Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Ladies and gentlemen and businesses across Australia, here we go again. Welcome to 2024. The Albanese government, just as it did in 2022 and again in 2023, now, at the very beginning of 2024, is giving you a slap in the face. Why do I say that? Because, for the business community across Australia, it does not matter what size of business you are—whether you are a large business or a medium business. It probably does actually matter if you're a small business, because, quite frankly, I do not know, based on the feedback that I have received from businesses across Australia, particularly small businesses, how you are expected to cope—when you are already drowning under significant pressure from rapidly rising costs et cetera, all due to the Albanese government's policy decisions—with what is now the third tranche of industrial relations legislation, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No. 2) Bill 2023.

So, as I said, welcome to 2024. This is the Albanese government saying, 'Happy new year,' to businesses across Australia. We expect a lot from businesses across Australia. We expect them to continue employing Australians. We expect them to prosper, to grow and to create more jobs. But, on behalf of Mr Albanese and the Australian Labor Party, let me be very clear: we are not going to put in place the economic framework or the policy decisions that are going to allow them to do this. In fact, what we are going to do for the third time—we did it in 2022 and 2023 and are now doing it in 2024—is whack them with another raft of job-destroying, complex, confusing and, of course, union-friendly industrial relations changes.

Well, Mr Albanese, guess what: the businesses across Australia are saying they don't like this, and it's not because they don't want to comply with the law, prosper, grow, create more jobs and pay higher sustainable wages. It is quite literally because they know—since they go in to work every day and employ people—that, under the first, second and now third tranches of industrial relations legislation, this legislation is going to continue to harm them. That is what the employers across Australia are telling us. They tell us that this legislation—which, as I said, is the third tranche, not the first—will impact the prospects of the employees that Labor purports to protect. Let us not forget who the employers of Australia are. I know who they are. I know those on the coalition side know who they are, but obviously Labor and, in particular, the Greens—and, I have to say, some of the crossbench—clearly don't know who they are. They are the job creators of this country. They are the people who employ millions and millions of Australians across every region, every town, every sector and every city in our great country. They get up every morning and they provide Australians with the jobs that they so desperately need. Mr Albanese whacked them in 2022 and whacked them again in 2023—and happy new year 2024: let's go for the triple whammy. If you're lucky, Mr Albanese, you might actually take a few of them out. I'm being sarcastic there.

Let me tell you what the employers of Australia are saying about these changes. It's very simple: the changes are going to add additional costs to their businesses. Mr Albanese and Labor don't seem to understand or, alternatively, they don't care. I will probably go with the latter, actually: they don't care. They don't seem to understand what happens when you add additional costs to business. Let me tell you what happens. This is what the businesses have told us will happen. They pass those costs onto the community, in the first instance, or, secondly, if they can't pass the costs on—guess what?—they have to lose employees from their business. So what you have is further costs passed onto the community or, alternatively, job losses. Wow, that is a great combination going into 2024.

Based on the state of the economy, I wouldn't have thought that the community in Australia need further costs passed onto them. The reality that they face, 18 months after the election of the Albanese government, is that anyone who goes into a shopping centre or a shop to purchase something feels the impact of food inflation. And you are feeling it because, under the Labor government of Mr Albanese, food has actually gone up nine per cent. Don't talk to people about housing. All they'll say to you is (a) 'I can't get a house,' and (b) 'If I'm looking to get one, property prices have gone up 12 per cent.'

What about the great promise Mr Albanese made to Australians prior the election, 'If I'm elected I will reduce your energy bill by $275'? They can't even mention the number '275' now because electricity, under the Labor government, has gone up more than 23 per cent. Gas has gone up more than 29 per cent. Let's talk about interest rate rises. After 12 interest rate rises under Labor, interest rates are at their highest since 2011. Let's translate that into what the average Australian family with a mortgage of $750,000 now needs to pay. They have to pay a not insignificant, I would have thought, extra $24,000 per year. On top of all of those increased costs, the first big piece of legislation the Albanese government wants to deal with this year will whack businesses across Australia with additional cost, additional complexity and complete, total and utter confusion which, as the businesses have told us, will only mean they will pass on those costs to consumers—the poor Australians who are currently struggling under the cost-of-living pressures. Alternatively, if small businesses in particular can't pass the costs on anymore, the only alternative they will have is to sack the workers. So increased costs and job losses are actually going to be the result of this legislation.

One of the things that has been missing from the industrial relations agenda under the Albanese government is the one thing that an economic agenda should incentivise—that is, increasing productivity, or, as I like to say, prosperity; you increase prosperity for all Australians. The link to productivity is the key. The more productive we are as a society, the more Australians can be employed—and you're actually growing businesses—and the more prosperous these businesses can be. And what does that then mean? They can actually pay higher and, the key here is, more sustainable wages. But, again, tranche 1, whack; tranche 2, whack, whack; and now we get to tranche 3, the triple whammy—productivity is not talked about by the Albanese Labor government.

There is so much that is wrong with this bill. Unfortunately, given the time today, we're only going to get a short amount of time to talk about it. But I've got to deal with the right to disconnect. This is fantastic, seriously! I see Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, has come out today and backed in that right to disconnect. Let's talk about this right to disconnect. It wasn't talked about prior to the election; that's not unusual for the Albanese government. It certainly wasn't raised in any of the non-consultation that the government had on any of their industrial relations bills. In fact, Senator O'Sullivan, do you recall, at any of the committee hearings, looking at the legislation and actually saying: 'There's a section on the right to disconnect. Can we interrogate it?'? It's not in the bill. You've got to love that, don't you! So we have gone through a sham committee process to look at the bill, only to find out that we haven't even seen a key part of it; it has been dreamed up by the Albanese Labor government. They haven't consulted on it. They haven't spoken to businesses. None of us have seen it—well, maybe Senator Pocock has seen it—and, apparently, it's going to pass through the Senate by the end of this week.

This is another one you're going to love about this government, seriously: what did Mr Albanese, prior to the election, say about transparency? He made it very clear: his government was going to be the most transparent government this country has ever seen. There is a word that I cannot use in this place, but everyone knows what it is—there's a saying of 'something, something, pants on fire'; I think it's pretty obvious what that is. He completely, totally and utterly misled the Australian people in terms of that.

What do we know about the right to disconnect? In the first instance, there has been no scrutiny because we haven't seen it. We haven't been able to say, 'Hey, hold on, can we work through this and what the implications are for business?' We know that this supposed new right will see the hours of the day where businesses are able to work with others across Australia, or even globally, potentially made more unworkable. I would have thought that, in a global economy, one would be putting in place legislative requirements that make us more competitive, not requirements that are going to make it harder to do business. Mr Albanese is always out there telling Western Australians, my home state, that he is a great friend of theirs. I have to say, again, two words followed by 'pants on fire'. I just don't think Mr Albanese—