Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) many Australian workers are being employed by labour hire companies on low wages and without access to entitlements such as annual leave, sick leave and parental leave;

(b) these workers are often working alongside other workers doing the same job, with the same roster who are employed on higher wages and with access to leave entitlements;

(c) the use of labour hire to avoid paying fair wages and conditions by Australian companies is growing, particularly in Australia's mining industry;

(d) the Federal Court of Australia in the Workpac v Rossato case determined that a worker who was defined as a casual employee by labour hire company Workpac was in fact a full time employee working a full time roster and therefore entitled to leave entitlements; and

(e) Workpac have appealed this decision in the High Court of Australia and the Government has intervened in the case to support the submission of Workpac that Mr Rossato is a casual employee and should not receive leave entitlements;

(2) recognises that the increasing use of labour hire companies by employers to avoid paying fair wages and conditions is reducing the incomes of workers and families, and is having a detrimental impact on their livelihoods, particularly in regional Australia; and

(3) calls on the Government to support Labor's policy and legislation in the Parliament that will ensure workers who do the same job receive the same pay.

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am grateful to the member for Watson, who has just joined us in the chamber, for seconding this motion. It is an incredibly important motion for all Australian workers, and he is equally passionate about stopping worker exploitation.

The resources sector plays a critical role in our national economy and never more so than at this time, when we are reliant on iron ore and coal being extracted and exported whilst many of our major economies are in lockdown, including in my own area of the Hunter. The workers of this sector are being left behind because of the Morrison government. My electorate of Paterson is proudly part of the Hunter region and workers across the Hunter are being exploited because their government has been weak and, staying true to their narrow-minded ideology, they are leaving workers behind. If you are doing the same job as the person alongside you, you should be getting the same rate of pay.

Labor has a plan to ensure that workers in the mining sector receive the same pay for the same job. It is very simple: if you do the work, you deserve the pay and the entitlements that go with it. Last week, casual miners hopes were, sadly, dashed due to this government selling them out by teaming up with some greedy bosses to overturn their rights. The High Court decision was backed by the federal government and this has dashed the hopes of casual coalminers seeking justice and, more importantly, a pathway to permanency.

I commend the miners union for its work in fighting back against this terrible injustice. We know the WorkPac v Rossato appeal judgement winds back significant wins for casuals established in the WorkPac v Skene Federal Court decisions, including a commonsense definition of 'casual' based on the reality of work arrangements and a pathway to compensation for exploited casuals. In short, if you are working full-time hours doing the full-time job, you are a full-time employee and you deserve to be treated as such.

I agree with the mining and energy union general President Tony Maher, who stated that the decision was deeply disappointing for coalminers, who were desperate for change in this industry. I have a clear message for the workers and the miners in my electorate in this industry: don't get angry, just get even at the ballot box, because this government has sold you out and the legislation was passed by the Morrison government. In March, we'll have the opportunity to have our say.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

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

There's an old saying that says you don't want to get between premiers and a pot of money or a bag of money. Well, when it comes to the Labor Party, you never want to get between them and workers and their remuneration because they will make sure, at every point, they do everything they can do deny them a pathway to secure a job on their terms, on their conditions, because what they want is to dictate to them their terms and their conditions. This motion is not about empowering workers, it is not about providing the opportunity for Australians to choose the terms and conditions of their employment—

Ms Swanson interjecting—

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Member for Paterson, you've had your chance.

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

It is about the power of the unions to dictate and decide how people work, on what terms and in what circumstances, because they are the beneficiaries of the Australian Labor Party's largesse. They use the power they have in this chamber to benefit the few rather than to empower Australians to make their own choices and make their own decisions about how they wish to live their lives.

If you believe the members of the opposition, labour hire is an incredible sector which employs millions of Australians and seeks to undermine workers across the board. The reality is nothing like that. Labour hire is a discrete sector of employment arrangements which has been stable at around two per cent of workers over the last decades. Critically, labour hire provides a pathway for some people to secure employment on their terms and for their circumstances. I have labour hire companies that operate out of the wonderful electorate of Goldstein and work to provide pathways for people to secure employment and jobs—again, for their circumstances and on terms that suit them, not union bosses.

