Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill is an incredibly important bill and an urgent bill. It is about getting wages moving again and modernising Australia's workplace relation system. Australians have been waiting too long for a much deserved pay rise. They've been waiting 10 years, and they shouldn't wait any longer. That's why it's important that we get this bill through. What this bill does is improve job security and gender equity. It improves workplace conditions and protections, and it boosts bargaining and restores fairness and integrity to fair work institutions. It increases job security, which is so important.

This bill is for workers who have been the heroes of the pandemic, the people who are underpaid, who fronted up day after day to keep people safe—the cleaners; the people in retail who fronted up day after day in that really stressful time of uncertainty; the people who are working multiple jobs just to feed their families, as we see increasingly insecure work and low-paid work in this country. It's for the people who fronted up day after day to care for the oldest Australians, aged-care workers. I'm really pleased to see that the Fair Work Commission has granted them the interim pay rise that they so much deserve after the advocacy of those workers, of unions and of the now Labor government. What our system needs is more than these case-by-case improvements. It need across-the-board reform to restore the balance and protect people who don't have the bargaining power in the workplace that they should have. This the for the people who fronted up in the pandemic to care for and educate the youngest Australians, our early childhood education and care workers. This is for people who are struggling at the moment with cost-of-living pressures, in my electorate and in every electorate that is represented in this place. It is important that we get this done to get the balance right in our workplaces and move into the future with a system that helps workers.

When an economy is managed properly, wages grow. That is not what we saw under the former government. We saw a decade of stagnant wages, and it is time that it ends. Working Australians have waited long enough. It's no surprise that those in the opposition don't support this. We've been listening to their speeches, and it's the same old stuff about unions—scaremongering about unions, about the impact this will have—and it's really the greatest hits from those opposite. It really is not surprising because the coalition in government had low wages openly and proudly as part of their economic strategy. You will never hear that from people on our side because we want an economy that works for Australians. When an economy is working well, people have wages that are growing, people have stability in their jobs, and that is what we need.

This is a bill that will improve gender equity in our economy. We in Australia are shamefully ranked 43rd for gender equity, and that has fallen in recent years. This is not good enough. We are well behind many similar countries. We have a gender pay gap of 14.1 per cent that persists. A huge part of this is the highly feminised industries, the female dominated industries, that are not given the respect they deserve, because value is not placed on the work that they are doing—caring work, which is skilled work, which is emotionally and physically draining work and which is incredibly dedicated work. It is work about which there should be no doubt as to its value because it is caring for our loved ones and educating our loved ones. It is incredibly important. These are the very people—and the cleaners, the retail workers and the others I've mentioned—whose wages have been stagnant for too long and who are being abused by the system, essentially, because they do not have a system that works for them that gives them any kind of fair standing in the workplace. This is about restoring that balance.

The gender pay gap persists in all industries but especially in these highly feminised industries, as I've mentioned. To reduce gender pay inequity, this bill will introduce a number of measures. A key one is banning pay-secrecy clauses so that companies can't prohibit staff talking about pay if they want to. It sounds ridiculous that that exists in 2022, but it does. It means that it can keep women in particular in the dark about the disparity between their pay and that of colleagues. This bill will address that, and it's very important. This will improve transparency and reduce the risk of gender pay discrimination, and it will empower women to ask their employers for pay rises. It will make gender equity a central objective of the Fair Work Act, including the modern award system, putting the issue at the heart of pay decisions made by the Fair Work Commission.

The government is also committed to enshrining job security as an object of the Fair Work Act to make clear the importance of job security in the workplace relations system. As I've said, at the moment in our economy, we see people increasingly having to work multiple jobs just to feed their families, to pay their rent and to fill their car with petrol. It is really difficult. This is not the Australia we want. We want an Australia where people have well-paid, secure, stable jobs. We saw just what no job security was like in the pandemic. When that pandemic hit, people didn't know if they were going to keep their jobs, and many people did lose their jobs. We did see some good things put in place by the former government to help people through that, but the people that they left out were casuals, and that was disgraceful. These were the people who had no job security.

We saw the impact of no job security when that pandemic hit and we see it in changing economic times, with the economic uncertainty that we're facing at the moment with the global situation. Job security is what people need to get on with their lives and support their families, and this bill will help to deliver that.

The bill will also implement one of the outcomes from the Jobs and Skills Summit: to provide stronger access to flexible working arrangements.

In line with recommendation 28 of the Respect@Work report, the bill will also introduce into the Fair Work Act a new prohibition on sexual harassment, including a new dispute resolution mechanism at the Fair Work Commission. This will provide all Australian workers with access to quick, informal dispute resolution before the specialist workplace relations tribunal.

As an outcome of the Jobs and Skills Summit earlier this year, the government agreed to strengthen protections against discrimination in the workplace. The bill does it by adding breastfeeding, gender identity and intersex status to the list of prohibited characteristics in the Fair Work Act, and this will align the Fair Work Act with other Commonwealth antidiscrimination laws—another really important part of this bill.

This bill contains measures to enhance the compliance and enforcement framework of the Fair Work Act. To deter underpayment and ensure that workers are paid correctly, the bill implements a recommendation of the Migrant Workers' Taskforce by prohibiting employers from advertising jobs with rates of pay which breach the Fair Work Act and relevant instruments.

The bill will also make amendments to the small claims process in the Fair Work Act to better support the recovery of unpaid entitlements.

Australia's enterprise bargaining system has been in decline for the last 10 years. Around half as many new agreements were made in 2020-21 as were made in 2013-14.

This bill is overdue, and I am so proud that on forming government we are making one of our first priorities putting in place a system, modernising a system, that will get wages moving again for Australians—Australians who are hurting at the moment. Every member of this place knows, if they are listening to their electorate, that people need a wage rise. They have waited too long.

Another really important part of this bill is abolishing the ABCC, because we believe that people in the construction industry should be subject to the same rules as everyone else and not be persecuted for being part of their unions. This is something I talked about in in my first speech, and I'm really pleased that this bill will deliver that. (Time expired)

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