Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the following from occurring in relation to proceedings on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living Tax Cuts) Bill 2024 and Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living—Medicare Levy) Bill 2024:

(1) on Monday, 12 February when the order of the day relating to the second reading debate on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living Tax Cuts) Bill 2024 is called on following the conclusion of question time, a cognate debate taking place with the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living—Medicare Levy) Bill 2024, and continuing without interruption until no further Members rise to speak, or the commencement of the adjournment debate at 7.30 pm;

(2) notwithstanding standing order 31, if the second reading debate has not concluded earlier, at 8 pm the adjournment debate being interrupted and the bills being called on for further consideration, with the second reading debate continuing until:

(a) no further Members rise to speak; or

(b) 10 pm;

at which point, debate being adjourned and the House immediately adjourning until Tuesday, 13 February at 12 noon; and

(3) any variation to this arrangement being made only on a motion moved by a Minister.

Question agreed to.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That so much of standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent Members moving further amendments to the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No. 2) Bill 2023, which are relevant to, or consequent on, the Senate amendments to the bill agreed to by the House prior to the interruption at 1.30 pm today.

For the benefit of members of the House, what we saw just before question time was the Leader of the House shutting down debate, exercising the guillotine to push through a set of measures passed in great haste in the Senate last Thursday. He did that, of course, because the government is jumping to the tune of the union paymasters. That's what this is all about; it's the government responding to the agenda of the people who control their preselections and fund their campaigns. Only eight per cent of Australian employees in the private sector are members of unions. But this government is not interested in the evidence, not interested in the data. This agenda that it has been pursuing is all about giving effect to the interests of the union bosses, regardless of the impact on jobs, on productivity, on employment and indeed on the future prosperity of our nation.

It is clear—and this is the reason that standing and sessional orders need to be suspended—that there were members both within the coalition and amongst the crossbench who had amendments that they wished to bring forward. It was very important, and it remains very important, that the House is collectively able to turn its mind to these amendments, because the stakes here are extremely high. Extraordinarily, the amendments passed by the Senate last Thursday have had the result of making a really bad bill even worse—and it takes a special kind of genius to achieve that, but that is what this government has done. As a consequence of the procedural steps taken by the Leader of the House, the opportunity was denied, both to the opposition and to the crossbench, to move amendments that we wished to make.

Let me explain to the House what those amendments were. One of those, for example—amendment (11), moved in my name—deals with the issue of the de-merger of unions. This is important, because some of the unions that have come together have come to regret it. Unions that have found themselves suddenly forced to interact with and be organisationally aligned with the CFMMEU have decided that actually this is a pretty unattractive prospect, to be working with a bunch of union officials and delegates who regard having criminal charges as a badge of honour. There are others within the union, other elements of that merged union, who want to demerger.

These were amendments that the coalition put into law when we were in government. We brought forward changes that gave greater flexibility to constituent parts, such as branches and divisions, of amalgamated registered unions by providing them with an opportunity to withdraw from an amalgamation if that would better serve them and their members, and the Labor Party supported it. Indeed, the current Leader of the House had this to say:

The problem with the provisions as they currently exist is that they only provide a window of between two and five years after an amalgamation in which a vote of that kind can take place.

In other words, he wanted it to be even more wide-ranging than what we moved and passed, with the support of Labor at that time, but they've now done a complete backflip. Now they are opposed to unions being permitted to de-merge. Why is that? One can only surmise that it is because union officials, union presidents, those who control the cash, those who control the preselections in unions like the AWU, the AMWU, the CFMMEU, the CEPU, the ASU, the CPSU, the TWU and the UWU are opposed to the changes. So, guess what? There is a sudden reversal in position. This kind of cynicism runs throughout this bill.

One of the other amendments that we were seeking leave to move—and I remind the House that in a breach of all ordinary procedures, in a breach of all the normal courtesies that exist between a government and an opposition when detailed legislation is being considered—the minister, the Leader of the House, refused to grant leave for these amendments to be considered. One of the other amendments we would have introduced would have removed the provision in the bill that passed the Senate and that will now be the law, unless we succeed in overturning it now, which completely changes the definition of 'employment'.

