Scott Ryan (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I inform senators that, at 8.30 am today, 27 proposals were received in accordance with standing order 75. The question of which proposal would be submitted to the Senate was determined by lot. As a result, I inform the Senate that the following letter was received from Senator Sterle:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

Instead of a plan for secure jobs for Australians, the Morrison Government is trying to make it easier for employers to cut workers' pay and conditions.

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The motion that we will be debating is that, instead of a plan for secure jobs for Australians, the Morrison government is trying to make it easier for employers to cut workers' pay and conditions. We know that that's the agenda of this government. During the pandemic, when they were ready to acknowledge the hard work of frontline workers—people working in retail, hospitals, health care and aged care—they were quick to make sure they had the photo opportunities to be with those workers. Of course, we should acknowledge all of those sectors that were involved, whether it was transport, retail, health, emergency services or aged care. The workers did keep Australia safe, and they kept the economy moving. But this government, with its agenda, is quite clearly not supporting those very same workers. Look at the attack on Australian workers. The people in retail and aged care get unsecure hours. They find it extremely difficult, if they don't have secure ongoing work, to enable them to take out a mortgage, to pay their rent and to meet the essential requirements of looking after themselves and their families.

In this country before the pandemic we saw—and it's still a huge issue now—the cut to Australian workers' pay and the agenda to erode the conditions of people's employment. There is a huge issue with casualisation of the Australian workforce and the uncertainty, with 13 million Australians being directly impacted. We will ensure that this latest industrial relations reform bill is opposed. We, along with the union movement, will do what we need to do to make sure the Australian people are informed about this attack on their pay and their conditions.

We know that there's been a huge issue with the stagnation of Australian workers' pay that they get to take home. In line with their DNA of making sure that employers have advantage over employees, we know that they would prefer that there was no union membership and that they could reduce access to worksites by unions. That is not going to be accepted by the Australian people. If you take someone who's working in aged care and they have split shifts, as we saw during this pandemic with the spread of COVID-19 so many people who work in aged care are women—let's be realistic, whether we're talking about retail or we're talking about aged care they're predominantly women—they have to have a second job. Sometimes they have a third job to make ends meet.

We know that this government is not supportive of increasing superannuation. We know that there's a huge disparity between what men retire with in superannuation and what women do. So the attack on now to cut wages and to ensure that there's continued casualisation of the workforce is predominantly going to impact on families and women because they are the ones who work in the lower paid positions. That's why I will continue to say at every single opportunity that I can—and I know my colleagues would—that you need to be a member of your union. You need to have a voice, because so many times you find that women don't have that same support. They may not have the confidence that others have in being able to take their issues to their employer. When they don't get the extra shifts or they're penalised because they weren't available—perhaps because they had to take their children to the doctor or they had other family commitments so they couldn't take up that offer of employment. But to not have an ongoing, secure job where you know that will get those 30 hours a week so you can budget your family budget around that time, and then the next week to have it cut down to eight hours, is just not good enough.

Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I find it pretty galling that the Australian Labor Party think that they can come into this chamber and lecture this government, the Morrison coalition government, on jobs. Let's turn our minds back to a very dark time in my own state's history and that was the time when we had a Labor government in Tasmania. Indeed, we had a Labor-Greens minority government for four years in Tasmania.

When I first came to this place I spoke in my maiden speech about those dark, dark days, under the Labor-Green minority government, when jobs were being cut left, right and centre. People were leaving our state left, right and centre, because they weren't able to work locally. This was a period of complete economic disaster and fiscal mismanagement in Tasmania.

Senator McKim interjecting—

Thousands of jobs were lost, Senator McKim, over that four-year period. Tasmania had the highest unemployment rate in the country. There were cuts to nurses. There were cuts to the police force. There were cuts to teachers, Senator McKim, and other essential Public Service positions—

Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Chandler, please resume your seat. Interjections are disorderly and I remind senators to address their comments to the chair, not across the chamber at other senators. Senator Chandler.

Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. As I was saying, back in those dark days of Labor-Green government in Tasmania poor economic management saw business confidence slump, further weakening employment rates. Investment was at an all-time low. The jobs situation under Labor and the Greens in Tasmania became so bad that people were leaving our state in droves to seek employment on the mainland. They knew there was no hope to look locally for employment, so they packed their bags, booked a one-way ticket on the Spirit of Tasmania and left. We lost so many skilled Tasmanians and so many young people during this period. That is what I spoke about in my maiden speech as being one of my drivers in seeking election to this place, to see another generation of Tasmanians would not have to leave our island for job opportunities, that they would have those opportunities locally and enjoy everything that is just so good about Tasmania's way of life. It baffles me that Labor come into this place and try to lecture us about jobs and lecture us about our record of creating jobs in Australia and in Tasmania when they don't have a foot to stand on.

