House debates

Monday, 9 September 2019

Bills

Fair Work Laws Amendment (Proper Use of Worker Benefits) Bill 2019; Second Reading

5:08 pm

Photo of Adam BandtAdam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Those on the government benches and those in various places who are considering supporting this bill may not realise it, but, in many respects, this bill is a recipe for more industrial action. In many industries that are going to be hardest hit by the effects of this bill, like the construction industry, it pays to know a little bit about the nature of that industry before charging off with a bill that is politically motivated and is said to achieve one certain end but is in fact going to do something quite different to the industry.

Most people would be aware that in the construction industry, for example, you have not only lots of employers but also lots of subcontractors. When there's a project the head tenderer, the head company, might bid on that project and get the project, but very rarely do they themselves employ all the people who work on that project. They'll employ lots of subcontractors. Those subcontractors will in turn engage employees, or they may even go through further subcontractors themselves. All of the people who are going to work on that project building a hospital or erecting some kind of new government building may not be there from beginning to end. They may do one particular job on that project for one particular subcontractor. That may come to an end and they may then go off and find work somewhere else.

Unlike people who, say, might work in one job with one employer for five years and have some entitlements saved up at the end of it when they leave and move on to something else, someone who works in the construction industry is perennially going from employer to employer to employer, from job to job to job, because that is the nature of the industry. That means that, potentially, you're being made redundant or you're being terminated at the end of every job, and then you go off and find something else. Something that for many of us might happen every five or 10 years, if that is how long you choose to stay with your employer, happens for many workers in the construction industry on a regular basis.

What's happened in the construction industry because of that is that the employees, their representatives the unions, and the employers have come together and said: How can we make this work to ensure that someone who works five years straight through, all the way through, but for multiple employers, can be sure that they're going to get all of their entitlements? How can we make this work, especially in the case where some of the smaller employers might phoenix—be here today, gone tomorrow and then resurrected somewhere else at some later stage? Even if they don't phoenix, even if you don't have an employer who is trying to flout the rules, the nature of the industry means that people will move from job to job.

So what has happened as a result? They've all sat down and, rather than have a big fight at the end of every job about whether someone has been made redundant and is entitled to redundancy pay, and rather than have a fight about whether someone has been unfairly dismissed when their employer lays them off and shifts them over to another employer because that's the way the tender has gone, they have agreed: 'No, let's put the money into a central pool. Let's get employers to contribute to a central pool so that everyone who works in the industry knows that, no matter what the status of their particular employer—whether they're working on a different job tomorrow from the one they worked on yesterday—their entitlements are secure.' That means that not only are the workers looked after but employers get the big benefit of industrial peace, as well. Employers now know that, if they don't get a particular job, people who were working for them could be laid off and perhaps even moved over to a completely different employer in a way that you couldn't do in other industries, because you can't transfer people around like that in other industries. They know that they can do that and that the employees will be okay with that, because all of their entitlements are secure and are being managed by an organisation that is representative of employees and employers and their respective organisations.

These income protection schemes bring the benefit of stability to these industries, and, because they are managing funds together, they are able to use interest rates on those funds for things that benefit the industry as a whole, things such as occupational health and safety training. In my state of Victoria there is actually an agreement between employers and employees to ensure that high standards of OH&S are upheld, and that is funded in part by some of the extra interest that has accrued on these worker-benefits schemes. Because they do it this way they are also able to provide training that suits the industry. Again, I'm stressing that this is done between employers and employees. They are able to use the money, the interest that's raised on top of this. They are able to use some of the results of their investments, which happens when you come and do things collectively at scale, to get training done that suits the needs of the industry. It provides a measure of industrial peace and it also provides services to the industry in a way that suits employers and employees in the industry.

You would think that this government of free marketeers, who tell us about the primacy of contract, would love a situation where people in the industry have sat down and negotiated for themselves arrangements that suit the particular industry. That is what we have got when it comes to looking after people's benefits; when it comes to services like counselling that are provided to people that are specific to a particular industry; when it comes to training; when it comes to occupational health and safety; when it comes to providing insurance to people and being able to negotiate those things in bulk. That is what we've got at the moment, but all of that is under threat from this bill for nothing more than naked ideological reasons.

