Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

In relation to amendment (1) on sheet 8934, I move:

That the House of Representatives be requested to make the following amendment:

(1) Clause 7, page 4 (after line 29), at the end of clause 7, add:

  (3) In determining the entitlement of an entity to a payment for an employee of the entity, the rules must provide that the types of employee that an entity is entitled to receive a payment in respect of include an employee of the entity who satisfies the requirements in subsection (4), regardless of the period of time that the individual has been employed by the entity.

Casual employee requirements

  (4) The requirements are that:

     (a) the individual was a casual employee of the entity on 1 March 2020; and

     (b) it is reasonable to assume that the individual would have continued to be an employee of the entity if the entity had not been directly or indirectly affected by the Coronavirus known as COVID-19.

This amendment relates to casual employees. Again, we've had substantial debate in this chamber about casual employees who, for no apparent reason that we can see that's justifiable, aren't able to qualify as they have had their work for less than 12 months. I heard an instance quoted in the chamber earlier today; I think the person was three days outside the 12-month period for qualifying. I had someone who, I think, was 13 days outside the period of qualifying for this.

Surely, the idea here is to keep as many people as possible working and as many people as possible connected to work as we move out of the crisis and the economy picks up. The idea, I would have thought, is to keep these workers connected to work as much as possible. As I understand it, there are over a million workers who are working. They're working. They're casual workers who just don't happen to have had their jobs for 12 months; some are very close to it. In some instances, there's very little difference in the amount that the casual workers who have been working for under 12 months have been earning. As I articulated in my second reading contribution, 50 per cent of the household income for the households that these workers are a part of is coming from these casual workers who are missing out. I don't know how we can justify saying to a worker who has been working: 'You don't get the JobKeeper payment. You can't access the JobKeeper payment, because you haven't had that job for 12 months,' when, as casuals, they have been working for 12 months. It's not justifiable. We should be extending this to casual workers so we keep as many people as possible connected to work and supported in the workplace. I strongly urge the government to extend these provisions to all those workers—the one million workers.

I had an older gentleman contact me. He's a part-time pensioner who has been working for just under the 12 months. In fact, I tell a lie; I had two people contact me in the last 24 hours. Another person contacted me just a couple of hours ago saying they are a part-time worker on a part pension who didn't qualify because they had changed jobs and hadn't been connected to their job for 12 months; it is just under the 12 months. They're going to miss out and they're on a part pension.

This is important to Australians. It's important to workers. What they want to do is hold on to their jobs.

The Senate transcript was published up to 22:00 . The remainder of the transcript will be published progressively as it is completed.