TRANSCRIPT: RADIO INTERVIEW - ABC RN - FEBRUARY 10, 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RN BREAKFAST
WEDNESDAY, 10 FEBRUARY 2021

SUBJECT: Labor’s Secure Australian Jobs Plan.

FRAN KELLY, HOST: Tony Burke is the Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations and I spoke with him earlier.

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: Good to be back.

KELLY: This policy is aimed largely at insecure workers, putting the spotlight on casuals, those toiling in the gig economy. How much is this driven by what we’ve seen and what’s occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic? Is this a policy shaped by COVID-19?

BURKE: Very much so. What the pandemic showed was that people who were the first to lose their jobs, the people who didn’t have the basic public health support of leave entitlements, were the people in the most insecure jobs. And we also, I think, people worked out during that time that insecurity is not just casualization. It’s also the gig economy, it’s also contracting out, it’s labour hire, it’s people on short-term back-to-back contracts that never end and they never end up with any security in their job. And coming out of the pandemic, we want to make sure that people who’ve had the bills racking up over the last 12 months have the capacity to spend. They need to be able to organise their finances again. Business is going to need domestic demand within the economy, because they need people to spend. And you don’t get that security across the economy unless you start with people in secure jobs.

KELLY: Well as you say, security is not just about those who’ve lost their jobs during the pandemic, there’s many people who have been in work – we’ve looked at the examples writ large of aged care staff for example who move from job to job – and one of the elements of the plan to be announced by Labor today is a change that would enable workers to transfer their entitlements from one job to another I guess, one short-term job to another short-term job. How would this work?

BURKE: Well this part of it is something we’ve said we would negotiate with the states and territories and start working through how we can have portability of entitlements for people. It’s something that you would start on an industry at a time, it’s not something that would just be unilateral legislation through the Parliament. But the principle here is there are a whole lot of people where we found out during the pandemic that the fact that they had no access to sick leave wasn’t just a problem for them, it was a problem for the public health of all Australians. And while it was exposed clearly during the pandemic, it is a reminder that insecure work, and people who are compelled to work multiple jobs, has effectively meant a whole lot of the standards we thought we had in Australia haven’t reached millions of our workforce.

KELLY: What are we talking about – sick leave, holiday pay, what sort of entitlements?

BURKE: Look if you start with, say if you give an example of a gig worker. At the moment their challenge is they’re not even classified as an employee and sometimes they’re earning below the minimum rate. Basic standards in making sure that they don’t turn up to work when they’re sick, that they have another way out, that they have another option – these are the sorts of principles that we want to be able to work through with the states and territories.

KELLY: Alright but what are you actually talking about – as I understand it, Labor’s plan would empower the Fair Work Commission to give gig workers fair wages and conditions. Are we talking holiday pay, are we talking sick leave, are we talking superannuation – and doesn’t that take them back into line with traditional jobs? It’s no longer a different sort of employment arrangement is it?

BURKE: Look, here we have probably one of the biggest changes that we’ll be announcing today. Up until now, the moment you get classified as a contractor rather than an employee, all your rights fall off a cliff. And so we’ve ended up in a situation where a whole lot of people working in the gig economy are in fact being paid less than the minimum hourly rate that is legal in Australia. Now, I get that there’s a whole lot of contractors who run mortgages off their equipment, who employ a bookkeeper, who are genuinely running an independent business. But I refuse to believe that the person earning less than the minimum wage, with a second-hand bike riding as fast as they can and running red lights to make ends meet is somehow empowered. What’s happened here is some of these platforms have been able to undercut what were meant to be minimum standards in Australia and we’ve ended up with third-world working conditions in a first-world country.

KELLY: It’s a model we’ve accepted and embraced though isn’t it – it’s a model that our society has really embraced. Food delivery services, rideshare, AirTasker..and we all know that we’re not paying enough really for the services delivered. Really we must know that in our hearts. Do you think we’re ready to pay more?

BURKE: Look, we want the technology. I want the technology, I use the technology, but we want the technology without the exploitation. And can I say, this is far more pernicious than just the apps you might have on your phone. The gig economy is now right through the care economy. There is a huge section of the National Disability Insurance Scheme now where people are underbidding for the same work. And you know, people think gig economy, they don’t think NDIS. Yet here is another area where the rates which are meant to apply are not making it through to the workers.

KELLY: The elements of this bill which directly counter or contradict some elements of the government’s omnibus IR bill include the changes to the Better Off Overall Test, the BOOT – you gave a midnight press conference last night to underline this point. What’s the changes that Labor would be suggesting?

BURKE: Well effectively right now on the Better Off Overall Test, our whole impetus is to stop the effective pay cut that’s contained within the government’s legislation. What they’re doing is – the Better Off Test – and the reason I did the media conference at midnight last night – people working at that hour are the people relying on penalty rates. They’re the people who, when they look at their payslip, will be able to see how much they get in overtime, in penalty rates, how much they get in different allowances – and they can work out very quickly how many thousands of dollars a year they could potentially lose if this change goes through. But in its simplest form, the Better Off Overall Test is a safety net that protects your take-home pay. And if you suspend or get rid of that safety net, then workers will land with a thud.

KELLY: Yes but if you lose the job because the employer can’t afford to keep you because of all those elements, in this critical period as the economy is being buffeted by the pandemic, isn’t that a worse outcome for the employee?

BURKE: And I tell you what you’ve gone to there is I think exactly what will be the partisan difference between Mr Morrison’s government and the policies that Anthony Albanese takes forward to the next election. We’ll find Mr Morrison just saying well ‘whatever you can get, whatever you can get paid, a job is a job.’ What we want to see is as we come out of the pandemic, that work is more secure and that people have the capacity to organise their finances and to get ahead again. Because you know, if you don’t have that security, then you can’t get a mortgage, you can’t get in front and the bills that have built up for many people over the last 12 months, you don’t get on top of them again. This debate determines what Australian workforces are going to look like on the other side of the pandemic. And we’re on the side of secure jobs.

KELLY: Just finally, what does Anthony Albanese mean when he says the next election will not be a referendum on the pandemic, but a contest between two different visions for the future of Australia? Don’t you think the people of Australia will be judging the government in large part on the job it’s done on managing the pandemic?

BURKE: Well, I’ll say two things on that Fran – first of all on the big calls, like the calls as to whether or not we have wage subsidies in the form of JobKeeper, both sides of politics have agreed on those big calls and more than that, wage subsidies we were campaigning for and Mr Morrison was telling us they were very dangerous. So on those sorts of big calls, people know that they are safe with Anthony Albanese and that on a whole lot of them, Mr Morrison had to be dragged there. But when it comes to the workforce and what your household budget is going to look like, people absolutely will be voting on that and the election’s going to determine whether the workforce, business and the economy get thrown a ladder or get thrown a rope. And it’s either going to be a secure way out or it’s going to be incredibly tough for people.

KELLY: Tony Burke, thank you very much for joining us.

BURKE: Thanks for having me on Fran.

ENDS