We know that labour hire employees have exactly the same rights and protections as other employees when it comes to issues like unfair dismissal rights, award entitlements, general protections and, of course, workplace health and safety protections. What we make sure of, is that, when people secure employment on their own terms, based on their own circumstances, we empower people who may not otherwise be able to do so to secure employment. We provide a pathway where, for instance, women who may have particular circumstances to do with their family arrangements or their responsibilities to others can secure employment on their terms and in their circumstances, so they can stand on their own two feet. The same is true in any family arrangement. I know many people who, because of the casualised nature of other issues they face in their lives, may not want the rigidity of a nine-to-five job on terms that suit law but don't suit them. Ultimately, the focus of what this government is seeking to do is to make sure it provides pathways for every Australian who wants a job to be able to get a job—to have a go to get a go.

Labor wants to stand right in the middle of any pathway that enables people to freely choose the terms and circumstances of their employment. This is the direct consequence, in part, of a significant decision made by the courts. We have introduced a new statutory definition of 'casual employment' that makes it clear that a casual employee is someone who has no firm advance commitment to continuing and indefinite work according to an agreed pattern of work. Doing this, and providing a pathway for universal casual conversion entitlement, means casual employees now have more opportunity to convert to permanent employment. This just requires employers—except for small businesses—to offer full-time or part-time employment to eligible casuals after 12 months of employment, unless there are reasonable grounds not to do so. What we have done is provided a pathway for people to be able to convert their working behaviour based on their interests. We've worked with small business and employees to be able to provide choices that seek what they want.

But, of course, we know full well that that has been opposed every step of the way by the Australian Labor Party. Why? Because it empowers workers and it doesn't empower unions. In February 2021, Anthony Albanese and Labor voted against providing casuals with a more secure pathway to permanency and removing the $39 billion double-dipping liability on business. I was wrong, actually, in my comments before about the reason Labor voted against these initiatives being because they thought it would empower workers and not empower unions. It is because it would empower workers to be able to make choices and decisions about their own employment arrangements. But the reason they voted against it wasn't because it didn't empower unions; it's because it didn't empower union bosses, who are their mates, who are the people, just like superannuation funds and others, whose terms they want to dictate and empower—at the expense of average Australians.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm really proud that the member for Paterson has brought this motion before the chamber, because this is a member who understands the needs of the mining workers in the Hunter. Those opposite: don't pretend you support mineworkers when at the same time you try to cut their pay. What we've got, in the member for Paterson, is someone who backs the industry and backs workers getting fair payment.

What we just heard from the member for Goldstein, where he referred to 'empowerment', is extraordinary. I'm yet to meet the worker who wants to be empowered to get a pay cut. I'm yet to meet the worker who says, 'If only I had the authority to be able to be paid less.' The workers who would be protected by what's being proposed by the member for Paterson, the workers who would be protected by 'same job, same pay', want to be empowered with a better take-home pay. I've met with these workers at Moranbah; I've met with these workers throughout Central Queensland. And it's not just the mining industry where this happens. People are employed by a company, and the workforce is usually represented by a union, because union workplaces do get better rates of pay. We don't resile from that for one minute. But, once an enterprise agreement is in place, some of these employers go off to a labour hire company. And, because those workers are technically employed by someone else, they come in and undercut the enterprise agreement rate. So you get two people working side by side on the exact same roster, where one receives a radically lower rate of pay.

What's the answer? What's the policy solution that the previous speaker, the member for Goldstein, just referred to? He said, 'You can deal with this through casual conversion.' What does his model mean? Well, if you're already employed by labour hire, the casual conversion legislation they put through doesn't let you change employer; you only get to convert within the labour hire firm. So he's offering the person who is already being paid less than the person they work side by side with to go from casual to permanent, still for the labour hire company, and be paid even less per hour still. The proposal that the member for Goldstein has just put forward as a way of dealing with the issue of two people working side by side, doing the exact same job, and one of them is being paid much less per hour than the other is: 'Let's just make the gap even wider.'

