Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020. On 21 January, Australia stood up its National Incident Room to deal with something referred to by most as the 'Wuhan coronavirus'. Since that time, we've been through a lot. We've had the Ruby Princess. We've had a first wave. We've had lockdowns. We've had emergency legislation for JobKeeper and JobSeeker. We've deployed the ADF to aid civil power. We've had border closures. We've now got a second wave, although, hopefully, we're seeing that curve flatten in Victoria.

Our response to coronavirus, COVID-19, hasn't been perfect, but I think we've done okay. The federal and state governments have done okay. The Public Service have done okay. Healthcare workers have done a great job. Our emergency services and the ADF have done a good job as well, and I'm sure everyone in this chamber is grateful for the work that they have done. But the response has been exactly that: a response. It has been reactive. We're seven months in, almost eight, and we don't have a plan. We know that there is a vaccine in sight. We don't know how effective it will be. Will it be 50 per cent, 60 per cent or 90 per cent effective? We simply don't know, so we're going to have to have a plan that deals with those potential outcomes.

It's certainly possible for us to have a third wave, and perhaps even a fourth. We're already seeing contingencies being put in place to deal with spot outbreaks. Again, we're dealing with a response package, not a plan. We should be dealing with a plan. We shouldn't just be looking at this legislation and saying, 'Does this do something positive?' We ought to be looking at this in the context of a much broader economic plan that tells us how we're going to get from where we are now to being a prosperous nation on the other side of COVID-19. We're getting a little bit of information but not enough. We need to have a plan that directs government procurement towards maximising local benefit in our economies. We need to have a plan that encourages R&D. We need to have a plan that promotes manufacturing, that helps us out with resilience and, certainly, ends the state we've been in for the last 100 years where we're simply exporting rocks and other commodities. We need to be value-adding and building that resilience. We need to make sure that we take our raw commodities and produce goods, and we need to make sure that we create jobs and wealth when we do so. Where's that plan?

We need to be looking at things like multinational tax avoidance. Tax transparency data that has been made public by the tax office in accordance with the law shows that, over five years, 221 companies have earned $850 billion in revenue and paid zero tax. If we understand how we're dealing with that sort of circumstance then we can understand whether or not we can afford to be more generous or less generous. This legislation is being presented in the absence of a plan, and that's hugely problematic in my view. I've actually been waiting for a plan since the commencement of this parliament. I remember sitting in this chamber, listening to His Excellency the Governor-General. I have no criticism of him. It wasn't his speech; it was the Prime Minister's speech. It had no inspiration. It talked about a pie and how that pie was going to be cut up. It didn't talk about making a bigger pie or making a tastier pie. All of that was absent. I find myself in the same situation again. I want to see a big plan so I can see where this piece of legislation fits into that plan, but it's absent. It's left me with the view that our Prime Minister has managed well but is not a leader.

Even at the lower level, the Senate is being asked to pass legislation that relies heavily on rules that no-one's seen. Sure, we've seen media releases. I've seen some fact sheets. But we do this time and time again in the Senate; we just work on blind faith that regulations will flow. When we were looking at the SDL changes for the Murray-Darling back in May 2018, we were committing huge amounts of public money but we had no idea of each of the projects around the country that were designed to help return water to the Murray-Darling. We just had blind faith, and that's not the way we should do business. So I say to the government that, whilst I support what you're trying to do with this legislation, proper process demands that we should be seeing the rules before we consider the legislation. We are, in effect, granting a power to allow the Treasurer to do many different things that we may have to correct at a later stage. When JobKeeper 1.0 came along, we needed to have flexibility. I understand that. But things have stabilised, so we need to be little bit more careful as we grant powers to ministers to expend public money. We should be seeing the rules upfront.

I indicate that I will support the bill. I will support the extension of JobKeeper. That's the pragmatic thing to do. It's about making sure we look after our businesses and their employees. We need to do it in a way that is flexible, so I even support the ideas behind the press releases and the fact sheets. We want to be able to target JobKeeper in different ways for different areas of the economy that are doing things at different speeds. Again, the rules should permit that. It's just sad that we haven't been presented with the rules.

There's certainly a contentious part of this bill, which I'm going to address briefly, and that relates to legacy employers. They are those employers who are no longer hitting the JobKeeper eligibility, either through a 30 per cent reduction, or through a 50 per cent reduction in the case of larger businesses. For those that sit between a 10 per cent reduction and a 30 per cent reduction, the government wants to introduce changes to the Fair Work Act that will give businesses some flexibility. Whenever we have that sort of legislation being put up, there is contention. There is a need to balance the needs of the business and, indeed, the needs of the workers. Anyone who's run a business—and I have—knows that, actually, to run a business you need to have a good workforce. When workers and businesses come together, you get productive outcomes. Therein lies the problem with this contentious part of the proposed legislation. We could grant powers for companies to have greater flexibility, but I point out that there is already flexibility in the current industrial relations legislation that permits employers to sit down with their employees, explain the circumstances that they're in and seek to make changes. There's nothing to stop that from occurring right now.

In trying to strike a balance, in trying to work out where the better outcome lies, I've had to think about employers who look after their employees. I know that, in those circumstances, those conversations can occur; the employer can talk to the employees and they can work out something that will help both of them through the crisis. However, it worries me when you have an employer who is not prepared to do that and who might otherwise simply treat their workers as cash cows rather than as part of their team. That's the only circumstance that I can think of where the IR changes that are being proposed would be necessary. In all other circumstances, I think the current rules will allow a good outcome. In terms of the changes, it is a fine balance, and it's not going to hold me either way, but I will be supporting Labor's amendment in relation to legacy employers—that is, to remove the additional powers that businesses are seeking. But I do so in recognition that there is already in place industrial relations legislation that allows workers and employers to sit down and work their way through a particular crisis.

I will support this bill. It brings stability. It helps us to look after businesses. It helps us to look after employees. I commend it to the Senate.