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

For the sake of the chamber, I want to clarify the current situation with our laws as they stand with the Fair Work Commission: if you are a worker who has been employed as a casual for less than 12 months, you can be fired with no recourse. So this legislation would allow casual older workers—who may have just got a job back—who've been in their job for less than 12 months to be fired. They can then be replaced by two younger workers being paid on pretty low wages but enough so that the overall wage threshold is slightly higher than it was before with the one older worker. This legislation allows that to occur. It allows our taxpayers' money to be used for that situation: to sack older workers who are already in a casual job, who already had job security—probably for years. It allows them to be sacked and to be replaced by two younger workers.

As you know from this debate, the Greens support absolutely all workers being in work—actually being employed. Anybody who wants to have a job should have the right to have a job, and there are so many ways that we can go about that, particularly if you are spending billions and billions of taxpayers' money to be helping to improve the employment situation for all workers. But particularly we want to see good quality secure work and we do not want to be pitting older workers against younger workers. We can be looking after both. The purpose of this amendment, which we are debating today as to whether the Senate will insist on it or not, is so that we can be looking after both and not throwing older workers under the bus so that unscrupulous employees can then use taxpayers' subsidies to then employ two younger workers in their place.