Matt Gregg (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There was a lengthy period of time in Australian history where low wages were a deliberate design feature of our economy. The election of the Albanese Labor government put a fortunate end to that silly spiral that we found ourselves in in the Australian economy. Secure jobs, better pay means that workers get their fair share of the prosperity that their work creates. It means that a person who does their fair day of work gets to go home and live their life with their family in peace, without being concerned by constant harassment through phone calls from their employer without justified purpose. It is a regime that gets the balance right between the interests of workers and employees.

We've had very little disputation about many of the new features of secure jobs, better pay. The right to disconnect, for example, has not led to industrial disharmony. People understand the common sense that underrides the rule, 'Contact them if needed but don't go overboard with contacting your workers when they're trying to enjoy their own time with their families.'

The objective of increasing the wages of working people is a noble one. Also, when we think about it, if you create an economy that incentivises a race to the bottom on wages, we see the very kinds of issues we've seen in aged care and child care: if you make it all too easy for firms to compete on a low cost base by undercutting the wages of working people, that's exactly what they'll do. So we had a system that, by design, incentivised a competitive approach which meant the way you got your advantage over the other firm was by paying your workers less, by exploiting contractual arrangements with labour hire companies and the like in an attempt to drive down wages. While that was legal and a legitimate business practice, that is clearly not a sustainable pathway to productivity in our economy. The way we achieve that is by incentivising firms to get competitive advantage by innovation—by more efficient procedures and by ensuring that we do the jobs better rather than just finding new and clever ways of undercutting workers' wages.

The new approach to industrial relations unashamedly means that workers do better, that the work done by employees is duly rewarded and that we put an end to the cycle of continual locking of the prosperity of working people. It is only fair that they get their fair share of the spoils of the work they do. But, at the same time, we want to make sure that we have a system that incentivises businesses competing on merit, on innovation and on new ways of doing things, whether that's through a differentiation strategy or by finding other ways to cut costs, such as more efficient machinery and the like.

The cherrypicking of small business data by the coalition as somehow providing support for their position, firstly, fails in a basic causation argument. Secondly, it ignores the fact that new businesses are being created in Australia all the time. The number of new entrants into the market exceeds the number of business insolvencies. There are a number of explanations for business insolvencies. We've obviously had high inflation and it's become increasingly difficult for small businesses to access credit, and these are very serious economic problems that we have to work on. But to suggest that giving fairness to working people is somehow the cause of economic carnage simply isn't borne out by the fact. We've got record employment at the same time as having an increase in wages. That common argument we heard for decades—that increasing wages means everyone will be out of a job—has been proven bunk. We now know that you can get the balance right, that you can have an industrial regime that incentivises workers, their representatives and employers getting together and coming to an appropriate arrangement for their business. That is what enterprise agreements are all about: they're about making sure that the interests of all concerned are duly regarded, that they fall outside the generic regime of a modern award and that those involved get to do something that gets it right for their particular business organisation. We encourage that.

We're also encouraged by the fact that we've seen a record number of enterprise agreements and a record number of workers subject to enterprise agreements. That means appropriate industrial relations tailored to the work, to workers and to the businesses that employ them. This has been a fantastic set of reforms, and we will see the benefits of them continue in the years ahead. I'm encouraged by the fact that real wages are going up for consecutive quarters, and may that long continue.

We've also got to make sure we continue to improve the legal arrangements around businesses to make sure that they have every incentive to increase productivity. Again, increased productivity means more efficient ways of conducting business. I'm so glad to finally see the end of this horrible cycle of trying to win the game by cutting wages to the lowest amount possible. It does not serve families, it does not serve our society and it does not serve business in the longer term. The race to the bottom on wages hurts everyone in the end. You end up with inferior industries. We saw it in child care and we saw it in aged care. If you continue the race to the bottom on wages, what you end up with is an unmotivated workforce, poor productivity and poor service delivery. So I'm glad to see that these reforms are continuing to benefit workers. May they long reign.

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