Things like occupational health and safety, for example, where you've got employers and employees working together with government and coming together to use funds to do that, are directly threatened by clause 329LD of this bill. It is out there trying to interfere in what employers and employees have negotiated to suit their industry, simply because the government doesn't like it. The government want to shift a lot more of this work about looking after people over to their mates in the insurance sector, shift it off to the banks so that perhaps they can make a bit more money, or to the financial sector so they can make some more money out of things like insurance products. If occupational health and safety has to be a victim of that by the wayside then so be it, because this mob care more about money than they do about safety. Why else would you bring in a bill that says that an arrangement that works at the moment, where you have effective co-funding and co-management by employers and employees of something as basic as occupational health and safety and training, now has to be threatened and ripped apart by this government just because the government doesn't like it? That's what clause 329LD of this bill will do.

Clause 329MJ of the bill also threatens the ability to negotiate insurance for people collectively on behalf of a whole workforce by using the clout that comes with working together. We also see with section 329LD of the bill that wellbeing services, which are so essential in an industry like construction, where the rate of suicide is higher than in the general population, are threatened by this bill. Why is this happening? It is happening because the government says: 'What would people have to hide if they went out to contract on everything like industry training, for example, where it now has to be funded at market value and on commercial terms? Why should anyone have any concern about that?' Well, have you seen what has happened to the training system in this country? Have you seen how many dodgy operators stick up their hand and say, 'Yes, we can provide you something cheap,' and it turns out that they're providing you something that's cheap because it's useless. That in turn has blown out both Commonwealth and state budgets, and now the government is having to rein that in. The geniuses behind this bill have said: 'Actually, we want more of it. We want to force industries like construction to hand over money to more of those dodgy training providers because—' Why? Because of what? This bill is a solution in search of a problem. The best that the Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations has been able to come up with is to point to activity that happened not before the government first introduced this bill but after. He points to the fact that after a version of this bill was first introduced in the last parliament some funds took action to deal with the fact that, if the bill passed, they were going to be restricted in the kinds of services that they were going to be able to provide. They knew they weren't going to be able to provide the counselling services, the insurance services and the like. And so, according to submissions that they've made to the Senate committee, what did they do? They gave some of the money back to the people who own the fund for the purpose of providing those services so that the counselling services and the like could continue to be provided.

When we said we were going to introduce the bill some people turned around and modified their actions so that they could continue to provide those services in case the bill came in. The best that the government could do was to say: 'Aha, we've got you! You transferred money out of the fund.' Yes. Well, der, Sherlock, of course they did, because you were about to introduce a piece of legislation that said important services that the employers and the employees wanted to continue were now no longer going to be done, or at least were going to be at threat. So don't use the fact that people did things after you introduced the bill to put themselves in a good position to provide the services that people need as justification for this bill. If the government had a smoking gun of some industries or some funds that had somehow been using money in some unlawful way, you would think they would be shouting that from the rooftops. But, no, they don't have that. The best they can do is to say that people took defensive action in response to a bill that's going to harm their ability to provide services. Well, that just doesn't cut it.

What I can say is that in Melbourne this will jeopardise the stability of the construction industry and the people who work in industries like it, whether in the electrical component of it or in construction. In those industries, where people move from job to job, they are now making it harder for the employers and employees to come together to look after each other and to allow that to continue in an agreed manner. What they are also jeopardising is training. The government has not once come in and said, 'Here's a training centre that is providing substandard training.' No. The training that is being provided and the occupational health and safety services that are being provided under the schemes that this government is attacking are top of the class in the country. They're top of the class because they're done in a way that meets the needs of the employers in the industry. The employers get to sit down and say, 'This is the kind of training and the kind of OHS we want.'

And it is largely self-funded. These aren't some great big slush funds that benefit unions or employer associations. They provide services to the industry. When this bill cuts them out and says, 'No, things like occupational health and safety, or industry training, or wellbeing or assurances are now all at risk,' what that does is start to erode the whole foundation of this scheme that has seen employers and employees come together to bring some level of stability. You are going to see instability in the industry. You're going to see services decline, you're going to see standards decline and you're going to see pushback.

I don't expect the government ever listens to evidence or ever listens to reason, but I say to everyone else who's considering supporting this bill: be careful. Be very, very careful because this is not a bill about improving accountability. This is a bill that's ideologically motivated, and there will be pushback.

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