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

There's a saying that you lead with your chin. On this occasion with the MPI not only have the opposition led with their chin; they've led with their head, their shoulders, the upper part of their body—the only thing they haven't led with is the toes on the ends of their feet. This is a prime example of people who have no idea of the pressures of cost of living and the stresses on people right across our community.

They said it quite clearly when they talked about the cost of living, when it was put down all that time ago, when the whole decision, the cultural change, was brought about by the opposition when they were in government. It was clearly spelt out by Mathias Cormann when he, as the Liberal finance minister, let the big one slip, when he said, 'Low wages growth is a deliberate design feature of our economic architecture.' That will live in infamy for years to come.

This government is clear about making sure that the mistakes the conservatives made whilst in government aren't continued. It's clear that we've made a decision that what Mr Cormann said quite loud was not loud enough. I think he needed to go one step further. He needed to say, 'We have a design feature of wage decline in this country.' Those people opposite were the first ones in the history of this country to actually wind back the middle class in this country, under their watch, their policies and their strategy.

Mathias Cormann went further than he could have even imagined to go to turn around and destroy wages, conditions and rights within this country. Wage cuts are a deliberate design feature of the coalition's economic architecture. It's funny: I don't remember seeing the phrases 'low wages growth' or 'wages cuts' on any Liberal Party election material, but that's exactly what they did, and those are exactly the policies they followed.

Now that the coalition are in opposition, they're acting constructively to deal with the low-wages crisis they created—heaven forbid! You'll be surprised to learn that they aren't—are they? No, of course they aren't. We had a summit with government, employers, unions and civil society last week to work on solutions to these issues. The only people who refused to show up were the Liberal Party. Poor old Angus Taylor was doing the media rounds demanding that he receive an invite, only for the Leader of the Opposition to tell him he wasn't allowed to go.

Last week was a great step forward on a real solution to the Liberal wages crisis. We saw agreements between the ACTU and COSBOA, even though the Liberals are threatening to have COSBOA's blood because they turned around and had the audacity to reach an agreement across the aisle, across the community and across business which is in the interest of all Australians. They just want to have the war and the fight because their deliberate strategy is to decrease wages, not only to keep them low.

We had agreements between the ACTU and the BCA. We had agreements between the unions and the National Farmers Federation. These are all things that couldn't be achieved by those on the opposite benches when they were in government. There were so many agreements at the summit, but the Liberals couldn't even agree on whether the shadow Treasurer would be allowed to attend. You don't think, when the government, good employers and workers come to consensus agreements that the opposition should get onboard? But that's what they think; they don't think we should be getting onboard. They think we should be tearing those agreements up.

We worked to make sure we had government, employers and unions coming together for the betterment of this country. That's the sort of Australia people want to see: consensus building, changes that mean that their real wages increase. There are no policies on the opposite side for that to happen. In fact, they have policies to make sure it doesn't happen, and they've stayed on the exact same program.

We've seen the attacks on the small business council. We've seen the Nationals attacking the National Farmers' Federation. It makes you wonder exactly who the coalition represent these days. They don't represent employers, who want to do the right thing; that's for sure. Good employers are coming to the table with the government and with unions and the community to work out solutions, because they know we need to see wages moving in the right direction again. They know that after a decade of Liberal wage cuts we need wages growth to kickstart our economy. They know that to get wages moving we need to fix our bargaining system, that we need to remove the barriers to enterprise and multi-employer bargaining.

But the Liberals don't represent the interests of good employers. Their new constituency is dodgy employers like Qantas, like Alan Joyce, who only know how to operate by ripping off their workers. Qantas is a textbook case for why single enterprise bargaining is not fit for purpose. Alan Joyce's enduring legacy will be that he proved that our enterprise bargaining system is broken and can be fixed only through multi-employer bargaining. He figured out that if you don't want to pay your workers the agreed-upon rates in your enterprise agreement then you can just outsource the work or, better yet, set up your own shell company to turn around and undercut your existing staff. Of course, Qantas has punted most of their workforce off enterprise agreements and on to agreements with creatively named shell companies, such as QF Cabin Crew Australia and Qantas Ground Services.

These shell companies exist only to undercut the agreements Qantas supposedly negotiated in good faith with their workforce. On one route you can now have five flight attendants who are employed by five different entities, each one on a worse deal than the last. One of the few cohorts still mostly employed directly by Qantas is their pilots. But just this year Qantas threatened their short-haul pilots with outsourcing if they didn't accept a multiyear wage freeze. And Qantas has the cheek to say:

We never said that a no vote would mean this flying would be outsourced.

They went on to say:

Had either pilot group not been able to provide us with the working arrangements needed to get a return on our investment, another entity would have done the flying.

That is just brazen. Qantas says it doesn't count as outsourcing if they set up a shell company themselves. Qantas made that exact same threat to their long-haul pilots two years ago. And on top of all the shell companies of Qantas there are third-party labour hire firms like Swissport paying workers so badly that they're underpaying the award.

The point is this: if Qantas workers are engaged through 20 or more different employers, single-employer bargaining does not work. If Qantas can tell its workers either to sign this agreement or they'll set up a new company to hire them, single-employer bargaining does not work. Alan Joyce has proven that multi-employer bargaining is the only way to protect and improve wages and conditions in aviation. You'll need a multi-employer agreement that cannot be undercut by another shell company or another Swissport. Otherwise, I can guarantee, there will continue to be a race to the bottom in the aviation industry.

It isn't just aviation. The Qantas blueprint is being adopted in other industries, such as mining. That's why there is a wages crisis in this country. If the Liberal and National parties really cared about wages and the cost of living, they would get on board with the government, unions and employers—good employers—to fix our bargaining system; they would get on board with multiemployer bargaining. But we know they never will, because, as Mr Cormann let slip, low wages growth is a deliberate policy agenda.

In actual fact, wage decline was a deliberate policy agenda under the opposition's watch when they were in government. That's why the opposition opposed a pay rise for aged-care workers. That's why the opposition were opposed to an increase in the minimum wage. But just as on climate and so many issues, the Australian public, employers and workers have moved on, past the coalition's internal culture wars.

We saw just last week a road transport industry round table convened by Minister Burke. There he had the Transport Workers Union; employer groups such as the Australian Road Transport Industrial Organisation, the National Road Freighters Association and the National Road Transport Association; employers like Linfox, Toll, FBT and ACFS; major clients Coles and Woolworths; truck drivers—employees as well as owner-drivers—and even gig platforms like Uber and DoorDash come to a settlement and a suggestion about what needs to happen in the future. That's the future for Australia.