Malarndirri McCarthy (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this very important matter that concerns Australian workers' pay and conditions. This government has no plan for secure jobs. Instead, it's making it easier for employers to cut workers' pay and conditions. One of the many lessons from the COVID pandemic has been how insecure work has threatened our nation's health and the economy. When casual workers don't receive sick pay they lack the financial means to stay home when sick, even with a highly contagious disease like COVID in the community. We know this because we have seen it happen. Aged-care workers, childcare workers and security guards facing financial insecurity if they take a sick day. We've also seen casual workers having to work multiple jobs to ensure that they get enough hours. This is bad not just for the health and hip pockets of those workers and their families, but also for society and for our economy as a whole.

We need to learn the lessons of this pandemic. The government's approach actually entrenches insecure work. Insecure work comes in many forms. I have heard from many workers their frustration at being rolled over from one contract to the next, in some cases for years on end. It makes it hard for people to plan ahead. It makes it hard for people to start a family. It makes it hard for them just to survive. I see this in the Northern Territory with families and governments and the Community Development Program. The current design of the CDP does not address the real employment challenges facing remote communities, including lack of demand for labour, lack of the skills required to take up available jobs and the health effects of poverty. The government's broken and discriminatory Community Development Program is no substitute for a plan for job creation and economic development.

But the Morrison government has no plan for jobs—certainly not in regard to the more than 33,000 people on CDP. The problems with insecure work in Australia have only gotten worse over time. Our industrial relations system has not kept pace. The coalition's industrial relations omnibus bill makes work less secure and cuts pay. Public health experts have labelled it an immediate threat to public health. They cite modelling that paid leave, including for flu and other infectious diseases, can reduce workplace infections by at least 25 per cent. The ACTU has said the bill fails the government's own test and that workers will be worse off. The government's changes will make jobs less secure, they'll make it easier for employers to casualise permanent jobs, and they'll allow employers to pay workers less than the award safety net. That is completely the opposite of what this country needs.

The bill creates a path for employers to cut back due to the impact of COVID-19 on their business and wipes out back pay claims for misclassified casuals. The existing better off overall test would be suspended, allowing enterprise agreements to avoid minimum standards of modern awards, making enterprise agreements a mechanism for lowering wages and standards. Working people have also sacrificed so much during the pandemic, and they are hurting. The government's bill will hurt them even more. As the CPSU says, the coalition government's proposed changes will accelerate the incidence of insecure work, undermine genuine collective bargaining and suppress wages growth. Impacts will be felt across the entire workforce—casual and permanent workers alike.

As if workers haven't suffered enough battling to make ends meet during COVID, this new legislative offensive is so pro business that workers could be hired on a casual basis in virtually any position that employers deem to be casual. This is because the Morrison government's IR changes include a new definition of 'casual employee' that effectively overturns two recent Federal Court decisions. The matters of WorkPac v Skene and WorkPac v Rossato found that employees were not in fact casuals but, rather, permanent workers, principally because they were given rosters up to a year in advance.

The tourism industry in the Northern Territory relies heavily on casual workers for human resources, and casual workers rely heavily on the tourism sector for work. Northern Territory government investment through tourism vouchers, Roadhouse to Recovery grants and the Visitor Experience Enhancement Program, as well as the federal government's JobKeeper scheme, have helped the local tourism sector survive. It has also created a false positive, which will soon run out.

Scott Morrison is leaving the tourism sector behind and putting jobs at risk by ignoring industry pleas for support beyond the end of JobKeeper. As the months of government inaction continue, tourism workers and businesses are understandably becoming increasingly anxious about whether they will still have a job after 28 March. A survey by the Australian Federation of Travel Agents shows that, if JobKeeper is not extended, three out of every 10 travel agencies will close immediately across Australia. We've seen travel agencies close during the pandemic. Do we really need to see more?

And travel agents are not alone, with many international-facing tourism businesses likely to be among the last to recover from the economic impacts of COVID-19. In December almost 2,000 Territory businesses were still receiving JobKeeper, with payments worth $29.3 million to the Northern Territory economy. The Morrison government keeps saying it needs more data before it will make a decision, but people's livelihoods are at risk. The president of the Australian Federation of Travel Agents, Mr Darren Rudd, has warned that, once JobKeeper ends, eight out of 10 people still working in travel will be out of a job, and 30 per cent of businesses will close and 52 per cent will be at risk if support is not extended again beyond 28 March.

The Prime Minister is not on the side of travel agents and tourism workers. He is leaving them to go it alone while he focuses on photo ops and announcements and never delivers. Just have a look at the rush that he made to Kakadu just over two years ago, and we're still waiting. Australians in insecure work or looking for work are anguished by the uncertainty and they cannot plan for their future. Labor is calling on the government to provide Australians looking for work with certainty about what support will be available to them after March. Australian workers deserve this. Territory workers deserve this. Labor has a secure jobs plan and it involves job security explicitly inserted into the Fair Work Act, rights for gig economy workers, casual work properly defined in law, more secure public sector jobs and so much more. As we know, the Morrison government does not care about Australian workers.