SPEECH: SYDNEY - AUSTRALIAN ROAD TRANSPORT INDUSTRIAL ORGANISATION - NOV 27 2020

ADDRESS TO NSW BRANCH OF THE AUSTRALIAN ROAD TRANSPORT INDUSTRIAL ORGANISATION

I acknowledge that we are on Darug land of the Eora Nation and acknowledge their elders past, present and emerging.

Thanks for the invitation to speak to you. I really appreciate it.

I really appreciate the effort everyone has mad. Getting to anything at the moment is more difficult than it’s ever been.0

I want to also very personally acknowledge someone who’s been a friend of mine for many years and has been talking to me about some of the issues that have been in the speech for as long as I’ve known him and that’s Senator Tony Sheldon.

Tony was elected to the Senate as you know last year but he’s already made an enormous contribution in a whole range of different areas, including most recently moving to establish a Senate enquiry into the aviation industry.

He’s part of a team of three people who have dedicated their lives to the transport industry in the Senate with both Alex Gallacher and Glenn Sterle.

Alex has been chairing the inquiry into wage and superannuation theft.

Glenn Sterle is chairing the road transport inquiry.

Glenn Sterle still has the best line that I have ever heard anyone deliver in a first speech, which is some years ago now when he turned up in the Senate and said “a whole lot of you won’t know that the chairs in the chamber came from Western Australia – I know because I unloaded the truck”.

That concept of an appreciation which Australians so often don’t have as to how and the complexity for something to get where it needs to be and to complete the journey, is something I’ll never forget Glenn explaining in those terms.

So they all advocate and support your industry really well.

The second thing I want to say is to all of you – thank you.

What a year.

We’ve talked a lot this year about the heroes of the pandemic.

But too often the heroes of the pandemic that we’ve spoken about are the people we can actually see. Now they are heroes – they might be in the caring economy, in aged care or in hospital care, they might be the people who had to monitor some really terrible behaviour at the retail end, but of course the logistics chain has kept Australia moving through all of this, and the complexity of it changed and changed radically in 2020.

Also, there was a level of risk for anyone who had to go to work. There were sort of three different categories of Australians during all of this.

There were the people who lost their jobs, who lost income and had to deal with that. There were the people like me where suddenly a whole lot of the work that you would do was being done from home, looking into a phone through zoom and a series of different apps.

And there were the people who had to turn up to work with a brand new pandemic out there and in your industry often travelling from dangerous location to dangerous location not knowing the extent which, particularly in the early days, the extent to which they were putting themselves in harms’ way to be able to make sure a job was done.

At the same that the warehouses were operating at reduced staffing capacity the demand for groceries and other goods increased by 40 per cent during the lockdown in Melbourne.

What that meant was workers in your industries were navigating multiple state governments, state border crossings, negotiating a whole new layer of paperwork with essential worker and entry permits as well as dealing with queues at borders and regular COVID testing.

That is to say nothing of the additional costs borne by the industry in compliance, developing COVID-safe plans across every workplace while at the same time continuing to pay the tolls on the roads as new tolls were appearing particularly not far from us here.

That’s a hell of an effort that has not received the recognition that it deserves.

So I just want to say thank you - not in my role on behalf of the Labor party, but in my role as a member of Australia’s parliament. The nation would have looked much poorer and people’s experience this year would have been a hell of a lot more difficult were it not for the professionalism of the industry represented around this table.

You overcame every barrier and you completed the journey. You rose to the challenges that were presented by the disruption at every mode and level of the supply chain.

And of course, the final bit of logistics, thank you to Hugh in organising tonight.

It’s constructive, it’s cooperative and the conversations I’ve had as I’ve moved around the table and across the table, there is a sense of goodwill and national interest in everything about tonight and I think that reflects hugely not just on the industry, but on yourself Hugh and what you bring together.

I’m sure the issues I referred to a minute ago are not ones anyone anticipated at the beginning of 2020 and so it’s been a difficult year I expect for everyone who’s part of the organisation, a very difficult time.

The gig economy and the death of gig workers

I now want to turn to the particular challenges that have caused me to want to formalise the speech I’m giving to you tonight.

Transport is a major industry that encompasses many types of work and much of that work is dangerous, and always has been.

There have been too many tragic cases of drivers working hard to meet deadlines and make a living who have never made it home.

Every year the transport, postal and warehousing industry records more workplace deaths than any other - and these are just the ones officially recorded by Safe Work Australia.

This year has been no exception. The official statistics show that as of a week ago, 49 people have lost their lives this year – more than one a week.

Killed in their workplace.

It is a huge issue for the entire industry and the families left behind.

In recent years we have witnessed a new section of the industry growing and growing rapidly in home food delivery services.

Over the last two months we have seen five deaths at work of workers in this industry – two in the last week alone.

Five people trying to make a living to support themselves and their families.

Five people working in third-world standards in a first-world country.

It is worker exploitation, plain and simple.

This is not a new phenomenon of course, but it is shocking.

Bijoy Paul, Dede Fredy, Xiaojun Chen and Chow Khai Shen and a fifth rider who’s name hasn’t been released - all of them went to work and never came home.

