Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Protecting Worker Entitlements) Bill 2023. Before I speak to the specific provisions of the bill, I wish to make a few comments in general about our industrial relations system and clear up a few misconceptions that we continually hear from those opposite in this space.

The first misconception they pedal is that the Liberal Party are anti wage increases. In actual fact, when we were in government, over our nine years of government, we actually delivered—and, Senator Scarr, I know you know this—real wage increases, wage increases above inflation.

Senator Sterle is mocking that, but that's the reality, Senator Sterle. It's the reality. What has this Labor government delivered in its first 12 months? Declining real wages—in fact, real wages plummeting at the fastest rate in decades. Why? Inflation. This government has no clue as to how to handle the inflationary pressures in the economy, and that is demonstrated quite clearly by the fact that the Reserve Bank had been raising interest rates, it paused, Labor delivered its second budget, and the Reserve Bank took a look and raised interest rates again—a very clear causality path. The Labor government did nothing. In fact, they spent big and they put upward pressure on inflation, causing the Reserve Bank to have to act. They're leaving all the heavy lifting to the Reserve Bank in the economy, and the impact of that, on peoples' mortgage interest rates and flowing through the economy in so many ways through high inflation, is directly the responsibility of this government. They cannot turn their backs and walk away and say 'Oh, inflation is not our problem.' Inflation is their problem. They're in charge of the budget. They are the ones who have significant levers of influence in this economy to deal with those inflationary pressures. So that is misconception No. 1. Real wages went up under the coalition government. Real wages are plummeting under the Labor government.

On flexibility, those opposite want you to believe that Australian workers and Australian families, including Australian mums and dads, don't want flexibility in employment arrangements, when in actual fact they have voted with their feet over 30 years, indicating that they do want flexibility in employment arrangements. 'Flexibility' is not a dirty word. It's a good word. It's good for workers, it's good for the economy and it provides people with the sorts of jobs they want at times in their lives when they want them. Flexibility is not a bad thing. In fact, inflexibility is an economy killer. If you want to be truthful about the history of this nation and the loss of the big manufacturing industries, such as the car industry, it was labour market inflexibility and the inability to scale up technologically that killed those heavy manufacturing industries in this country. It wasn't the direct policy position of any particular government, but it was inflexibility in our labour markets in the 1980s and 1990s that killed heavy industry in this country. Inflexibility is an economy killer. Flexibility provides the economy with the flexibility it needs. Flexibility is a positive in this economy, and workers have shown over the last 30 years that they care about flexibility. They actually want flexibility in their employment arrangements. This idea that somehow the economy has suddenly become filled with gig workers or casuals is a nonsense. If you look at the data, you will see that the broad balance in the economy between permanent, casual and part time has roughly remained the same over the last 30 years, since the 1990s. What was the spark that rebalanced the economy to the current position in terms of full time, part time and casual? It was the fact that the inflexibility in the labour market in the 1970s and 1980s and into the early 1990s was an absolute economy killer. Inflexibility is an economy killer.

The third misconception I want to clear up before I get to the bill proper is this idea of wage theft and that, in some way, businesses, particularly small businesses, go out of their way to rip off their staff. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a problem in our system, and that is that the sheer complexity of the system causes people to make mistakes. Let me just give you two examples to show you that those mistakes are not just being made by small businesses against a small number of employees that they potentially employ. Maurice Blackburn, the so-called labour lawyers, with literally hundreds of IR specialist lawyers on their team, underpaid workers. They got the rules wrong and had to re-fund the lowest paid workers they employ. That's because the system is so complex even the labour lawyers can't get it right. How do you expect a small business—mum and dad running a cafe, a news agency or a fish-and-chip shop—to get it right when the labour lawyers can't get it right? The system is too complex. This is not wage theft; this is people making mistakes because the system is so complex. There is some criminality, of course, and those people should be punished. But the fact is that, when you see a law firm like Maurice Blackburn full of people who are specialists in this area of IR law and in prosecuting these kinds of supposed wage theft doing it themselves, you've got to say the system is wrong. The system is too complex.

Who else is involved in so-called wage theft? The ABC. The ABC got it wrong. The ABC, with its $1.1 billion of funding from the Commonwealth government, could not get its wage bills correct. They underpaid their staff. Why? Because they were out to deliberately steal money off their staff? If so, you guys should be looking at cutting their budget, because that is a pretty disgraceful act. I don't think so. I think the system is so complex they made a mistake. They rectified it, and that is as it should be.

Senator Henderson, you may have a slightly different opinion to me on that. But I believe that, in the vast majority of cases, mistakes are being made because the system is too complex. The system requires, particularly small and medium-sized business owners, to have a level of experience and skill in these areas that is very difficult to get. It is very difficult to acquire it internally and, if you have to pay for it, it is very expensive. If you are a small-business owner and you have to go to external consultants to get IR advice, guess where that money is coming from? That is coming directly out of your take-home pay as the business owner.

Barriers that make it harder for businesses to employ and that make it harder for employees to choose flexibility in their working arrangements are government policy that is keeping inflation high and doing nothing to bring it down. All these things, combined together, are hurting Australian workers and hurting Australian families. They're bringing extra unnecessary pressure on Australian families at a time when there are economic headwinds ahead. As we said when we were in government, there were economic headwinds clearly on the horizon.