This government has a keen focus on creating jobs for Australians. We don't just talk the talk; we walk the walk. Since the coalition was elected into government in 2013, up until the global pandemic that we've seen over the last 12 months, in excess of 1.5 million jobs had been created around the country. This speaks volumes to the initiatives and conditions that we as a government put in place to stimulate economic growth, create jobs and make Australia more prosperous. During the pandemic, the Morrison coalition government stepped in to provide unprecedented levels of support for businesses and the people they employ to protect them from the dire economic consequences of the pandemic. We understood the immense challenge facing the country and we acted to mitigate the effects on jobs, businesses and the people of Australia.

I've said many times in the last 12 months and I will say again today: when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I was incredibly worried, particularly for my own state of Tasmania, that we would go back to those dark days where more people were leaving our island than coming to it. I worried about the economic challenges we would be facing. I worried about how we would deal with them and what Australia would look like coming out the other end. But, because of the policies of this government, we are coming out the other end, and Australia, I think, economically, is on the right track for recovery. What were those policies? An additional $1.2 billion was allocated in the budget to create 100,000 new apprenticeships and traineeships. The JobMaker hiring credit is encouraging businesses to hire younger Australians, recognising that young jobseekers often suffer the long-term impacts of economic downturn. And investment in road and other infrastructure projects is creating more jobs around the country and providing better public amenities for Australians.

But our quest to continue to create more jobs for Australians doesn't stop there with those fantastic policies, because we as a government recognised when the COVID-19 pandemic hit that the way the Australian workforce operates, the way that employees engage with their employers, was going to be different on the other side of this economic downturn and that there would need to be greater flexibility so that we were able to rebuild our workforce following the COVID-19 pandemic, and that is what our IR reform package will facilitate.

These reforms address known problems with our industrial relations system and the Fair Work Act. They will not only support wages growth and help regrow the jobs lost to the pandemic but also tackle broader issues like underemployment, job security, underpayment of wages, and the failure of Labor's enterprise bargaining system to drive wage and productivity growth.

This package of reforms will give businesses the confidence to get back to growing and creating jobs, as well as the tools to help employers and employees to work together in a post-COVID-19 Australia. As I said, we recognised early on that this would be an issue as we came out of the economic downturn, and that's why we have acted, with these reforms, to ensure that businesses and their workers are able to engage and negotiate as our workforce gets back to work following the economic downturn. These vital reforms to employment law build on the various economic supports provided by the government during the pandemic, some of which I listed earlier in my contribution. They are driven by one simple goal: breaking down barriers to job growth so we can get Australians back to work.

The reforms were developed after extensive consultation with employer and employee groups, who sat down with the government for many, many hours to find innovative solutions to support struggling businesses as well as protect and enhance the rights of workers. These reforms are important for all Australians as they aspire to grow their careers and seek out the opportunities that will allow them to contribute economically, whether it's buying their first home, supporting their family or planning for their retirement. We are committed to creating jobs and strengthening the economy so that more Australians can do this. This has been a strength of successive federal coalition and state Liberal governments, because we understand the importance of having a job, the sense of accomplishment that comes with that, the dignity that comes with that and the ability to provide for yourself and your family. This is why jobs have been a key focus of this government, especially during and following the high point of the pandemic.

As I said earlier, I know only too well what can happen to jobs when they are left to the devices of Labor and the Greens. What happened in Tasmania under the previous Labor-Green government was devastating for our state, to the point where, as I said, Tasmanians were leaving in droves. So many Tasmanians I know—my friends, my family—all left our island state for work opportunities on the mainland because they couldn't find those opportunities at home. Some have since returned to the island, and many have not. That is a real loss for our state, which needs skilled young Tasmanians to drive our state forward. But that is not going to happen at the hands of Labor and the Greens.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an absolute load of tripe we were just subjected to by Senator Chandler—absolute tripe! I'll make one point. You know the most important measure of the Labor-Green government in Tasmania? Carbon emissions. Carbon emissions in Tasmania sank during that period so that Tasmania became a net sequesterer of carbon emissions, helping the world address the greatest public policy challenge of our time.

