Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges that through the passage of its 'closing loopholes' legislation, the Government has closed loopholes used by some employers to undercut wages, conditions and safety for Australian workers, including by:

(a) stopping companies using labour hire as a means of underpaying their workers;

(b) making it a criminal offence for employers to deliberately steal their workers' wages;

(c) closing the loophole in which large businesses could claim small business exemptions during insolvency;

(d) introducing a new criminal offence of industrial manslaughter;

(e) ensuring better support for first responders with post-traumatic stress disorder;

(f) protecting workers subjected to family and domestic violence from discrimination at work; and

(g) expanding the functions of the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency to include silica;

(2) recognises that many Australian families are doing it tough dealing with the cost of living, and that getting wages moving again is a key part of addressing the cost of living;

(3) notes that the Opposition has voted against legislation to get wages moving 36 times in this term of Parliament; and

(4) calls on the Opposition to support the remaining elements of the 'closing loopholes' legislation, including minimum standards for gig workers, reforms to the road transport industry and a better deal for casual workers who want to become permanent.

Last week, the second half of the Albanese Labor government's 'closing loopholes' bill passed the Senate. Right now, it's back before the House and being debated as we speak; in fact, we may be called to a division at any moment! This important reform is the next step in the Albanese Labor government's plan to bolster and protect the pay and condition of Australian workers. If passed, when passed, the bill will provide minimum standards for gig workers, reforms to the road transport industry and a better deal for casual workers who want to become permanent.

I ask: when called upon to vote on this important legislation, this legislation so critical to the interests, health, safety and remuneration of Australian workers, what will the Liberals do? Based on their track record, I suspect we know which way they'll go. At every opportunity it appears the Liberals will oppose legislation that protects Australian workers. The Liberals opposed closing the labour hire loophole, instead siding with companies like Qantas who have used the loophole to undercut pay agreements and steal from workers, including from thousands of families in my community. Despite their opposition, that's a loophole that Labor has now closed. The Liberals opposed the criminalisation of wage theft, deciding that while it's a criminal offence for a worker to steal from the till it's no problem for an employer to steal from a worker's pay packet. Despite their opposition, Labor criminalised wage theft.

The Liberals opposed getting wages moving again not just once but 36 times in this term of parliament alone. It's no secret that wage suppression was part of their economic plan for a decade in government, and clearly it remains a part of their economic philosophy in opposition that workers don't deserve their fair share of the economic pie. Despite the Liberals' ideological opposition to higher wages, the Albanese Labor government has overseen record wage growth. Wages are growing at four per cent—the highest they've been in 15 years—and we've seen two consecutive quarters of real wage growth; I'm happy to take the member for Casey through what that looks like at some later point, if he requires! This is not just some sort of economic good fortune; it is the product of the hard work of the Australian people, and the policy settings from the Albanese Labor government and our plan to get wages moving again.

We've restored balance at the bargaining table with our 'secure jobs, better pay' laws. We've backed and secured substantial increases to the minimum wage. We've successively advocated for record increases to award wages. We've backed and funded a 15 per cent pay rise for our aged-care workers. All this, alongside the changes implemented in the first half of our 'closing loopholes' bill, has resulted in higher wages and better conditions for Australian workers.

So, as we approach another vote on supporting Australian workers, I am hoping that the Liberals have turned over a new leaf in 2024 and let their relentless contempt for working people fall behind them. Look at Labor's tax cuts, for example. It appears now that, despite all the incompetent bluster and a vicious commitment to rolling them back, the Liberals will now support Labor's tax cuts, even if they have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the pulpit.

I can't help but wonder: will they bring their new-found support for the Albanese Labor government's agenda to the second half of the closing loopholes bill, or will they revert to their default position of denying Australian workers a fair go? That's what the closing loopholes legislation is all about—ensuring that Australians have safe and secure work irrespective of who they are or which industry they work in. It's about standing up for casual workers who want to become permanent employees and giving them the right to convert their employment if they want to. It's about empowering the Fair Work Commission to set minimum standards for gig workers and ensuring that they aren't subjected to worse standards of pay and conditions just because they work in the gig economy. It's about establishing minimum standards in the road safety industry and doing what we can to prevent anymore unnecessary deaths on our roads.

