Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Road Safety) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to questions without notice asked by Senators Gallagher and the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Wong) today relating to wages growth.

Before I start, Minister Cormann, I want to share with you a catastrophe that this nation finds itself in. I'm glad that there are some grown-ups across the chamber in Senator Brockman, as well, and Senator Stoker. This is serious stuff. We know there's a slowdown and we know that wages growth is pretty poor, but we have a dilemma in the trucking industry in this nation. We have in this nation a very simple thing called the modern awards. We all know how they work. For years, I have argued with everything that I could get for transport workers to be higher than the modern award, because I don't think it's all that great. Be that as it is may, there is a law of the land that says, 'Thou shalt pay X amount of pesos per hour or whatever it might be, or cents per kilometre in the long distance award,' and no-one argues. You don't argue; we don't argue. Everyone in this nation is touched by road transport. Senator Brockman, your family farm would have had a very close affinity with road transport. There is no argument. Whatever we eat, whatever we wear—you name it—everything comes on the back of a truck. Everything is delivered, except maybe the odd baby here and there.

My desk is full of examples of companies not meeting even the basic modern award. Wage theft in this nation is exploding. We've heard some pretty bad examples. There have been some slip-ups from computers—that is Woolworths $300 million—a couple of chefs have been a little shaky in what they've paid, as we know. They're self-nominating and dobbing themselves in, which is great—it's tremendous. But it is exploitation 101 in the road transportation industry. The worst part about the exploitation and wage theft in the road transport industry is the employers themselves. The majority of them are not bad people, but they are having the living daylights squeezed out of them from the top of the supply chain. If you go to employers and say, 'Are you paying your people right?', every employer will say, 'Yep. Everything's cool with me.' They're not going to own up to doing the wrong thing. The truth of the matter is I don't think it's unreasonable for hardworking men and women—whether they are drivers or forkies, whether they are owner-drivers or are employed drivers and employed subcontractors—to be remunerated in accordance with the basic law in this land.

I've got examples here. I'm absolutely gobsmacked. Minister Cormann, you need to take this on board, because you have friends in the trucking industry as well. I know who they are, because they're my friends as well. I have one classic example here that cannot go—and this is only one. There are heaps of them. This is a job advertisement on Seek. They're calling out for an HR, which is a heavy rigid, truck driver with ABN. I'll let that sink in. For those who don't know the industrial laws of the land, you cannot have an employee driver with an ABN. It is completely and totally against the law. Sorry, Senator McMahon, this touches your state because of how important road transport is in the Territory. I know because that was my old run—Perth to Darwin—for all those years.

This is called scam contracting. This is not me running some argument that my union, which I'm a life member of, wants me to go in and give you a tickle-up about. This is serious stuff. This is people out there trying to do the right thing. And this is before I even start talking about road safety. This mob in Queensland is QLS Logistics. I wouldn't know them from a bar of soap. I don't want to know QLS Logistics unless I have the ability to go out there and prosecute them. They're asking for a truck driver:

… Truck driver with an ABN to deliver Multi-drops to the QLD country region. Driver will need to operate Truck and Dog and have a current BFM—

which is basic fatigue management—

certificate to be able to drive 12 hours a day.

That's not against the law. You can do that. The ad continues:

Late model Mercedes Benz autoshift truck provided.

Ain't that wonderful! They're providing a truck for you. It goes on:

Trucks are hand unloaded at stores with trolley by the driver, with deliveries to major retail and whole sale outlets through the country QLD area. All deliveries will be brown and white goods—

furniture; okay, great—

Person to be physically fit.

Yep, you would expect that. It continues:

Applicants MUST have a ABN

Immediate Start.

$300 + GST day rate - runs will be 5 - 6 days long guaranteed each week.

You cannot do this by law. And you know what? No-one gives a fat rat's bottom. There is nobody policing this. The Fair Work Ombudsman is asleep at the wheel. The Fair Work Ombudsman likes to take the easy stuff. He can get out there and ping 7-Eleven or whatever they're called. Isn't someone going to stand up for our trucking people? This cannot remain. We want to start talking about road safety. I'm pleading with you, Minister: something has to be done.

Amanda Stoker (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Sterle, I share your interest and your concern to make sure that people who are working in trucking have safe and fair working conditions. It's entirely important. I am a little bit at a loss to see, or to recall, Senators Gallagher or Wong asking anything about the trucking industry in the course of their questions today, and so I might help you out by bringing you back to what Senators Gallagher and Wong asked about today, and that was the economic indicators that we have in this country. There was a concern expressed, in the course of those questions, about wage growth in this country. It's understandable that people are interested in wage growth. It goes to the take-home pay of all Australians. You'll notice that I'm not getting carried away. I'm not getting cocky. This is serious stuff, things we should not get inflammatory or theatrical about. It matters too much to the lives of Australians for us to be carrying on and scoring political points.