I thank the Labor Party for bringing this matter of public importance on. I want to start by saying this: it is no surprise that this government is trying to introduce legislation that would make work less secure and make it easier for employers to cut pay and cut conditions, because that is exactly the outcome that the neoliberal ideologues on that side of the chamber seek to achieve. That neoliberal ideology celebrates the power of the market and the freedom of people to act in those markets without restriction. But what this ideology really boils down to, for most Australians, is: you're on your own. If you can't negotiate secure work for yourself or better pay and conditions, well, that's just how the market values you, they would have it. People—they would have it—will just have to live with it. It's a dog-eat-dog system, a system where you either sink or you swim, and, if you're sinking, you'll get no help whatsoever from government. It is pure, debased Darwinian economics. That's why, after 30 or 40 years of privatisation, deregulation and adherence to trickle-down economics, workers today are—

Hon. Senators:

Honourable senators interjecting—

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Listen to this. No, listen to this. Workers in Australia today are taking home the lowest share of domestic income on record. And it's why, on the other side of the coin, the greatest share of domestic income on record is going where? It's going to corporate profits. Now, if you want to argue with those facts, be my guest, but those are the facts, and those facts are celebrated by the LNP, particularly those with a pedigree in one of the various free-market so-called think tanks that promulgate this nonsense on behalf of their corporate backers like Gina Rinehart.

What the neoliberal ideology boils down to is the brute power of the big corporates to corrupt our democratic institutions with a clear modus operandi to corrode whatever workplace protections and whatever social safety nets have been put in place and hard won over the centuries by working people in this country. Neoliberalism is about the corrosion of democracy itself so the wealthy can get even wealthier. If you think that's an overstatement, have a listen to the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin D Roosevelt. In an address to Congress in 1938 he outlined what he described as two simple truths about the concentration of economic power. First, he said:

… democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism …

Well, hear hear, late President Franklin D Roosevelt! That is, in fact, in its essence, fascism. The second point he made in that address to Congress is:

… democracy is not safe, if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living.

In other words, the safety of our democracy depends on curbing corporate power and influence and on ensuring the equitable distribution of wealth, including through fair wages and fair working conditions. Those things, fair wages and fair working conditions, and full employment are everything that neoliberalism stands against. That is why, through tax cuts or winding back responsible lending laws or attacking workers' rights, what this government stands for is more power for its mates and more money for its mates.

Colleagues, the social contract is starting to fracture underneath us and we collectively will pay a very, very heavy price as more and more people start to realise that neoliberalism and trickle-down economics are letting them down. And it's cooking the planet at the same time. (Time expired)

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

I am so excited to get up here and make my contribution to this discussion. Listening to Senator Chandler, I have to tell you, is quite comical really. You know, when we get 20-odd-year-olds coming into this building who haven't had any life experience but who want to talk about how much they love workers and talk all about jobs, I would just say that I came in here when I was at the young age of 45, so I can talk from life experience.

So you talk about the farce that the mob opposite have of creating opportunities and you talk about what a magnificent job they're doing for working people and young people. Well, I have to tell you, Mr Acting Deputy President Gallacher, I've had a privilege in the last few months of running around the nation talking to more and more truck drivers as the weeks go by, and I'm going to start by telling you some home truths. Do you want to know how good things are out there? It's about time this mob opposite actually took their fingers out of their ears and started listening to what goes on in Australia.

Now, I wrote off to the Fair Work Ombudsman and I said, 'Since your inception in 2009, how many cases have you run against employers for underpayment of wages or sham contracting?' And I have to give it to Ms Parker, she wrote back to me. I admire the Fair Work Ombudsman; I just think they're grossly underresourced and I think that they have their hands tied behind their backs. They haven't got any opportunity. You know how the rules are bent towards this mob opposite and their donors. She said to me there have been 20 cases of underpayment of wages for truck drivers. Mr Acting Deputy President, Senator Gallacher, you and I can sit down and have a nice stubby of Carlton Dry and I reckon I could come up with about 50 companies during that one stubby. And you, with your experience, would probably have another 50 companies just from South Australia alone. This nation is corrupt and rort—the underpayment of wages in the trucking industry alone.

The mob over there rub their hands together because some high-profile chef's been touched up because he's done something wrong, or Bunnings has done something wrong or, they said, even Maurice Blackburn. Go for it! What about the hardworking men and women in the transport industry? Some of the shams and scams going through the industry will be no surprise to you, Mr Acting Deputy President.

