Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020. This is the scheme the government initially said would create 450,000 jobs, primarily for young people, but it was soon revealed that it will in fact deliver one-tenth of that. And then when we saw the actual legislation—blink and you'll miss it! There's virtually no detail in there at all, and almost everything is left up to the minister to deal with by regulation, without the benefit of the scrutiny of this chamber.

The government claims that this will create employment and opportunities for Australia, but there's no detail in the bill. There would be no protection for workers. It would give huge power to the minister. It would, in fact, promote insecure and low-paid jobs for young people. And it would once again allow big business to use public money to bolster their profits under the guise of a wage subsidy. The audacity of this government knows no limit. This is a corporate welfare scheme with no promise of creating good, secure, well-paying jobs and with no protections for existing workers, who could well be fired and replaced with workers eligible under this scheme so that their employer can get a bit of extra public dough from this government, who it probably donates to in a cosy little relationship there.

This bill grants incredibly broad powers to the minister to hand out public money to employers. It basically doesn't do much else at all. It doesn't establish the JobMaker hiring credit scheme itself; it doesn't provide a single detail about the scheme and it doesn't detail the eligibility criteria. It simply delegates all of that down to the minister, who's got, I think, two years to set up an unlimited number of publicly funded wage subsidy schemes with very little guidance and very little constraint and with much benefit for employers and potentially very little benefit to actual workers.

We have seen throughout the pandemic the absolute hell of a time that people have had. People have lost their jobs. People have been scraping by. But that hasn't been the universal experience, has it? The 25 richest people in Australia got richer, and some of the largest companies operating in our domestic economy made massive profits and paid massive dividends. So this pandemic hasn't had a fairly-experienced economic impact. When you have some of our biggest companies increasing their profits and paying out even bigger executive bonuses and higher dividends to shareholders, wage subsidy schemes should subsidise wages, not the profits of big business. Yet there's no protection for this bill to make sure that workers receive the benefit of public funding, a concept that we support, particularly in times like this. This bill doesn't guarantee the delivery of that support to workers, because that's all left up to the minister.

The minister can simply create a program, a plan or a regulation over the next two years that gives money to big employers with very little protections. That's exactly why the Greens will be moving amendments to put in place those protections to make sure that workers get the benefit of this scheme. We want to make sure that wage thieves—companies that are notorious for underpaying their workers—can't simply take yet more public funds and pocket more private profits whilst their workers are still being done out of the wages they are legally entitled to. These are sensible amendments that we hope this chamber will support, but that remains to be seen.

We had to fight to get a committee inquiry into this bill. This government didn't want to have an inquiry into this bill and was dragged to doing so. During a committee hearing the President of the ACTU, Michele O'Neil, said:

If there is an abuse of the scheme where there have been underpayments, breaches in health and safety provisions et cetera, that should render the employer ineligible for the scheme.

That's a very sensible approach. Public money should not be rewarding bad behaviour by big corporations. If it has been shown that they underpay their workers, if it has been shown that they pay out massive dividends to either shareholders or their highly paid directors and managers and if it has been shown that they don't need public support, they shouldn't be getting the additional public support. Workers should be getting that support. So we'll be moving the amendments my colleague Senator Faruqi has outlined in lovely detail to address those issues and to put in place those protections.

The other thing this bill fails to do is set up a dispute resolution process for workers who are fired in order that an employer can avail themselves of this JobMaker scheme and hire two new people. That fired worker needs somewhere to go. Actually we'd prefer that businesses were precluded from wantonly and baselessly firing existing workers in the first place. This scheme should not be a trigger for employers to simply fire existing workers and rehire people in order to get some public support to do so. Yet another of our amendments will address that issue and will protect workers from being tossed aside by their employer unlawfully in order for that employer to avail themselves of this public subsidy.

I've talked a little bit about the amendments that we will move to this bill. This government should not be promoting insecure low-paid work that threatens the employment of existing older workers. The Fair Work Commission needs to have jurisdiction to address any such claims. Our amendment would do that.

There should be a provision in this bill that stops wage thieves from getting public money. Sadly, history is littered with examples. I think one of the previous speakers was somewhat aghast that that happens. Yes, it is disgusting, it shouldn't happen and it is against the law, but it still happens. Often it's up to workers themselves to take on these corporations and fight for their rights.

