Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

r BARBARA POCOCK () (): I rise to signal the Greens' support for the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Protecting Worker Entitlements) Bill 2023, which makes several simple and common-sense but important changes to the Fair Work Act: clarifying the rights of migrant workers under that act, expanding access to unpaid parental leave and ensuring that casual workers in the mining sector have fair and equal access to long service leave, alongside other technical changes that provide clarity on the operation of the commission and that simplify and streamline a number of processes under the act. While these are all worthy goals, and I support them, I feel that it's important to place on the record my interest in a greater level of ambition and a change to the scale and pace of reform in this area, which needs to be larger and faster.

There are many long-overdue improvements that could be made that could secure a better deal for workers. At last year's election, Australians voted for change to workplace relations, like so many other issues, and they are waiting for some real change in their pay packets and, for so many, greater security in their jobs. After a decade of inaction, many Australians can't afford to wait any longer. While their wages are stagnating, they've watched climbing prices eat away at their quality of life, and they've shouldered hit after hit, as the increases to their rent have outstripped inflation and as big business saw the cost-of-living crisis as an opportunity to engage in rampant price gouging and profiteering that even the Reserve Bank has recognised this week. Further, I want to foreshadow that I do not find the arguments for the various amendments just put forward by Senator Cash convincing, and I don't expect that we will be supporting them.

In March of this year, the Select Committee on Work and Care published its final report, which, amongst other recommendations, included a call for major reform to Australia's workplace relations laws to address the needs of parents and carers. We're yet to see enough action on those recommendations, despite the proposals receiving the broad support of government senators on the committee—alongside, of course, the Greens. The committee set ambitious targets for reform, and they are essential for so many working carers: roster justice; the right to disconnect from technology when your working day is finished; access to a paid holiday and paid sick leave for all workers, including casuals; and government leadership on the move towards a four-day working week.

Witnesses at the committee's hearings frequently singled out working hours and working time as critical issues and major challenges that they face as parents and carers. Witness after witness spoke about how they were being failed by laws that haven't kept pace with the changing nature of work in the 21st century. Workers seeking flexibility are often locked into casual work without access to the critical, basic right to a paid holiday and paid sick leave, which every parent and every working carer knows is so important. Those who need greater certainty and predictability in their working hours often find themselves in situations where their hours of work are subject to change without notice, and that means a change not only in your hours of work but also in your pay packet.

As the shift towards working-from-home arrangements accelerated in recent years, workers have increasingly been expected to be available around the clock to field work-related phone calls and monitor their inboxes when they're off the clock. This wage theft and this constant availability, in the form of availability creep, continues unabated, as workers face mounting demands that they be available by phone, email and text out of work hours and without compensation.

Productivity gains made by our contemporary workforce have been absorbed by business profits, while wages have stalled—at a time when record profit-taking has been highlighted by Australian researchers and the OECD as a major driver of inflation. It's time to restore balance and review Australia's hours of work. While other major economies have forged ahead with reductions to working hours, Australia has lagged behind. We led the world in the 1840s. It has now been 40 years since we've seen any reduction in working hours for Australian workers, and, in those 40 years, we've seen a massive change in who's at work on any day of the week—increasingly, women; increasingly, people who are responsible for the care of someone else. We need to renovate our workplace relations regime.

Trials of a four-day working week around the world have been enormously successful. In a recent Australian study published by Swinburne University of Technology, none of the 10 businesses that participated in a four-day-week trial experienced a loss in productivity. Seven of the 10 saw improvements in their productivity. The Swinburne study is consistent with other very large trials around the globe in many countries and in Australia: better morale; improved staff retention; less use of sick leave; growth in productivity.

If the Albanese government is serious about the rights of working people, then all of these issues need to be prioritised. Workers need protected rights to request predictable hours of work if they need them, and to turn off their phones and computers outside of work hours if they're not being compensated for being available. Casual workers need access to paid leave.

There are significant changes in this bill to help protect the rights of migrant workers, and the clarification that it provides for migrants who are working beyond their visa conditions is important. It's important that people are being permitted in their visa conditions to work; that's very important to better protection from exploitation for those migrant workers, and it was a key recommendation of the Migrant Workers' Taskforce. It is vital that these workers have the same access to legal protection as other workers, regardless of their migration status.

However, more needs to be done to support migrant workers providing essential services in our community. I'm frequently contacted by people whose skilled worker visa applications have been severely delayed as they attempt to renew temporary visas or to proceed along a pathway to permanence and citizenship. These are diligent and hardworking people—many of them, in teaching and health care occupations; many of them, carers in our care workplaces—who are being pushed into insecure work, outside of their areas of study, as many employers are cautious about employing staff on bridging visas.

International students have also contacted me to share their concerns about their ability to cope with work restrictions for student visa holders which return on 1 July. Amidst the cost-of-living crisis, international students face an enormous struggle to make ends meet on limited hours against a backdrop of stagnant wages and exorbitant rent increases. It will be of little comfort to student visa holders that their rights under the Fair Work Act will be protected, when cost-of-living pressures force them to work beyond the 48-hour-a-fortnight cap.

The provisions in the bill to provide expanded access and greater flexibility to those taking unpaid parental leave are a clear improvement. It's important to stress, however, that Australian parents' access to paid parental leave remains woefully inadequate, and Australia still has such a long way to go to catch up with comparable countries in terms of paid parental leave. It will be some time—many years—before Australian working parents can access increased paid parental leave that approaches the international standard. It will be some years before they get to just 26 weeks paid leave, which is well below the 2022 OECD average, which, currently, is 51 weeks. If Australia proceeds at the rate of progress the government seems to consider satisfactory, it will be nearly 2040 before Australia finally catches up to the rest of the developed world, in terms of giving people the rest and support they need when a new child, a baby, arrives.

After a decade of stalled progress on workplace relations, major reforms are now needed to improve the work-life balance and the circumstances of a changing workforce, and we need changes that will safeguard workers' standard of living. Voters sent a very clear message last year, issuing a call for urgent action. Insecure work and sluggish wage growth continue to undermine prosperity, and they make prices rises, rent increases and ballooning mortgage repayments bite that much harder, affecting so many households and so many workers.

Australia's workers are looking to Labor for a lifeline, for the decisive action that was promised in the last election campaign. It's time for the Albanese government to deliver on a more ambitious set of reforms, a much more fundamental set of reforms, that will address the current circumstances and real experiences of Australian workers in our diverse households and workplaces.