One of the greatest scams in this nation is called 'kilometre rates'. This goes back to the time in your previous life, Mr Acting Deputy President, when you were negotiating these enterprise bargaining agreements and rates, before we got the EBA system, and the fights we had with the industry bodies about average speed and all that sort of stuff. There are some very good employers out there who pay a kilometre rate. It's negotiated. It's above the award kilometre rate. And they'll do the right thing and pay hourly while the guys and girls are loading or unloading, or whatever they're doing. Fine, no worries. The majority of employers in the road transport industry, predominantly in the interstate line haul sector, are absolutely ripping off their drivers. I'll talk about the eastern seaboard, because this mob over there probably haven't been past Jerrabomberra; that's as close as they've got to the west, where the real trucking starts. The employers say it's 880 kilometres between Melbourne and Sydney, so they'll pay for 880 kilometres, not taking into account that drivers have probably spent five or six hours running around Melbourne or Sydney doing the loading. Someone's got to actually wash the bucket of nuts and bolts; someone's got to put the fuel in it. They don't pay for that. That's all part of the kilometre rate. The drivers just do that for love! If you have to change a tyre halfway between Melbourne and Sydney, or Sydney and Brisbane, or Adelaide and wherever—you don't get paid for changing the tyres. That's all part of your kilometre rate. So don't expect to get paid for all the add-ons. This goes on day in, day out in this nation. I challenge anyone to tell me that I am wrong. I know I'm not wrong. I know because the drivers tell me this.

That side over there spout about how wonderful they are—'We love jobs and we love workers!'—but half of you wouldn't know a worker if they fell over one. You wouldn't have a clue what a worker goes through. You're all privileged. So don't sit here on $200,000-odd a year and tell us how wonderful it is out there. You're asleep at the wheel!

Senator Bragg interjecting—

If you want a debate, mate, I'll give you a debate. I'll debate you day in, day out. Don't you dare step into my space if you're not informed, mate, because this is my area and I know it damn well!

Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

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

I apologise. It happens when you get spivs that interrupt on something they know nothing about.

I'll tell you about another scam, and you've only got to go to SEEK.com to see it. One of the worst offenders in Queensland, QLS Logistics, is advertising on SEEK. They say: 'Come and drive our trucks; be prepared to work six days a week; you can work 10, 12 or 14 hours a day, no worries'—as long as you've got an ABN. This is sham contracting. They'll pay you as a subcontractor. Do you know why? It's because they're not going to pay you penalty rates, superannuation, holiday pay and sick leave and they're not going to give you rostered days off. This is what's going on. I report it to Fair Work Australia. I give it to the Fair Work Ombudsman. They came back to me. Like I said, they're underresourced.

I've got examples here of some of the shams and I'll share some of them with you. If anyone wants to interrupt and challenge me, feel free. This is from the Fair Work Ombudsman on underpayments in the transport area. One company had $132,000 in underpayments, another had a baby amount of $35,000, another had $60,200 and another one had $251,000. These are just single employers! How do you—I nearly said the fun word! How do you actually rip off your truck drivers to the tune of $251,000? Don't go away—others include $43,000 and $286,000 in underpayments. This is from the Fair Work Ombudsman, not Sterle making it up. This is what's going on out there, ladies and gentlemen.

Everyone thinks it's all rainbows and unicorns out there in the trucking industry. It is far from rainbows and unicorns. Wouldn't you mob go into a spin if your cucumbers weren't on the shelves at Coles next to the bread for your watercress and cucumber sandwiches! Wouldn't you spin out then!

Wouldn't you spin out if your latte or your chai or whatever you drink wasn't in the store at Coles or Woolies because the poor truckies hadn't got it there!

Senator Bragg interjecting—

Senator Bragg, put it in writing. I'd love to hear from you even more. In fact, I challenge you, mate: prove me wrong. We'll take it outside. We'll take 38 steps to the right of here, where no-one's protected by parliamentary privilege. I know, mate, because I'm the one doing it; I'm the one talking to truckies.

I'll give you another one while you're all thinking it's rainbows and unicorns out there: Toll Fast. Mr Acting Deputy President Gallacher, how many companies were they before they all became Toll? I'm talking about back when you and I were organisers and you rose to the dizzy heights of state secretary and I ended up getting side shifted over to being a senator—just joking! How many times have we seen the big companies win? These are the ones that win. I'm reliably told by my good mate Richie Olsen that there is a massive blue going around Australia. Toll Fast have about 500 owner-drivers. These are couriers who've got their own one-tonne and two-tonne vehicles running around. One of their biggest clients is Officeworks. Toll Group had that problem with the internet—they got raided and all that sort of stuff—and their 500 owner-drivers around the nation have not been paid in six months. It's six months late. They haven't got their pay. I know for a fact that around Australia the union is blueing this with Toll. They're one of the two biggest transport companies in Australia. How the heck can they look anyone in the eye knowing that they have not paid their people for six months? How does anyone do that? You wouldn't get away with that in the Wild West. This is what's going on. People are fighting a major transport company—government contracts and all sorts of stuff—for their underpayments and against wrong classifications. If the big boys can do it—and normally I don't have a problem with the big boys, because we have the opportunity to get it sorted out—how the hell do the little ones not think that they can get away with it?

