage theft and other endemic exploitation that disproportionately affects younger workers. To date, proper regulatory oversight and integrity measures have not been made clear, and we simply don't trust this government when it comes to putting the interests of workers first. When it comes to the labour market, when it comes to the jobs of Australian workers, we know that those on that side are always going to back the bosses. They're always going to back the employer against the worker. That's why Australian workers don't trust them on these sorts of issues. The government's presided over insecure work and underemployment for too many years, and we're going to end up with well over a trillion dollars worth of debt out of this. Unemployment and underemployment will remain too high for too long and the jobless rate isn't expected to get back down to pre-crisis levels even over the forward estimates period. So the Australian people are rightly asking, 'Well, for over a trillion dollars worth of debt, are we getting bang for our buck with a program like this?'

The legislation also doesn't specify any safeguards that the government's publicly stated apply to the subsidy. The legislation makes an amendment to the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Payments and Benefits) Act, the JobKeeper enabling legislation, which authorises the Treasurer to make the rules about payments for financial support to entities directly or indirectly affected by coronavirus, and the opposition haven't even seen a copy of the draft rules yet. And the bill allows the Treasurer to create payments with the stroke of a pen. The only constraint on such payments is that they are primarily for the purposes of improving the prospects of individuals getting employment in Australia and increasing workforce participation. Labor's been calling for wage subsidies since the beginning of the pandemic to support vulnerable workers, businesses and communities. But we've also been making sure that we call for payments and programs that are targeted and deal with some of the endemic issues that we have in the Australian labour market at the moment related to insecure work, underemployment, a lack of security in the workforce, casualisation of work—people without the protections and conditions that we all consider reasonable and that ensure that Australians have a high standard of living. None of those issues that have been endemic in the Australian labour force have been dealt with through this wage subsidy. That's why Labor will be recommending that this bill is referred to a Senate committee—so that some of these issues can be teased out. Hopefully, we can work in a bipartisan manner to improve some of the conditions in this program so that it's better targeted and achieves the aims which it has stated—that is, getting Australian workers back to work, protecting jobs and ensuring that we deal with some of those issues that have seen Australian workers feel like they're being left behind under this government.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I'd like to thank all members who've contributed to the debate on this bill. Of course, it's been good that there has been a bipartisan agreement today to urgently discuss this bill and have it pass the House. It was always the government's view that this bill should, indeed, pass the House as a matter of urgency, and it's good that that may happen today. I also want to say that the Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill does extend the prescribed period of the coronavirus payment framework from 28 March 2021 to 6 October 2022 to enable the JobMaker hiring credit. This, of course, will allow the creation of JobMaker hiring credit rules. I note members' supportive contributions on both sides for the principal purpose of this legislation.

The JobMaker hiring credit will help to provide job opportunities to young jobseekers, who are particularly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, as the economy recovers. We heard powerful anecdotes from all sides about the importance of young jobseekers and the Commonwealth helping those young jobseekers through the difficult coronavirus pandemic.

The JobMaker hiring credit is a key part of the government's economic response to coronavirus as outlined in the budget. It will help to support Australia's economic recovery, and I commend this bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.