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

I spoke earlier in this place about how many Australian workers have been left out of JobKeeper. I spoke about how the administration of the JobKeeper scheme had failed to ensure that public money did not go to executive bonuses. I spoke about how hundreds of millions of dollars of public money had gone to companies like Qantas, who then had nothing to stop them from pocketing the money with one hand while turning around and sacking or outsourcing Australian workers with the other hand—all under the guise, at the same time, of JobKeeper, while they were carrying out massive forms of wage theft.

Just as Labor stood up in this place and argued for a better JobKeeper scheme that included all workers, the government's own embarrassing error revealed that they had already budgeted an extra $60 billion for JobKeeper that would not be spent. Even then, they refused to include some two million workers that they had left out. JobKeeper was not what it should have been, because it failed so many working people and their families. So Labor will take a hard look at JobMaker. We will judge the program from the standpoint of working people and working families—and from the businesses that they support and the economy that thrives if working people also thrive. We know, despite its flaws, that JobKeeper had been the lifeline for millions of workers and thousands of businesses, which is why we called on the government to keep JobKeeper in place and not cut it back while it is still the middle of a recession. But then they went ahead and cut the rate of JobKeeper in September, and the final cliff is coming for these workers and their employers in March 2021, when JobKeeper will end. It will end without a real plan for local jobs, local manufacturing or local procurement. And, of course, there is no plan for the aviation industry.

That brings me to JobMaker. JobMaker is the latest policy announcement to come out of the Prime Minister's policy marketing production line. Like all of this government's policies, it is nine parts announcement and one part delivery—if you're lucky. Announced as part of the budget, JobMaker comes after the recent ABS figure shows 30,000 jobs were lost in the two weeks to October 17. This was the first fortnight after the government cut JobKeeper back prematurely. We've already lost half a million jobs since COVID hit, and we are set to lose another 160,000 jobs before Christmas. We must never forget that those official unemployment figures do not include the two million Australians who are underemployed.

Labor has said from the outset that we would be constructive and work with the government to support our workers and businesses during the pandemic. But they cannot hide from the fact that this measure is going to do very little to support the creation of secure, long-term jobs. In its current form, JobMaker will encourage turnover of longstanding employees. It will provide a tax incentive for these employees to be replaced with short-term workers in insecure jobs. The government will say that the jobs we have are new. The headcount must increase. They will say that each new job must be 20 hours, but there is nothing stopping an employer replacing one worker who works full-time with two young workers, or replacing one casual worker working substantial hours similar to full-time hours with two younger workers. The headcount goes up, the hours go up and someone loses their full-time job because of the government policy. For the two young people who get a casual job, those insecure jobs can be withdrawn as soon as the subsidy ends after a year, presumably allowing for another batch of short-term or part-time jobs.

This government is fond of saying that the best form of welfare is a job. What that glib marketing statement ignores is the quality of the job. It tries to gloss over the epidemic of underpaid and insecure jobs in our economy. It makes clear that all this government is about is a bandaid solution of short-term jobs to pump up the official employment figures and get through to the next election. What Labor stands for is secure jobs, jobs with rights, jobs with training, jobs with fair pay and decent conditions, jobs with superannuation for an appropriate and dignified retirement.

The JobMaker bill should make sure that these jobs include minimum and legal rates of pay, that they are of the highest standard and that they are for the long term. JobMaker also ignores millions of workers aged 35 and over, leaving them without access to any meaningful government support once JobKeeper ends. The JobKeeper scheme guidelines also contain no provision which guarantees workers access to any form of redress, such as an arbitration process, should their employment be unjustly impacted by the scheme. While some workers have access to dispute processes through their enterprise agreement, the majority do not. What this means is that workers will have their hours cut or their jobs terminated to make room for subsidised insecure workers.

What is particularly disturbing about this bill as it stands is that an employer can sack a worker and the worker would not even know that they were being replaced by a younger subsidised worker or workers, which is why it's in the interest of fairness that JobMaker must be transparent. To the greatest extent possible, the public must know how the billions in public money will be spent on the JobMaker scheme.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the extent to which job insecurity had already become endemic in our economy. COVID-19 is a crisis. Its aftermath should be an opportunity to rebuild better than what we had before, an opportunity to build secure, well-paying jobs with rights, superannuation and training; jobs that come with access to adequate sick leave, including when a worker needs to self-isolate. What we need is a government that promotes secure jobs and builds a lasting legacy of prosperity for all Australians. Instead we get JobMaker, which is really 'job replacer', 'job churner' and, if you're over 35, 'job excluder'. We have a government unwilling and unable to grapple with the job insecurity it had itself embedded in the economy before COVID. Instead of tackling insecure work, this government policy is to promote it.