Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on today's matter of public importance on workplace relations, because it represents one of the most critical issues currently before this parliament—an issue of the utmost importance to many millions of Australian wage earners and indeed for the broader Australian economy.

It is clear that no matter the circumstances in the economy the Morrison Liberal government is hell-bent on making it easier to cut workers' pay and conditions. This will of course come as no surprise to hardworking, wage-earning Australians, but it certainly does seem a strange way to try and rebuild our economy and improve the lives of working Australians. It seems strange because pretty much every economic commentator, including the Reserve Bank, has said that lifting stagnant wage growth poses one of the most significant challenges to Australia's short-, medium- and long-term economic success; and strange because wages, already flatlining and already struggling for many years under this government have really taken a tumble in the past year. In fact, just yesterday, the latest weekly payroll figures from the ABS, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, showed that since 14 March last year wages for men in my state of Tasmania have fallen 5.6 per cent—fallen by more than five per cent, a real cut to the take home pay of tens of thousands of working people and their families. Mr Morrison and his Liberal government want to see those pay packets cut further. It's ideological, not to mention economic, lunacy and it's been noticed in the community.

Just today in the Hobart newspaper The Mercury, an eminent Tasmanian barrister, Fabiano Cangelosi, after analysing the Morrison government's industrial relations omnibus bill, wrote:

The bill seeks to replicate the Howard government's WorkChoices legislation by unbalancing the beneficial value of the economy against working Australians.

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The omnibus Bill amounts to an attempt at capitalising on COVID-19 disruption to wreak lasting change on the industrial relations landscape.

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If passed into law, the overall effect will be a workforce reduced to the level of a mere exploitable resource for big business.

The omnibus Bill repudiates the core constitutional role of the federal government: to make law for the common good.

These are apt descriptions of the government's bill and their intent.

Just yesterday, the Morrison government again confirmed it still wants to cut workers' take-home pay. The Attorney-General and the Prime Minister were quite clear: they are only prepared to remove from their bill their plan to scrap the better off overall test because they do not have the votes in this place to secure passage. They're not prepared to drop that component because they have suddenly realised that it is unfair, and they're not prepared to drop it because they've accepted that enabling the further erosion of the pay of hardworking Australians is not in the national economic interest, no; they just can't get it through the Senate.

In fact, in his statement yesterday, the Attorney-General stated he still believed the changes to the BOOT are 'sensible and proportionate'—not quite the description I would use for a change that would remove the safety net for workers and give employers significantly more power to cut pay and reduce entitlements, but we know that they are merely retreating on this occasion for the sake of political expediency because they know that the remaining components of their omnibus bill will continue to work towards their aim of making it easier to cut workers' take-home pay, and we know that, given the opportunity, they will rapidly bring back changes proposed to BOOT.

Labor has always set a very simple test when it comes to any changes to industrial relations. We would support the legislation if it delivered secure jobs with decent pay. The government's legislation still fails that test. Labor has always made it clear that, while the BOOT change was the most egregious attack on job security and workers' pay in the government's bill, it certainly was not the only one. The new laws will continue to make it easier for businesses to employ people as casuals, even when they work like permanent workers. This will only result in more insecure work—and insecure work, over time, always means lower pay and fewer conditions. What is crystal clear is that the Morrison government is not on the side of working families, and it never delivers. (Time expired)