TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - ABC NEWS - NOVEMBER 24, 2020

TONY BURKE MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
SHADOW MINISTER FOR THE ARTS
MANAGER OF OPPOSITION BUSINESS
MEMBER FOR WATSON
 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2020

SUBJECT: Delivery rider deaths, casuals, energy policy, superannuation.

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: Tony Burke is the Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations. Welcome.

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: Hi Patricia, good to be back on the show.

KARVELAS: What is your reaction to the latest death of this food delivery rider in Sydney?

BURKE: It's chilling. When you think that the responsibility for their safety is being governed not by an employer but by an algorithm. That's how they're working. When they work, whether they get shifts, how quickly they are expected to work - it is all being governed by an algorithm. And the government's view has been well, they're not employees. Well, if someone is wanting work and the algorithm, the app they're using is their pathway for the work, it is hard to see that they are somehow a proud independent contractor responsible for their own insurance, and they're expected to be up and running as though they're a small business when their entire infrastructure is that they bought themselves a bike. It's not safe work. There is a customer demand for it so this sort of industry is going to exist. It's not safe and it needs to be. It's not secure work and it needs to be. And we can't have a situation where for the sake of convenience, we put up with there being a section of Australia's workforce that effectively has no rights.

KARVELAS: So what does the industry need to do to start dealing with what appears to be becoming a pattern, with the fifth death nationally in the last three months?

BURKE: In terms of the industry itself, they do need to sit down with employees' representatives, the TWU, the quotes you played from Michael Kaine before, and work out how to make the workplace safer. Some of that will go to protective equipment, some will go to the simplicity of things like proper lighting and fluro colours when riding. A whole lot of it will go to safety training, and some it as well will go to working the way through how the algorithm and the app - that effectively has become their supervisor - works to make sure that people are being treated as humans at work, and that's not normally an algorithm's job. If someone is working under immense pressure, then they won't work as safely. We can talk
about how quickly we've had so many deaths - the real worry is I don't think anyone believes the report overnight will be the last.

KARVELAS: Does Uber Eats' acknowledgement that the industry needs to make safety improvements give you confidence they are willing to make fundamental changes?

BURKE: It gives me hope that it will be better than it is right now. But I think we're probably going to need more than that to go from hope to a level of actual confidence. So I do think the Federal Government needs to play a role here. I do think we need to acknowledge that someone where your entire infrastructure is you bought a bicycle, to say that person is an independent contractor and a small business in their own right just denies reality. And we need to get to a situation where people in those circumstances, where there is some principles around, how long can a shift reasonably be without someone getting a break? How do you make sure someone gets proper training? How do you make sure that the pressure doesn't just become immense? Because part of getting the next shift on these algorithms is to make sure you're always available. So effectively the work till you drop concept of accepting every shift, working harder than you should, not taking breaks, effectively putting yourself in an unsafe situation, for many of these apps is in fact encouraged. Whereas in any workplace you're meant to have a supervisor who guards against that exact circumstance.

KARVELAS: Do you agree with Christian Porter, the minister in your area, that making it easier for casual and part-time workers to be permanent is a better solution than taxpayer-funded sick leave?

BURKE: No. I think it's a ridiculous comment from Christian Porter. To presume that that is somehow of itself would fix it. We have a problem with insecure work in Australia and a whole lot of the vulnerabilities in Australia have been made clear through the pandemic. Vulnerabilities in our aged care system, vulnerabilities in the workforce itself. The fact that we have so many people working multiple jobs has been spoken about in different circles for a long time but the virus has made people realise just how real that is. The challenge with, first of all, the Christian Porter example, can I say, doesn't do anything about the delivery driver we were talking about a moment ago, because Christian Porter doesn't view that person as even a casual. He doesn't view that person as an employee at all. So for that part of the insecure workforce, what he's talking about pretends that those people aren't even there. The second challenge with what he's talking about is it presumes that if there is a rort going on casualisation being used in ways it shouldn't, then you just put up with that rort for the first 12 months and then the person can say, maybe, can I please be a permanent worker after those 12 months. We need to in a whole lot of different layers, find ways of making the workforce more secure. If there's one thing people are going to need on the other side of this pandemic, it's going to be security at work.

KARVELAS: What does Anthony Albanese mean when he says Labor's internal debate over climate policy has been managed?

BURKE: Look I haven't seen the quote and that's an odd way to frame a question. If I can put it maybe in these terms. The discussion around climate and the best way to act on it is one that we've had for a long time. Every time there's been a vote in the parliament about whether or not Australia should act on climate change, we're the only major party that's always voted that we should. Were it not for the fact we've now had, I don't know, more than a dozen different energy policies from the current government, the outcome of that hasn't just been that we have less investment into the energy sector, it also means we have more expensive electricity.

KARVELAS: What did you make of Murray Watts' speech in Rockhampton declaring support for the coal industry?

BURKE: I thought it was pretty much locked in to a whole lot of principles that Anthony gave in his first vision statement, which he delivered in Perth. Back then he made clear that we needed to move away from a view that somehow it was a choice between doing something about climate change and protecting blue-collar jobs - that there's a pathway forward for both. And if you go back to what Anthony said in Perth in the first vision statement, there's a direct line, it's the same principles. What surprised me is that Murray's speech was written up as being so surprising.

KARVELAS: But isn't the main problem, sure that's the vision, you want to tell people you can deliver, but you don't have a detailed plan that tells industry workers where their next job is coming from when the nation transitions away from fossil fuels.

BURKE: Hang on, in terms of where we're at in the cycle at the moment - we didn't win the last election, it's the obligation on the Government to be governing. The announcement that was made though, which is directly relevant to anyone in the energy sector, was the announcement Anthony Albanese made in his budget reply speech about investing in transmission. Investing in transmission, and the plan he put forward there, is directly in line with what's been put to make sure that you get better transmission from all the different sources of energy throughout Australia, including coal, gas and renewables, to have a more reliable grid, and to get cheaper electricity which therefore means cheaper energy jobs, better jobs in a whole range of any job that relies on energy, throughout the country.

KARVELAS: Tony Burke, just finally, Paul Keating obviously spoke to 7.30's Leigh Sales last night. At the same time we have the Government responding to the superannuation review and they say that it's a conspiracy theory that they're trying to dismantle superannuation, it's not based on any truth and in fact Labor's been critical of a report that doesn't even make firm recommendations. Why is Labor saying that the Government's trying to demolish superannuation when the Government is saying it believes in universal super?

BURKE: It says it believes in universal super but it's not saying it believes in the legislated increase to 12 per cent. And we've had some extraordinary comments, I think from the Minister you just had on previously, where she claimed to be - I don't know the exact term - but it was something like ambivalent about something that at that point was the government's own policy. Look at the public statements put out by Andrew Bragg, look at the public statements put out by Tim Wilson. There is real pressure that government members are putting right now to break the promise that superannuation would rise to 12 per cent. And can I just say, quickly because I know you'll be running out of time, what that actually means. That means workers during the pandemic who didn't have support to get through, who were told by the government it's okay you can clear money out of your superannuation, and they made that decision believing that in future years they would be okay because the contribution was going to go up to 12 per cent. They have now been directly betrayed. They take the money, they clear our their super and now on the other side of that the government looks to be saying, and government members are pushing hard to say, well that 12 per cent you thought you were going to get? Nah, it might not be on the table anymore. So it's no surprise we're going to fight that.

KARVELAS: Thanks so much for joining us.

ENDS