TRANSCRIPT: DOORSTOP - CANBERRA - DEC 8, 2020

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA
TUESDAY, 8 DECEMBER 2020

SUBJECTS: IR changes; unions; Scott Morrison misleading parliament over Kevin Rudd.

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: I'm happy to go straight to questions.

JOURNALIST: Mr Burke what do you make of the latest industrial IR reforms that the government's proposing here today, mainly to do with part-time workers?

BURKE: Look, the government's had a habit of looking down their nose at casuals and at part-time workers and wanting to say, as long as you're getting any hours then you should be grateful, even if you're not getting any security. Our test on everything will be whether or not what the government puts forward delivers secure jobs with decent pay. And that's the simplicity of our test on all of this. The media I think has been put in a pretty difficult situation. People are being given media drops without being allowed to see the legislation. And so we're talking about legislation that we haven't seen yet either. But the principle will apply to everything is does it deliver secure jobs with decent pay?

JOURNALIST: What are your thoughts on the extension of the IR relaxations for industries that are hardest hit by COVID-19? And are you worried that those exemptions or extensions might be exploited?

BURKE: I'm not as alarmed as I was yesterday because the government's further clarified it. Part of the so-called flexibilities have effectively meant a cut to take home pay, where employers have been able to - separate to what they'd otherwise be allowed to do - just cut people’s hours. And as businesses have come off JobKeeper it has effectively transferred the help to the business from coming from the government to coming from the employee. We've been deeply critical of that. What the government has now said is that they’re not wanting to extend that part of it, they’re only wanting to extend the issues about place of work. That's less alarming but we'll still conduct a consultation before we land a final view.

JOURNALIST: When it comes to the part-time workers, the government’s suggesting that if a part-time worker’s offered extra hours, they should be offered that extra work at ordinary rates of pay, rather than overtime. And that would encourage more businesses to give part-time workers more hours and potentially encouraging less casual work and more part-time work.

JOURNALIST: It's not the worst of their ideas. But it's not without some problems where we'll need to look at the legislation. Let me give a couple of examples. We don't want a situation where a part-timer would have through a normal roster change be given more permanent hours. And instead of that they're only offered more non-permanent hours. Effectively, what that means is security that otherwise would have been given to them isn't. And they end up called a part-timer, but only 12 or 15 of their hours are part time and the remainder are effectively casual. That's not a pathway to secure work. So if it's framed the way you've described in the question, there may be a pathway through. But there are also some risks attached. The other thing I'll say is the government has previously used an argument, and I suspect they might use it here, where they’ll pull out enterprise agreements where this sort of flexibility exists. And there will be enterprise agreements where this exists. But here's what you need to remember. It's different if something is given up in a negotiation, in return for a pay rise or some other benefit for the worker, then for the parliament to just legislatively and unilaterally give it away. And so, the fact that this exists at some workplaces isn't quite the context because it will have been in return for other areas that have guaranteed security at work.

JOURNALIST: On the issue of the Fair Work Ombudsman, the suggestion is they’ll get $47 million extra to ensure that businesses are essentially paying their workers correctly. Do you welcome that move on wage theft?

BURKE: Additional money for the Fair Work Ombudsman is a good thing to do. The best thing you can do in terms of making sure that people were properly paid historically has been to have a strong trade union movement, which the government for its entire life - up until the very recent dropping of the Ensuring Integrity Bill - had been trying to dismantle. So this part of it is good. In terms of the entire government agenda, there is no surprise that so many stories of wage theft have come out on their watch.

JOURNALIST: So just more broadly on the omnibus bill that will be presented to Parliament tomorrow. Do you think that what the government is doing here is there's going to be give and take, that businesses and employees will have to give and take when it comes to IR issues?

BURKE: Well, that's the way the government's described it. It's legislation that that we still haven't seen, as I said earlier. So we'll adopt a constructive approach to it. But if it fails the test of delivering secure jobs with decent pay, then we'll oppose those parts of it. That's what we'll do. So that's the test. We've been upfront with that the whole way through. The government yesterday was more conciliatory on this bill then they've been on other pieces of legislation. And if they offer a constructive way forward then we'll take it. But if they offer a take-it-or-leave-it approach and if it fails the test, it'll be pretty logical where we'll land.

JOURNALIST: And on the demerger, Labor will be backing more legislation so big unions can demerge or decouple from each other?

BURKE: On the demerger issue we haven’t completed our processes. Normally I wouldn’t comment on Shadow Cabinet at all but given it’s on the front page of the papers, those stories today are broadly accurate. What I can say with respect to that bill is we have seen a draft and I suspect what is introduced today will vary from that draft. The principle behind it, of are there circumstances were outside of the three-year window a division of a union might want to exercise a democratic vote to decide whether it wants to stay - that principle, we’re broadly okay with. But what matters is how limited are those circumstances? What I certainly don't want is it being so broad that you end up with a whole lot of organisations being tied up in red tape and ballots because there's one section of an organisation that wants to abuse it. That's in no one's interest. And we’ll see the final form of what the government introduces today.

JOURNALIST: There's even talk about that bill going through Parliament this week, which seems pretty swift. Are you open to that? Or is that just not possible?

BURKE: Well there's a series of pieces of legislation that we've already agreed with the government to them having fast passage this year. And in doing that, we've done that quite deliberately. And while I'm often critical of the government's management of their program, we haven't had many weeks of Parliament this year. So there is a backlog and we've been cooperative where legislation is agreed. So the test of all of those sorts of issues will tend to be whether or not the legislation is agreed. That will depend on what the government introduces today.

JOURNALIST: And does that put pressure on John Setka. If that bill is put through this week, is it a message to John Setka that his power base in the CFMEU shouldn’t be taken for granted?

BURKE: That'll be a matter for the members of the union and the different divisions within the union. What I have to make sure of is that we get the principle right in landing our position on the bill. And that will be making sure that we can respect democratic rights of members of a division of an organisation without tying up a whole series of organisations in endless red tape.

JOURNALIST: Mr. Burke, just on the Kevin Rudd issue, do you think that the Prime Minister should apologise in Parliament after suggesting that Kevin Rudd had been using special exemptions to travel this year?

BURKE: The prime minister has got a problem with the truth. He's got a problem with the truth. And whenever he sees an opportunity for a political fight, he just instinctively goes there. That's what happened yesterday. He didn't like the question, he made clear he didn't like it. So he had to have a political attack – even when it wasn't true. That's who our prime minister is, that’s who Mr. Morrison is. Now for a long time it's been the tradition that if you make an error in the parliament, you report and apologise for that error in the parliament. I remember sitting in the chamber during adjournment debate when John Howard walked back down to explain he’d misheard a question on climate change, what he said was incorrect and he corrected the record. But Mr. Morrison usually has a view that the rules that might have been good enough for John Howard, he's too good for. So we'll see how he handles that. But the correct thing to do is to have the decency to go back to where you made the error which was in that room and apologise for it.

ENDS