Australians have a good sense of what's reasonable and what's not, and it is reasonable that, if you're doing the same job on the same shift at the same workplace, then you get the same rate of pay. The member for Paterson will have had many conversations with mining workers throughout the Hunter, where they will tell you upfront their frustration at this not happening. Don't forget, in an industry like mining, when you've got these concerns, it's not simply a difference in pay; it's also a difference in security. What does that mean in the mining industry, an industry where safety concerns are not about whether or not you have a minor injury; safety concerns are about whether or not you are at risk of dying at work? People told me in Central Queensland—and mining workers everywhere will tell you, and the mining union will tell you, but those opposite might not know this—that people in less secure work are less likely to speak up about safety issues. How do the workers know this? Because they've got examples of labour hire people who did speak up about safety issues and they never saw them for another shift.

Job security is a safety issue. Job security is about us being a country where, if people have security of their job, they have security in their take-home pay and they have security in knowing that they'll be able to pay their rent, pay their mortgage, pay their bills. It's a security that this side of the House will defend for the workers of Australia and it's a security that those opposite are deliberately designing to remove from the Australian workforce. Everybody who sees the injustice of different rates of pay for the exact same job should know there's only one way to fix this, and it's a change of government at the next election and following what's been put forward by the member for Paterson.

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

There are so many things to think about in the world that we're facing that it's easy for people to push aside the stuff that doesn't seem directly relevant to them. For some people, labour hire isn't part of their immediate world. But its effects on working conditions and wages are far-reaching, whether we think about it or not, which is why I'm very pleased to speak on the motion moved by the member for Paterson.

Australian workers and Australian consumers are affected by the increase in labour hire. It is a nonsense to say that people choose labour hire because it empowers them in some way to negotiate a better deal. They do it because they have no choice. They cannot go directly to the organisation and get the job that they want. It is being channelled through labour hire. I'm going to talk about that in the private sector as well as the public sector.

You can't tell, when you're looking at the person who is caring for your loved one in aged care, whether they're employed by a labour hire company or not. You can't tell, when you speak to someone on the phone at Services Australia, whether they're employed by a labour hire company or not. You can't tell when you're looking at a mining site or a building site. But there are two really serious consequences that occur for people employed by a labour hire company. One is that these workers are on lower wages, without access to entitlements that give security and dignity to people's lives—things like annual leave, sick leave and parental leave. A consequence is that they may not be in a position to ensure that the environment that they work in is as safe as it should be. They don't have the voice they would have as a permanent worker. They're without all sorts of security. That means that, financially, they can't get a bank loan, they can't buy home or even build up a reserve to start their own business. In the COVID environment we've seen that, along with all those things, people in insecure work are the first to lose their work, the least likely to have a buffer and the most likely to miss out on financial support.

Think of the longer-term effect on wages that this scenario has created. The value of wages that people get has continued to fall under Liberal prime ministers. While wages grew an average of 3.6 per cent under Labor, it's been less than half that under this government. Long before COVID hit, wages were flatlining. Ross Garnaut describes the pre-COVID economic environment created by the Liberals as 'the dog days—a time of listless growth and historically low wages'.

The reason so many people were feeling pressure on their family budget pre-COVID was that we came from a time when workers were seeing their fortnightly pay rise by, on average, $100 a week every year or two. That's what we used to have—a steady increase. But these days it takes an average worker seven years to increase their pay by $100 a fortnight—stagnant, dormant, listless, sluggish; I feel a bit like Monty Python, saying those things! We have had flatlining wages. It begs the question: how many essentials were families going without pre-COVID because of the failure on wages? Right now, many are in much more dire straits. It's pretty simple: when it comes to labour hire rorts, the government are ripping off casual workers. Workers doing the same job at the same site should get the same pay. That should be the standard.

