Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Insecure work is a growing problem. Academics have written about it; economists have acknowledged it. Paper after paper that has been published on it has talked about the growing insecure work crisis that we have in our country. What is insecure work? More and more Australian workers are living week to week, waiting for their roster to come out. It is about the casualisation of our workforce. It is about the growing number of people who are being forced to work for subcontractors—being sacked from their job and offered their job back with a subcontractor. That could happen on an individual basis or it could happen on a mass, collective basis, like we saw at Longford with the Esso workers. Today is the one-year anniversary of those workers being sacked and offered their jobs back on reduced pay and conditions—and they're not alone. This is a problem occurring in many industries and in many workplaces across Australia.

What we don't have is a government that is taking the problem of insecure work seriously. They have not got involved actively in this space of work to address the problems that we have around casualisation, the growth of part-time work and the growth of insecure work. A clear example of how out of touch this Prime Minister is was in yesterday's question time, when he was asked by the shadow Treasurer, 'What's the median income in this country?' The Prime Minister didn't know that figure. Later on in question time, he wanted to supplement and add the actual figure. He acknowledged that, because people are on part-time arrangements or working casually—words to that effect—the median income in this country is about $52,000 a year. That figure is not enough to live on. Yes, it is correct that one of the reasons why so many electorates have a median income of $52,000—or, in many cases, less—is that far too many working Australians are no longer in full-time work. They no longer have full-time arrangements with locked-in wages and locked-in salaries. They are in insecure work, whether it be through labour-hire contracts, whether it be that they are forced to get ABNs, whether it be that they are casual and desperately trying to make up full-time hours or are part-time and trying to do the same.

One area where this government has completely dropped the ball—it is not even talking about it—is the gig economy. The gig economy is something that a lot of people have benefitted from. We can now book many services on our iPhones. At the beginning, there was a lot of excitement about the gig economy. However, what is actually happening in the gig economy on this government's watch is gross exploitation of the workforce. Through the Fair Work Ombudsman investigations, the court cases, the claims that have been raised in the media and the unions involved in this space, we know that some workers are being paid $5 or $6 an hour—in Australia, in 2018! This is because Uber has quite a few lawyers and is finding loopholes in the Fair Work Act and the Corporations Act to try to get around paying its workers a minimum entitlement. That is why this place and the government need to step in to close those loopholes.

It's not just the workers who are being exploited when it comes to the gig economy. We're hearing increasingly from some of the clients of the gig economy. I'm talking here about Uber Eats. The ACCC have taken the step of investigating the unfair contracts that Uber Eats are forcing upon their cafes and restaurants. This is a space that didn't exist about 10 years ago—this space didn't exist five years ago. This is a space where we need the government to be proactive about policy, and they're not. Working people in this country need a government that understands the importance of returning to a job you can count on. The principle of first option is a full-time job, not an insecure part-time job, not being sacked and offered your job for labour hire, not being forced into casual arrangements. I urge the government to get serious about rebuilding, recreating direct employment, full-time jobs, jobs that Australians can count on.