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

BARBARA POCOCK () (): Labor has made improving productivity central to its second-term agenda. The question of fair distribution of productivity gains should be central in this debate, and discussion of a four-day week for hardworking Australians must be part of that agenda. The last 10 years have seen productivity gains through the hard work of Australians flow to higher profits for business much more than to workers' wages. Indeed, profits have increased at twice the pace of wages over the last decade—97 per cent compared to just 50 per cent. That is hardly fair.

On top of this, Australians are working longer and harder and, too often, are underpaid for the work they do. What's more, we are on the edge of an AI revolution which will turbocharge productivity in many jobs. Any conversation about productivity in our country needs to focus on how to fairly share productivity gains with those who generate them—that is, workers. Historically, for much of the last century and the one before, the mechanism for doing this was through reductions in working time. It's time to return to that tradition.

Australia once led the world on reductions in working hours. In 1856, when the stonemasons won the eight-hour day, we were at the international cutting edge. In 2023, we led the world with the Greens-led groundbreaking right to disconnect to tame the technologically driven availability creep that, without a right to disconnect, turns our homes, commutes and weekends into boundaryless sweat. It's been 40 years since the last reduction in working hours in our country, despite very significant increases in productivity which have not been fairly shared with workers. It's time to revisit working hours.

Unions, businesses, workers and the Greens are calling on the Labor government to pave the way for a four-day working week. We Greens took a policy to pave the way for that working week to the 2025 election, and we want to work with the Labor government to deliver on it. Our model for shorter working hours would see Australians working 80 per cent of their normal hours with no loss of pay. We want to see coordinated, properly evaluated, nationwide four-day-week trials across a range of industries. Right now, people's lives are stretched too thin, with many juggling demanding jobs alongside caring for their kids, parents and loved ones. By changing the way we work, people can have more time for family, community and leisure while addressing the incredible and debilitating imbalance between those who have too much working time and those who have too little.

The evidence shows that shorter working hours are good for our mental and physical health. They improve gender equity at home, as men do more domestic work and care, and they help address staff shortages. The research evidence is really clear: shorter hours are a win for workers, for workplaces, for productivity, for homes and for our community. Australian workers deserve more time to live, not just work. Countries all around the world are moving to a shorter working week. Four-day-week trials have begun successfully and have been rolled out in the UK, New Zealand, Belgium, Iceland, Sweden and Japan, and they are on their way here in the ACT.

This week, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation have called on the government to consider shorter working hours at the upcoming productivity summit. In 2023, the ASU won shorter working hours with no loss of pay for their workers at Oxfam and in a number of other workplaces. Almost two-thirds of Australian workers, 63 per cent, support fewer hours per week with no loss of pay. Many businesses are adopting a shorter working week. Both Unilever and Medibank are running a 12-month trial of shorter working hours with no loss of pay and have reported that employees are happier and productivity is stable.

The momentum to pave the way for shorter working hours in Australia is here. We are already comfortable with flexible working hours, working from home and disconnecting from our jobs after hours. A four-day work week is the obvious next step. Australia, it's time to take back our week. We in the Greens are keen to work with Labor to make that happen. Labor claims to be a party of workers. If this is still true, we should see a focus on shorter hours as part of the productivity debate. Without it, we're just at another talkfest where technologies drive up profit and leave workers and their families behind in an outdated, unfair working-hours regime appropriate for last century, not this one.