Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The motion that we will be debating is that, instead of a plan for secure jobs for Australians, the Morrison government is trying to make it easier for employers to cut workers' pay and conditions. We know that that's the agenda of this government. During the pandemic, when they were ready to acknowledge the hard work of frontline workers—people working in retail, hospitals, health care and aged care—they were quick to make sure they had the photo opportunities to be with those workers. Of course, we should acknowledge all of those sectors that were involved, whether it was transport, retail, health, emergency services or aged care. The workers did keep Australia safe, and they kept the economy moving. But this government, with its agenda, is quite clearly not supporting those very same workers. Look at the attack on Australian workers. The people in retail and aged care get unsecure hours. They find it extremely difficult, if they don't have secure ongoing work, to enable them to take out a mortgage, to pay their rent and to meet the essential requirements of looking after themselves and their families.

In this country before the pandemic we saw—and it's still a huge issue now—the cut to Australian workers' pay and the agenda to erode the conditions of people's employment. There is a huge issue with casualisation of the Australian workforce and the uncertainty, with 13 million Australians being directly impacted. We will ensure that this latest industrial relations reform bill is opposed. We, along with the union movement, will do what we need to do to make sure the Australian people are informed about this attack on their pay and their conditions.

We know that there's been a huge issue with the stagnation of Australian workers' pay that they get to take home. In line with their DNA of making sure that employers have advantage over employees, we know that they would prefer that there was no union membership and that they could reduce access to worksites by unions. That is not going to be accepted by the Australian people. If you take someone who's working in aged care and they have split shifts, as we saw during this pandemic with the spread of COVID-19 so many people who work in aged care are women—let's be realistic, whether we're talking about retail or we're talking about aged care they're predominantly women—they have to have a second job. Sometimes they have a third job to make ends meet.

We know that this government is not supportive of increasing superannuation. We know that there's a huge disparity between what men retire with in superannuation and what women do. So the attack on now to cut wages and to ensure that there's continued casualisation of the workforce is predominantly going to impact on families and women because they are the ones who work in the lower paid positions. That's why I will continue to say at every single opportunity that I can—and I know my colleagues would—that you need to be a member of your union. You need to have a voice, because so many times you find that women don't have that same support. They may not have the confidence that others have in being able to take their issues to their employer. When they don't get the extra shifts or they're penalised because they weren't available—perhaps because they had to take their children to the doctor or they had other family commitments so they couldn't take up that offer of employment. But to not have an ongoing, secure job where you know that will get those 30 hours a week so you can budget your family budget around that time, and then the next week to have it cut down to eight hours, is just not good enough.