Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Too many times I hear Labor take a very ordinary position, but today's statement is a new low. This Labor MPI demonstrates the counterproductive, antibusiness, antifamily and, in fact, anti-employee position. The politics of Labor is class war, and in this war the casualties are the very people that they are purporting to stand for. The worker who desires the flexibility to earn as much as possible, while balancing commitments to family, school hours and events, should not be locked into some draconian system that forces them and their employer into an unfavourable work plan, dreamed up by a union hack convinced that a class war is not only imminent but required. The world is changing, and the unions are struggling to keep up. A couple of months ago, I heard evidence at an inquiry where a union told me that employees did not want to work from home and, in fact, they had not asked them that. Yet, we know that since the pandemic the world has changed very rapidly indeed.

This position demonstrates the fantasy world that Labor live in, where jobs are magically created, and their lack of understanding of what it means to mortgage your home, to work all hours, to build a business, carefully budgeting to add another staff member, and to deal with the paperwork, the changing awards, the complexity of payments. All they want to talk about is stolen wages. I can tell you, as a small-business operator, as one of the people who provide 60 per cent of jobs in Australia, that this is not a responsibility that is taken lightly. The relationship that you have with your staff is so important. The position Labor have taken can only be reached by people who've never employed someone else, who've never sweated over paying creditors and wages and hopefully leaving something in the tin for your family. It is a position based on a lie.

My experience was quite the reverse. When I came into that business, I offered casual workers permanent roles. While some were pleased to take on a permanent role, there were others who absolutely did not want to. They enjoyed the additional 25 per cent payment in lieu of holiday pay and sick leave. They liked the flexibility of being able to manage their family life. They liked to be able to start at hours that suited them and me. This belief that employers are just out to exploit workers and stamp on the throat of the little guy is rooted in the Dark Ages. It bears no relevance to today. They don't understand that there is already a condition in place that allows casuals to be offered permanency and in fact converts casuals to permanency. But many casuals do not want that. They want the flexibility of home life and work. If we mandate that casuals must become permanent or that employers must alter the working hours of casual people every week in order to comply with that requirement, how is that good for employees? How is that good for families? It is just, again, a lack of understanding of what it is like in the world of small business.

We should be protecting those people who want more flexible working arrangements and who want to be able to negotiate with their employer wages and conditions that are mutually beneficial. The coalition's industrial relations reforms achieve balance. They make it easier for workers and employers to get the job done with minimal fuss, less red tape and more flexibility. Again, I cannot emphasise enough the role of small-business people in Australia. They employ anywhere from one to 100 additional people, and they do not create jobs from some magical fairy dust, as Labor would have you believe, but they create these jobs out of blood, sweat and sacrifice from their families. So I want to welcome Labor and the unions to join the 21st century and to listen to what workers actually want, instead of simply channelling Karl Marx to dictate old-fashioned employment practices.