Tragically, 235 people died on our roads just last year in transport related accidents as the impact of cost cutting and unrealistic deadlines proved deadly. I want to commend the efforts of the Transport Workers Union and the dedication of employers and industry associations who came together to support this legislation in shared recognition of a need for a safer and more viable road transport industry. I hope that their example, the coming together of somewhat unlikely allies, can be a lesson for the Liberals opposite when considering this legislation on its merits.

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a seconder?

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd hate to be seen as seconding the motion, but I'm happy to speak to it! The member for Hawke is a good man, and I think he has good intentions. But, sadly, we're in the game of politics, where consequences are what we're judged on, not our intentions. Ultimately, in this bill, Labor has chosen to exercise its right to disconnect from reality and, simply, from the workforce by pushing a narrative that I believe is driven along ideological bounds that will ultimately hurt workers.

I'm going to talk to an exact example of that. This legislation has caused a lot of concern amongst particularly small and medium businesses who are trying to understand what this means for them. They already exist in a very complex IR framework and, on every change that's required, they seek guidance. I'll give an example of starting out in a small business. My father was a concreter. He knew how to do his work. What he didn't know was IR legislation. For him to navigate these changes required external help. That's fine. But when you don't engage with that bottom level, the people who are starting out and really trying to make their way, you get problems like this.

We had an IR forum. I had wonderful support. We had speakers from the Master Builders Association, the National Farmers Federation and the Recruitment, Consulting and Staffing Association come and speak to local business owners in Groom. We held it at Gold Park. I'm happy to disclose that that is the ground of my wonderful football team, the Rangers Rugby Union Club. We held it there. They have a convention centre at the back. To run the meeting, they had to engage one of their casual employees to come out and staff the bar, a young man called Jason. Jason was homeless in his early years and had some of the problems that you find amongst homeless people, particularly getting his way back into employment. Thanks to the good people at Bates services they got him on the employment bandwagon. He wasn't attractive to employers in a full-time capacity, but they were willing to give him a go as a casual to start his way out. Here's a young man who has absolutely pulled himself up by his bootlaces. He's done everything he can. He got himself into employment. If you ask about his first pay cheque, the smile on his face is something that you just know what it is. It is aspiration coming through.

Anyway, Jason's there, manning the bar, serving drinks to people as the IR conversation is going on. As the conversation is going on, both he and the manager of the bar are sitting there, and you can see their faces getting more and more ashen as we discuss what this means for Australian workers. At the end of the evening, once we went through the legislation and what it meant for casuals, the bar manager came over and said: 'Garth, I've got a problem. Under this legislation Jason loses his job. I can't afford to employ him full time. I do not make enough money in this bar to keep everyone else running and to employ him full time. He comes along on a regular basis, on a Wednesday evening, and runs the convention centre. He chooses Wednesday evening because he's studying the other evenings to try and get ahead in life.' This ridiculous legislation will strip this young man of his career—his employment at that place.

There was a time when Labor was in touch with labourers; that's long gone. There was a time when they were in touch with the working class; that is long gone. This is the sort of legislation that is just another nail in the coffin of ambitious young men and women across Australia—people like Jason, who didn't have the greatest start in life. He's not going to be working for the high end of town, which this legislation won't change. The big banks, Qantas—get all the photos with Mr Albanese and Mr Joyce, if you want to throw that into the conversation—those guys don't care. They've already got IR lawyers. They can navigate another 300 pages of legislation. Little pubs and little places like this can't. When faced with the question, 'Do I keep this guy on, or do I not?', they don't have a choice. Jason will lose his job because of this legislation.

The fundamental misunderstanding by this Labor Party is to think that every casual will have a 100 per cent conversion rate to full-time employment. They won't. You're costing people their jobs. You're costing people their aspirations. If you just went out and listened to people, and ran a proper consultation process, you would have heard this and we wouldn't be having the absolute shemozzle that we're seeing on IR from this government.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise knowing that the bells will ring at any moment on the second half of the closing loopholes legislation. It is good to be standing here, knowing that in this part of the House, and in the chamber, we are debating industrial relations. And we need to, because, as the previous speaker for the opposition just demonstrated, there's a lot of education that we need to do in relation to the bill that passed the parliament in the last sittings. Deputy Speaker, I'm the chair and you're the deputy chair of the Employment, Education and Training Committee, and we've already been advised, through that role, that the Fair Work Ombudsman will start the education process for employers to understand what their obligations are under the new law that has since been adopted.

