Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by the Minister representing the Prime Minister (Senator Birmingham) to questions without notice asked by Senator Ciccone today relating to workplace relations.

Senator Ciccone asked about the plight of an aged-care nurse, Ann, who has been in her profession since 1978 and who expressed her concern about the government's IR legislation, saying:

The proposed legislation doesn't make things better for us and our residents. It makes it so much worse. And to be honest, I don't think I can handle any more cuts.

Prime Minister Morrison and Minister Porter have made it clear that they are only ditching their plan to scrap the better off overall test, the test in IR law—and doing so would have given employers the capacity to strike agreements that made cuts—not because they don't believe in it, not because they recognise that it's unfair, but because they can't get it through this Senate. The Labor Party is very firmly opposed to it, and, now that some discussions have taken place with the crossbench, it's very clear that there's only one motivation behind the government dropping this test, and that is that they don't have the opportunity to pass it.

Mr Porter said very clearly he still believes in the change—a change that would remove the safety net for workers and give employers vastly expanded powers to cut pay and entitlements. Minister Porter continues to say it is 'sensible and proportionate'. Nevertheless, this IR legislation, which is in the guise of 'the COVID recovery package', is really the government saying, 'We'll create rhetoric around the creation of new jobs, because we will boost company profits by cutting the wages and conditions of Australians.' So why are they retreating on this? They are retreating now for the sake of political expediency. But we cannot forget that this is their real agenda, as we have seen time and time again in this place.

We can also see in what the government continues to put forward in this place that dropping the BOOT test was only part of the picture. It's certainly not the only issue. There are issues in relation to changes in rostering and hours, the conversion of pay et cetera, and moving from casual to permanent employment that are also egregiously problematic.

What does that mean for a nurse like Ann, a registered nurse for 12 years who works in aged care? As we've seen in the course of this pandemic, aged-care workers have been told that they can't work two jobs, despite the fact that they don't earn enough in their aged-care job to get by. We've seen workers have significant problems in this regard. These are the kinds of flexibilities that this government wants to continue to impose on Australian workers instead of coming up with funding reform and a package for areas like the aged-care sector.

The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, in their submission to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, said:

The impact of COVID-19 served to draw attention to the risks associated with a casualised, insecure workforce.

They highlighted that, in health and aged care, movement across work sites was an infection risk. This has been the situation for these workers for too long. COVID has only highlighted that. We've got to stop this legislation before it passes as a whole. (Time expired)