Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. How will the Albanese Labor government build on the outcomes of the Jobs and Skills Summit to encourage agreements and to get wages moving again?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Solomon for the question. Cost of living, and the challenges being faced by cost of living, is the interaction between prices and wages, and part of being able to deal with cost of living means that we need to get wages moving. And that needs to apply to workers, in particular those who have not had the benefits of bargaining in a significant way. And they are the workforces where there are disproportionately women: aged care, the independent education sector, early childhood education, community services, health services.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Moncrieff will stop yelling.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Only today I had land on my desk—and this is how much red tape is in the system at the moment when businesses want to bargain together—something from 22 different employers, employing dental hygienists, dental therapists and health therapists, needing my permission to be allowed to bargain together. So the workers want to bargain with these employers, the 22 employers want to bargain together and yet we have a red-tape system where it has to go all the way to the minister, where I have to take into account six different conditions. And there's actually a seventh condition, which is 'anything else you want to consider'. After I give permission for it, which I did today, it then has to go to the Fair Work Commission for them to give permission as well. Those opposite will publicly rail against red tape, unless it's red tape that holds wages back.

In Victoria, we had 70 not-for-profit early childhood centres that wanted to be able to bargain together but the current system didn't allow them. These are all workplaces with about 20 to 30 staff, overwhelmingly female workplaces, and not one of them with its own HR department. Those opposite, who wanted to do the bullying of different small business organisations recently—saying, 'How dare you try to get rid of red tape and try to be able to bargain together?'—might take notice that small businesses don't have their own HR departments. If they want to be able to have an agreement that is tailor made for their style of business, multi-employer bargaining is the only way they're going to have that sort of opportunity. And yet in that case, every one of those centres had to individually—all 70 of them—go through the process of registering an agreement and making their own applications. But what was the outcome? You were able to get 16 per cent above the award for those workers, and for the employers to be able to get the sorts of agreements they want. If we can get those sorts of outcomes without the red tape, it gets wages moving and it's good for business.