It’s a story your industry knows all too well. The circumstances are different, but the causes and impacts are the same.

There is a direct link between safety and rates, and a challenge to companies that do the right thing when they are undercut by businesses doing the wrong thing.

You’ve heard me make this point before. My first portfolio was Shadow Minister for Small Business and I started to make this point about safe rates at meetings fifteen years ago. The person who first alerted me to it was Tony Sheldon.

Dangerous low rates mean high speeds and no breaks. They mean deaths.

My personal commitment to safe rates has never changed and it also prevents reputable businesses such as yourselves from being undercut by dodgy competitors.

It allows you to put your own people first without losing business as a result.

But when I first raised this issue in the transport industry there was no such thing as an app.

There’s no shortage of heavy vehicle drivers who do consider themselves independent contractors running a small business.

They carry a mortgage over an asset, they run major expenses and insurance through the business, they employ people, and the eventual sale of the vehicle and the client list becomes their own nest egg in retirement.

The claim that a visa worker whose only asset is a second-hand bike is somehow an empowered independent contractor is ridiculous and dangerous.

An employer would have obligations. An algorithm is used to deny protections.

An employer has to lawfully provide minimum rates of pay. The algorithm has no reference to the award.

An employer has to lawfully provide safe rest breaks. The algorithm rewards those who don’t take rest breaks.

Today’s proposal from Uber, that you might have seen in the Financial Review, is to have drivers bid directly against each other to undercut to the lowest possible price.

I think we need to see that particular proposal for what it is: it’s deadly.

The safety issues of maintenance, fatigue, and speed are all ditched and the lowest price becomes the only arbiter.

Australia as a country made decision more than a century ago that:

We would not be a low wage country
We would not be a place where you needed tips to survive
We would have minimum standards in each industry
And it would be safe to go to work.

We all want the convenience of the technology, the technology itself is not the problem.

And the technology is not going away.

But we can’t allow the technology to be used to change the meaning of what it is to work in Australia.

This can be fixed. Pretty easily.

It’s up to the Government to respond quickly.

I’m not determining there’s only one way the Government could respond, but let me offer one option just to show that this can be done easily.

One option would be to extend the power of the Fair Work Commission to be allowed to deal with circumstances that were “employee-like”.

This would avoid the risk of new legislated definitions which could simply see the platforms restructured to avoid being caught by the legislation.

Giving a role for the Commission also ensures genuine independent contractors don’t get caught by the sort of regulation that you require for people who are being exploited and receiving less than minimum rates.

If the government has a proposal, we will look at it seriously because Australia needs to do better.
Thankfully on this, the media is reporting these tragic deaths and perhaps, finally, people are starting to pay attention.

But while important, media attention is not enough.

State governments and oppositions are conducting their own enquiries into gig work – this is welcome and necessary, but it’s also not enough.

This is a national issue and it’s one which requires action from our national government - which so far has been missing in action.

They are silent on this issue and they’re issues at a broad level that your industry has faced for a long time.

Labor in government tried to address some parts of it. The app part wasn’t covered by us – that wasn’t there – but the Safe Rates issue, we did address.

Much of that good work has been undone by the current Government with nothing put in its place.
We remain committed to finding the necessary solutions to ensuring your businesses remain viable, sustainable and safe.

I don’t want there to be a situation where good businesses do that standard business thing of considering your own people your greatest asset find yourselves decreasingly competitive because you’re dealing with shonks who put their own people last.

Industrial relations reform

Now despite being silent on the gig economy issues, one thing the Morrison government has not been quiet about is industrial relations reform.

They’ve been quiet about what they’re going to do about it but they haven’t been quiet about the concept of industrial relations reform.

It’s been quite the journey since their re-election in May last year with a whole lot of twists and turns along the way.

Next week we go back to Canberra for the final two weeks of Parliament for the year.

We expect that sometime during that fortnight the government will introduce its Industrial Relations legislation.

I want to be clear that we will look at that in good faith.

We are not looking for ways to oppose, we are looking at how we can be constructive.

I think it is possibly a reasonable expectation that there will be some sort of Senate inquiry to work through the detail.

If we have something that really closely reflects what was agreed in the Working Groups then I think it’s reasonable to expect something will go through the parliament, probably early next year.

If we go through the entire Working Group process and then we get legislation that doesn’t reflect what was agreed in the Working Groups, then I expect we will be in a land of debating what amendments are appropriate and what are not because we’ll probably have legislation where some parts of it are constructive and some parts of it are highly political.

We don’t know exactly what will be in the legislation, and we will make our final decision obviously when we see the legislation itself after months of secrecy.

We hope and expect that the government will give the parliament the time to carefully consider and debate it, which is only fair given the Working Group process - and we’ve been talking about this over dinner - five separate groups, 32 meetings over a period of 10 or weeks or so as well as the additional consultation after that, when you go through that much effort, the legislation should be based on it, and based pretty closely on it.

But whatever it is, here’s the test.

Every measure has to be tested by does it create decent, secure jobs and does it improve job security.
I want to explain something about what we were chatting about over the table.

