TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING - DEC 9, 2020

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2020

SUBJECT: Scott Morrison’s scheme to cut workers’ pay, unions, right-wing extremism.

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: Tony Burke is the Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations, he joins me now. Welcome. Do you accept that the BOOT, which is the Better Off Overall Test for people who don’t know these over the top acronyms, needs to be fixed given unions and employers both agree it has flaws?

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: You need to do something to get enterprise agreements moving again and to get enterprise bargaining moving again. What the government has done today is not what you have just suggested in the question but to actually completely suspend the Better Off Overall Test for two years. So all the requirements to make sure that workers are better off disappear for the next two years, and while the Prime Minister in a very strange way today was denying that there is a wage cut coming, I have to say, you get rid of a test that is making sure people are better off, what you think’s going to happen?

KARVELAS: Would Labor consider supporting changes to the BOOT if there were amendments or changes?

BURKE: We’ve got the legislation today, we were not privy to advance copies of it or anything like that, so we're still working through the detail. The one section that we have been able to get through quickly enough, to say we certainly will not support is the suspension of the Better Off Overall Test, that they have done under the cover of the pandemic. The effect of this is that agreements that happen over the next two years, and each of them themselves is then a two-year agreement, so you are looking at four years down the track that people will still have pay cuts because of legislation the government wanted to get through now. And the scale of those pay cuts is extraordinary. An aged care worker, you think of the people who have had an extraordinary year but work on weekends, work late nights, they’re the people where losing your shift penalties really hurts. And aged care worker could stand to lose $11,000 a year as a result of this. I think the heroes of the pandemic deserve a better level of thanks and a better Christmas present then that sort of pay cut that was brought down in black and white today in the legislation that came into Parliament.

KARVELAS: It is based on this two-year period, so that businesses can make sure to keep as many people on the books as possible. Is that not a worthy project to try to get as many Australians working?

BURKE: Right now we need people to be getting back into work and we need people to be spending money. If people know that there are pay cuts coming the last thing they will be doing is spending money. And if you don't get people spending money in the domestic economy, you don't get a recovery.

KARVELAS: But you need people working to also spend money, don't you?

BURKE: I hear that but there are some countries in the world that have decided to get their economies moving by making the workers in those countries poorer and poorer. I don't want Australia to be on that list. And the government is being completely contradictory in their arguments here. We’ve got Josh Frydenberg out there saying the economy is doing so well that now we can cut JobKeeper and JobSeeker because business does not need it anymore. And at the same
time we have Christian Porter saying the economy is doing so badly that we need the frontline workers to be the ones that take a pay cut of an extraordinary level, potentially all their penalty rates are up for grabs in what has been introduced today because the economy is doing so badly. Both cannot be true.

KARVELAS: Isn't it misleading to call this the Morrison pay cut when workers under the legislation actually have to vote to approve any variation of their agreement?

BURKE: We know what happens, particularly in workplaces that are not unionised where people don't have that strength of a collective voice when an agreement is put to them and the boss says unless you vote for this you are going to lose your job is. We know what happens. And a whole lot of the timeframes that people would normally have to think about this - they have been cut too. This is a deliberate strategy about cutting pay, that was what was announced today, and you don't get an economy moving and the answer in Australia has never been that the path to prosperity is by making workers poorer.

KARVELAS: Where is the evidence that this will cut the pay of essential workers as the Opposition Leader has suggested?

BURKE: At the moment the protection against a pay cut is the Better Off Overall Test. In any new agreement you have to overall be better off. For two years, they are taking that away. So your hourly award rate, ordinary time, is protected – but that is about it. All the extra allowances, the extra penalty rates, all become up for grabs because the protection that used to be there for all of those gets suspended for two years. That is the proof, it’s in section 19 of the bill. And I had expected in Question Time today that we would have a serious argument about whether or not that is right for the economy. But bizarrely, Mr Morrison and Mr Porter just denied that they were doing it, on the same day that they had introduced it to Parliament.

KARVELAS: Do you acknowledge that businesses that have either done well or only been mildly affected because of coronavirus wouldn't actually qualify under the test required by the Fair Work Commission?

