House debates
Thursday, 18 February 2021
Bills
Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020; Second Reading
4:17 pm
Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Insecure work is a scourge. For many, it is designed to keep workers compliant, scared to speak up about unsafe conditions, about sexual harassment, about wage theft, about unpaid overtime. I have been telling these things here today to paint a picture of a serious underbelly of insecure workers in our workforce out there. This bill, the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020, does nothing to secure work for anyone. It does not fix the casualisation issues. It certainly does not address other forms of insecure work. In fact, it makes it easier to employ people as casuals. The details have been explained very clearly by the shadow minister, the member for Watson, and many other speakers who have spoken to this bill today. So I won't spend time going through the details. But I have spent my whole career fighting alongside workers for their rights, for decent pay and conditions. I became a job rep for the nurses' union as a very young nurse. I actually held honorary positions for the nurses' union, the ANF, now called the ANNF, as president of the Victorian branch and as federal president, and then I held a full-time position as federal secretary of that great union. I then was ACTU president, and here I am in this House still fighting for workers' rights; and it beggars belief that we are still fighting over similar things
This government has form when it comes to attacking workers' rights, when it comes to attacking their pay, their conditions and their bargaining rights. This is in its DNA. So this bill is no surprise to anyone. It's no surprise to us. It certainly isn't any surprise to so many hardworking Australians who have had to fight for their rights time and time again because of this government, whether it was Work Choices—remember Work Choices?—whether it was cutting low-paid workers' penalty rates—if you ask, 'Where are those thousands of jobs that cutting penalty rates was supposed to create?' the answer is that they're nowhere—whether it was the so-called, weasel-word-entitled ensuring integrity bill, which tried to cut the right to organise to maintain pay conditions, whether it was leaving workers in key industries out of JobKeeper or whether it was cutting superannuation increases. That is a short list. I could go on forever.
The government have said that they will amend this bill, but after the amendment it will still fail the test. It doesn't create secure jobs and it doesn't ensure decent pay. It makes it easier for employers to casualise jobs that would otherwise have been permanent, it makes bargaining for better pay and conditions more difficult than it already is, it allows wage cuts, it takes rights away from blue-collar workers on big projects and it weakens wage theft punishments in jurisdictions where wage theft was already deemed a criminal act, as in my state, Victoria. The Minister for Industrial Relations can pop some lippy on this legislation if he likes, but it is still a pig of a bill. We will not support this bill. We stand up for workers, for workers' rights and for decent jobs.
4:21 pm
Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020. The devil is in the detail and is certainly not reflected in the title of this bill.
Before I go into some of the specific matters of this bill, I want to talk about the context of why we are actually talking about the fair work amendment bill and not the other bill that was before it on the original government business program a mere 24 hours ago, which of course was the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Amendment (Grid Reliability Fund) Bill 2020. We are debating this bill because the government has pulled the Clean Energy Finance Corporation bill, because the member for New England put in an amendment but didn't tell his colleagues, and now that bill isn't going to be coming back to this floor.
Mr Falinski interjecting—
I can hear the interjections from the member for Mackellar. He is very brave in interjections, but I will only believe in his bravery when he votes against the member for New England's amendments to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation bill. I know the member for Hughes, who has walked into the chamber, will be supporting the member for New England's amendments to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation bill, joining with many of his colleagues on those completely misguided amendments to that bill. But that is why we are here now, at the end of this parliamentary sitting week, talking about the fair work amendment bill: because the government are too ashamed to bring on the original bill that was meant to be debated this week. They have been shamed into pulling that bill off the government program, and they've been forced to settle for this bill.
Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The minister on a point of order?
Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The member has a requirement to remain relevant to the bill under discussion.
Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Member for Macnamara, I'm listening closely.
Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I didn't catch the mumbling that was going on there, but I will say this: let's turn our attention to this bill before the chair at the moment. The Attorney-General, during question time, was asked over and over and over again, 'Will you guarantee that workers will not be worse off under your bill and your industrial relations framework that you're introducing in this House?' And what did we see from the Attorney-General? We saw base politics. We saw denial. We saw rejection of contentions of questions. But there is one simple thing we didn't see, and that was an acceptance of the truth that this industrial relations framework that this government has bowled up to this place is a reflection of what they are all about, and that is leaving Australian workers worse off and cutting the pay and conditions of Australian workers. Despite the Attorney-General time after time trying to make a little bit of political ground on this, he simply failed and backed down. He was again shamed into pulling one part of the bill from this place. Just like they pulled the Clean Energy Finance Corporation bill after the member for New England's amendments were bowled up to this place, he pulled the better off overall test from this bill. But that's not the only thing that is stopping us from supporting this bill. There are other parts to this bill—
Mr Falinski interjecting—
I can still hear the member for Mackellar talking about how much he's looking forward to supporting the member for New England's amendments to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation bill, but I'm going to come back to the matter before the chair. I'm not going to be distracted by the member for Mackellar's interjections. This bill simply leaves Australian workers worse off—
Jason FalinskiJosh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Worse off. And it doesn't matter how many times the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General come into this place and deny it, you only have to look at their own actions to see that what they say at the dispatch box doesn't reflect what they actually do. What they say at the dispatch box is that it doesn't hurt workers, but what they actually do is pull out bits of the bill which then, in black-and-white legislation, leaves workers worse off. We on this side of the House have a very different idea about making sure that hardworking Australian families aren't left worse off by this Morrison government and by this Attorney-General.
What this bill does is create more casualisation in our economy; it creates more of a casual workforce in our economy. We on this side of the House have said that this doesn't have to be the way. In fact, we've offered up policy solutions. The Leader of the Opposition gave a detailed speech about the options that we could be undertaking, as a country, to help give people a pathway to permanent work. If you are a casual, we want to see you have the option—if it's what you want—of getting into full-time, permanent work. What this government wants to do is lock you into the casualisation of your work. This government wants to lock in the lack of pay and conditions of the casualised workforce, compared to the permanent workforce. This government's idea of industrial relations reform is to make sure that workers have less work security, less job security and less long-term security in their employment.
To look at some of the details of why and how the government is going to unravel this, let's look at some of the things it's doing around enterprise bargaining. Under this bill, workers will only have to be notified a month after negotiations have even commenced—a month! They're weakening the bargaining framework so that workers are going to be left behind without negotiations. They're also taking away the right to a comprehensive explanation of an agreement that they're being asked to vote on. And workers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds will no longer be guaranteed an appropriate explanation from this government's reforms.
I'm looking forward to continuing this when the debate resumes. I will be continuing with my contribution on this bill, but, as we head towards the adjournment debate today, let me reiterate where I started: the Labor Party opposes leaving workers worse off. This government wants to make sure hardworking Australians are worse off under their industrial relations framework. We on this side of the House want to see fewer casual workers in the economy, we want to make sure workers have a pathway to permanency and we want to see good pay and conditions available to Australians, not denied. If you are looking to transfer from casual work to permanency—for example, if you've been in the same job for two years—we think that is an appropriate time for you to say: 'Hang on a second, I've been with one organisation for at least two years. That should guarantee me a right to permanent protection.' But of course they're not entertaining any reforms like this. All they want to do, all the member for Mackellar wants to do, is leave workers worse off, to pay them less, to rob them of pay and conditions. We will not stand for it on this side of the House.
Debate interrupted.