This is all about a direct attack on people who want to work for themselves: for tradies, for subcontractors, for those who decide they want to be their own boss—and that is something the unions hate. The unions hate the idea that there are people who want to run their own show, who want to have a go, to take a risk, rather than being forced into the straitjacket of being treated as employees. Of course, many millions of people are employees and that is absolutely fine, absolutely noble. For those who want to be employees, that is absolutely a proper and legitimate way to work. I say that to respond to the inevitable strawman from the Labor member and—surprise, surprise—former union official on the other side of the table. We have no objection at all to employee status but what we do object to is when, substantively, the status of an individual or group of individuals is not employee status. What we object to and what so many fair-minded Australians—people who want to have a go, who are aspirational, who want to be better for themselves and their family and for our nation—object to is being forced into being treated as employees because it's something that the union bosses want for them. We say that is wrong. We say that is profoundly wrong. We say that is a consequence of the amendments that were rushed through in a disgraceful and undemocratic process just last week. We call for those to be changed, and that is one of the amendments that I have put before the House this afternoon.

And then, of course, we have the issue of the right to disconnect. On any view, these are very complex issues but what is clear, quite rightly, is that there are already protections available for employees. What is problematic about this legislation is it fails to recognise the balance between employees and employers. Today, many employees are able to leave their physical place of work to work from home, to go and pick up the kids from school, to go and have an urgent medical appointment or to take an elderly parent to an urgent medical appointment. All of that flexibility is possible because people know that, if there is an urgent need, they can be contacted.

As a result of a grubby deal done at the last minute between Labor and the Greens means that these rigid legal provisions have now been introduced and passed into law. There has been no time for affected stakeholders to have the opportunity to comment on these changes, to analyse their impact, because it was all done in 24 hours. It is an absolutely disgraceful way to proceed and it is no surprise that many in the business sector have expressed their alarm about what this means when there might be something that needs to be dealt with urgently, for example, because it is imperative to the interests of a customer. There is no reference to 'customer' in the legislation proposed by the Greens and supported by Labor. Because as far as the Greens and Labor are concerned, the customer is somebody who doesn't exist. They are just not interested. The risks to our economy, the risks to our national security are absolutely profound.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Manager of Opposition Business, resume your seat for a second, please. Your own colleagues are not doing any favours when the assistant shadow Treasurer, the minister at the table, can barely hear the Manager of Opposition Business speaking because of the interjections. They are very unhelpful. You've completely disrupted your own colleague's speech, and I think you should show him the courtesy of a bit of silence while he speaks. I have asked the minister to do likewise.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, I want to put on record my appreciation for the strong support I am receiving from my colleagues and make the point that this is a terrible bill, a terrible act. Extraordinarily, it has been made worse, and the amendments that we have moved are designed to deal with some of that. I know that the member for Wentworth wants to speak and I wonder whether she may indeed wish to second the motion. If she does so, she has a real-time opportunity to do that.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I might just give you the call first, member for Wentworth.

Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion. I have two key points I would like to make in relation to both this motion and also to the legislation that the government has rushed through today. The first is do not rush legislation because the people who pay the price from rushed legislation are not in this House but they are out there in the community, in our businesses, in our workplaces, and they are the ones who are the victims when we don't get it right. And when we stuff things through the parliament so speedily and without proper investigation and consideration of the detail of the legislation we're going to put through, then we are creating problems for the real people in Australia who have to deal with the consequences of our actions.

The second point I would like to make is that the House cares—certainly I do, and I think actually most of us do—very deeply about real wage growth. But if we're going to grow real wages, then we need to grow productivity and we need to be assessing how this legislation and other legislation effectively grows productivity. I am deeply frustrated that the government has cut off the debate today, so now we can't debate whether we should actually have the Productivity Commission assess our workplace laws and see whether we can actually grow wages, because that is what this country needs if we are going to raise the living standards of Australians.

Going back to the first point, the government put forward the legislation and the details in the Senate last week. I have had deep concerns with this legislation from the start. I do not think the government has made a strong case as to why this is going to make a fundamental difference to the productivity and long-term wage growth of people in our country. I support that there are issues we need to deal with, such as the gig economy, which is a new part of the economy, but what the government has done here, and previously, is significant overreach, including the changes made to the definition of 'casual', which is extremely problematic.

