Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is no denying that JobKeeper has been an important lifeline, keeping Australians in work and businesses going. Labor knew from the outset that this country couldn't have had this support snapped back on 27 September as the Morrison government initially had planned. The opposition has always been constructive during this crisis, and I hope the government will continue to listen to our suggestions to improve our economic recovery. We called on the government to introduce wage subsidies despite their ruling it out earlier this year. We called on the government to abandon its proposal to extend emergency IR powers to businesses that have fully recovered—and they have. We have called on the government to extend JobKeeper, and today they are doing that. So, Labor will be supporting this legislation.

I said at the beginning of this crisis, in February, at a meeting with tourism operators and business owners in Cairns that this pandemic would hit Cairns first, and worse—and it has. More than 6,000 businesses in the Cairns region were relying on JobKeeper in July, during a time of uncertainty over the future of the program. For too long, the LNP believed it could stick to its snapback strategy, which would have led to mass unemployment queues, particularly in regional Queensland. The member for Leichhardt at the time was out there saying that extending JobSeeker was a no-brainer, while the member for Mackellar called for the scheme to be shut down even earlier than September. The government was saying one thing in Cairns but another thing in Canberra, and this led to uncertainty and confusion in the community.

I spoke to businesses, workers and community groups in regional Queensland, and the overwhelming consensus was that Far North Queensland could not afford to have JobKeeper snapped back too early. I started a campaign calling on the government not to cancel JobKeeper too early, and it was supported, particularly by hospitality businesses but also by the community sector. This bill allows the Treasurer to make that extension. So, I want to thank all the community groups, the hospitality businesses and people in the community who supported this campaign and called for this extension. It should not have taken so long for the government to commit to that extension, but I'm happy that we are here.

As we know, this bill allows for an extension to changes to the Fair Work Act which allows employers to reduce employee working hours down to the rate of the JobKeeper payment without breaching workplace conditions. Employers also retain the right to effectively cut the rate of pay for JobKeeper recipients who continue to work normal hours. The government has since said that they want to extend this flexibility for workers who are no longer on JobKeeper. The perverse effects of these changes mean that a low-paid worker would have their hours cut to 60 per cent of their ordinary hours and earn less than the rate of JobKeeper. Labor can see where the government is going on this. The government is testing their future plans for permanent industrial relations changes in the name of so-called flexibility, when really they are attacking decent jobs. Australia's lowest-paid workers could lose up to $300 a week from their pay packets during the deepest economic crisis in our recent history—many essential workers who have helped us get through this crisis. Labor will stand up for these low-paid workers by fighting this change.

It has also become clear that there are a number of things missing from this legislation. Firstly, we know that this legislation doesn't fix gaps in JobKeeper that Labor has for some time been arguing need to be fixed, and can be fixed, by the Treasurer. Too many Australians are being left out and being left behind, some by accident but many deliberately. The Treasurer retains the power to include 1.1 million short-term casuals, university and local government workers and temporary visa holders in the JobKeeper program. He retains that right and yet he continues to leave them out of this program.

The other thing missing from this legislation, and from the government's overall response to the coronavirus, is a plan for jobs. Jobs—actual jobs—not re-announcements of previous measures or projects, which are taking too long to get off the ground; not the promise of a project to be constructed in, say, 2022 or 2023, as we heard the other day with inland rail; not fancy sounding slogans without any substance; not grants that sound great, but when a business applies for the grant they find out they're not actually eligible, which we know is what happened with one of the arts grants announcements where a Gold Coast arts company is not eligible.

For the first time in history one million Australians are out of work. The government's own figures show that 400,000 will be out of work by Christmas. Despite being faced with mounting job losses and rising unemployment this government's instinct is to remove substantial JobKeeper support from the economy without any plan to replace it, without a plan for jobs, without a plan for how those people who will lose their jobs before Christmas will find a job again. After seven years of the LNP so many jobs in regional Queensland are at risk. We are facing an unprecedented economic crisis and without a plan the unemployment queues will continue to expand.

Finally, I will say this: we know that the government's track record is to cut, sack and sell. We know that of the Morrison government and we know that of the LNP in Queensland. The Morrison government doesn't have a plan for jobs. They don't have a plan to bring manufacturing back home. They don't have a plan to bring forward infrastructure projects that regional Queenslanders desperately need. That is the glaring omission from this legislation—lots of announcements, lots of press releases, but no plan for jobs. Regional Queenslanders who have been hit hardest by this economic crisis deserve better from this government.