Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle. It's really good to be back.

I rise to speak on the Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020, the JobMaker legislation. I think we've had JobSeeker, JobKeeper and JobMaker. JobMaker is a good name. It's a noble ambition to make jobs, particularly when you're in a global recession and potentially a global depression. Creating employment is incredibly important. Everybody has got the right to a liveable income and to a safe, secure and meaningful job that pays them good wages. It is particularly important because even before the pandemic struck us we had an underemployment and unemployment crisis in this country. As our dissenting report to the committee report on this bill says:

In March 2020, the national unemployment rate was 5.2 per cent, and was even higher for young people at 11.6 per cent. The underemployment rate was even worse, at 8.8 per cent nationally and 19.1 per cent for young people.

These are really horrifying statistics. We know that we are setting up young people and putting them on track for a pretty bleak future. We know from previous recessions that when people get left behind and end up experiencing long-term unemployment it is very hard for them to get back on track, even when economic conditions improve.

We Greens agree that there is a need for government action so that young people aren't left behind. That's why, when the crisis struck, we released our Invest to Recover plan, which would have created 870,000 jobs. We want to see government take meaningful action to create jobs. We think that young Australians should be offered a jobs and income guarantee so that no-one is left behind, so that every young person has the choice of a job that is secure, well paid and satisfying, or a place in education—and a free place at that—at uni or TAFE, or a guaranteed income.

When it comes to these jobs, we reckon that the government should spend their money on public sector jobs. They should be provided in the employment sectors of the future, in which we know there is so much work to be done, whether it be tackling our climate crisis by investment in renewable energy, transforming our grid or environmental restoration. We know that we've got huge problems across the country in our degraded environments that require that people be employed in good, quality jobs restoring our precious natural environments, tackling the threatened species crisis and implementing recovery plans rather than not doing them and having them on the shelf. Jobs in teaching, jobs in aged care, jobs in child care—these jobs would be at a cost that is way less than the $99 billion that this government is handing out in handouts to big business.

We have done these sorts of employment programs before in this country. I remember when I was in my 20s in the 1980s and we had the Commonwealth employment program. It was a very successful program. I remember many of my contemporaries being given a leg-up and a start to their careers with a job under the Commonwealth employment program. In fact, we know that there are programs with public sector jobs that are operational now in Victoria. We have got the Working for Victoria program, the half-a-billion-dollar program which is creating six-month or 12-month positions in the public sector and providing really good, quality jobs.

I'd like to share the experience of a young woman who I know quite well, who, at the end of last year, finished her master's degree in urban planning. She had been supporting herself in hospitality throughout her university career. We got to 2020 and the pandemic hit. She'd finished her degree. Her hospitality jobs, of course, completely dried up. She no longer had a university course to go to; she no longer had a job to go to, but she managed to get herself one of those Working for Victoria jobs in strategic planning. It's a six-month position in Melbourne local government, and she has done really well. The six months is going to be up, come January, and she's now applying for jobs in similar positions throughout local government across Melbourne and is really confident that she's going to be successful in getting one of those roles. It has been such a leg-up for her career. These are the sorts of jobs—public sector jobs, good-quality jobs—the government could be putting money into and providing, but that's not what this legislation does. So the Greens have got very significant concerns about this legislation.

Fundamentally, the bill does not offer the protections that are needed for workers. It entrenches insecure, short-term, low-paid work for young people while handing out public money to big business under the guise of a wage subsidy. There are insufficient protections for existing workers to ensure that they don't lose hours or their jobs so that businesses can hire workers that are eligible for the credits. New jobs should not be created at the expense of existing jobs, and workers must be protected, and we are going to be moving amendments to safeguard the conditions of workers to that effect.

There's nothing in this legislation to prevent wage theft, which is already an enormous issue. Qantas was recently found to be underpaying its workers with respect to the JobKeeper payments. Coles previously announced underpaying workers by $20 million. McDonald's didn't pay penalty rates for decades and is currently facing a potential class action for denying workers paid rest breaks. We reckon that the hiring credit should be revoked for businesses who are found to be underpaying their workers, and our amendments propose changes to that effect.

On top of this lack of safeguards in the bill for young workers, we've got another fundamental issue with this bill. As our dissenting report to the committee inquiry notes, it's essentially handing the Liberal Party government a blank cheque. Why would you give a blank cheque to the party that's already given us sports rorts, that's given us one rort after another? Again, what we said in our dissenting report was that the Greens do not support the JobMaker hiring credit scheme being established by the minister, effectively, solely through regulations; nor do we support the broad and unrestrictive powers proposed to be granted to the minister in this bill. Our concern is shared by many of those who made submissions to the inquiry, as the chair's report identifies. The JobMaker hiring credit should be created through legislation and subject to parliamentary scrutiny and amendment.

Sadly, this government has got form when it comes to rorts. And it's not just sports rorts. The JobKeeper scheme was paid out via employers, despite concerns about it getting rorted, and there have been too many experiences of that happening. It has turned into a job rorts. As we said in our dissenting report, while workers are doing it tough, we've seen some of Australia's biggest companies increase their profits and pay out even bigger executive bonuses and higher dividends to shareholders. In August, it was revealed that the publicly funded JobKeeper wage subsidy was being used to prop up company profits, and 17 of Australia's top companies paid $250 million in dividends while also receiving JobKeeper. Under the proposed JobMaker rules, there is nothing stopping big businesses abusing the hiring credit in the same way. Wage subsidies should subsidise wages. They should not be used for corporate profits and higher dividends for shareholders. So we're going to be moving amendments to tackle this issue as well. I really hope that all senators in this place support them. After all, companies should not be able to pay out increased dividends at the same time as they're getting a subsidy.

Throughout this crisis the Liberal Party have played favourites with who they have supported and who they have left behind. The Liberal Party let Virgin, one of our two key airlines, go under. Thousands of workers were at risk because the Liberal Party refused to support them. At the same time the Liberal Party handed out millions and millions of dollars to their mates in a separate airline. This Liberal Party fundamentally left behind the dnata workers and the thousands of others represented by the Transport Workers Union. I want to acknowledge here the important advocacy of the TWU in standing up for the workers that this Liberal Party has left behind. If you're talking about JobMaker, you do not allow thousands of workers to be left on the scrap heap.

The Liberal Party managed to give out millions of dollars to wood processors, who are ripping into our native forests and driving our precious wildlife to extinction. Rest assured the Australian Forest Products Association had close consultation with the minister's office about how they would be bailed out. But the arts sector, which employs hundreds of thousands more people than the native forest forestry sector, hasn't seen a cent. The Liberal Party are playing favourites. They are all rorts, all spin and no delivery for so many people who are being left behind.

Fundamentally the Liberal Party stand for big banks, big fossil fuel companies and big corporations. They don't care about the environment, they don't care about workers and they don't care about your family and the struggle that people are facing to stay afloat in this recession. Many during this period have had an awful moment in the supermarket of thinking what they will put back on the shelf because they don't know whether they have enough money to pay for what they need. There's that moment when you don't know whether your credit card is maxed out—but, if you've been bankrolled by fossil fuel corporations for decades, you can't identify with what that's like. You think that just saying 'jobs and growth' often enough counts as support. You think that giving money to the banks will somehow trickle down to the most vulnerable in society. When the big banks feel the squeeze, the Liberal Party makes sure that they get a bailout and a handout for their executives, but when people who are doing it tough need a hand then the Liberal Party gives them a kick in the teeth.

This bill as it currently stands has, as I said, great ambitions to make jobs. It's a noble ambition. But as this bill stands it is pretty blooming awful. We will be moving amendments to improve it.