Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to take a brief moment to make sure that everyone in the chamber understands the effect of the amendment to the bill.

I just had a brief conversation and I would like to place on record that under our existing workplace laws there are no protections from being dismissed unfairly if you have been employed for fewer than 12 months with your employer. Contrary to an opinion that was just expressed, there are no protections for existing workers who have been employed for less than a year with their employer. That's what this amendment seeks to address. This amendment says that the government isn't going to give a boss an incentive to fire those people who they can legally fire; it's not going to incentivise that firing through this scheme.

I want to make it crystal clear that the purpose of this amendment is to protect existing workers from being sacked and from being incentivised to be sacked so that an employer can simply hire two additional employees to get the subsidy that this bill would provide them with, in fact on lower hours and with lower wages. The Greens don't think we should be using public money to incentivise insecure work and to encourage older workers—or even younger workers, for that matter; any worker—who have been hired for less than a year to get sacked. I said my piece before, but this is a very sensible amendment. This was an improvement to a scheme that we hope creates jobs—we hope it does what it promises to do. But this protection is a necessary one to make sure that older workers, or even younger workers, for that matter, are kept on by their employer in this time of economic precariousness and huge unemployment rates. This is an important protection. I just want to make sure that everyone in the chamber understands that that's what this amendment does.