Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

Can I join with you, Mr Speaker, and express warmest regards on behalf of all Labor members. Unfortunately, our leader can't be in the House at the moment, but I'm sure if he were he would be expressing his warmest regards to the delegation from Ireland and talking about the very strong links that exist not only between this parliament and our friends in Ireland but between the Australian Labor Party and our friends in Ireland. It's lovely to have you here today.

I was talking about the important role that unions play in creating equality in this country. Unions are essentially what we do about inequality in Australia, because if you look at the difference between those countries that have narrowed the gap in inequality and those that have increased the gap between the haves and have-nots there is one thing in common: it's their industrial relations system and the existence of strong, responsible unions. It matters a lot in electorates like mine, where employees earn less than the national average—certainly a lot less than the average they earn in the Prime Minister's electorate. And they think that the Prime Minister and those who serve him simply do not get what life is like for them.

I spend a lot of time travelling throughout the regions in my portfolio responsibility, and the thing that is brought home to me from town to town, from workplace to workplace, is the deep concern that people have about insecure work—whether it's the casualisation of work in their workplace, or whether it's the fact that they were once a permanent employee and they lost that job and they are now working maybe two or three days a fortnight in very precarious employment arrangements. Maybe they are described as an independent contractor with their own business. But when, in fact, they have no control over their working hours, their terms and conditions or their tools of trade, they are an employee by any other name. It is a problem right throughout regional Australia—precarious employment, insecure work, people wanting more hours than they have, people wanting a permanent job. People want a secure job so they can go to their bank manager and say, 'How about that loan application so that I can buy my home?'; so they can go to the bank manager and say, 'I need to get a replacement car because this one isn't doing it anymore'; so they can restructure their credit, so they are not continually on the credit treadmill.

Unions are what we do about insecure work. Unions in the workplace and unions in the industry are the people who are bargaining for secure work, bargaining for greater control over outsourcing of work and bargaining for a say over how labour hire is used in a workplace. Too often we see a responsible negotiation between a union and an employer being secured on a Monday and before the ink is even dry on that agreement workers are being sacked within the workplace and replaced by labour hire on lesser wages and conditions. This is not conscionable behaviour. This is what drives inequality and drives insecure work, and decent responsible unions are what we do about this. It is what we do about this.

There's been a lot of talk about the need for an injection of wage growth in this country. Australia, in short, needs a pay rise. Instead of grasping this challenge and putting in place the policies and structures which are going to be able to ensure that workers are able to bargain for and get the pay rise they deserve and the economy needs, the government is introducing legislation such as this, which drags us backwards and makes it harder for workers to be represented and to bargain for that pay rise that we need. It makes it harder for them to defend conditions that they already have. You may be aware that about 700,000 workers are likely to be affected by the Fair Work decision to remove certainly penalty rates from their wages and conditions. Cutting penalty rates will see a pay cut of around $77 a week for low and middle-income and working-class families. At the very same time that everyone from the Reserve Bank—the minister on some days and not on other days—is saying that Australians need and deserve a pay rise, they are supporting these changes. One member even described it as a gift to workers. They are supporting these changes that are making it harder for workers to make ends meet.

So, we do need some changes in our industrial relations laws. We need some changes that are going to make it easier for workers to bargain for and secure a pay rise. They deserve it, and the economy needs it. We need laws that will ensure that workers and their representatives will be able to bargain for job security, to bargain to put in place measures to do away with insecure work in their workplace, so that they can have decent, secure jobs wherever they live, wherever they work. We need to put in place laws that will enable unions, workers and their representatives to protect jobs in regional Australia so that the sacking of workers in these 70 jobs that are earmarked to be taken from Nowra, only to be transferred here to Canberra, can be stopped. A strong union in a workplace like that would ensure that those job cuts do not go ahead.

So, I implore all those members opposite, instead of coming in here and voting for this legislation today, to do the right thing by their electorates, to ensure not only that these laws do not go ahead but that we do something to protect the jobs of those people I've identified—particularly in the case of those Nationals members who'll bang the drum and talk to anyone who'll listen to them about the importance of decentralising work. Well, the first step in ensuring that we have more jobs in regional Australia is to protect the ones that are there at the moment. For these and so many other reasons, this bill should be rejected.

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