The industry associations representing hospitality workers, like the AHA, do not share the same fears as the previous speaker because they understand that the new requirement under the casual conversion clause is, if the person is regularly doing the same hours, consistently has the same roster, then there is an opportunity for that worker to convert to those hours. It's not about creating a full-time job if that full-time job doesn't exist. It's about saying that you cannot continue to roll somebody over as a casual, with those opportunities to dismiss when you like, if they continually do the same roster. It's strengthening the casual conversion clause that already exists.

It's not fair for members to come into the House and spread misinformation. It's just not fair. We need to make sure that we're working off the facts and that, when we're talking to small businesses in our community, they understand what their obligations are. They should talk to their industry association. They should talk to the Fair Work Ombudsman. Before dismissing anybody, find out what your obligations are and what these new laws mean.

What I really respect about what the parliament did at the end of last year, before we took the break, was the legislation that we adopted that stopped labour hire companies being used to underpay workers. Far too often in this country, when I've gone out to workplaces, whether they be in the mining industry or in manufacturing, you meet people who've consistently been doing the same job as the person next to them—they have the same job title, they have the same experience and they're doing the same job—yet one is being paid less than the other. That's because they're hired by a labour hire company. It's just not fair. The minimum standards in that particular workplace, if you work for labour hire, are those in the award—or those in an enterprise agreement, if one has been struck with that particular employer. The minimum standards for the worker, in many cases, are those in the enterprise agreement that has been struck, that has been built up over years to a certain level of conditions. So labour hire—and this was completely legal—was being used as a way to underpay those workers.

What the closing the loopholes legislation did was to change that to say: 'For the same workers doing the same job with the same relevant experience, site rates must apply.' This is good legislation. This is about closing a loophole and restoring fairness and integrity. It encourages employers to look at those labour hire workers and work out who they want to bring onto their books.

Introducing a new criminal offence for industrial manslaughter is important. This is about changing culture on our worksites and making employers, in the most grievous of situations, accountable. We've seen it used already in Victoria, for the owner of the truck company who allowed his driver to drive far too many shifts in a row, for far too many hours, which led to the tragic killing of those police officers on the Monash Freeway. This legislation is about saying to employers and companies: 'You have a responsibility to make sure that your workers are working safely and fairly.'

We're protecting workers who are subject to family and domestic violence from discrimination in the workplace. Again, we're making sure that we're lifting standards and supporting women to not lose their job when they're going through this tough moment in their lives. We've expanded the functions of the former Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency to include silica—again, an important reform that passed the parliament back in December.

These changes strengthen our industrial relations laws. They will help employers and employees in their workplaces. These changes make our workplaces safer. They close the loopholes and give workers and employers the opportunity to work more closely together.

Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a pity that the member for Hawke has decided to leave the chamber in the debate on this motion; it probably says a little bit about the credit that he gives it—and he was given it by a minister, no doubt. But he did talk about real wage statistics, and he talked about the last two quarters. What he didn't talk about was the fact that real wages have gone backwards in every quarter, on an annual basis, since Labor came to government. That includes the biggest collapse in real wages on record, in the December 2022 quarter. He didn't want to talk about that. He didn't want to talk about the fact that, over the past 18 months, real net disposable income per person fell by 8.6 per cent. For an average income earner, this is a decline in take-home pay of just under $8,000. Primarily, it has been driven by rising mortgage payments, falling real wages and increasing taxes.