What irks me even more as I talk to transport operators and talk to the good trucking companies all through Australia—and there are many good trucking companies—is that they're being screwed the living daylights out of the top of the supply chain. This is where all the pain comes down from these corporate captains, these magnificent corporate citizens. And I'm not just going to Coles and Woolies; I'm throwing the mining companies in there too, like BlueScope Steel. They're all as bad as each other, the whole damn lot of them, because they exonerate themselves from any employer-employee relationship; they just contract it out. I tell you what, if you're worried about Uber, wait until that gets into the trucking industry. And Amazon said it's prepared to lose money for 10 years to disrupt what's going on here in Australia. So while you're out there with your talking notes and prepared speeches—I don't have a prepared speech—and what the minister's told you to say about these wonderful things that you're doing, cast your mind back to what I've said. Walk outside and ask people in the street how it's going for them.

I'm the first one to put my hand up to say we need to support young people getting into industry. You don't even put money into training for the transport industry. This is one industry that cannot attract kids. When you hear all the horror stories about how they're treated, the lack of toilets and the poor facilities, no wonder no-one wants to go into it. (Time expired)

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to address this matter of public importance. I think it is important in all things to put the changes that we are proposing to this parliament into a framework, because you need to know why you're doing something before you do it. In my first speech to this place I reflected upon the words of Theodore Roosevelt after the coal strike of 1902, who said:

Now I believe in rich people who act squarely, and in labor unions which are managed with wisdom and justice; but when either employee or employer, labouring man or capitalist, goes wrong, I have to clinch him, and that is all there is to it.

That is exactly our agenda here. We're not coming into this place to try and pursue an agenda to try and aid any organisation, whether it be a corporation or a union. We know who we represent here; we represent the people. In my case, I represent the people of New South Wales. There is no question that industrial relations is an area where there's been far too much ideology and not enough problem-solving. There are people who come into this place who are not sure who they represent. They're not sure whether they represent the people or whether they represent a union or, in some cases, whether they represent a super fund. This is a very important point of clarity for us. Why would we pursue these changes to the labour laws?

The answer is that we believe there is a need to create more investment and, ultimately, job opportunities for the Australian people, who we all represent in this place. I'll step through a few of these changes that the Attorney-General is proposing.

The first is nailing down a definition of 'casual worker'. After the Rossato case, this has been an area of great conjecture. People would be aware that Australian companies are now sitting on liabilities of about $40 billion after that court case, because it's backdated, effectively. So this legislation is designed to put in place a situation where, after 12 months of reasonably consistent casual employment, a worker can convert to a permanent part-time role. That is an option for that person under this legislation.

If we don't legislate this, all those liabilities are going to sit there on the books—in some cases accounted for, in other cases not accounted for—of Australian businesses, and the class actions are already starting. That is an important piece of certainty for Australian workers and Australian businesses. Trying to have longer-term agreements, as the bill proposes, is a very worthwhile idea. We are competing for new investment for major projects. We always have been. This is a country that has competed for the best brains and foreign investment since the First Fleet, and that is the status today.

I have been reflecting upon the geopolitical changes in Hong Kong. I think a lot of the debate around China is quite unsophisticated. My view would be that Hong Kong will still be an important gateway to China but it will not be the same regional centre for finance and technology. Why would you put your executives in danger, of the international security law, as you would be in Hong Kong? I think there is a lot of money that will come out of Hong Kong that will create new jobs, and those jobs could be in Sydney, they could be in Singapore or they could be in Tokyo. I think it's incumbent upon this parliament to find ways to improve our competitive position so we can attract that marginal investment, that mobile capital, and we can have those additional workers in Australia.

We're also looking to improve the operation of the BOOT test so that there is a real worker test, a real scenario, not a hypothetical. This Fair Work Commission has created an art form of slowing down and jamming and gumming up the works and running the enterprise bargaining system into the ground, in this country, to the point where award reliance is higher than it was years ago. The whole point of enterprise bargaining is that workplaces can decide what's important for them, above and beyond the basic award rates. But with enterprise bargaining, basically, dead it is incumbent on this parliament to try and reboot that. All in all, we're committed to more investment and more jobs.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In serving the people of Queensland and Australia, I note that Labor is fixated on the problems not the solution. The facts are that the government listened to One Nation's legitimate concerns for employers and employees and it booted out the BOOT. One Nation achieved that. One Nation is doing more for Western Australian workers and employers than Labor. That is, in part, thanks to our Western Australian team, Robin Scott, an ex-Freo sparky who works hard for the people of the mining and pastoral region in WA, and Colin Tincknell, the One Nation WA state leader who proudly represents the South West region. Workers should be concerned that Labor and some union bosses have abandoned them. Casual workers are being abused and the needs of small business—Australia's largest employer of workers—have been all but ignored by everyone except One Nation.

