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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

In Abraham Lincoln first's annual message to Congress on 3 December 1861, Lincoln sought to correct—to warn against—what he saw as a false assumption about the relationship between employers and employees, or, as he called it, capital and labour.

He rejected the effort, in his words, 'to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labour in the structure of government', where it is 'assumed that labour is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labours unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labour'. Instead, Lincoln corrected this assumption noting:

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

It is this false assumption that Abraham Lincoln was referring to that we are still correcting today. It's this false assumption that this government clings to in 2018 and wields in an attempt to destroy the rights and security of working people in this country. Today—157 years later—I'm proud to echo Lincoln's correction. I'm proud that I'm part of a party that stands in parliament now to fight for an idea—the idea that people have built this country, that they create value and that their rights must be protected.

But the combination of technological change, neoliberal trickle-down economics and a government that loves cosying up to the billionaire class is threatening these rights, and working people are under attack.

Wage growth is stagnating while company profits are increasing. Penalty rates have been cut. Inequality is at record highs. Underemployment is rife in this country. Casualisation is up. Employee organisations—unions—are attacked and demonised regularly in the media. All the while, this government is trying to give big companies a tax cut that will deliver them billions more in profits. And this comes despite mountains of evidence that delivering a tax cut to companies who already avoid tax won't do anything for the rest of us. Companies that don't pay tax don't need a tax cut.

Crikey notes a report released last year that examined over 90 big US companies who paid well below the headline rate of tax, and it found that instead of wage and job growth those companies were associated with job cuts: the median job growth for those companies over the period from 2008 to 2016 was minus one per cent.

The balance is undoubtedly shifting away from working people. In 1959, wages share of GDP was 46 per cent and gross operating surplus share was 17 per cent. Now, while wages share is roughly the same, gross operating surplus has climbed to 24 per cent.

In terms of total factor income, the trend is the same. The long-term trend is not tipping towards everyday people; it's tipping towards profits at the expense of everyday people.

The laws need to change. It is time to give everyday people more control over their lives, and nowhere is this clearer than in the question of job insecurity. That is why we are introducing this bill, a version of which we introduced several years ago. We couldn't get support from either Labor or Liberal at that stage, but I am hopeful, as the national debate shifts and people recognise that job insecurity is wrecking people's lives, that now parliament will finally step up and fix the problem.

I am proud to introduce the Fair Work Amendment (Tackling Job Insecurity) Bill 2018 which will tackle rising job insecurity by giving casual and rolling contract workers the power to convert to secure employment. We have a problem in this country when teachers work at Bunnings over the Christmas break because their contract only lasts for as long as the school term lasts, but that is happening around this country. We have a problem in this country when someone could work in a university, in the same department, doing the same work for 10 years, and not be entitled to a day of sick leave during that because they have been casual all that time, but that is happening in this country. And we have a problem when one in three young people either don't have a job or don't have the hours of work they want, and when they do the right thing and finish education and go on to TAFE or go on to university, they still find themselves facing a world of having to pay sometimes to go to work or, if they're lucky enough to get work, it's often on a short-term basis or on a casual basis. Australia is amongst the worst offenders in the world in this respect. It is no wonder that people are feeling anxious and angry. It's not just the way people are feeling; it is the way the society is changing. Insecure work is increasingly on the way to becoming the norm and not the exception.

Under the legislation that we would introduce, we would fix the holes in the Fair Work Act that the Greens have been pointing out since 2012. Workers employed on a so-called 'permanent casual' basis—which is really something that only exists in Australia to the extent that it does—or on rolling fixed-term contracts where you're left in the same job but on repeated short-term contracts, will have the right to request to convert to ongoing employment. The Fair Work Commission will decide if the employer has serious countervailing business grounds to justify a refusal of that request. Unions will also be able to seek industry-wide orders to regulate the use of insecure work. We desperately need it in places like the higher education sector, where many people have this fantasy of the tenured academic in higher education, but about one in three people there have full-time permanent ongoing work. We need to be able to regulate this on an industry basis. We also need to recognise that there would be exemptions. Under this proposal, genuine short-term casuals employed by small business during seasonal work, for example, would be exempt. So you'd be able to employ casuals for up to three months at a time, but you wouldn't be able to exploit it.

As I said, according to some reports, Australia has the highest level of casual workers in the world. And these workers are much more likely to face irregular and insufficient hours of work and fluctuations in earnings.

According to the Parliamentary Library's public document, Characteristics and use of casual employees in Australia, 53 per cent of casuals experienced variable earnings from one pay period to another in August 2016, compared with only 15 per cent of permanent employees. Just under a third, about 31 per cent, of casual workers wanted more hours of work per week, compared with 10 per cent of permanent employees.

Casuals are much less likely to be given a guaranteed minimum hours per week than their permanent counterparts.

Casual workers are more concerned about their job security than permanent employees—and for good reason. So many things in life require certainty and planning. Qualifying for and paying off a mortgage, having children, looking after family and loved ones. How can you regularly pay the rent or pay off a mortgage if your pay fluctuates wildly from month to month, week to week or even day to day? You front up to the bank manager and say, 'Look, I'd like to get a mortgage to go and buy a place to start a family, and, yes, I've been working at the same employer for the last few years', but they look at your payslip and see that you're employed on a contract basis or on a casual basis. I've heard reports that people are getting turned away. Even as rapacious as the banks are, and as much money they want to make from writing large mortgages, people are getting turned away from that. It's even happening at the rental stage as well. People are unable to get a secure and affordable roof over their head.

A large part of the problem is that so much of the work in Australia at the moment is insecure, and we haven't even touched on those areas not covered by the Fair Work Act—those people other than employees. There's a growing number of people who are being forced, through sham contracting arrangements, to call themselves independent contractors. They don't even get the basic minimum rights of employees, full stop. When you add all of that up, the ACTU's claim that 40 per cent of people in this country are now in forms of non-standard employment is right.

Our laws have just not kept up. This bill will update our laws. I say to all of the other parties in this place: I'm sick of people talking about job insecurity when there's an election or when there's a by-election, but then failing to back it up with votes in parliament. The Greens have been pushing since 2012 to give people rights to more- secure employment, and I'm proud to reintroduce this bill again. I hope that the changing nature of the debate in Australia and the fact that so many people are hurting because their lives are becoming riskier and more insecure will push other parties in this place to back this very sensible bill. This very sensible bill has been well thought through and will give our laws the teeth to tackle the scourge of rising job insecurity.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the bill and reserve my right to speak.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and resumption of debate will be made an order of the day for the next day of sitting.