The other thing he didn't want to talk about, but was happy to throw barbs at the opposition on, was wage theft and voting against wages. I'll give him his due: he wasn't in the parliament at the time. But he's been involved in politics for a long time and is very influential, I hear, in the ALP in Victoria. He didn't talk about how Labor voted against legislating a wage-theft provision on 23 February 2021. He didn't talk about the fact that we could have had legislation in operation today for workers, if Labor had voted for it in 2021. Conveniently, he misses that in history. It was described by one Labor source, in the AFR on 3 February 2021, as 'collateral damage'. So it says a bit about those opposite that they're happy to get up here and talk about wage theft, but their actions in 2021 said another thing. This motion from the member for Hawke, in many ways, sums up the challenges with Labor's—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 12:29 to 12:48

The challenge with this legislation and this motion is that there's no mention or discussion of productivity. Everyone wants higher wages—it's good for the community, it's good for society, and it's good for business. But to avoid inflation from wage growth, it has to be coupled with productivity gains. As Richard Holden, the University of New South Wales's professor of economics, recently said:

We have a big productivity problem in Australia. And that makes current wage increases inflationary … But @Tony_Burke sure isn't being careful about IR policy and inflation.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member will refer to members by their proper title.

Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's the quote. The minister sure isn't being careful, to paraphrase Richard Holden. It's a direct quote. We've seen, since the Albanese government came to power, a collapse of 6.1 per cent in labour productivity in the last 18 months. That's the challenge that we have. It's why we're seeing inflation so high for many reasons. You need to get that balance of higher wages coupled with productivity to ensure that prices don't go up. This legislation is just adding more complexity and cost, and it's making it harder for small business to deal with it.

As a small business owner in my community, Jack, recently wrote to me: 'This is 800 pages long. I don't have enough time or manpower to trawl through it all.' That's the reality. Every time we add more and more legislation in the IR space, it is small business owners that struggle to keep up with it. Big business is fine. They've got significant resources and IR departments to handle it. But we're asking husbands and wives and families with no expertise in IR to understand 800 pages of legislation. Now we learn that the risk is that, if they get it wrong, they can end up in jail. If they get the right to disconnect wrong, which was the legislation that Labor voted for last week, it can put them in jail. That's what happens when you rush legislation in the IR space: you make mistakes and it's the community, employees and employers that suffer.

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

It is an absolute pleasure to be upstairs in the Federation Chamber in between votes in the closing loopholes legislation in the House below us. It's interesting that the member for Casey said that he wanted people to get paid higher wages. It was nice to hear someone from the opposition benches suggesting they wanted higher wages, but I'd ask the member for Casey to back that with some of his actions. He has just left the floor of the House of Representatives where once again he voted to keep wages low by attempting to put this legislation, which is incredibly important, out into never-never land. That is on top of all of the other stalling tactics that have been used by the opposition since the first tranche of closing loopholes came into parliament. We have just heard that detail downstairs.

I want to thank the member for Hawke for bringing this on in private members business today because, of course, Labor wants to get wages moving—but not just that. The pendulum in industrial relations has swung way too far to the right and we have waited a decade to bring fairness back to the table. The best example of that is the section in the closing loopholes legislation that deals with labour hire and stopping labour hire being used to undercut agreements made between workers and their employers. This has been going on for a decade and has meant that we have had wages under cut. It has meant that people have lost ground in terms of their wages. This all becomes critically important in a cost-of-living crisis, of course. Labor has always stood for a fair day's pay for a fair day's work and this legislation, the closing loopholes legislation, supports that.

I just want to touch on the right to disconnect aspects of this legislation and explain it to some of the people in this room if they do not understand. This was something that was brought to my attention previous to my time in this parliament when, as a principal, I had teachers come to me, to say, 'It's great that my team leader's working so hard but, seriously, my phone goes ping at 9.30 at night and it's a message from my team leader saying, 'Can we do something to address this?' The solution wasn't that difficult. You can set up your emails with a clock and a timer. So you can have the bright idea but it doesn't land in the inbox until 9.00 the next day if you get the settings right. These are things that employers can seek to fix. Some of the solutions are incredibly simple and incredibly easy.

Imagine if you are a teacher or a parent of a couple of kids and you're getting messages at 10 o'clock at night. You might already be in bed asleep at 10 o'clock at night. I know as a younger teacher with a young family I would have been asleep before 10 o'clock at night. These things are avoidable. It just needs care and attention to avoid them. This legislation means that people will understand that they do have the right to disconnect, that they are paid for work and, if people want to negotiate around that in specific purposes, then I'm sure employers will find a way to do that. I'm sure that you can set this up reasonably.