Coles is perhaps the most recent example. They saw a 7.1 per cent increase in their net profit in the pandemic, yet in recent years they have been successfully taken to court for underpaying their workers to the tune of $20 million. That's a very large company that has not demonstrated good employer behaviour, has made an awful lot of profit this year and does not need additional taxpayers' support. But, under this bill, they can still put their hand out and get taxpayer money, despite being wage thieves and despite making squillions in this pandemic.

McDonald's is another example. They're facing a class action this minute for denying hundreds of thousands of workers rest breaks. There are a few other examples here: Qantas and Super Retail Group. There are many large corporates that haven't paid their workers properly in the past that would be eligible to get taxpayer support under this bill as it is currently drafted. There is a very easy and sensible fix. We are happy to support employers who are doing the right thing and who are passing this money on to their workers and creating jobs. Employers who are pocketing the money, making additional private profits, and underpaying their workers should not get this support. It's a very simple amendment and a very reasonable one at that.

I've talked about employers who haven't paid their workers properly. I've talked about the need for the Fair Work Commission to actually have jurisdiction over workers who might be sacked so that employers can avail themselves of this scheme. The other important issue is dividends. Our amendment says that if businesses have actually paid increased dividends between March of this year and the end of the scheme they should be ineligible—another very simple concept. If you are doing very well economically, despite the fact that this nation is in a technical recession thanks to the pandemic—and years of mismanagement, I might add—then you do not need additional taxpayer support. Our amendment would say that you've simply got to stand on your own two feet. Taxpayers should not be subsidising the private profits of big corporations. I don't think you'd find an Australian out there who disagrees with that, but you may find several people in here who do.

I hark back to the fact that those same large corporations make very generous donations, in fact, to both sides of politics. One wonders whether this is just a continuation of that very cosy relationship between large corporations and this government—in fact, both of the big parties. Australians are fed up with that. What we've got here is a $4 billion corporate welfare scheme with no protection for workers, which comes off the back of a $99 billion corporate subsidy in the budget. This government can't turn around without handing out more public money to big corporations when, in fact—as the Greens have been saying for many a year now, and in particular in this pandemic—if you actually want to generate employment, if you want to create jobs, then directly invest in the services that people deserve and need and rely upon, like hospitals and schools, and rebuild our manufacturing base. Let's have some public investment in public manufacturing. Let's build stuff again. What's more, let's build clean energy components so that we can address the climate crisis at the same time as tackling the economic crisis.

This is not rocket science. It's about using taxpayer dollars wisely to create good outcomes—to create jobs, to stimulate the economy and to address the climate crisis. That's a far better use of the $99 billion that we saw in the budget going to big corporations—and this bill in particular, with $4 billion in corporate welfare, with no protection for workers and no guarantee that that money will actually flow to create jobs that are anything other than low-paid insecure work.

We are very worried that existing workers, particularly older workers, will be sacked by their employers and then two new younger folk will be rehired on insecure conditions with no protections themselves, just so the employer can get the benefit of this small amount of public subsidy. That is not a situation this government should be using taxpayer dollars to deliver on. It is not a good situation for workers. We can fix this bill. That's what we're proposing to do with our amendments that strengthen the Fair Work Commission's jurisdiction, that stop that wanton sacking of existing employees and that mean that companies who have made massive profits or that have been shown to underpay their workers are not eligible. This is a fixable scheme, but what remains to be seen is whether there's any will to actually back any of those sensible amendments, many of which witnesses to the inquiry themselves proposed and supported.

We are proud supporters of wage subsidy schemes but not ones that don't have any protection for workers; that give complete discretion to the minister to make it up as they go along for a period of two entire years; that could in fact see mass unemployment; and, of course, that are going to actually produce one-tenth of the jobs that the government initially claimed. So this is our position on this bill. We look forward to seeing whether or not there's support for our amendments once we get to the committee stage. This is a bad bill that could be improved, and it remains to be seen whether this government will finally start using public money judiciously to create jobs, to provide services and to address the climate crisis. That would be a far better spend of the $4 billion for this bill or the $99 billion that we saw go to corporate welfare in this budget.