In terms of what the government rushed through, particularly over the weekend—there has been put forward this idea of the right to disconnect. I feel very strongly that it is important for people to be able to take a break from work, to be able to do that and to work with their employers to make sure they can do that in a way that works with their family life but also works for the employer. However, the way to do this is not to rush through legislation. We didn't get the amendments until Thursday. We got the details today, Monday, and we are now being forced to vote.

One of the things that I do in my electorate is talk to people because most of my businesses do not spend their time watching question time—thankfully, because it's a waste of time; they don't spend time reading through detailed IR legislation amendments coming out of the Senate. They are too busy running their businesses and doing their jobs. The problem with what the government is doing today, as it has done previously, is it rushes through legislation and then the business community—not just the peak bodies, but the small businesses, the medium businesses—are actually going to have to deal with this legislation. They're actually going to have to deal with how this affects their staff and how they'll make this work. They have had no chance to engage on this and really give us their thoughts on what is going to happen. We pass it and they have to live with the consequences. That is why I'm so frustrated with what the government has done today, both in rushing it through from last week and then forcing the House to rubberstamp legislation that we have barely seen. That is incredibly problematic. It's quite against what the government said it was going to stand for, in terms of integrity of government and better consultation, and I significantly object to it.

The last point I want to make is about real wage growth. I have sat here in the House and listened time and time again to the Leader of the House lecturing us about the government's desire to push up real wages. He and I are 100 per cent on the same page on the desire to push up real wages. But if he is serious and if the government is serious about pushing up real wages, then they should have absolutely no problem in having the Productivity Commission look at what the implications of workplace legislation, including these changes, will be on real wages. We know the only way that real wages grow is through productivity growth. But the government is rejecting even a debate on whether the Productivity Commission can look at workplace laws. I looked at their e61 legislation, which showed that previous Labor governments pushed through legislation that was meant to help workers and actually ended up with more workers in the casual sector and more money going to capital instead of labour.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the motion moved by the Manager of Opposition Business. I welcome, too, the crossbench contribution made by the previous speaker, the member for Wentworth, and the very valuable contribution she made.

To follow on from the member for Wentworth and what she was saying, there have been a lot of broken promises from this new government based on what they said before the election and what has happened after the election. We know the cost of living is one, and there have been a whole lot of others. What the member for Wentworth was touching on—and a point that I want to reinforce too—is that one of the things that the government said before the election was that they were running on themes of transparency and integrity. You heard a lot of those words before the election: 'We are going to be a government like you've never seen before. We're going to be an extremely transparent government. We're going to take integrity in government to a whole new level.'

The fact is that it is not the first time that the Manager of Opposition Business has had to move a suspension of standing orders to try and have a discussion about very serious matters in a bill. This is quite a common occurrence. I say to the crossbenchers who are in the chamber: it is unusual in parliamentary practice that an opposition has to move so many suspensions of standing orders to try to get a debate, to try to get a discussion, on so many pieces of legislation. What we've seen with the new standing orders, what we've seen with the Leader of the House, on so many occasions—usually with the most serious and significant legislation that we're talking about, including these IR laws—is that you get gagged. The debate gets guillotined, and the process gets gagged. When this legislation went through the House the first time—Deputy Speaker, you may remember—the same process happened. There was a gag and a guillotine of it. When the legislation first went through the House, the debate on every amendment was limited to 20 minutes. That is almost unseen and unheard of in this chamber.

To go back to where we are now: this legislation, after being guillotined and gagged, went to the Senate. We saw the same process in the Senate. The legislation in the Senate was guillotined and gagged—and in fact there was a mistake made because of that process. Now the legislation's come back to the House, and we have had almost no opportunity to look at this amended legislation. Some of these things we hadn't seen when it went through the first time. The problem with this, and it's a problem with any piece of legislation, but this is significant legislation for every business, for every employer, in this country, is that—we know, because we get told this—neither big business nor small business are clear on the significance of some of this legislation. When you read media reports from the ministers on some of these issues, it's confusing as to what some of this legislation means.

