Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution on this very important piece of legislation, the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2021. There are a lot of perceptions in the community about how difficult it is for people to understand the lawmaking that goes on in this place, but I want to make a few things pretty clear to the ordinary Australians who vote and send us here and expect us to stand up for them, especially when the government is going to have a good go at them.

The government has created this bill and called it an omnibus bill. It has 'bus' at the end of it. We understand what a bus is; it carries an awful lot of people. This bill carries an awful lot of legislation in it, and it's going to affect every Australian. It's very significant. Instead of having a long time line for careful consideration of the legislation they're advancing, the government limited the amount of time for due scrutiny of this bill. I know that the crossbench, who deal with Labor senators in good faith on many issues, will be paying attention to this debate. They were right when they made it clear on the weekend that they wouldn't support this legislation this week not only because it's such a bad piece of legislation, which I will get to, but because of the unseemly haste with which the government has tried to push it through.

Instead of allowing hearings right across this country for Australians to participate in, the government forced us to hold only three days of hearings. The committee travelled to Townsville and to Adelaide for hearings, and then had a hearing in Canberra. People were on the clock for half an hour each, being rolled in one after the other. They were not even able to have their say. The committee had to apologise to nurses who came to Adelaide to give evidence, because they weren't allowed to give their statements because there wasn't adequate time allocated. That is the contempt we see from the government about due process, and the people of Australia are waking up to it on many fronts. This is not just an idea out there that might or might not affect you; this is something that is going to affect your business. If you're a decent businessperson employing people in your local community, you're going to be caught in this trap the government is setting. The changes the government is advancing are being advanced by people acting in bad faith against the workers and the good small businesses of this country.

I want to put on the record right at the beginning of my speech what Ms Pulleston, a nurse, had to say in Adelaide of this bill. She read it. She got across the detail. She stood up on behalf of nurses at the front line. She came to Adelaide, and this is as much as she got out on this legislation:

I would say that it's a real kick in the guts. Other people got to stay home and work from home and not have the risk of taking this infectious disease—

referring to COVID—

home to their families. That is something real we had to prepare for. I had to prepare my husband and my kids and say, 'If there is an outbreak, I am not coming home to give it to you. Mum has to stay somewhere else.' That was a real fear that we had to face, and we still showed up—

This is what she says about this bill—

Cutting shifts and making life harder for us when we are going to have to put in that extra effort and when it does affect our residential aged-care facilities, that's the time when everyone has to stand up.

The 'everyone' who needs to stand up today, who can prevent the government from advancing this bill in a way that will negatively impact on Australian workers and small businesses, is the crossbenchers sitting on the benches in this chamber. They have the capacity today to slow this bill, to halt this bill, to send the government back to do better consultation than three short days on legislation that will linger long and have a profound impact on Australians.

We see that the government have got form on this. Every time the Liberal-National government get an inch of wiggle room on industrial relations, they try to ram through anti-worker provisions. As soon as they got control of the Senate in 2004, as people will remember, what did they push through?

Senator Sterle interjecting—

They rammed through Work Choices—indeed they did, Senator Sterle. Senator Sterle remembers it well. It was one of the most repressive and cruel blows to workers outside of the Depression.

With everyone focused on a pandemic and a vaccine rollout that is very problematic, disgraced minister Christian Porter's omnibus bill is put before us. This is a Frankenstein amalgam of anti-union provisions meant, deliberately, to crush wages at a time when workers absolutely need them to grow. The bill as it stands for debate is a little changed from what it was just a few weeks ago, when the last version of the bill sought to exempt enterprise bargaining agreements from the better off overall test. That was so bad; it was really the 'worse off overall test' the government wanted to put in. The crossbench stood up to them at the time and said: 'Forget it. That's just got to go.' The government, under pressure from the crossbench, removed that. Well, the crossbench have the power to halt this bill today, and that is what I encourage them to do.

In a time of wage crisis, if the government's bill gets through this house today it will push wages further down. The government's plans are actually revealed in this bill. There is a plan for fewer full-time jobs. In all of their media they call it 'flexibility', and they speak about it as 'flexibility'. Flexibility that only goes one way is a form of abuse. Flexibility for workers and flexibility for business owners needs to be something that's negotiated in good faith, and nothing about this bill has been undertaken in good faith. Everything about it has been a stitch-up by very, very powerful advocates of the largest businesses in this country against decent, hardworking sole traders, small-business men and women, and the workers of this nation, who keep things on the road.

