Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was going to give the opposition a gift and not talk for very long, but they don't have another speaker here, so I'm giving them fair warning that, if another speaker doesn't appear, I may speak for 15 whole minutes on the bill. I'm perfectly happy—and able—to do so. Having put out that disclaimer, I'm wondering whether one of them is going to run out quickly and find another speaker, in the hope that I'll stop! I do have somewhere else I need to be.

However, I do want to make some remarks on this Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023. It is important. Since coming into government, more than 500,000 jobs have been created already. That's more than any first-term government in Australia's history. And 85 per cent of those jobs are full-time jobs. Wages are now growing at the fastest rate in a decade. That's important in a cost-of-living crisis. I know those opposite don't understand this, and they don't like to hear it, but, in a cost-of-living crisis, it's not just about inflation and the way that prices go up. It's also about the money that comes into workers' bank accounts. It's about money that comes into the family or into the household, and that's why it's so important that we now have a government that has as its policy—as a deliberate design feature of our economic management—seeing wages grow.

But the truth also is that many Australians are not receiving the full benefits of this wages growth because of legal loopholes that allow pay and conditions to be undercut. It's also a shameful fact that, in this country now, a large amount of wages are simply stolen from workers. The McKell Institute analysis, based on Fair Work Commission data and audits, showed that Australian workers were underpaid nearly $850 million a year, ripping $330 million of economic activity out of the country. In my electorate of Bruce alone, estimates are that 8,000 people lost nearly $5 million in wage theft in just one year.

What does this bill do about it? It does four things, in simple terms. First, it makes wage theft illegal. If an employee steals from an employer, it's illegal, but it's not a crime when an employer intentionally steals from their workers. It should be. Second, it stops employers using labour hire agreements to undercut wages. Of course there is a legitimate role for labour hire work in Australia but not when a business uses it to blatantly avoid enterprise rates of pay. This is a loophole that the bill will close.

The third thing it does is improve the situation for casual workers. Many Australians work permanent regular hours, just the same as permanent employees, but they can't get any of the benefits of job security, even if they want to. This bill will simply allow casuals to choose. There'll be a new pathway for eligible employees to change to permanent employment if they want to. I stress that again: it will be the choice of the employee. Nothing in this bill forces casuals to take permanent work. Many casuals want to stay casual; that is absolutely fine. But many casuals workers want the benefits of sick leave and the protections that come with it. We saw that during the pandemic, when millions of workers were suddenly stranded. Although they'd been doing the same thing in the same job year after year, they had no sick leave when disaster struck. This bill will deal with that.

The fourth thing the bill does is set fair minimum standards for employee-like work for gig economy workers in the gig economy. Gig workers have no minimum standards, no minimum pay and no minimum conditions. That's a disgrace. Gig economy workers are exactly the sort of worker whom the Labor Party has always fought for. They need basic workplace standards. This loophole is a rort. It causes serious harm—physical harm, economic harm, social harm—to workers and it's not fair.

But these are not just statistics; they're real people right across Australia. Everyday Australians in every community, as well as vulnerable migrant workers, are being hurt and exploited because of these loopholes. And remember that, when migrant workers are exploited, it doesn't just impact other people; it impacts everyone in Australia because it drags down the pay and conditions of everyone else. I have one example in my electorate of Bruce. The Fair Work Ombudsman sanctioned a waste management company more than $375,000 after five vulnerable migrant workers were underpaid almost $200,000 over just 20 months in 2018-19. Do the maths. That's $2,000 per month per worker. They were employed to sort waste at facilities in Dandenong and Hallam. This example sums up the four main elements of the bill: labour hire loopholes, having their wages stolen, casual workers who actually want permanent regular hours, no minimum rates and minimum standards, and gig economy workers being ripped off.

It is worth reflecting on why these loopholes exist. There's a simple answer. For nearly a decade the Liberals, the former government, simply refused to do anything. They knew that these labour hire loopholes and rorts were growing. They had report after report that they failed to act on. They knew that, with digital technology, the gig economy forms of work were exploding. They had reports, they were told and they did nothing. And they knew that wage theft by unscrupulous employers—a minority of employers of course; most employers don't steal wages from their workers—was out of control. But the Liberals knew perfectly well that a small minority of bottom-feeder employers were doing exactly that, and they stood by and did nothing. It drags down wages for everyone.

I stress again that the McKell Institute analysis showed that the average Australian worker would've been earning $254 more a week if, under that mob in their wasted decade of decay, dysfunction and division, wages growth had simply continued at the same rate it had been at under the Rudd-Gillard government. Under Labor, under Rudd and Gillard, wages grew at 4.6 per cent on average. Under the Libs, it was 2.5 per cent. Real wages actually went backwards in their decade in office. But that was actually no accident. In one of those rare outbreaks of honesty under the former mob, then finance minister Mathias Cormann went on the television—it's still there; you can still google it and watch it—and said that low wages are 'a deliberate design feature of our economic architecture.' It was as though the Liberals thought: 'What's wrong with trying to lower wages?' That was actually their policy.

Again, independent analysis constantly exposes their policies. Liberals are to blame for suppressing wages, including through public sector pay freezes, an increase in the number of visas for temporary migrant workers, inaction on wage theft in the gig economy, failing to press the Fair Work Commission for bigger minimum wage increases and cutting penalty rates. At every turn they tried to cut wages.

I'm going to quote myself. I was having a bit of a google around and a bit of a look, because I knew there was something there in the back of my mind, and I found myself reported in the media. We've been talking about this for years, Madam Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou. I know you've been talking about it through the Joint Standing Committee on Migration. Finally in government, though, we are able to not just talk but do something about it. The media article said:

The Labor MP Julian Hill, a member of the joint standing committee on migration—

with you, Deputy Speaker—

also blames the government's decision—

that was the then government, the Liberals, not us—

to freeze the minimum rate of pay for workers on temporary skilled visas as a factor in wage suppression.

Get the figures. When Kevin Rudd left office in 2013, the temporary skilled migration income threshold—that's the minimum rate of pay that you have to pay a temporary skilled worker if you bring them in on a temporary skilled visa—was $53,900. When the Liberals left office, it was $53,900. They didn't raise it one dollar in a decade. As the article quotes me:

From 2014 onwards every Liberal minister for immigration (initially Scott Morrison)—(Quorum formed)

Before I was so rudely interrupted, I was making the point that for a decade the Liberals left the minimum wage that a temporary skilled migrant needed to be paid stuck at $53,900. What do you think that does in a decade? It pushes wages down, and that was their deliberate policy. This government immediately raised it to $70,000 and we are further reviewing the migration system.

They lost control of the borders. Under the watch of the Leader of the Opposition, that hopeless disgrace of a Minister for Home Affairs, the tough-on-borders guy, nearly 100,000 fake asylum seekers came into this country by plane on a work scam. What does that do? It helps push down wages and exploits people.

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