Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

On Wednesday last week, Deliveroo abruptly shut down its Australian operations, leaving around 15,000 riders out of work, with no warning. For the thousands of riders who had relied on Deliveroo for income, there was little consolation in the company's announcement that it would compensate them with two weeks pay but not actually deliver the payment for at least a month. There's also no guarantee that riders will receive what they were already owed, as their claims are ranked low in the hierarchy of the company's administration. Deliveroo's complete abandonment of its workforce is symptomatic of a deeper problem with the gig economy. Gig workers are treated as individual business entities and, as a result, are denied all the basic pay and conditions which Australian workers have fought for generations to achieve. The evasion of employment obligations underpins the business model of many gig platforms, not just Deliveroo.

Currently, I have an intern in my office from ANU, Kesh Karupiah, who has written a wonderful research report about the gig economy and the regulation that Australia desperately needs. His research report highlights the sheer scale of the problem. In 2020, Australia's gig workforce was estimated to be as large as 250,000 workers, outnumbering the workforce in industries like media and communications and mining. On top of that, the gig workforce is overrepresented with young people, migrants and disabled people. Research tells us that these are groups with particularly limited knowledge about their rights and how to defend them, making them very vulnerable to the predatory and ruthless practices of gig platforms. It is essential that gig workers receive the same minimum pay and conditions as other employees. All kinds of workers should be on an equal footing.

We look forward to Labor introducing industrial relations legislation to plug this significant regulatory gap that's currently working to entrench an already vulnerable workforce.