Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We have said that the whole time. We in fact went to the election with that policy. The ILO was again used by the coalition to justify their position. They used it last night, although I will again note that they did not support the Greens’ very sensible amendment to ensure that the fair work legislation was in fact consistent and gave effect to ILO conventions. However, after having knocked our amendments off, the coalition still uses the ILO definition. It is interesting to look at the ILO definition. Their resolution states that small- and medium-sized enterprises are defined according to national custom and practice. This bill is setting the national custom and practice at 15. The Greens do not happen to agree with the level of 15, but that is what this bill is doing. So it is not fair or right to be quoting the ILO definition for a small enterprise at a certain level when it is in fact up to us to set that. Australia’s custom and practice has, since 1984, been 15. We do not agree with the practice but this bill is giving effect to that custom. The ILO convention in relation to this issue also states that exclusions are permitted in relation to:

… other limited categories of employed persons in respect of which special problems of a substantial nature arise in the light of the particular conditions of employment of the workers concerned or the size or the nature of the undertaking that employs them.

This has been understood to refer to workers employed in genuinely—and I emphasise the word ‘genuinely’—small or family businesses along with managers, apprentices and agricultural workers. What we do not accept is that businesses of 20 staff, or particularly of 20 full-time-equivalent employees, have special problems of a substantial nature in relation to the scheme for unfair dismissal in this bill.

So can we please drop any reference to and abuse of ILO conventions to justify your definition of small business to try to jack it up to 20 or 25 full-time-equivalent employees, which we all know exceedingly well means that in reality you want to hike it up to 50 or 60 because full-time-equivalents means counting in part-time and casual people so that of a sudden we will have businesses included here that have 50 or 60 employees. I think we are getting closer and closer to that magic number of 100 again, don’t you? That is exactly what they are trying to do. They are trying to undermine the government’s election promise of 15, which the Greens were never supportive of—but we think it is a hell of a lot better than 20 or 25 full-time-equivalent employees. So we will not be supporting any move away from that number.

I will note, as Senator Xenophon and Senator Ludwig mentioned, that in the revised amendments sheet the opposition have changed their amendments so that the exemption for redundancy pay is limited to 20 staff, and that is on a head count. Senator Fielding’s figure—I am sure he will correct me—is 15. This makes it inconsistent. It is messy to have two different definitions of small business, but of course it achieves their objective of trying to hike it up so that more and more people do not have proper access to unfair dismissal rights.

We are talking about small businesses, in particular those in retail and hospitality that employ a lot of part-time and casual workers. And guess what? These are the jobs of the most vulnerable workers—women, young people and quite often non-English-speaking people. Guess which workers were affected most by Work Choices? You got it—the vulnerable workers. Research has shown that it was the vulnerable workers—women, young people and those in vulnerable jobs—who were the most affected by Work Choices. And here we have the coalition—and, yes, I am going to bring out the dead body again, because we have to keep reminding people that that is what is driving this agenda—who keep saying they have put the knife in the heart of Work Choices, but in fact they have not. They keep trying to drag it back. This amendment will once again affect the most vulnerable workers in our community, the same way Work Choices does. That is why the coalition want to raise this limit to 20 or 25. The Greens will not be supporting it. We put the government on notice very clearly—we have in the past and we will once again—that we will not be supporting any move to increase this threshold from 15.

The coalition and the two Independents are not only trying to raise this threshold, but they are making the threshold full-time equivalents, not heads counted. The Greens will not support it. We will not wear it. This is a return to Work Choices, which clearly undermined workers’ rights and clearly enabled people to be unfairly dismissed. We will not support it. It is not part of a fair industrial relations system and it is taking us back to Work Choices.