Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is great for the people who are involved in this case that they will reach some settlement. It is also great that they will get fairer compensation as a result of the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool Payment Scheme Amendment Bill 2016. A few people in my electorate have approached me about this issue and have raised it on several occasions. Bendigo is home to a number of our disability support agencies. Because we have a lack of businesses locally that are able or willing to engage people with a disability, a number of them have set up their enterprises to partner with their disability support services. These enterprises employ a number of people in my community who have a disability. Through no fault of their own—they thought they were doing it in good faith—they engaged people and, they acknowledge, have underpaid them. That is why this issue is very dear to the hearts of many people in my electorate, whether they work for these businesses or whether they are the businesses that employ them. So, they welcome this move to bring forward this payment. Of course, the workers said that they would have liked 100 per cent compensation, but understand that when you are involved in negotiations, when you reach a settlement, 70 per cent is better than a drawn out case.

So, we welcome the settlement of the class action between the supported employees and the Commonwealth. A number of organisations have been very worried about what the future would be, and I will touch on why the government needs to settle the uncertainty by bringing forward a new non-discriminatory wage tool as soon as possible for the sector. They are hoping they can draw a line in the sand on this issue and move forward. This settlement means that thousands of workers with a disability whose wages are being paid using the BSWAT, a discriminatory wage assessment tool, will now have fairer compensation for the wages they were denied. And it is hard, using this particular tool. I have had people come and say that they have not had an assessment done in a while. I have had people say that they believe their competency level and ability are higher than what the agency has rated them as having. These are workers, at the end of the day. They are very proud of the work they do and should not be discriminated against just because they have a disability.

We are pleased that the parties have finally come to an arrangement. It is disappointing, however, that it has taken so long to come to this point. We opposed this legislation when it first came into the House, because the people at the very centre of this issue were not happy with the 50 per cent mark. And you can understand why, which is why we are taking their guidance in supporting this bill today. Too often people with a disability do not have a strong enough voice, whether in our community or in law. That is why it is so important that people in this place ensure that people with disability do have a strong voice and that they are represented.

It demonstrates again how this government failed to listen to people with a disability and their advocates the first time around. They failed to listen to the peak disability organisations, and the also failed to listen to what the many enterprises, like the ones I mentioned in my electorate, were saying about this particular case. It is only now that we have agreement across the board that we on this side are ready to support it.

I will just give the House a bit of an outline of the great work going on in some of the organisations in my part of the world, starting with Radius Disability Services. They have just opened an exciting retail and hospitality emporium, right in the heart of town. They took over the old Toyworld building and have started to renovate that space. They are focusing on retail and hospitality. Their retail side is basically vintage clothing; they screen-print their own designs and they also make their own clothing. Since their doors opened they have been going quite well. It is an enterprise in which, as you can imagine, they have to sell a lot of shirts that they make in order to break even, so the support they get from the community for this enterprise is welcome. It is also one of the supported-employee locations where they are desperately waiting for the government to finalise the new tool so that they can make sure that their business remains profitable into the future.

The other side of the business, apart from the clothing side, is a hospitality service—catering that they are able to do in the local community as well as hospitality work, such as working in cafes. Through the establishment of this emporium they are training a group of workers, and some of them are applying for work in our local cafe industry. It is wonderful to see people who once might have been written off by our community—saying they could not gain the skills needed to work in hospitality—having, through being involved in Radius, new skills and the ability to go on to further employment. Yes, the training program may have taken a little bit longer than for somebody who goes straight into the hospitality industry, but that is what Radius has been able to offer them.

Another organisation in my part of the world that has a number of small businesses providing supported employees an opportunity to work is Bendigo Access Employment. They have a number of contracts, from environmental services, car services and management services to their PepperGreen Farm site. This is a unique site. It used to be the Chinese Garden markets—until the 1950s. Later, it was turned into a plant nursery, only to be passed on to become the PepperGreen Farm site. At this particular site, supported employees work with their supervisors on their horticultural garden, growing local produce. That produce is for sale—you can buy your PepperGreen Farm produce on Thursdays.

They have now established a kitchen, which is producing meals. This is another catering opportunity, offering 'meals on wheels' for people who may be at home, who may be alone or who may not want to cook. So they are growing their business. Again, this is giving people with a disability an opportunity within this enterprise. The community park has horticulture, environmental education and heritage awareness, and it is operated under the umbrella of Bendigo Access Employment, delivering a number of employment initiatives.

