Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Next week marks 25 years since the election of the Howard government. While some Liberals may celebrate this milestone, others will be reminded of the Work Choices debacle and how it led to the demise of an increasingly arrogant and out-of-touch Howard government. Regrettably, the bill before us today, the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020, shows us that those opposite have learnt nothing in the intervening years. A quarter of a century after the Liberals suffered a humiliating rejection by the Australian people, which saw the government dumped and the leader lose his own seat after going after workers' pay and conditions, they're at it again.

Many of us had hoped that the experience of COVID had led the Morrison government to have an epiphany and finally turn their backs on their core business of attacking working Australians. Indeed, there was great optimism last year when the Prime Minister yielded to Labor's calls for wage subsidies to protect jobs and to keep money flowing through to local economies. The creation of JobKeeper even led some to think that the Liberals had finally kicked their longstanding habit of responding to every economic challenge by going after workers' pay and conditions. Some even dared to hope that a fundamental truth may have dawned on the Liberal Party—that when working Australians are doing well, the whole country benefits. The optimism grew when the government announced that it was going to lay down its weapons and work in genuine partnership with employers and unions to come together with an industrial relations reform agenda that would actually benefit workers. Well, I never! What a radical idea!

Labor approached the legislation with an open mind. The legislation just had to answer one question: would it create secure jobs with decent pay for Australian workers? Sadly, in this case, the answer was a resounding no. Indeed, the legislation was going to deliver a pay cut for people on every single award in Australia. Under this legislation, employers would be permitted to violate the better off overall test, a critical safeguard which, as the name implies, protects workers by prohibiting agreements that would leave them worse off. This cruel plan would allow new agreements to get rid of any penalty rates or shift penalties, costing workers as much as $11,000 a year. Employers could take advantage of this option if they were affected by COVID-19, but, under the government's definition, it would be hard to find an employer that would not fall into this category. While the government argued that it was a temporary measure, the reality is that it runs for at least two years for the making of agreements that will then last for years themselves. In the firing line were some of the lowest paid people in the workforce. These include cleaners, supermarket workers, cooks, truck drivers, childcare workers and aged-care staff—indeed, the very people who have already sacrificed so much during this global pandemic. This is shameful. After a terrible pandemic year—indeed, using COVID-19 as a cover—the government quickly returned to form, trying to slash the pay and conditions of some of the lowest paid workers in Australia. To think that only a few months ago, the Prime Minister was insisting that we were 'all in this together'! It is unbelievable.

Thankfully, but unsurprisingly, the crossbench senators agreed with Labor and refused to sign up to this unconscionable attack on workers, so we now know that the government will be forced to pass amendments to dump the suspension of the better off overall test. This is good, but don't be fooled. It doesn't make this bill good—not by a long shot. It failed Labor's test of creating the conditions for secure jobs with decent pay in December, and it won't deliver secure jobs with decent pay today. In some cases, it directly levies pay cuts. It also changes the bargaining rules, which will make it harder for workers to negotiate, and it removes other measures that are designed to protect workers.

We know there is a massive problem in Australia with permanent, ongoing jobs being billed as casual jobs to deny workers the security and leave protections that they deserve. Indeed, the percentage of casual workers had grown from 23.5 per cent to 25.1 per cent of the workforce before COVID took hold in 2020, and casual jobs comprise a massive 60 per cent of all wage jobs created since May of last year. This rampant problem was recently put to the test in the courts when the CFMEU challenged the 'permanent casual' rort. This was a landmark case which found that work that is regular, ongoing and permanent in nature cannot be defined as casual. This bill essentially overrules that Federal Court decision. It endorses the shameful rorting that has been going on for years, denying workers the security and entitlements that permanent work offers.

The government argues that everything's fine because there's a casual loading. Well, we know from a recent Griffith University report by Professor Peetz that more than half of Australia's casual workers actually don't get any casual loading at all. For these workers, being casual doesn't equal flexibility. It means fewer rights, no sick pay, no holiday pay, no ability to get a home loan and no casual loading to help compensate for the lack of benefits that are enjoyed by permanent employees. What we're looking at now is a unilateral move to nullify the rights of workers who find themselves in this situation. This is yet another unconscionable attack on job security.