BURKE: That's not true. What you describe there is something Christian Porter said in his media conference. You read the bill and the bill does not say that your business has to have a particular level of detriment as a result of COVID-19, it simply says you have to have been affected by the pandemic. I cannot think of a business in Australia that has not been affected by the pandemic.

KARVELAS: That’s interesting you put that. So if the government were to define the level of “effected”, just like they do with JobKeeper, put some sort of definition on it, would Labor consider it?

BURKE: Then you get right back to the definition that is already in the Act. If you are going to confine it to the most extreme, extraordinary cases, that is already there in the legislation. The only reason the government is adding this is because they want to have a broad-based policy that allows for the next two years wages to be cut.

KARVELAS: You say it is already there but I'm asking you a very specific question. If they were to say downturn has to be 30 per cent – I’m making this up - would you consider it?

BURKE: The answer is no, and the reason is the amendment that would completely fix this is the Act as it currently stands. Anything more than that is a situation where at the end of a pandemic the government is saying to the workers that got us through this, now is the time, the government will withdraw support and it's all on you and you get the pay cut.

KARVELAS: That means there is no negotiation from you?

BURKE: We made clear today, we not supporting legislation that cuts the pay of workers. That is what this does today.

KARVELAS: Full stop? There is no change to the BOOT, no negotiation that could satisfy Labor?

BURKE: They have come out today with legislation that cuts the pay workers. I gave – and we telegraphed this a long time in advance - I made clear we had a really simple test we would apply to legislation, and that was it had to provide secure jobs with decent pay. This fails that test.

KARVELAS: Why did Labor ultimately decide to back the legislation that allows the demerger of big unions?

BURKE: At the moment, there is a brief window where if you are a division of a union you can vote after an amalgamation to leave. So that's two years after the amalgamation until five years after. So, that brief window is already there. There was an argument that we had to work through as a party, as to whether or not there would also be, after that window, some extreme circumstances where a division of a union, even though the window had passed, might want to still have a democratic vote for their members to choose whether or not they wanted to stay in the amalgamated union. The only justification for that in our view was if the amalgamating union, the larger body, had engaged and had a record of illegality, that would be a reason for a division that had not been part of that illegality to say we want to have a democratic vote as to whether or not we get out. What was presented to us over the weekend was broader than that, and we made it clear to the government it was only that narrow circumstance where we would support it. What they introduced today, we don't need to amend because they already made that change.

KARVELAS: Just finally on an issue that is not in your portfolio but I know you have been following because you are the leader of opposition business, which makes an all-rounder as well, there have been negotiations and now Peter Dutton has referred this issue that Labor has been pushing for which is
around right-wing extremism, white supremacy groups - an inquiry into that. But part of that referral from the government has also included Islamist extremism. Why has Labor got a problem with that?

BURKE: We’re no longer pushing for the separate inquiry. We wanted to make sure there was an inquiry into right-wing extremism and then there will now be. I understand there is now an agreement, the government put that forward as a compromise, and we have agreed with that. The thing that matters, and that we want people to know is no matter what the threat to you is, no matter what sort of terrorist activity might be the threat, we want it to be being dealt with an equal level of seriousness. It's important for people to have confidence that our agencies are doing that and an inquiry to make sure of that is really important to. On the anniversary of Christchurch, I think that was brought home to everybody.

KARVELAS: No doubt about that, and I know Labor is not opposing the referral but Kristina Keneally did make the point in the press conference that was just broadcast before we started talking … The point she made was in the last 20 years there had been a lot of focus on Islamist terror, on right-wing extremism, that focus has not happened.

BURKE: And she is exactly right on that. I have had it put to me many times, including after Christchurch, that people want to know - particularly the people who will be the targets of right-wing extremism - they want to know that there is as much attention going on that as there needs to be. People have not felt that there is evidence that enough of that is happening, and I think we are also all very aware that in terms of where the terrorists came from, the tragedy of Christchurch might have been in New Zealand but the development of the terrorist happened in Australia. And we have to know that, we have to sadly own that and make sure that in future we can prevent that.

KARVELAS: Tony Burke, thanks for joining me.