The government ludicrously pretends that this bill will allow a path to permanent conversion for a casual worker. But, in fact, what it does is the exact opposite. It gives the employer a veto over that request. We had considerable evidence about this. If you're a casual worker and you definitely want to be a casual worker—sometimes it does suit people's lives—that's not a bad thing. But, if you're a casual worker who can't get a car loan because you're a casual worker or if you're a casual worker who can't get a housing loan because you are a casual worker and you decide you'd like to become permanent, do you know what this government has cooked up for you? A few magic words: 'Give them the old razzle-dazzle so they can say that they're giving them casual conversion.' Mr Morrison—the master of spin and show, the showman—

An opposition senator interjecting—

Absolutely! The reality is that, under this legislation, your employer will actually be able to say: 'There's a pattern of work. If I don't really want to have to offer them casual work, I'll just change their pattern of work and, then, in that last six months, they haven't worked a regular pattern—sorry, not eligible.' The definition of 'casual' is really entirely up to the employer. If they say you're casual, you're casual. You're stuck with it. That is not an advance in security for the Australian people. That is not good business practice. It's not good for the genuinely great small business employers who know their employees by name, who pay the right wages, who want to do the right thing. In the committee hearings, they were on the record talking about the need for a very, very different view of the conversion from casual status to full-time work.

I acknowledge that this bill does address one issue that is relevant to some states—that is, the crime of wage theft, which is absent in federal legislation. Again, it is so close. They look like they're doing the right thing, but it's a bit like The Wizard of Oz: you pull back the curtain, and what's really going on with the machine? Well, behind the scenes, what this really means is that, for workers in Queensland and for workers in Victoria, this legislation will water down the protections they have in getting back the wages stolen from them by unscrupulous employers. These are stolen wages, wages taken from Australian workers. They've showed up, they've worked the shifts, they've done the hours, they've provided the service—they've done their part of the deal. This government says, 'We need to do something about wage theft, but, oh, my God, let's make sure we don't do it as well as Victoria or Queensland.' They've literally got the template for how to do it right, yet, if this bill passes today, they take those rights away from the workers of Queensland and Victoria.

Again I say to the crossbench: do not let this government get away with this absolute con job. It is a con job with regard to protection of workers' wages. I had a great conversation with Senator Gallacher, who is in the chamber and who may be making a contribution very shortly, about who's robbed when wages are robbed. It's not just the individual, and I'm sure he'll make more comments about that himself.

I read an article just the other day—and people are seeing this happen; we saw the 7-Eleven debacle—in which Adele Ferguson said there's another wage theft case involving truck drivers in Victoria. She notes in the article:

In the past month alone 10 security businesses, Chatime bubble tea, … a toy retailer and an IT services business have been pinged by the regulator—

for various sets of arrangements to take people's wages. On 1 July this year that Victorian legislation comes into effect. Is that why the government are so hell-bent on pushing this through this week? Do they want to trump Victorians, who fought for their fantastic piece of legislation for years and years and years? Is that the idea? Get the crossbench on board, look like you've done a little bit of work this week and totally do over the Victorian and Queensland states and everyone who lives and works there? Is that what the rush is, because if that's the reason for the rush then that is another reason why the crossbench should say, 'Hold the phone guys; we are not going to advance with this today.' There are so many reasons why this bill should not be passed.

At a time when everyone from unions and the Reserve Bank to prominent business leaders are clamouring for the government to do anything—anything!—to grow wages, the government have introduced this bill that will cut wages. Deloitte Access Economics reports that, even on our current trajectory, Australian workers could wait up to five years for wage growth. If this bill passes it will be even longer before you get a wage rise. If the government were really serious about helping struggling businesses, they wouldn't be pushing this through today. Instead, they would be advancing something to support the extension of JobSeeker, especially for select industries that are still struggling from lockdowns and the pandemic. They should be keeping consumers spending, not rashly ending the supplements for JobSeeker and JobKeeper, which have lifted thousands of Australians out of poverty for the first time in years.

I know that there are nine public health experts from the Australian National University in Canberra who wrote about this bill. One of the terms they used to describe it was that 'it is an immediate threat to public health'. That's how they described the bill that this government is trying to get the crossbench to sign onto today. Their submission notes that Australia has one of the highest rates of individuals without leave entitlements. I love Australia. I'm so proud to be Australian, even though I am celebrating St Patrick's Day today. The reality is we have problems in our country. Leave entitlements in Australia are amongst the lowest in the OECD, with estimates ranging from 25 per cent to 37 per cent of the workforce without them.

I'm sick and tired of the attacks on workers by this coalition government. If it isn't an attack on their democratic representatives in the union movement, it's an attack on Australians' wages and conditions. It's a Neanderthal view from those opposite that the only way to achieve economic growth, the only way to achieve national prosperity, is to pay workers less, to make them work more hours and to give them more insecure conditions. It is a recipe for disaster for this country—not just for individuals but for the whole fabric of society. We should all be sharing in the wealth of this nation, instead of concocting, through this omnibus bill, some ridiculous plan to disadvantage Australian workers, the people on whom this country relies to lift us during pandemics, to lift us every day when they go to work. They need security; they don't need this bill. They need leave; they don't need this bill. They don't need this government. (Time expired)