I don't believe, with all due respect to the Leader of the House and the minister, that he necessarily understands all the ramifications of this legislation. You would normally have a great opportunity in this chamber to flesh that out. There'd be lots of views. You could even have a parliamentary committee look into it and have real stakeholder engagement. The minister said he had stakeholder engagement. Believe you me, Deputy Speaker, the most stakeholder engagement the minister would have done would have been with the union movement. We could've had parliamentary committees look into this and really flesh some of these questions out. We didn't do that. That's one thing, but the fact that we can't now even have a proper debate and questions in this chamber, and move amendments on the legislation because of some of the things we're worried about, again shows the hypocrisy of this new government, given that they spoke about integrity and transparency before the election. They've shown that that was a furphy.

I welcome the member for Wentworth's contribution to this. Again, I say to the crossbenchers: it is almost unheard of, how many bills of significance are being gagged and guillotined in this chamber. There's no surprise in it, especially with this IR legislation, because we know who preselects and pays for the members opposite. This is paying the puppetmaster. It's still a great shame—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd be very careful. I'm going to remind the member of standing order 90.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

that the thing has been gagged, but it's not a surprise, coming from this government.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just before we go any further in this debate: I don't enjoy interrupting people, but, if there are imputations cast on particular members, I will be pulling you up. Standing order 90 stands in this House.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very disappointed and I'm very disillusioned. When Labor came to office in May 2022 it promised to be accountable and transparent, and yet we have seen the opposite occur. It started when Labor didn't allow all the members in this place to talk on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1). That was the first time I can recall that that particular debate had been gagged, guillotined and cut short. We have another case here today. This is why the suspension of standing orders motion moved by the member for Bradfield—the Leader of Opposition Business—is so important and needs to be treated as such.

When you have a motion such as this put forward by a leading Liberal member of the parliament and seconded by a teal, the member for Wentworth, you know just how important and unusual it is. That's why standing orders need to be suspended and the amendments, very carefully and thoughtfully put forward by the member for Bradfield, need to be considered. It's not for us, it's not for politicking and it's certainly not to support the member for Wentworth's cause for re-election or ours. It's for the people of Australia—the public, the business owners, the workers.

Australians need to have this legislation and these amendments considered in a far better fashion than what we've seen today. It's been unedifying and unfortunate. Standing orders need to be suspended because the government's handling of the legislative process with respect to its so-called closing loopholes bills has been mismanaged badly. The opposition are not going to just stand by and allow this to happen in a fashion whereby the issues and concerns that we bring forward responsibly, on behalf of Australian taxpayers and Australian businesses, are just washed away.

Let me remind members about the origins of these amendments. Members would recall that the first time the House considered a form of these amendments was in September last year when the bill was originally introduced. That bill was hundreds and hundreds of pages long. We've had less than 24 hours to consider legislation that's already had—and will have with these further amendments—a ripple effect across Australian workplaces and the economy, even if you just look at what the Senate was proposing and what the Greens were putting forward regarding the right to disconnect between workers and employers.

Whilst this debate was going on in the House of Representatives, a private member's bill pushing, promoting, advocating and encouraging it was put forward by a Labor member in the Federation Chamber. We heard the member for Lalor talking about how teachers don't deserve to be phoned at 9.30 at night by the team leader. To my way of thinking, team leaders are not employers, as such, and this goes to the nub of just how difficult, complex and far-reaching this legislation could indeed go. Team leaders are not responsible for the wages of teachers. Yes, they are at middle management level and they are important. Whilst I appreciate that teachers do a very hard job, it's not just a nine to 3.30 job. My daughter, Georgina, is a schoolteacher and I know how hard she works. The member for Lalor, in using that example, forgot to mention that it's actually principals who have the responsibility for employment at their schools.

This legislation is very complicated. The member for Bradfield has brought forward very good amendments. That is why standing orders need to be suspended and why the member for Wentworth has seconded a coalition motion to suspend standing orders. That, in itself, should say everything about this legislation and everything about how important these amendments are. When you get the teals and the coalition agreeing, then it really is important.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for this debate has expired.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion be agreed to.