Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in this grievance debate to talk about a very important issue. It is the Department of Human Services' current bargaining with the CPSU on behalf of the many thousands of people that work in the Department of Human Services. This issue is crucially important to those thousands of workers, and they are all around Australia. This issue affects not only every single one of those workers but also the thousands upon thousands of Australians who rely on them to provide essential support and services. This grievance is a very important issue because it goes to the heart of the narrative that is building very rapidly around this government, a government that does not seem to care about not only the workers within the Department of Human Services but the many thousands of people that rely on Human Services for some very basic survival issues in their lives.

I am speaking today about the ongoing industrial dispute between the Department of Human Services and its staff members. Staff at DHS have been waiting for over three years for the department and the government to come to the table with an acceptable enterprise bargaining agreement. In the three years since the negotiations began, there has been no offer that addresses the years-long wage freeze employees have been subjected to and no offer that truly acknowledges that these workers have a right to access stable and secure employment. This situation is about so much more than just pay. Although the government's current proposed pay arrangements would not allow ordinary workers to keep up with the cost of living, their conditions and a decent standard of living for those who work hard to take care of others is what is really at stake here.

The proposed EBA would give employees no access to fixed regular hours, leaving rostering decisions to be made ad hoc by management. Under these conditions, parents, for example, would face an ongoing struggle to arrive at and leave work early in order to pick up children from school because they would be in different DHS centres from day to day. There is also a strong trend towards a casualisation of the DHS workforce in the government's proposals, which strips casual and part-time workers of access to benefits and seeks to make it easier to keep workers on short-term contracts. How is it that, when 36 million calls go unanswered, the government's answer was to have 70 per cent of the new staff in the last financial year hired as casuals?

Over 70 per cent of the Department of Human Services' workers are women, with over 30 per cent of the workers part time. Many of these women work in caring roles and many of them are carers at home, too. Many of them are parents and have young children. All of them are being disproportionately affected by the current proposal for their pay and conditions. We know that the work of women is often undervalued and underpaid. This can only be seen as a further attack on the working women who dedicate themselves to caring for others both at work and at home.

The so-called Minister for Women here in the federal parliament refuses to even consider domestic violence leave for people who work in the Department of Human Services. An example of the lack of regard for the work of women has been made clear in this process. The department has rejected the request of the Community and Public Sector Union, as I said, to allow DHS employees to access domestic violence leave as part of the new agreement. The management of the department are unable or unwilling to protect the most vulnerable of their own employees with rights. Instead, they want to have the discretion to say who gets assistance and who does not. Surely the government should seek to lead by example. What kind of example are they setting on the most serious of issues? This, combined with the proposed cuts to rights of part-time, casual and rostered workers means that some women have already reported that they have to leave their jobs with the Department of Human Services due to a lack of flexible working arrangements.

There have been two ballots of the workforce at DHS to vote on an EBA proposal since this process began, each with an almost 80 per cent participation rate of staff. In the first, 83 per cent of staff voted to reject the offer. After lengthy negotiations by the CPSU, minor concessions were granted. Again, 79 per cent of workers rejected this offer. The last proposal from the management did not address many of the concerns raised by the workforce, and as with the two previous offers it was rejected by 74 per cent of the staff who voted. In fact, at this stage, compensation for the lengthy pay freeze the workers at DHS have experienced is likely a necessary precondition for moving forward. Offers of such compensation have not been forthcoming. This raises the question of the utility of this continued process at all. It is clear that the latest proposed EBA continues to ignore the needs of the DHS workforce. It does not offer pay which keeps up with the cost of living and removes flexibility from conditions and entitlements in ways which inordinately impact women. The department and government need to acknowledge that their current tactics are not working and see new solutions for people who work within the DHS.

The DHS is already failing to meet its obligations to the community. We know this because of the issues we have spoken at length about in this place over the last few weeks. We have heard stories from Centrelink customers and what is happening to vulnerable Disability Support Pension recipients with unnecessary reviews, and Medicare is unable to process customers' claims in a timely manner. These issues are not the fault of the hardworking employees of DHS, and I underscore that. Increased pressure on this workforce through cuts to conditions and entitlements can only serve to make it more difficult for these people to do their jobs, leading to worse outcomes for all those who rely on these essential services.

This of course is all taking place at the same time that Sunday penalty rates are under attack by a government and Prime Minister who just do not get the issue. They do not understand or do not care about the issues around penalty rates. These are real wages. These are not add-ons for families. Of course, potentially this cut in take-home pay affects women the most, whether they are young women saving for uni, women supporting their families or women in the workforce. It will affect women most egregiously. Regarding the view that you can work extra hours to make up for the shortfall in your take-home pay, to put it quite simply: that is not the solution or the answer when you strip somebody of their take-home pay.

We can see there are common themes here: DHS workers waiting for over three years to get a wage increase, fighting three years to maintain a standard of living, fighting for three years to maintain conditions, and women trying to keep a sensible work-life balance, while workers in some of the lowest paid industries have their Sunday penalty rates reduced, meaning a cut in real wages. When is the government going to stop their war on workers? When is the Minister for Human Services going to step up and support the workers inside the Department of Human Services? And when is the government going to understand that workers have had enough? Understand that Australians will not tolerate unfairness. Understand that Australians understand when a government is attacking the most vulnerable and taking away from those who can least afford it. We see this in the penalty rate cuts and we see this in the egregious components of the omnibus bill that I understand will go to the other place tomorrow. We are talking about denying young people access to Centrelink payments for over five weeks. What are they expected to live on?

We are seeing cuts to the age pension and we are seeing absolute havoc been created for the people who rely, from time to time, on Centrelink, which is of course part of the DHS. I reiterate that the negotiation between the DHS, the government and, of course, the CPSU has been going on for three years. There have been ballots, there have been clear indications given by DHS staff on what the issues are, and there is the inability of the government to understand what it means to say to your workforce, 'No, you can't have domestic violence leave and, by the way, we're casualising most of the workforce. And, no, you will not be able to be in one work centre for any permanent time. We will tell you from day to day and from week to week where you're going to work. I'm sorry if that affects your child-care arrangements.' How can a woman who lives in Parramatta and has her children in child care in Parramatta be told that she is working in Penrith next week and arrange to have the children dropped off and picked up? It is absolutely impossible. It is incomprehensible that people who are under so much pressure and do such important work as Department of Human Services staff are being treated so disgustingly by this government.