Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

First of all, isn't that an extraordinary description of what's happened in the economy, pre-COVID-19! Here's the party and the government that doubled the debt. But also let's look at today. This is normally budget day, but we have no budget. We've also got a government without a plan for what we do moving out of this COVID-19 period. But don't worry! It's probably a little bit unfair to say they don't have a plan; they have a plan to snap back to no plan. That's their strategy. Let's snap back to no plan. In actual fact, in the case of a number of their backbenchers and others on their side, they have a plan to snap back real quickly to no plan.

In the case of underemployment, let's look at what we would be snapping back to. Pre-COVID-19 Australia had 1.23 million workers wanting more hours than they were getting—8.7 per cent of the workforce. Even before COVID-19 lay-offs, the headline unemployment rate in Australia sat at 5.3 per cent. The number of people who either couldn't get a job or couldn't get the hours they wanted spiked under the Morrison government to 13.8 per cent. Snapback.

They want a snapback. I will give you an example: a survey by the Transport Workers Union of Jetstar workers, where 90 per cent of Jetstar workers wanted more hours. Not only is Jetstar refusing to guarantee workers' hours in future arrangements but the agreement also restricts workers from getting another job in aviation. Snapback.

Let's look at other snapback strategies this government's got. Underemployment: snapback. Wage theft: what's the plan? Billions of dollars taken out of our economy. That's their snapback plan. We see people having their money stolen. We see superannuation theft. We see companies that are doing the right thing, abiding by the law, being unfairly competed with. But they want a snapback.

In actual fact, they want to snap back a bit further. In the case of the gig economy, except for probably Senator Bragg, not many people would have picked this up. There was a decision made by the Fair Work Commission rightly looking at the laws, which are going to be challenged in the High Court, about what rights people have in the new economy, in the gig economy. It actually made a decision that many workers in the gig economy, particularly in Uber, would not have any rights, particularly in the case that was taken forward for the Gupta family, Amita and Santosh, who were doing some work to support the disability pension that they were on. They wanted the right of reinstatement after being victimised, as they felt they had been, by the company. What does the gig economy look like? In the case of these workers, they were averaging $7.85 an hour, half the minimum wage. Snapback. That is what this government wants to see: a snap back not just to pre-COVID-19 but, in the case of the gig economy, to the sorts of practices that were happening with piecework in the 1800s. When they snap back, they snap way back. Of course they want a snapback when it comes to Newstart—$40 a day. How could you possibly see that anybody would have the capacity to turn around and survive on that sort of income? Snapback.

Let's look at the consequences of the last major recession that we had, in 1990-91. Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy made the comment, whilst he was being questioned at a Senate hearing, that in the 1990-91 recession almost 1.2 million Australians had manufacturing jobs. More than 100,000 jobs were lost from that sector in a two-year period, and, despite a larger economy and workforce, the number of manufacturing workers today is 25 per cent below the pre-1991 peak. Snapback.

We have to have a plan. We have to have a plan about how we actually move this economy forward, how we deal with the new economy and how we deal with the consequences of COVID-19 and the economic consequences that we're facing. We have to make some decisions about how we not snap off our economy but actually turn it around and make it work for us. It's critically important, whether you're suffering from wage theft in the gig economy or in the manufacturing sector— (Time expired)