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

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance. Instead of investing in Australia's future, the Morrison government is choosing inequality and climate collapse in its federal budget. Some of my colleagues spoke about the climate collapse, so I will focus my remarks on the Morrison government's choice to perpetuate inequality.

The Morrison government hopes that COVID-19 has given us all amnesia. They want us all to forget how unequal and how weak our economy was before the pandemic hit. Trust me: millions of Australians who for years faced stagnating wages and work insecurity have not forgotten. Let's take a look at where we were in December 2019. At that point we had notched up six years of this government. The economy was slowing and had continued to slow after Scott Morrison had stabbed Malcolm Turnbull, the ex PM, in the back. The economy was already not working for ordinary working families. Growth was anaemic, consumer confidence was down, unemployment was up and household spending was growing at the slowest pace since the global financial crisis. Retail trade was at its worst since the 1990s recession, and many retailers were shutting up or on the brink of collapse. Household debt had surged to record levels and was almost 200 per cent of disposable income. Household living standards were actually on the decline, with real household median income lower than when this mob came to office in 2013. Business investment was tanking and was at its lowest level since the 1990s recession. Net government debt had already doubled since the Liberals and Nationals came to office and was at record highs. All of this was pre-COVID.

There were many older Australians who were struggling—mostly those who do not own their own homes or those who have little superannuation to access. Of course, ordinary families—men and women—struggled to pay their bills, especially the young people being forced to juggle multiple jobs and finding it near impossible to get enough work to earn a decent wage and get basic protections such as sick leave and workers compensation. So Prime Minister Morrison and Treasurer Frydenberg don't get to hide behind the pandemic and pretend inequality was not already rampant.

The other thing this government does not like to get out—they like to pull the COVID curtain over it—is that we saw a steep increase in intergenerational inequality on their watch. This is worsening inequality which they have done little or nothing to mitigate. If you compare across generations, you can see just how much harder it is for younger people today to reach the milestones my generation took for granted: a secure job, marriage, family and a home of their own. The average household aged between 55 and 64 is $300,000 richer than the same household back in 2003. If you go to the 65-74 age group, you see the difference is more than $500,000. Meanwhile, the picture for the 25-to-34 age bracket is starkly different. Even before COVID hit, this generation was going backwards. Over that time frame, their wealth was already stagnating.

There is a myth out there that younger Australians somehow are to blame for their own failure to accumulate wealth or buy a home because they spend their money on travel and eating out—the famous smashed avocado on toast example. The problem with the smashed avocado story is it's not true. Figures compiled by the Grattan Institute show that 25- to 34-year-olds save as big a proportion of their disposable income as did their elders. The difference is that today their savings can't keep up with surging asset prices and they cannot get housing and other assets of their own until much later, if at all, because they cannot get secure work. Insecure work is the biggest driver of inequality in this country. Insecure work existed in the Australian labour market long before the COVID pandemic. The pandemic has shone a light on the consequences of insecure work for our entire society.

This government has a historic choice. They can bake in the inequality laid bare by the pandemic or they can begin to address it by tackling what has become a two-tiered labour market. The world of increasingly insecure work and the inequality it creates is what we'll leave our children if we don't take steps now. The Morrison government needs to start valuing work again from the point of view of working people—the role it plays in their dignity and power and the opportunity it gives to them and their families to gain real economic freedom.

If you don't think insecure work is a problem at the heart of the system of inequality in our economy, I urge you to consider these statistics. The Australian Bureau of Statistics' jobs figures announced last month showed that 111,000 net new jobs were created in August. The ABS was at pains to point out that nearly every single one of the 111,000 net new jobs was of self-employed staff, not normal employees. Two-thirds of these new jobs were part time. The conclusion that most economists, including Phil O'Donoghue from Deutsche Bank and Danielle Wood from the Grattan Institute, are drawing from this is that most of the jobs were created in the gig economy.

There's nothing inherently wrong with short-term contract and gig work if you have rights. In many industries—including trucking, which I know very much about—small business contractors are the norm. At the Transport Workers Union I often used to say that our owner-driver members made us the largest small business organisation in the country, and it still stands. The problem with the gig economy is it is used as a cover for those who would pay people less than the minimum wage and strip basic protection from those hardworking Australians. This leads directly to a two-tiered workforce: one group without rights and one group that has rights to demand better conditions—a two-tiered system. Gig workers are often deliberately misclassified as the second group, as contractors who miss out on superannuation, sick leave and compensation for injuries while at work. The platforms, in many cases, have tried to create a legal vacuum where they can underpay workers below the minimum wage. Food delivery workers are earning $10 an hour less, with no paid leave. Rideshare workers can be fired from Uber with no recourse, even after working part time or full time with them for years.

Depending on how you measure it, the gig and contracting economy is about eight or nine per cent of the workforce and rising. The rapid emergence of digital platform employers like Amazon, Uber, Deliveroo, Airtasker et cetera has presented us with a new kind of challenge. A recent survey this month of delivery drivers found that 71 per cent of these workers were struggling to pay bills and buy groceries, and that 36 per cent had been hurt or injured on the job and 81 per cent of those workers didn't receive any support from their company—so 36 per cent hurt or injured and 81 per cent of those receiving no support from their company. Sixty-three per cent said they had been unfairly treated by the platforms, like having their account deleted without a chance to defend themselves. That's the Prime Minister's brave new world. It should not be the rest of the country's. The lack of even the most basic protections makes these workers incredibly vulnerable.

There could be some steps to address many of the issues that I've described and give us a path out of insecure work and, therefore, out of inequality. We need to fix our temporary migration system to stop employers using visa status as a means of exploiting migrant workers. We need to rethink the regulatory regime for labour hire. We need to invest in TAFE and universities to futureproof workplace skills. We need to be creative on the Commonwealth Procurement Rules and corporate procurement. These are the sorts of things that will make sure we have an equal economy—one that serves everybody.