I have stood up to put a stop to these abuses for casual workers that the unions, the Labor Party and politicians like Joel Fitzgibbon knowingly ignored for years. Recently, the CFMEU mining division agreed with me that their union has ignored casuals for many years. I applaud that person in the CFMEU for having the courage to do that, and lawyers for the ETU and CFMEU confirmed that, in their opinion—and I agree with them—the IR system needs to be free from lawyers. For Labor to say that it's going to be easier for employers to cut wages and conditions is not enough. Labor need to step up and show everyday Australians what Australia's IR problems are and what they would do better. Labor, like Joel Fitzgibbon, are all talk and no action.

One Nation wants genuine industrial relations reform for the benefit of employees and employers, especially for small business and their employees, and the best way to do that is to listen and contribute to a better system. We have been listening widely and hearing the concerns from industry, union bosses, employer and employee groups, welfare groups, casual and injured workers, and small business. I care and I will fight to protect workers' legal and moral entitlements, just as I am doing in Queensland and I am doing in the Hunter Valley, even though it is not in my state. One Nation stands for the workers that Labor and Joel Fitzgibbon continue to ignore.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is great to stand up here today and respond to Senator Sterle's idea that we are planning to cut pay, because there is no greater example of how pay is cut in this country than superannuation. It takes 9½ per cent of somebody's wage, rips it out of their pocket, sends it to some big city somewhere to some unaccountable person who doesn't have to repay it to the person when they are 60. There is no capital guarantee with superannuation. We are going to go to 12 per cent here, so that is another 2½ per cent that could go into someone's pocket. The workers are going to miss out on that because it isn't going to go into their pockets; it is going to go to some blowhard in some ivory palace somewhere.

I have a lot of time for Senator Sterle. We struck a real chord in the year before last when we were down in Wangaratta when he said that he grew up on his father's lap driving a truck, and that is how I grew up. I grew up on a farm. I can remember as a young child sitting on my father's lap, sitting behind the wheel of big truck as well. At the end of the day, what we share in common is the spirit of the battlers. This is the problem with superannuation: the battlers don't get to see it. The battlers don't get to see any superannuation; it goes to the blowhards in the ivory towers. I don't know why blue-collar workers support superannuation. I don't know why they want it to go to these ivory towers. If you want to support workers' conditions, let them have control of their hard-earned wages.

But it doesn't end there. Labor have got this crazy scheme now where they are going to increase what they call portability. They are going to rip out 25 per cent of casuals' loading. They are going to say, 'Don't worry about that. It isn't going into your pocket, no. Let us look after it for you.' Here we go again. It is the same old theme of collectivism, the same old theme of command and control that says: 'No, you don't know what you are doing with your money; we know best.' This is typical Labor, through and through—command and control, don't let the casuals have their money.

It is estimated that $8,000 a year will get ripped out of workers' pockets. Labor are going to reduce the loading for casuals. A lot of people in casual labour actually want to be in casual labour. They might be the secondary breadwinner in the family and might want to work around the primary breadwinner, so they may only want to work Saturday or Sunday. They might like the flexibility of coming and going and not being locked into a fixed contract. They might be students who occasionally get a bit of extra work on the weekend or get a bit of extra work over the holidays but don't want to be forced into permanent work, and they sure as hell don't want to lose their loading. They don't want to lose their loading. But, of course, Labor cannot help themselves. They have to take that money and look after it for themselves, because that is the way they get to clip the ticket and that is the way they get to exert more command and control over the worker. They want to deny the worker individual freedoms.

Then, of course, the greatest threat to working conditions in this country is the cost of energy. What Labor want to do is go to unreliable, non-recyclable energy. That is right. This is the crazy thing: they call this energy renewable energy. You can't renew lithium batteries. You can't renew solar panels. You can't renew windmills, mate. These lithium batteries are one per cent ore body. You've got to mine a hundred tonnes of the stuff just to get to the ore, and that's before you bring in stripping ratios. Sometimes stripping ratios are 10 to one. How much dirt are we going to have to dig up in this country to get one battery? It's exorbitant, and that is going to drive the price of energy up.

Of course, Labor think it's great to have more people in energy creation. But this just goes to show that they don't understand business. You don't want to increase the number of workers involved in the input costs of a business; you actually want to increase the output. We on this side of the chamber want more people in manufacturing producing outputs, not producing inputs. We've seen that up in Queensland, where the Queensland Labor government have been subsidising foreign companies to basically produce energy at the expense of our own coal-fired power stations, which meant that last year they made a loss for the first time ever.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Everyone should have a home and a good job and a good school and good health care and food in the fridge and a warm place to sleep. Everyone should have the essentials of life that you need to live a good life. The reality for so many people in our community for so long has been that these essentials have been out of reach, that struggle has been the daily background noise to existence.

