Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on the wage theft crisis engulfing workplaces across this country, making it harder for young workers and migrant workers to make ends meet. There has been a rapid rise in allegations of wage theft and worker exploitation. In the past month alone, these headlines have caused shock and concern.

Sunglass Hut workers were underpaid by $2.3 million. An article in The Australian goes on to say, 'Sunglass Hut took seven months to report underpaying 620 workers by $2.3m, disclosing the massive underpayment to the Fair Work Ombudsman' but that 'Sunglass Hut will not be prosecuted after striking a deal with the ombudsman that will see the company make a $50,000 "contrition" payment'. Further, in the article 'Bunnings in a decade of super shortfalls' in The Australian, another corporate has been caught underpaying its workers, with Bunnings revealing on Thursday 'it has discovered an error in superannuation payments for some part-time workers that goes back almost 10 years'.

Another article from The Australian said:

Wesfarmers on Tuesday admitted underpaying 2000 current and 4000 former employees from its industrial and safety division an estimated $15m in superannuation, allowances and entitlements since 2010 …

…   …   …

It is one of the biggest instances of underpayment reported by a company and is almost double the $7.8m in wages and superannuation underpaid to more than 500 current and former employees by celebrity chef George Calombaris's hospitality empire.

Speaking of restaurants, we have the Chin Chin empire underpaying staff. The article in the Sydney Morning Herald said:

A detailed external audit shows that the high-end restaurant business that runs Chin Chin in Melbourne and Sydney underpaid staff by $340,000 in a single year, with one-fifth of the company's workforce affected.

The article goes on to say:

Some staff had been paid $10,000 per year less than they should have received as compared to the minimum rates of the award.

A further example—and a shocking one at that—is a recycler accused of $1 million in wage theft in the Sydney Morning Herald, which said:

A group of refugees and migrants were underpaid an estimated $1 million in a single year while working more than 70 hours a week in harsh conditions at one of Australia's biggest recycling companies.

There was a suggestion in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald from some of these companies that what really needs to happen is an amnesty on underpayments and wage theft. It said:

Some top restaurateurs say they have been left "scared" after several wage scandals in their industry, with calls for an amnesty to bring operations into compliance.

You would think, with headlines like that, a company involved in the hospitality industry would be keen to show that they're not interested in taking this action any further or in being caught up in any more wage theft scandals, but then it goes on to say that one of the restaurant owners said:

The so-called 'wage theft' has been culturally acceptable for decades … That's not because restaurant owners are driving Maseratis, it's because that’s how they survive and stay in the game.

These cases are shocking, and they are from one month of headlines under this government.

This government has been put on notice. In 2015, a large-scale wage theft of worker exploitation case involving 7-Eleven workers was uncovered. As Giri Sivaraman and Patrick Turner, two lawyers who worked on that case, noted:

7-Eleven employees were especially vulnerable to exploitation because they:

(a) possessed little understanding of Australian industrial law;

(b) were unaware of their entitlements;

(c) were not members of a union; and

(d) often spoke English as a second language.

These headlines shouldn't be happening. This government has been on notice since 2015 that wage theft is an issue, but they've chosen to take no action. Since that scandal, further wage theft scandals have been revealed, and the worst case—I'm very disappointed to report—is from my home in regional Queensland. As recently as 2018, the Electrical Trades Union discovered migrant workers being paid $30 a day to do work on a Townsville solar farm. This isn't just wage theft; this is slave labour—and it is happening in our country right now. But I want to make this very important point: the majority of employers do the right thing. When businesses underpay their workers, it hurts good businesses too. This is about protecting workers and protecting good employers.

There are a number of issues that have been identified as the root cause of the current wage theft problem. First of all, fewer workers are members of unions. The ability of unions to organise in workplaces has been reduced, and union powers to investigate wage theft have been restricted by conservative governments. I know exactly how hard it is to get a wage theft claim through the court system. It is incredibly difficult, and, without the backing of a union, it is very difficult for individuals, particularly young workers and migrant workers, to see that money back in their bank account.

Secondly, there has been an increase in migrant workers working in temporary employment, being exploited by bad employers, and undermining the employment of genuine, skilled tradespeople. Let me make this clear: there is a place for overseas workers in this country to work and to fill skills shortages. But what we have seen over recent years is an increasing reliance on temporary overseas workers by businesses who know that if they employ an overseas worker they are less likely to have an organised workforce. Finally, the inaction of this government for the past six years has led to a culture of businesses who are happy to do the crime because they know they will not do the time.

I acknowledge that the government has released a discussion paper, but it's just one of their many inquiries, reviews, discussion papers and consultation papers. If the government was really serious about tackling this crisis, they would have legislation before this parliament this week. Even so, this government's plan is fundamentally flawed. You can't criminalise wage theft on the one hand and reduce the power of unions on the other and hope that the problem will just get better, because it won't.

The Liberals' record on supporting young workers is woeful, and now they're trying to convince young Australians that they're here to help. We know that they cut penalty rates, and we also know that those rate cuts haven't resulted in one single new job. The Liberal-National government defunded TAFE to the tune of $3 billion. Now they've created a skills shortage, particularly in regional Queensland, and they are scrambling to fix it. They also lecture young people who can't go to TAFE, calling them 'job snobs' if they want to go to uni, but they won't fund TAFE so people don't have to go to uni—so they have to go to uni. The thing about going to university and calling people 'job snobs' is this: nurses and teachers go to university to get their qualifications. This government has no right lecturing people on their choice of what they want to do.

Finally, sensing that they may have a youth problem, what does this government do? They recruit the coolest, hippest, most woke tradie that they can think of to join their team, announcing that they will pay Scott Cam an undisclosed, commercial-in-confidence amount of money to be Australia's first national careers ambassador. This is such a good idea that the government won't tell us how much taxpayer money they are spending to make a few Instagram ads with—with all due respect to Mr Cam—a 56-year-old television host. I can see TikTok with 'Scott from The Block' already! Here's a hot tip: if you've won a Gold Logie, people under 25 probably don't know who you are.

This is a government that thinks that if they have the right spokesperson then Australians won't complain if you offer young people a PaTH internship that pays $4 an hour to wash cars. Young Australians don't need a career adviser. They need a government that will have the guts to stand up for them, to fund TAFE and to take real action on wage theft. But they won't get that under the Morrison government.