Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2021. The Morrison government spends a great deal of time talking about the economic recovery from the pandemic. It likes to talk about reviving the manufacturing sector to reduce Australia's dependence on fragile global supply chains. In this process it asserts it is creating new skilled jobs for Australians. But so far we've seen very little evidence of the investment necessary to actually achieve those objectives. The truth is that the government does not have a plan for recovery. It only has a plan for increasing the amount of insecure work, for keeping wages growth stagnant, for doing the bidding of the top end of town.

What we see outlined in this bill is the nearest thing to an agenda that this government has. It is a bill which is aimed at increasing what the employer advocates like to call flexibility. 'Flexibility is a very, very familiar word in the mouths of conservative politicians. We've come to understand what it really means of course: it's code for cutting wages, cutting working conditions, undermining job security and making it harder for workers to organise in defence of their rights. All the talk about flexibility masks the fact that increasing numbers of people are being forced into insecure, precarious work. The Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute estimates that casual jobs account for some 60 per cent of the jobs that have been created since May last year. From May to November 2020, casual employment grew by 400,000—the biggest increase in Australia's history. They have massively added to the numbers of what have already been called 'the precariat' in this country.

In late May 2020 the International Labour Organization called for urgent and large-scale policy responses to prevent long-lasting damage from the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly to young people. It feared that multiple shocks would lead to a lockdown generation, lacking social and human rights including the right to collective bargaining and participation. It noted that little or no social protection, including adequate unemployment and sickness benefits, accounted for these precarious conditions. What we're seeing in this government is a repudiation of that approach.

The initial response to COVID from the government was to spend very, very large sums of money to ensure that we did not sink too far into depression, but now we see a reversion to kind, to type. What we are seeing is a return to policy positions where the government is seeking to impose a regime of competition—the neo-Liberal settings which inform employment relations and welfare policies that are about fostering more precarious approaches to social relations in this country. We have seen this develop since the economic crisis of 2007-08 and we've seen it exacerbated throughout this last pandemic, right around the world. We've seen it happening not just in this country but across all market economies. It's not just a technological change—although some will say 'What do you expect, with the changes of digitisation?'—but a deliberate policy of conservative parties. It is a consequence of the disruption of the pandemic but it is exacerbated by the policy positions being pursued by conservative parties. These policies, when applied to the workplace, to the welfare system, to vocational education and training, maintain a pool of low-paid and mostly unemployed workers who have to compete with one another at the bottom end of the labour market. So they're able to provide reserve wage conditions to maintain suppression on the growth in real wages. Instead of stimulating growth, what we've got is a competition for jobs. That is the fundamental principle that underlies the economic theory behind the development of the precariat not just in this country but in so many other countries. It's why we see the deregulation of employment conditions; why we're seeing, under internationalisation and marketisation, the growth in casualisation; why we are seeing the reduction in social protections. It is why we're seeing this push for supply-side employment policies aimed at developing a marketing arrangement matching existing skills, rather than the development of new skills for new industries.

This is a bill that employer advocates would naturally support. They say it's not really a problem, because insecure work has really been much the same over the last 20 years. They say casualisation has remained about 20 per cent of the workforce. What they do not acknowledge is the rise in casualisation throughout the period starting probably even before the previous economic crisis. In 1982 casuals comprised some 13 per cent of the workforce. By 2017 they were 25 per cent of the workforce. More importantly, casual work, which has a narrow definition in terms of sick leave and other entitlements, forms only one part of 'precarious work'. Precarious work is work that's performed by workers with little economic or social security, with little control over their lives, with little control over their work environment. It includes not just casual work but work on fixed-term contracts, seasonal work and employment under labour hire contracts. According to the OECD, in 2015 Australia ranked third in the world for non-standard forms of employment. The OECD average for those forms of employment is one in three jobs, but in Australia, the OECD noted, it was 44 per cent.

This bill before us will increase competition for low-paid, precarious work, but it will not drive economic growth. It will be a further rip into the social fabric of this country. People will find it more difficult to control their economic lives and maintain the bonds that keep households and communities together. People will start to become alienated from a system that they feel no longer works for them. It will further exacerbate the tensions within society. It will undermine trust amongst citizens and between citizens and public institutions such as parliament. As a consequence of this kind of thing, in many democracies around the world we have seen the rise of far-Right populist movements. In many parts of the world, we've seen fascism in its many forms—which many said was defeated in 1945—re-emerge from the economic crisis of recent years.