But there's another consequence, and that's in the public sector—about not just the pay but the quality of service my constituents receive when they interact with a department heavily reliant on labour hire; Veterans' Affairs is a case in point. It was confirmed earlier this year that the level of labour hire staffing in DVA is 42 per cent. Forty-two per cent of staff are employed not by the department but through a labour hire firm. This is a department with an increase in claim and client numbers far in excess of what had been predicted when the Liberals first put these artificial caps on the numbers of staff within departments. In 2012 DVA thought it would have less than a quarter of a million clients in 2020; in reality it has more than 320,000 clients. Its case load is extraordinary. The CPSU says its members report that some colleagues are managing more than 250 cases. This is one of the consequences, and it has to stop. We have to tackle these issues, and Labor will. Secure work has financial, economic and mental health benefits across our society.

Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] I'm pleased to speak on the motion moved by the member for Paterson. Last week we saw the High Court overturn the Federal Court's decision in the case of WorkPac v Rossato, in yet another blow for casual workers who are fighting for job security. Casuals are already facing an uphill battle because of the Morrison government's push to legitimise the concept of permanent casuals—casual workers who stand side by side with full-time employees, working the same hours day in, day out, only to take home substantially less pay. This government has turned its back on the Australian value of 'same job, same pay'. It has legitimised wage theft and allowed job insecurity to grow.

Let's look at the facts. Pay rates for labour hire casuals are on average about 30 per cent less than those of permanent workers, and that's if they don't take leave; the difference is closer to 40 per cent if they do take leave. The widespread use of casual labour hire in construction, manufacturing and mining is a blatant cost-cutting measure that leaves regional communities hundreds of millions of dollars a year worse off. Australia has the highest proportion of temporary labour in the developed world. About 40 per cent of Australian workers have casual or insecure jobs, like gig work or labour hire. In the medical and health sectors close to 23 per cent of the workforce is casual; in building and construction it's 23.6 per cent; and in the accommodation sector it's 44 per cent. For these workers, financial insecurity is the norm.

Thanks to deregulation of the labour market over the last 30 years, too many Australians are now stuck in limbo as permanent casuals. It is commonly accepted that casuals are paid a loading to compensate them for insecure work and lack of paid leave. But most casuals are still receiving less than permanent workers doing the same job. In fact, for many casuals, the longer they remain trapped in insecure work, the more likely they are to be paid less than their permanent co-workers. Half of all casuals would prefer to have a permanent job with paid leave, but in some industries workers aren't given a choice.

It's casuals who have also borne the brunt of this pandemic. In March last year, when the first wave hit, many casuals lost work and many were excluded from JobKeeper. It's now 18 months later, half of the country is in lockdown, and casuals have once again been plunged into uncertainty. Some have lost hours, while others are still working on the front line as essential workers in retail, aged care, disability support, transport and cleaning—people on low wages who can't work from home or access sick leave if anything goes wrong. On the other side of this crisis, we must make sure that Australians who want secure jobs can find them, especially in regional Australia.

To finish, I'd like to turn to the impacts of casual work on mental health and wellbeing. The link between insecure work, financial distress and mental health crisis is well known. As soon as the sector you work in is at risk, your mental health is at risk; and, as the demands of your work grow and the control you have over your circumstances drops, the risk increases. Over the last 18 months, hundreds of thousands of Australians have found themselves out of work as businesses have folded or workforces have been trimmed, and many people are experiencing mental health problems for the first time in their lives. We know that almost one in five Australians will struggle with their mental health in any year. But some Australians are much more likely to experience mental health problems, including those looking for work or those in insecure work.

Mental ill-health has been described by some as a second-wave or shadow pandemic, and this government is risking people's lives if it doesn't create more opportunities for secure work. In the National Suicide Prevention Adviser's Interim Advice Report, it was recommended that the government should 'develop a Commonwealth process for reviewing new policies or initiatives to ensure they assess any impacts—positively or negatively—on suicide risk or behaviour'. The Prime Minister says mental health is a priority, and I believe him, but he can't ignore the impacts of his policies on mental health and wellbeing, especially when it comes to the casualisation of the workforce.