Next I'd like to talk about the changes that the bill makes to enterprise bargaining—changes that are permanent and almost always in favour of the employer. Take this, for example: employers can now go through the bargaining process for four weeks before they even tell workers that bargaining has started and that they have the right to be represented. Similarly, unions are no longer able to scrutinise non-union agreements if they fall short of the standards. And Fair Work will be limited in what it can consider when determining if workers are indeed better off through an agreement. There is also a change which actually allows illegal clauses in agreements—clauses that don't comply with the National Employment Standards. This undermining of the National Employment Standards is appalling and will make it nearly impossible for workers to get a fair deal.

The government has consistently used the excuse of COVID-19 as a cover to justify attacking workers' rights, to argue that the system is skewed and that more flexibility is needed. Of course, we know that flexibility, when used by the Morrison Liberal government, is in fact code for removing industrial protections from Australian workers. The government is right; there is an imbalance in industrial relations. But it's certainly not in favour of the workers. We only need to look at how the workers' share of the national pie is declining. In Australia the total share of income paid to workers through wages and salaries has been declining since the 1970s. At the same time there has been an accompanying growth in the share of national income that is going to capital owners in terms of profit. This isn't good. It is not proportionate and it's not fair.

We can also see this imbalance demonstrated starkly through our wage growth statistics. Indeed, in the most recent quarterly wage price index, which was released in November last year, wages grew by just 0.1 per cent for the private sector and 0.2 per cent for the public sector. This is the lowest quarterly rise since records began 23 years ago. The annual growth rate fell from its previous record low of 1.8 per cent in the year to the June quarter to just 1.4 per cent. Record low wage growth is the Liberals' legacy for working Australians. Let's never forget that shameful fact. This bill shows us that the Morrison government is not yet finished.

Let's be clear: the Morrison government has dumped its changes to the better off overall test not because it has realised how egregious they were but so it can still have a chance to progress through the Senate other parts of the bill that attack workers' pay and conditions. This means one thing: the Morrison Liberal government has learnt nothing from its past mistakes, it hasn't seen the evil of its ways and it will try again at the first opportunity. This is why Labor has launched a national campaign to put pressure on the Morrison government to dump this toxic bill in full, in its entirety. The last thing our nation needs right now is a war on workers' pay and conditions. It's not a war we would ever want to see in this nation. At a time when we are seeking to recover from an economic crisis in the wake of a global pandemic, this is a shameless and reckless plan for our nation.

This bill is nothing short of economic vandalism. Frankly, government members should feel deeply ashamed to be part of this ongoing attack on the millions of people they have been elected to represent. The Morrison Liberal government members might like to tell themselves that it is somehow for the greater good for workers to take a hit, because businesses and the economy will flourish. But the sad reality that the Liberals have never seemed to wrap their heads around is: when workers suffer, business suffers too. By attacking workers, this bill attacks the Australian economy and, indeed, our nation as a whole. This bill will only serve to further reduce people's disposable income, ripping precious dollars out of workers' pockets and, indeed, our local communities—communities like Newcastle—at the worst possible time. If workers don't have any money, business is bad. If business is bad, jobs aren't created. It is really that simple. Just as the Prime Minister's decision to slash penalty rates for millions of Australians did not create a single job, this legislation will do nothing but make it harder for working Australians to make a decent living.

It is gravely disappointing to see the Morrison government return to the Liberals' old strategy of attacking workers again and again. Have they learnt nothing from the pandemic or the past? Surely it's now time to acknowledge that slashing wages and conditions isn't going to help anybody. Let's not hinder our economic recovery, Mr Morrison, with a stubborn adherence to Liberal Party ideology and time-worn strategies of going after workers at every opportunity.

Abandoning plans to scrap the better off overall test is a good start, but it sure as hell is not enough. The industrial relations imbalance between workers and business remains very skewed in this nation. We recognise the power imbalance in that relationship and the need for government to continuously seek to redress that imbalance. It's time for the government to dump this toxic bill in full and to focus instead on ensuring that workers get their fair share of the national pie. That's why Labor's message to all working Australian men and women is that we're on your side. We're here to ensure you get a fair deal and we'll be holding this government to account every single day.

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