Conservative governments in this country seem oblivious to the social and economic costs of the policies that they are pursuing. They have clung to a neoliberal approach aimed at driving down wages and placing more people in more precarious situations within our society—a goal that gives the lie to their supposed interest in economic recovery. Increasing the general wage level is the most direct means of stimulating economic growth. It's probably the most effective way of increasing people's opportunities. It's not complicated. When people on low incomes are paid more, they will spend more, and that benefits businesses and the workers they employ.

It is a short-sighted approach that the government is pursuing. Cutting costs is a prescription for a downward spiral in economic activity. That's what we've been locked into for quite a while. The Centre for Future Work stated in its submission to the Senate inquiry into this bill:

… a dramatic and lasting deceleration in wage growth took hold beginning around 2013. Wage growth fell by half, with private sector WPI plummeting to a low of around 1.8% in 2016 and 2017. … plummeting to record-lows during the COVID recession to only 1.2% …

Because the government keeps chipping away at everything that protects the standard of living of Australians, you might think that the government is set upon an ideological agenda of undermining the living conditions of the people of this country. You'd be right to think that, because what you're seeing in these circumstances is that people who are often self-employed, who are often engaged in informal work or casual work, have all had to face increasing economic pressures associated with a precarious way of life, and their entitlements and their protections and their employment rights have been reflected in the lower bargaining power that they enjoy and, as a result, a decline in their economic independence.

It's often presented to them that they are in fact more independent, because they're self-employed. In fact, their position is more and more dependent upon others. For work, they depend on a relationship with a single source, rather than a range of clients, and that's exactly what the courts of this country have found, and that's what obviously distresses the government so much. The provisions of this bill seek to overturn those court rulings. Under this bill, a worker who agrees to be employed as a casual at the start of their employment can remain casual, regardless of their actual work patterns. That requires that the employer hires them on the basis that they make 'no firm advance commitment to continuing and indefinite work according to an agreed pattern of work'. If a court were later to find that the worker in this position was in fact permanent, any casual loadings paid would be offset against the permanent entitlements the worker is owed. Both the definition and the offset can apply retrospectively.

By the government's own estimate, these changes will cancel up to $39 billion in back pay that otherwise would be paid to casuals. Under the National Employment Standards, employers are required to make a written offer of a conversion to permanent employment after 12 months if there has been a regular pattern of work for six months. But under this bill an employer faces not having to make the offer if there are no 'reasonable grounds' to do so—for example, if an employer thinks the job might not exist in another 12 months or if there has been a significant change in the hours of work. So, the 'reasonable grounds' exception is broad enough to block any transition to permanent employment. The bill offers people who are in insecure casual work a catch 22. Of course you can become a permanent employee, but there's still another reason you can't: this bill allows for an employer of a part-time employee who is working a minimum of 16 hours a week to agree to work extra hours at the ordinary hourly rate—that is, without overtime.

The provision initially applied to 12 awards nominated in the bill, but the number of awards to which this simplified additional-hours provision applies can be expanded by regulation. It's another pernicious increase in the amount of delegated legislation, which of course is a matter that this Senate should be concerned about. This is a provision that will inevitably reduce job security, because it effectively casualises part-time workers.

The better off overall test has been a crucial protection for workers during EBA negotiations. The Fair Work Commission has been able to exclude changes that would disadvantage employers, but this bill suspends those protections. And with greenfield agreements, the bill provides extended new EBA periods of up to eight years. This provision will apply for projects with a construction cost of $500 million, but the minister can declare it to be a 'major project' and the production cost can be as low as $250 million—and we know that, on the scale of infrastructure projects in this country, that is not a great deal of money.

So, the parliament's ability to scrutinise these agreements, to hold to government to account, is removed, and the government's capacity to introduce flexibility, as defined by employers, is increased dramatically. This bill increase penalties for the underpayment of wages, and that's a good thing. But the government is very deceptive. It does not define what 'dishonesty' is. It does not in fact provide the protections it is alluding to. These measures are in no way a plan for recovery and they in no way protect us from the precariousness and the undermining of working conditions in Australia. (Time expired)