It is clear that the member for Dickson—the Leader of the Opposition—and the Liberals and Nationals have voted against this legislation every step of the way. They've voted against a fair deal for workers. They've voted against swinging that industrial relations law back to a fair place. They voted against legislation that would stop people undercutting wages. These are all things that we don't want to see, particularly in a cost-of-living crisis. But, as we know, they don't want to see anybody get a fair day's pay. They don't want to see people get a pay rise anymore than they want to see low and middle Australia get a tax cut. That's the bottom line here.

Those opposite will say no to everything to slow everything down, to push everything into the never-never, because they haven't figured out yet that, after 10 years, workers have had enough of that and they want a fair deal.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll take the member for Lalor up on a few of the points that she made. The member for Lalor actually belled the cat when she talked about team leaders calling teachers at 9.30 at night. Team leaders aren't the employers. Team leaders are not the principals. If, in fact, it does become illegal for a boss to call a worker after the said appointed hours, what happens when a team leader who is not the boss, who is not the employer, who is not the person paying the wages, does that? Do they go to jail? Is there a term of imprisonment? That's what the Greens would have us do and say, because the Greens have hardly ever—I don't know of too many Greens who have run small businesses. Yes, there would be some, granted. But this is dangerous territory which we are entering and which we are navigating, when employers, who pay the wages of employees, are not allowed to call them after hours.

What it's going to see is a reverse effect. The employer who is allowing the employee to work from home and to do all sorts of things, like have haircuts and that in the boss's time—all that will stop. We'll get very hard and fast rules about what people can do and when they can do it and how they can do it. This is dangerous territory—not thought through.

All the Manager of Opposition Business wanted was for this to lie on the table until the next sitting. That's all we were debating in the House of Representatives, because this is complex legislation. It is a bad bill. It is a terribly bad bill. It's impossibly complex and intricate. There is way too much uncertainty for those small businesses who, during COVID, struggled so much. Although we provided JobKeeper and the other arrangements that kept their doors open and kept people in jobs, this mob came to power and said, 'What have we got for a trillion dollars worth of Liberal Party debt?' It wasn't a trillion dollars; it was nowhere near that. What we did was we saved livelihoods and indeed we saved lives. That's what we did in the time of a global pandemic. Indeed, we were credited with being one of the very best in the world for the provisions we put in place to keep business doors open, to keep people safe and to keep people alive.

This bill adds huge costs to businesses. Businesses are already struggling. They're struggling because there is a cost-of-living crisis. They're struggling because there are inflationary pressures on everybody. Labor have the levers which they could pull to ease the situation, and yet they are not, unfortunately. Instead, it's just he who pays the piper calls the tune, and, unfortunately, the unions are calling the tune, and Labor, well, they're just going along with what the union paymasters say they need to do. As the member for Casey pointed out in his eloquent remarks, it does nothing for productivity. It doesn't increase productivity.

And I take exception to the member for Lalor's remarks that we on this side don't want people to be paid more. We do, but what we want is for people to be able to keep more of what they earn. At the moment, whilst wages might be slightly higher in certain sectors—aged care and others—people are taking home less because their disposable income has been far reduced by the policies and measures put forward by those opposite, who quite frankly don't give a tinker's cuss about businesses. It shows in this legislation. They don't care so long as the union members are getting what they need and what they want. This risks jobs because, if you are an employer, if you are a boss in a small business, you will think twice about putting on, particularly, that young person. You will think twice about putting on a person who doesn't want to go above and beyond.

It's all about balance. It's all very much a balance as to whether an employer is going too far by calling somebody after hours, and it works itself out. Bad bosses are quickly recognised and quickly identified, and they just don't cut it. This institutionalises conflict in our workplace. That's something that we want to avoid at all costs. Government says it's made concessions for businesses. I tell you what, the business community doesn't like it, and they will remember this at the next election. It weakens our economy. It reduces our effectiveness as a nation to be able to pay people the right amount of money, for people to take home more of what they earn and for the economy to grow.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.