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

For many years the Greens have been crystal clear that the industrial relations system in this country is broken. It is too hard for people to organise, it is too hard for people to get a pay rise, and it has worked especially badly for women and for the low paid. After decades of stripping back awards and making it harder for people to organise, we have seen wages go backwards in real terms, and people are now suffering, especially when you combine that with massively high inflation. A big part of that is problems with the Fair Work Act.

We also have been saying very, very clearly for many years now that we have a work and care crisis in this country. It is too hard for too many workers and especially women—not only women, but the burden of caring especially falls on women—to balance their work and care responsibilities. People are being pulled at a number of ends. It's not just people having to look after their children; it is also many people being sandwiched in the generation where they're looking after their children and their parents as well. The pressures that are being brought to bear on work and care are reaching crisis point for many people in this country. That's why, going back a decade, the first bill to give people an enforceable right to flexible working arrangements was introduced by me into this House in 2012. It was designed to give people an enforceable right to flexible working arrangements. At that stage it wasn't supported by Labor or the coalition. The first bill to ban pay secrecy clauses, which we know contribute to the gender pay gap, was introduced by Senator Waters back in 2015. At that point it was not supported by either Labor or Liberal.

On this question of ensuring that people have proper enforceable rights to have better pay arrangements and that we close the gender pay gap, the Greens have been leading. The Greens have been leading for years in this place, bringing legislation to this parliament that would have an effect. We've also been crystal clear for many, many years that we need to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission. It is a blight on the rule of law in this country that, if you happen to work in a particular industry—in this instance, the construction sector—you have fewer rights than someone who works somewhere in a different sector. This includes that you can get brought in front of what is effectively a secret police force and you be denied your right to silence and forced to answer questions in a way that other workers just don't have.

For years we have been pushing in this place to restore the rule of law by getting rid of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, and we haven't always been supported by others. But we have been consistent in fighting for women, fighting for rights for carers and fighting to ensure that people across this country have their rights protected. We took that to the election and we've also made it clear to the government that we want to see action on those areas and that we would support action on those areas. When the government brought its bill to this place, we were pleased to see a number of the things the Greens have been fighting for for years included in this bill, although we had some concerns about a number of elements of the bill because we think they didn't do what we thought the government was trying to do with them. One area is fixed term contracts, for example. Again, we'd brought legislation to this place to address the scourge of fixed term contracts and the rise of insecure work before anyone else did. It was opposed by Labor and Liberal, when the Greens brought legislation to this place to tackle the scourge of fixed term contracts in higher education and in the aged-care sector.

We raised these issues with the government and we see that a number of those matters have been addressed in the amendments that have been circulated. On the basis that a number of the issues the Greens have been raising for some time being included in this bill and also the fact that a number of the issues we raised with respect to the original drafting being addressed, the Greens will support this bill and the amendments in this House. They will make a big difference to a number of workers right across the country, so we'll be voting in favour of the bill and the amendments when it comes to a vote, which I understand will be tomorrow. There are still some outstanding issues, and we know that the bill will go to the Senate after it's passed here. In the Senate the government is obviously going to need the support of the Greens to get this legislation through and is going to need the support of others in the Senate as well.

There are issues that we continue to have with the bill where we can see the potential that people could go backwards. I don't think that's the government's intention, but having practised in this area of law for over a decade we know where the traps lie in bills like this. We will be continuing to have good faith discussions with the government about those areas as the bill comes before the Senate. Of course, it will ultimately be up to the government as to what form the legislation reaches the Senate in. We thank the minister for having those discussions with us in good faith. We will continue on that basis as the legislation reaches the Senate. We hope that those issues can be resolved by the time that it gets to the Senate.

I also want to commend and place on the record here the work of Senator Barbara Pocock from the Greens, our employment spokesperson. Before she came to this place, she was Australia's foremost academic in the field of work and care. She knows, I suspect better than anyone else, the depth of the work and care crisis that exists in this country and the solutions that are needed. In the short time that she's been here she's not only managed to get a Senate Select Committee on Work and Care established but that committee has issued an interim report that had Labor-Greens majority recommendations that said clearly we need to start taking action to address this work and care crisis. I commend her for that work and bringing her expertise to the Senate, and getting a majority of the Senate on board. It shows that in this parliament now—the parliament that the people voted for at the last election—there is a real prospect, if we choose to take and seize this opportunity, of addressing some of the big issues that have been affecting women and that have been leading to a work and care crisis in this country. If we do that we will go a long way to addressing 10 years of seeing wages go backwards, the growing pressure and a crisis that means that people can't live their lives with their families, with their friends—live the kind of full life that they want.

Basically, deregulation has got out of control in this country, and that includes in the work sector. As a result people are left with next to no ability to exercise real control over their working arrangements. That means being able to balance your responsibilities at home, your responsibilities that you might have to people who you are caring for, your responsibilities you might have to your parents who getting old and need looking after with your right to continue working. For too long that burden has been pushed down on individual people. People have been feeling the crunch for too long. If we can get some reforms through this parliament where the government does not have a majority in both houses of parliament and is going to need to work with others to get things through, if we can get reform on that during in the course of this parliament, then I suspect the Australian people—especially women across this country who bear the burden of caring responsibilities—are going to thank us for it. We're up for seizing that opportunity. We will keep pushing to ensure that people have more control over their work and care arrangements.

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