I am 26 years old. In 1994, the year that I was born, the Newstart payment rose for the final time in a 26-year period and, for the 26 years I've been on this planet, it has stayed exactly where it was, at the same time as more money than can be conceived of has flown into the pockets of big corporations and the companies that donate to the major parties in this place. For those 26 years, the community have been campaigning with the Greens to increase what was Newstart and is now called JobSeeker so that it is above the poverty line, so that people can have access to those essentials, so that the struggle can be a little bit less.

The Morrison government has announced a $3.50 a day increase. That is not an increase; it is an insult. It is an insult to all those who campaigned for so long to raise the rate. It is an insult to every person who gave their time to tell their member of parliament about the need for an increase, and it will not be accepted—not by the Greens. We will continue to campaign for a JobSeeker rate which is above the poverty line, that alleviates the struggle that is people's existence far too often. We will keep campaigning on it and we will be clear that this is our goal. We will not mince our words. We will continue to work with the community for a real increase to JobSeeker.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I realise that Senator Steele-John came in and made a contribution to this discussion; in fact, the MPI today is about employers and ensuring workers get fair pay, entitlements and conditions. Labor would have you believe that this is a government that isn't looking after workers, when in fact the only side proposing to cut wages and cost jobs is sitting on the opposite side of the chamber, the Labor Party. We recently heard opposition leader Anthony Albanese announce his undercooked and disappointing attempt at an industrial relations policy. It has nothing to help employers and employees work together, nothing to grow jobs, nothing to address underpayments or fix a broken enterprise bargaining system. But do you know what it does contain?

It contains either a $20 billion a year business tax or, on the other side, a cut in casual pay equal to, on average, $153 a week. Yep, that's right. The Attorney-General's Department has estimated that just one element of the plan proposed by those opposite—extending paid annual leave, sick leave and long service leave entitlements to casual employees and independent contractors—would cost up to $20.3 billion per year. A $20 billion per year business tax.

Over the course of the last week we've heard that those opposite suggest quickly that this isn't the plan, but then we saw the ACTU suggest that Labor's policy would actually be to cut casuals' pay to extend these new entitlements. The Attorney-General's Department has estimated this would cost a casual employee, on average, $153 a week. So which side of this chamber has a desire to cut pay? It is not this one.

As we have shown through the pandemic, the government is constructive and pragmatic when it comes to industrial relations policy. We focused on measures designed to regrow jobs, to boost wages and to enhance productivity, doing so in the same cooperative spirit that the country has so successfully embraced in our approach to the pandemic. We have done this through extensive consultation with unions and industry, aiming to bring people together and not divide them.

What the country doesn't need is more attempts by Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party to turn workplaces into battlegrounds, pitching employers against employees for their own political purposes. We had hoped that 2021 might see the opposition adopt a more mature approach to industrial relations. But sadly their continued bluff, attitude and outright lies about what our government is proposing shows that they remain hopelessly fixated, as always, not on solving problems but playing politics.

The government's willingness to consult widely was evidenced last week when it announced the removal of the temporary section 189 amendment. By refusing to back the bill Anthony Albanese has shown he is only concerned about protecting one job: his own. The government's IR package addresses known problems within our industrial relations system and Labor's Fair Work Act. The reforms will not only support wages growth and help grow the jobs lost to the pandemic but tackle broader issues like underemployment, job security, underpayment of wages and the failure of Labor's enterprise bargaining system to drive wages and productivity growth. In fact, it is a Liberal government that is working to deliver these outcomes.

In continuing to oppose the government's IR bill here is what the Labor Party is against: tougher civil penalties and new criminal penalties to stamp out wage theft, a quicker way to recover underpayments when they occur, a quicker enterprise approval process through the Fair Work Commission to help deliver pay rises more quickly. But, of course, it's old Labor saying, 'Let's block everything and change nothing.' What else do they want to block? The opportunity for more hours of work for almost 30 per cent of part-time employees in the retail sector and around 40 per cent of part-time employees in the accommodation and food services sector. So much for Labor being on your side. Definitely not if you are a part-time worker or a—(Time expired)

Malarndirri McCarthy (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this very important matter that concerns Australian workers' pay and conditions. This government has no plan for secure jobs. Instead, it's making it easier for employers to cut workers' pay and conditions. One of the many lessons from the COVID pandemic has been how insecure work has threatened our nation's health and the economy. When casual workers don't receive sick pay they lack the financial means to stay home when sick, even with a highly contagious disease like COVID in the community. We know this because we have seen it happen. Aged-care workers, childcare workers and security guards facing financial insecurity if they take a sick day. We've also seen casual workers having to work multiple jobs to ensure that they get enough hours. This is bad not just for the health and hip pockets of those workers and their families, but also for society and for our economy as a whole.