As we come out of the pandemic job security, which has always been important, is going to be more important than ever.

We know that when you climb out of a hole, there’s more jobs. By definition, the Government will be saying ‘more jobs are there”, that has to happen when you come out of a hole, when you come out of a lockdown.

But there’s a massive difference for the economy as to whether they are secure jobs or whether they are insecure jobs. Because for the economy, what we want people to start doing again is spend money.
But if they’re worried about the security of their jobs they’ll save that money. It’s a rational thing for them to do.

If they feel they’ve got job security they’ll start to spend again. And until they start to spend again, the economy is not going to have the growth we need to have again.

So while job security for a Labor Party has always been in our frame, it has never been more important for the needs of the Australian economy than what it’s going to be as we move out of the pandemic.
The rules that govern our workplaces today and in the future are going to need to be fit for purpose.
Now we saw through some pretty extraordinary cooperation between employers organisations and unions, workers representatives, that the IR system as it is at the moment can move quickly.

We had some really rapid changes to legislation and to awards and to enterprise agreements.
That doesn’t mean the rules today are perfect, they are not. So we are there for the conversation as to how they can be improved.

In the lead up to this there was a pandemic, before coronavirus, a pandemic of examples of wage theft and superannuation theft and that needs to be dealt with in the legislation that we see.

If there is one positive thing brought about by the crisis it is cooperation that we’ve seen that I’ve referred to.

The government owes everyone around the table, including the union movement a debt of gratitude. I’m not sure that they will get it but they certainly deserve it, not only for the cooperation they showed but for the advice they provided.

Every time I hear the Government now boast about JobKeeper I remember when both the union movement and the Labor Party were calling for a wage subsidy.

We did it on the floor of Parliament and the PM looked back at us sitting on the benches opposite and told us it was ‘a very dangerous proposal’.

It was the right proposal and we made it in good faith in the interests of the economy.

And can you imagine, just imagine where the economy would be now had we not won that argument, and the government had stuck to their original view that there shouldn’t be a wage subsidy. You can only just think of how many people would have lost their jobs and their connection to the workplace over these last few months.

We know from previous recessions when people lose their connection to the workplace it makes it that much harder for them to find their way back in.

Superannuation

I want to finally say something about superannuation, because we know we’re going to be in a fight on this.

The fight is coming on a few fronts, but ultimately it comes to one simple concept. Do we believe everybody should be saving a nest egg for retirement? Or should it be something that you only get if you are in a particularly high paid job? That’s effectively the argument that we are in.

It’s worth thinking about what has happened to people at the lower income end during this time. And when I say lower income end in terms of superannuation balances, that also just includes anyone who’s in the first decade of their work, because your superannuation balance is relatively low during that time.
The government encouraged people in two different hits to take $10,000 out of their super. We were worried about that policy and we don’t blame the people who took money, a lot of the people who took money out were people who had missed out on other forms of support during the pandemic. And a whole lot of people took it because they needed it.

But they also took it, having been told that the Government had made a commitment that their super on an ongoing basis was going to rise to 12 per cent contribution. Now they’ve taken that money out, a whole lot of people have cleared their balance to zero, and the Government’s now saying “oh by the way we might not increase it to 12 per cent”.

Not only is that deeply deceptive to anyone who took their money out, and will have a permanent impact on their financial capacity for the rest of their lives, it also, if they follow through with this, will be one of the most extraordinary examples of intergenerational theft we ever see.

If people don’t have their own money in retirement, the rest of us pay for it. And it will be an extraordinary example of intergenerational theft if we just see to get through these six months that a debt burden is put on the rest of Australia because the Government decides to break its promise with respect to increasing it to 12 per cent.

People will still need support in their retirement and I’ve got to say that the superannuation system is one of the great reforms that we’ve had in Australia. It’s one of the great Labor reforms.

If you think of the impact – I’ve just talked about what it’s meant for the individual in terms of retirement - but it’s not just the individual. During the global financial crisis and as we come to the recovery now, when business needs investment we now have this huge pool of domestic savings wanting to invest in this country.

Before superannuation you used to hear people talk about the problem we had in Australia was that we only invested in bricks and mortar and we had a real problem for the economy with national savings. No one says that anymore, because it’s not true anymore. And it’s not true anymore because of our superannuation system. We should guard it for what it means for each individual and their future and we need to guard it for what it means for the Australian economy.

Conclusion

Effectively the message I want to leave you with tonight is that during the pandemic you’ve completed the journey. For every Australian on every trip. And it’s now up to those of us in positions in parliament to complete our part of the journey.

That means we need to complete the journey in terms of making sure that people are safe at work.
We need to complete the journey in terms of making sure that you’re not undercut by shonks and rip off operations.

We need to make sure we complete the journey in industrial relations reform because cooperative workplaces are always better workplaces.

And we need to complete the journey that was promised by both sides of politics at the last election for superannuation to remain a cornerstone of both investment and security in Australia.

You’ve completed your journey it’s up to those of us in parliament now to complete the journey that’s our obligation to you.

ENDS

FRIDAY, 27 NOVEMBER 2020