We know from the Productivity Commission's final report in its mental health inquiry that mental ill-health is costing the Australian economy upwards of $200 billion a year, a sum that is reported as being a conservative estimate. We know that these aren't just numbers in a ledger. These are real people, and their lives are at risk as they struggle to find work and struggle for more secure work. The Prime Minister says mental health is a priority, but every day, in the policies and the decisions of his government, he's risking people's mental health and their wellbeing. Our communities deserve better. Local people deserve better. Casual workers across Australia deserve better.

Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm here on behalf of casual and labour hire workers on the north side because insecure work and low wages have created a perfect storm for them, and this Morrison government does not care. When South-East Queensland went into lockdown last week to stop the spread of the delta variant in our community, north-side workers in insecure work—people who were casuals, contract workers, gig economy workers and labour hire workers—suddenly saw their hours slashed or taken away altogether overnight. These workers instantly fell through a trapdoor into a financial abyss, with no annual leave, no sick pay, no holiday pay, no family leave.

The current industrial relations landscape we find ourselves in is not one that is here by chance or by happenstance of the free market, as those on the other side of the House would lead workers to believe. No, workers are worse off today because of deliberate policy decisions made by consecutive Liberal-National governments who value profits over people; who think we live in a corporation, not a community; and who care more about the national budget than the household budget of a family living in Boondall. Under the Liberal-National government, the nature of Australia's workforce has been shifting for a decade. Over one-third of the workforce is currently in insecure or non-standard forms of work, directly impacting many workers' ability to provide for their families and to plan for the future. Wages are projected to decrease over the next few years, while the cost of living continues to climb.

How did we get here? Well, here are just a few examples of the Morrison government's cold and systemic war on workers. In 2019 the former Minister for Finance declared that wages were low by design, as part of the Morrison government's deliberate economic strategy. In February 2020 the Morrison government created an amnesty for dodgy employers who had not paid their workers adequate super entitlements. Earlier this year, in the midst of a global pandemic, the Morrison government wrote to the Fair Work Commission cautioning against an increase in the minimum wage. And who could forget the Morrison government's crowning glory built with thorns for Australian workers, Work Choices 2.0? It was designed to strip workers of their legal rights and, when it looked like the bill wasn't going to pass, the Morrison government vindictively took out the wage theft provisions, the only provisions which Labor had agreed to support.

At every step of the way, the Morrison government has sent dog whistles to dodgy employers that it's okay to rip their workers off, and I have seen the consequences of that every day in my community. There is no more egregious example of the Morrison government giving the green light to a dodgy boss than the Prime Minister and his mate Alan Joyce. The Morrison government has handed out $2 billion in corporate welfare to Qantas without any conditions that that money be given directly to the workers, the workers who paid the taxes that were the money in the first place. With $2 billion worth of taxpayer funds in their pockets, Qantas has slashed their workforce, denied workers who have been stood down from taking sick leave, frozen their wages for two years and tried to outsource 2,000 jobs to a labour hire company because workers have stronger bargaining abilities as a unionised workforce.

Since the Federal Court's decision that Qantas acted illegally when trying to outsource those 2,000 jobs, we have heard nothing from the Prime Minister—not in the media, not in the parliament, not a word about it. The Prime Minister has Alan Joyce's number on speed dial. He needs to pick up the phone and tell Alan Joyce to reinstate the 2,000 workers who were stood down when it was announced that their jobs would be outsourced to a labour hire company. He also needs to tell Alan Joyce that any taxpayer support that is given to Qantas must be used to keep workers in their jobs, jobs on the north side of Brisbane.

As your federal member I will always fight to protect the jobs of northsiders and protect them from wage theft and the exploitation of honest workers. Only Labor have a plan to tackle exploitative, insecure work. A federal Labor government will defend your penalty rates and your rights at work. We will legislate to properly define casual work. We will explicitly insert job security into the Fair Work Act. We will crack down on cowboy labour firms to guarantee same job, same pay. We will put a cap on back-to-back short-term contracts for the same job and enforce portable entitlements for workers in insecure industries. When the election comes, Australian workers will remember who fought for their rights in a pandemic and which Prime Minister did them over at every single opportunity.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and resumption will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.