Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It used to be said in life there are only two constants: death and taxes. But, under the Morrison government, Australian workers must deal with three constraints and three constants: falling wages, insecure work and wage theft. These three crises of the Australian labour market are not just holding Australian workers back but holding the Australian economy back. Wage growth has reached its slowest pace since the Depression in the 1930s. In the most recent September quarter, wages grew as little as 0.1 per cent. Things have become so desperate that the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Philip Lowe, has been calling it a crisis in wage growth, calling on workers to start demanding wage rises from their employers. Even before the pandemic, the pace of insecure work in Australia had been rising, and since COVID-19 the pace of insecure work has accelerated rapidly. For example, 60 per cent of all new wage jobs created since May last year were casual jobs. This is the biggest increase in casual employment in Australia's history. Three-quarters of all new jobs were part-time in nature, and insecure work, such as our own accounts contracts and gig work, dominated the growth in jobs considered self-employed. Then we come to wage theft. PwC estimates that $1.35 billion in wages are stolen or unpaid every year, and Industry Super Australia estimates that as much as $6 billion in superannuation is not paid, affecting one in three Australian workers.

Under the inaction of the Morrison government, Australian workers must deal with insecure work, with falling wages and with wage theft. Behind these facts and figures are human stories and real workers that have been affected, workers like Diego. Since coming from Brazil three years ago, Diego has been working for the food delivery company Deliveroo. He was often paid below the minimum wage, working almost every day of the week delivering food to people's doorsteps to support his wife and 11-month-old daughter. Diego has become the face of the heartless way these companies try to employ their workers. In the midst of the global pandemic, at a time of unprecedented increase in demand for food delivery, Deliveroo sacked Diego with practically no warning at all because he was 10 minutes late with an order. In the midst of a pandemic, with a wife and daughter to support, Diego was interviewed on the ABC. He spoke of his sacking:

It was frustrating, as I've been with them for years and they just didn't care what I had to say.

I mentioned all of my personal problems, my loss of income, my wife and 11-month-old daughter, who I need to take care of ... but they just don't care.

Backed by his union, the Transport Workers Union, Diego has taken Deliveroo to the court over his unfair dismissal. His challenge is a major test case for the gig economy in Australia, not one this government is funding. They fund cases against casual workers that get rights in the mining industry, they back big labour hire companies and they back big miners. Of course they intervene in those cases, but they don't intervene in the cases for real people that are really struggling and that deserve to have rights in this economy. I eagerly await the case, but I certainly won't be holding my breath waiting for the government to act.

Workers in food delivery need outcomes now. A recent survey of riders and drivers by the TWU and the Delivery Riders Alliance revealed the distressing nature of the industry. There is an average hourly rate of little more than $10 an hour. Almost two-thirds felt that they had been unfairly treated by a company, without a chance to defend themselves. More than one-third had been injured on the job, with almost 80 per cent of those injured receiving no support of any kind from their company. We know this is dangerous work. We know that we've had five people killed in a matter of only a few months. All of them leave behind friends and family—loved ones who deserve better than to lose their father, their brother, their son or their friend to an industry that pays critically low rates of pay and incentivises people to drive and ride dangerously just to be able to put food on the table.

We've been having this debate about what should happen with the media and what sort of arrangements we should have. Some were calling it the Murdoch tax. Others are calling out how this government is prepared to take up this case for Murdoch, against Facebook, the gig economy and tech companies, but they're not prepared to take cases up for hardworking people in this country, who are literally dying at the hands of these companies. They're being ripped off by these companies. Rather than just handing money over to firms in the hope that they will keep journalism going, and taking on the big tech companies—people have been pounding their chests about this in the last few days—how about you pound your chest for Dede Fredy, Xiaojun Chen, Chow Khai Shien, Bijoy Paul and Ik Wong, all of whom died because they did not have the protection against those same monoliths and the same types of corporation that you failed to take into account.

Hearing Minister Porter in the House yesterday, and seeing the responses to questions asked about Deliveroo, we're saying to give these workers minimum wage and rights to collectively bargain, but those things are just too complicated. This Attorney-General, who has responsibility for workplace relations, says someone getting paid half the minimum wage is too complicated for him and the government to work out—that says it all. It's not too complicated. It's just that they've simply taken the side of these big monoliths and made a decision. Their card is always going to be in my pocket. It's quite clear that, when these companies are supported in this sort of lack of action to protect workers, people pay the price.

These companies are literally killing people in the food delivery industry. These companies are literally maiming people in the food delivery industry. There has been report after report about what occurs when you incentivise payments for companies and for workers in the way that these companies are. When you do not give them a minimum wage, an appropriate wage, to be able to sustain their families, they drive like hell and they put themselves at risk, because it's a choice between doing that or not eating. It's a choice between doing that or not providing for your daughter or your partner or your family.

We clearly need a government that turns around and says that all workers are important; that the economy is important, so that people have the capacity to spend; and that business doing the right thing is more important than business doing the wrong thing. There are companies that operate in competition with the gig economy. They operate and pay decent wages. They actually have enterprise bargaining agreements. It might be surprising to some on the other side that the enterprise bargaining agreements with unions are at better rates of pay and have better conditions. Their people have more of a voice and there is more consultation in the negotiations for agreements. It's inconvenient for those on the opposite side to actually recognise that, because that has been the strength of enterprise bargaining agreements. The weakness is the fact that the laws being proposed by this government do not allow proper negotiation to take place, which will further exacerbate the imbalance in bargaining right through the middle of a pandemic.

If you want any more starker example of where this country is getting it wrong and where this government has got it so wrong, it is when we say to gig workers that they don't count, when we say to their loved ones that they don't count, when we say to those who have lost family members that they don't count and when we say that you can be paid less than minimum wage—that it's too complicated to fix. In my previous life I dealt with a lot of employers, and I tell you what: they don't think that it doesn't count. They think it does count for something, and you should think that way, too.