So let's break it down to the facts. We know that inflation over the September quarter has been 1.7 per cent. That's not high. But, importantly, the wage price index exceeds that number. Over the same period, September quarter of 2019, it rose by 2.2 per cent. So what does that mean? Well, it means that while people's wages went up a little, the cost of living went up less. It means that people, in net terms, got a little bit ahead. Did they get a lot ahead? Did they earn a whole lot more than the cost of living went up? They earned a little bit more than the cost of living went up. But the important thing is that growth in wages exceeded inflation. It meant Australians got ahead.

Would I like the difference between those two numbers to be greater, so that Australians were earning a whole lot more? Of course I'd like to see Australians earn more, but we should remember that if we have wage growth that enormously outstrips inflation it does have an impact on pushing the price of everything up. So this can become a little bit circular. If we reach the point where, just by having runaway wages, we push up the cost of living enormously it doesn't get Australians ahead. To have a steady-as-she-goes, measured, sensible approach is actually not bad in circumstances where we have other advanced economies facing challenges to wages growth and other advanced economies facing slower growth than they have had across their economy. In circumstances where we face challenges as a nation in relation to dealing with drought, which has enormously hit our rural sector, then we aren't doing too badly against that global picture and against those local challenges.

In that context, it's important to point to the huge investment we have made in infrastructure to help Australian people have access to more work, to see more stimulation of our economy. There has been $100 billion in a pipeline of infrastructure that is to have an enormous impact across this country.

It isn't just the stimulus that comes from that spending itself but the economic opportunity that is unlocked by the fact of the strategically-chosen projects, because of the way that they empower other businesses to grow, the way that they open up the potential for other projects to grow. And then, once we add to that enormous infrastructure pipeline of projects that are happening now across this country, we can also look to the stimulus effect of drought support in rural communities that are doing it tough.

We have put forward a record passage of assistance for people who are trying to deal with the impact of drought. Since the last budget, we have committed an additional $355 million to step up yet again our drought response, and that means we can add to the more than a billion dollars since the election. (Time expired)

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government has clearly been mugged by economic reality. The government clearly has no plan, has no agenda and is running on fumes. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer assure us all is well and things may even get better. We've heard the Leader of the Government in the Senate today say that, apart from a few international headwinds, it's all pretty good. That's been their line since before the election.

The real economy doesn't match their rosy story. Wages are flatlining. So are retail sales. Household debt is not shrinking. The unemployment rate is stuck around five per cent. All of this is happening despite the fact that we have historically record low interest rates and, of course, the much-vaunted tax cuts. The traditional stimulus measures—at least the ones the government has tried—are simply not working. The tax cuts have not resulted in increased consumer spending, companies are not investing in new production, and research and development has fallen away massively. It's no wonder that the Prime Minister has said to his party room that he wanted to get politics off the front page. No wonder he said that he wants ministers to engage less with controversy. It's no wonder that he would want to maintain this fairy tale that this is all going to happen. Mr Morrison and Mr Frydenberg are desperately trying to shut down dissenting voices.

Most notably, they want to shut down the voice of the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Philip Lowe. We heard today that the government respects the independence of the Reserve Bank. Of course, that's not reflected on the front page of The Australian today, where the chairman of the government's House of Representatives committee has attacked the Governor of the Reserve Bank. It's part of a consistent pattern of abuse of the Reserve Bank. In a world first for Australia Post, a letter written on Tuesday managed to get to The Australian within a couple of hours. Talk about express post! Mr Wilson must have walked it around to the editorial suite of The Australian to get it done in that time!

Of course, for five years we have been told by the Reserve Bank that monetary policy alone cannot rescue this economy from the doldrums. It's called for stimulus measures including investment in infrastructure. We've been told that we should invest in stimulus measures rather than rely on interest rate cuts to make this happen. Of course, this government has sought to nobble the Reserve Bank. They have tried to embarrass and humiliate Mr Lowe by having him appear at press conferences with the Treasurer in a manner which the royal commissioner would never do. The Reserve Bank governor has been nobbled and thugged into making sure he does not comment on economic policy. The mild-mannered Reserve Bank governor, of course, has been put on this government's hit list because he proposes quite clearly reasonable measures in light of the extraordinary economic circumstances. This Treasurer has decided to call Mr Lowe to heel. We now know the consequences.

The economic statistics are simply this: the quiet Australians will not remain quiet. The reality in the real economy is that the government's measures are failing. Undermining the Reserve Bank's independence and attempting to silence independent voices will not change the facts when it comes to what families are experiencing, what it really means to have low wages, what it really means to have high increases in the cost of living and what it really means in terms of understanding the economic hardship that's being felt by families right across this country. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.