Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It's disappointing that we find ourselves standing here in the Senate chamber today, at the end of a very difficult 12 months for Australians, who've been doing their bit to get through a pandemic, dealing with a piece of legislation, the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2021, which proposes the most drastic changes to our industrial relations system in over a decade. It's no coincidence that this is coming in the recovery phase—we hope—of a pandemic. It's just like the way the government has used COVID to push its agenda, or the agenda of its donors, for a fossil fuel led recovery, the 'gas led recovery'. I and many senators have sat on the COVID committee hearings over many months and we've witnessed this cynical use of a pandemic to say: 'Hey, we need a COVID recovery. Jobs are important, the economy's under assault; let's do this.' They've used it to push their agendas. Today is another example of an agenda, which they just can't let go, to do whatever they can to undermine workers' rights—to come into this place and work for their special interests, the big business sector.

It is especially disappointing because two things we can reflect on from COVID over last 12 months are how it relates to workers' rights and how we operate in this place. Firstly can I say that it gave me, as a senator, a lot of hope during the first phase of COVID, when we were all in lockdown and working from our homes, to see political parties come together and unions and business advocacy groups come together to put in place a stimulus package that helped both businesses, especially small businesses, and workers. Of course, that was the JobKeeper program. It wasn't perfect. Not enough people got it. The Greens pushed hard for those who were unfairly or unnecessarily, through mean-spirited politics, left out of JobKeeper.

I remind my colleagues across the chamber that the Greens were the first to be campaigning and calling for a living wage during the pandemic. We worked hard to speak to stakeholders to try to get everybody on board, as I am sure the Labor Party did. To your credit, you did listen. It took a few weeks for you to get on board but eventually you did listen to the business sector, the unions and other political parties in here, and we got a good result for Australians. I don't think any of us can deny that JobKeeper and certainly an increase in JobSeeker, which we would like to see made permanent, has helped every state economy and our national economy. It has helped small businesses stay in business. It has given workers the certainty they have needed during this very difficult period. So where has that spirit of cooperation gone, where everybody is working for the public interest? Where has that spirit of cooperation gone? It's especially damning that it's back to cynical self-interested politics so early.

We also know that COVID laid bare just how bad and how big a problem insecure work is in this country. Many of us probably felt the frustrations. It wasn't just state premiers or the Prime Minister who felt frustrated when we saw outbreaks from hotel quarantine. But we learned that those hotel workers who had spread COVID, which led to more shutdowns, were working two or three jobs. They were out there because of insecure work. They had to do two or three jobs to put food on the table. If that's not an indictment of just how bad insecure work in this country is, I don't know what is.

What we have before us today is a cynical attempt to use the COVID recovery period, under the guise of 'we need jobs and growth'—just the name of the bill tells you that: the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2021—to say: 'Forget about these concerns that workers, unions and some in the small business sector have about this bill. What's more important is that we have jobs and recovery during a pandemic.' If anything, it should be the other way around. The pandemic should be an opportunity for us to press reset for the next 20, 30 or 50 years. We should use this as an opportunity to get things right—to maintain a higher level of JobSeeker to give people fairness and dignity in their life, and review this concept of a living wage that has so helped so many Australians. That money has been circulated through the economy. The circular flow of income has worked. It has kept certainty in our communities.

The reaction we are seeing right around the country to the removal of JobKeeper tells you something very important. People aren't confident, without government stimulus, of the economic landscape, both here and overseas, in the next nine to 12 months. While government regulations are in place, while the government are dictating border closures and restrictions for business and restrictions on international travel—and, may I say, restrictions that are totally necessary—they have a role to play and a responsibility to look after small business and workers. It has worked very well in the last 12 months. But here we have, before us today, an attempt to lock in insecure work. I'm going to go through my key problems with this bill in a moment, but it's worth pointing out that over two million people in Australia are unemployed or underemployed, with women, young people and migrant workers particularly bearing the brunt of this statistic. Instead of improving job security and lifting wages—which, as the Reserve Bank governor continues to remind us, is absolutely necessary if we're going to have a future recovery—the government's pushing for a bill that will further entrench insecure work, suppress wages, give more power to businesses at workers' expense and undermine the role of unions. It is more of the same, more of what I and other senators in this chamber have seen every day in this place since the government came to power in 2013.

