TRANSCRIPT: DOORSTOP INTERVIEW - CANBERRA - JUNE 10, 2020

E&OE TRANSCRIPT 
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
CANBERRA
WEDNESDAY, 10 JUNE 2020

SUBJECT: Australia Post; dnata workers; musicians’ open letter.

TONY BURKE: Labor fought hard to make sure that the Parliament would be sitting again. And we're pleased to be able to have these sittings over the next fortnight. Even in the midst of a pandemic we've shown that the Parliament is able to sit and is able to function. But importantly we need to be here to be able to make sure that we keep arguing that nobody should be left behind. At the moment with JobKeeper and a series of different programs that are being run by the government, there have been good ideas but their implementation has not been as good as it might have been. And some of them, being implemented simply poorly. We don't want people to be left behind. And I want to just very quickly refer to three groups of people being left behind at the moment in different ways.

The first are Australia Post workers, and indeed everybody who relies on Australia Post delivery. The government, in particular Minister Fletcher, has used the pandemic as cover for cost cutting. They've used the pandemic as cover for a long-term objective to downgrade mail deliveries in Australia. What it effectively means is instead of letters being delivered within three days it will now take twice that length of time because of weekends, covering overtime as well. So instead of over three days it will now take twice as long for your mail to be delivered. And they put that rule in place for a year. This is not about the pandemic - it's about using the pandemic as cover the cost-cutting and job-cutting. And this week once that regulation is tabled in the Parliament, Labor will be moving in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate for it to be disallowed so that people can get their post delivered properly.

The second area where people are being left behind is workers like those at dnata. While not now allow a lot of people will know what dnata is but they will know what Qantas Catering is. Qantas Catering, the government approved a foreign takeover some years ago. It was approved by the government that the foreign takeover could occur and the government is now using that foreign takeover as an excuse to deny the workers the JobKeeper payment. We need to remember that if they are eligible for JobKeeper, the company won't get to keep a dollar. And yet you have thousands of workers, where we want to keep their relationship with their employer, being left behind. And we need to be able to make sure that during this pandemic we carry the whole community together, that people are not left behind.

And the final group, you will have seen in the papers today, something in the order of about a thousand musicians and venue operators who've written about the fact that the whole way through this people who work in the arts and entertainment industry have largely been left behind. These are people who work gig to gig, event to event, festival to festival. And the nature of their employment has meant that the rules for JobKeeper effectively cut them out, even though they've been effectively working full time. A couple of weeks ago Anthony Albanese and I were with a bloke who doesn't stand in the spotlight but he holds the spotlight, by the name of Scott. He's been working in the industry for 35 years, 34 of them as a casual. He's not eligible for JobKeeper. He's being left behind. And it's just ridiculous that someone like Scott, working in an industry for 35 years, misses out on JobKeeper, and somebody else doing a shift a week, suddenly gets a multiple of their salary even though they're still living at home with their parents. Happy to take questions.
 
JOURNALIST: What’s the alternative plan that Labor would propose?

BURKE: As we've said the whole way through we will support anything the government does that make sure these people are included again. So when legislation has been put before us we’ve put forward amendments and those amendments have been had been voted down. But as you've seen, there's been a series of times where we've voted for legislation not because it was perfect but because it was urgent. If the government wants to take action, is willing to take action, so that these workers are not left behind they can expect a good level of support and optimism and the sort of cooperation that we've been showing throughout this whole time. Thanks very much.
 
ENDS