We need to learn the lessons of this pandemic. The government's approach actually entrenches insecure work. Insecure work comes in many forms. I have heard from many workers their frustration at being rolled over from one contract to the next, in some cases for years on end. It makes it hard for people to plan ahead. It makes it hard for people to start a family. It makes it hard for them just to survive. I see this in the Northern Territory with families and governments and the Community Development Program. The current design of the CDP does not address the real employment challenges facing remote communities, including lack of demand for labour, lack of the skills required to take up available jobs and the health effects of poverty. The government's broken and discriminatory Community Development Program is no substitute for a plan for job creation and economic development.

But the Morrison government has no plan for jobs—certainly not in regard to the more than 33,000 people on CDP. The problems with insecure work in Australia have only gotten worse over time. Our industrial relations system has not kept pace. The coalition's industrial relations omnibus bill makes work less secure and cuts pay. Public health experts have labelled it an immediate threat to public health. They cite modelling that paid leave, including for flu and other infectious diseases, can reduce workplace infections by at least 25 per cent. The ACTU has said the bill fails the government's own test and that workers will be worse off. The government's changes will make jobs less secure, they'll make it easier for employers to casualise permanent jobs, and they'll allow employers to pay workers less than the award safety net. That is completely the opposite of what this country needs.

The bill creates a path for employers to cut back due to the impact of COVID-19 on their business and wipes out back pay claims for misclassified casuals. The existing better off overall test would be suspended, allowing enterprise agreements to avoid minimum standards of modern awards, making enterprise agreements a mechanism for lowering wages and standards. Working people have also sacrificed so much during the pandemic, and they are hurting. The government's bill will hurt them even more. As the CPSU says, the coalition government's proposed changes will accelerate the incidence of insecure work, undermine genuine collective bargaining and suppress wages growth. Impacts will be felt across the entire workforce—casual and permanent workers alike.

As if workers haven't suffered enough battling to make ends meet during COVID, this new legislative offensive is so pro business that workers could be hired on a casual basis in virtually any position that employers deem to be casual. This is because the Morrison government's IR changes include a new definition of 'casual employee' that effectively overturns two recent Federal Court decisions. The matters of WorkPac v Skene and WorkPac v Rossato found that employees were not in fact casuals but, rather, permanent workers, principally because they were given rosters up to a year in advance.

The tourism industry in the Northern Territory relies heavily on casual workers for human resources, and casual workers rely heavily on the tourism sector for work. Northern Territory government investment through tourism vouchers, Roadhouse to Recovery grants and the Visitor Experience Enhancement Program, as well as the federal government's JobKeeper scheme, have helped the local tourism sector survive. It has also created a false positive, which will soon run out.

Scott Morrison is leaving the tourism sector behind and putting jobs at risk by ignoring industry pleas for support beyond the end of JobKeeper. As the months of government inaction continue, tourism workers and businesses are understandably becoming increasingly anxious about whether they will still have a job after 28 March. A survey by the Australian Federation of Travel Agents shows that, if JobKeeper is not extended, three out of every 10 travel agencies will close immediately across Australia. We've seen travel agencies close during the pandemic. Do we really need to see more?

And travel agents are not alone, with many international-facing tourism businesses likely to be among the last to recover from the economic impacts of COVID-19. In December almost 2,000 Territory businesses were still receiving JobKeeper, with payments worth $29.3 million to the Northern Territory economy. The Morrison government keeps saying it needs more data before it will make a decision, but people's livelihoods are at risk. The president of the Australian Federation of Travel Agents, Mr Darren Rudd, has warned that, once JobKeeper ends, eight out of 10 people still working in travel will be out of a job, and 30 per cent of businesses will close and 52 per cent will be at risk if support is not extended again beyond 28 March.

The Prime Minister is not on the side of travel agents and tourism workers. He is leaving them to go it alone while he focuses on photo ops and announcements and never delivers. Just have a look at the rush that he made to Kakadu just over two years ago, and we're still waiting. Australians in insecure work or looking for work are anguished by the uncertainty and they cannot plan for their future. Labor is calling on the government to provide Australians looking for work with certainty about what support will be available to them after March. Australian workers deserve this. Territory workers deserve this. Labor has a secure jobs plan and it involves job security explicitly inserted into the Fair Work Act, rights for gig economy workers, casual work properly defined in law, more secure public sector jobs and so much more. As we know, the Morrison government does not care about Australian workers.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are no further speakers on the MPI.