I've mentioned that the pandemic has highlighted inequality that's been allowed to flourish as a result of the push by this government for insecure work over many, many years. Casual workers were hit the hardest during the pandemic, accounting for approximately two-thirds of people who lost their job when the pandemic hit just over a year ago. Those casuals who still had a job were amongst the lowest-paid and most insecure workers, with no access to paid leave entitlements. And we mustn't forget the role insecure work played in spreading COVID across the country as workers without paid sick leave were forced to choose between their health and their income. I once again remind senators of issues around quarantine outbreaks among hotel workers. Many employers have built insecure work into their business models. While they turn a profit, workers have not had a job or income security. Changes in this bill will just entrench that. Instead of passing a bill that further entrenches insecure work, reduces wages and increases the powers of employers, we need to outlaw insecure work and ensure the right of all workers to a safe, meaningful, secure job with good wages and conditions.

The first issue I have with this bill is the definition of a casual. The new definition will give employers all the power to determine whether a worker is casual and will allow businesses to classify workers as casual at the start of their employment, regardless of what ends up happening after that or how many additional hours they end up working. The bill clarifies that to avoid any doubt: the question of whether a person is a casual employee is to be assessed on the basis of the offer of employment and the acceptance of that offer, not on the basis of any subsequent conduct of either party. In other words, it allows the use and abuse of casual workers, who may be required to work full-time hours but don't get any of the entitlements that go with that. I've got no problem with casual work if it's with the agreement of the worker. I've been a casual worker myself, and that has suited my personal circumstances. But without agreement and with a scant regard for workers' wellbeing it's totally unacceptable.

The other issue is casual conversion. Casual-conversion offers must be made to casuals who have been employed for 12 months unless—and I stress 'unless'—there are reasonable business grounds not to make the offer. This is unenforceable, as arbitration is available only if both parties agree, and the employer has very broad rights to refuse conversion on reasonable business grounds. Well, what does 'reasonable business grounds' mean? Does it mean the employer wants more profit? As if that's going to work and be a fair basis to make casual-conversion deliberations!

I've also got problems with a new class of workers, what we call 'part-time flexi'. This bill will create a new class of de facto casual workers by robbing part-time workers of hours and income security by allowing businesses to effectively treat these workers like casuals, with the power to increase and decrease their hours. The bill introduces simplified additional-hour agreements, which allow part-time workers in industries that have been hardest hit by the pandemic, such as hospitality and retail, to be employed on contracts that offer a guarantee of only 16 hours a week, with their employer able to increase their hours without paying overtime. We note that penalty rates will still be paid where applicable. This applies to 12 modern awards; however, the minister will have the power to make regulations to include or exclude modern awards. If you were a worker, having seen the track record of this government in the last nine years, would you trust the minister and this government to make those decisions in your interests? I wouldn't.

Enterprise bargaining: there is a suite of proposed changes in this bill that significantly erode workers' rights and undermine the role of unions in the enterprise-bargaining process. Time and time again, we've seen big businesses act in their own self-interest at the expense of workers' wages and conditions. However, the government is removing the safety net checks and balances that are designed to protect workers and asking them to trust big business to do the right thing. Once again, I'll remind the chamber of Philip Lowe's comments when speaking recently about the need for wages growth. What is needed, and what economists, unions and workers call for, are for policies that will increase wages. However, this government is pursuing a bill that will suppress wages as if we haven't learnt the importance of being fair and equitable during the pandemic.

Greenfield agreements: this bill will allow the Fair Work Commissioned to approve greenfield agreements to operate for eight years, locking workers into subpar agreements without the opportunity to renegotiate or access arbitration—eight years! That's a long time; eight years is nearly a decade. And wage theft: while the bill criminalises wage theft for systemic patterns of underpayment, which is welcomed, it doesn't apply to one-off underpayments, inadvertent mistakes or miscalculations. That needs to be fixed also.

So there are six or seven key things in this bill that the Greens fundamentally oppose. But, more importantly, I ask senators in this place to think about the last 12 months. Think about the spirit of cooperation that we've all worked together on in this place—something we can be proud of for the rest of our careers—helping our country to get through a difficult period. Unions were working with businesses and politicians were working across political parties to help workers, small businesses and everybody to get through the most difficult of times. That spirit of cooperation has now gone. This bill signals that. This bill is a return to business as usual: trying to screw workers, trying to help big business and supporting their donors in politics. I urge senators to reject this bill.