One thing I will say about our supported employee enterprises, our not-for-profit enterprises that rely on supported employee labour, is that they are creating opportunities for a group of workers who would otherwise miss out. They need our support in making sure the wage assessment tool is fair and in accordance with our obligations regarding to workers' rights. They need the acknowledgement that running these enterprises is not like being on the open market. It is more expensive to train people. It is more expensive to make sure that they have the equipment and the appropriate places than it is for private enterprises, so there is a role for government to play in supporting these businesses to make sure that they are meeting the benchmarks required.

I hope that a number of these organisations will be successful in our first round of Stronger Communities grants. Unfortunately, in Bendigo, we are still waiting for many of our grants to be approved. Our disability enterprises, such as Radius and Bendigo Access Employment, have all applied. They have passed the first stage of the process to receive funding to ensure that they have the most up-to-date capital equipment that they need to continue growing their businesses.

We also have the Kyneton and Castlemaine copy centres that do a lot of work for local businesses and schools. At a copy centre, as the name says, they do the printing and the photocopying. The last time I was out at Castlemaine they explained to me that there is a waiting list for people to use the photocopier. They enjoy doing the photocopying and the folding. In the upcoming election, I might need to remember that we have a group of people in the south of the electorate who are very keen to do those jobs.

I am just highlighting how these are people who go to work, who enjoy their work and who just want a fair pay for a fair day's work. It comes back to the key point: whilst this bill is about ensuring that people who have been underpaid get some kind of compensation, the government needs to get on with the job of finalising the new non-discrimination wage tool so that future supported employees are not underpaid and are not left with so much uncertainty. It is also so important for their organisations that they know they are paying people the right rate of pay.

I would also call on the government to make sure that there are clear rules and guidelines about where and when you can apply this tool. In one particular case, a business in Bendigo that was doing traffic management, came to see me because they had lost their entire contract to a business, based in Melbourne, that was coming up to Bendigo to do the work. They were paying supported employees as little as $2 an hour. The Bendigo business said: 'We cannot compete with that. We are paying people award wages and this business, which claims to be a disability support organisation and has people on supported employee wages, is paying them $2 an hour.'

When we are in the space of workers' rights, when we are in the space of wages, when we are in a contracting industry, like traffic management, where wage bills can be the competitive edge, we need to make sure that this tool is not being used inappropriately. Where it can be demonstrated that it is, we need to make sure that the employer is held to task and that they are not misusing this tool and underpaying people, deliberately, in order to win contracts. It is not the only place that it has happened. It has also happened in the cleaning and maintaining of local government cars. The local government stepped in to say: 'This is not appropriate. If person A gets paid X wages, person B should get paid X wages.'

The whole point of the tool is to fairly assess people in their capacity to do a job. That is part of the problem, in this space, when it comes to Australians with a disability. We need to give people with a disability more of an opportunity to gain meaningful employment. In Australian workplaces, we have one of the lowest rates of people with a disability working. It is the role of government to help support people with a disability gain employment—not only to help businesses to hire people but also to help change the culture.

I can remember that when my offices were renovated in Bendigo we were hoping to have somebody from Scope come in and volunteer with us. We were hoping to offer work to somebody who is in a chair. But when we put forward the plans to have our offices renovated, what was knocked back was having a disabled toilet installed. It makes it very hard for me as a local federal member to employ somebody who may need a disabled toilet, because it was knocked back. The Department of Parliamentary Services said that the budget just did not stretch far enough. So that is just an example of how if, as a parliament, we want to be a model employer, we need to make sure that we have appropriate facilities for people with a disability.

It also goes beyond just government; it also means that we need to challenge employers about who they give a job to. We need to make sure that there is not so much a cash incentive on the table but that we are actually rewarding and encouraging best practice—making sure we are giving people who might be differently-abled the opportunity.

I met a fantastic young man when I was out at Radius Enterprises. They have a recycling and environmental service where they drive around in empty trucks to where people have donated goodwill items in clothing bins. They then load up the trucks and send them to Melbourne. Basically, the old clothes are turned into new product. He had gone from being a supported employee to being on the books as a full-time employee, as a supervisor. He said that when he was younger he was just written off, 'I still don't quite know what disability I have, but I was just kind of judged.' Now, he is running the service. It is a great success story and we need more of those.

We need our government to get serious and to finalise the new non-discriminatory wage tool so that more people have an opportunity.

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