TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - ABC 24 - FEBRUARY 10, 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING
WEDNESDAY, 10 FEBRUARY 2021

SUBJECT: Labor’s Secure Australian Jobs Plan.

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: Tony Burke is the Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations and he joins me now from Brisbane. Welcome to the program.

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: Hi, PK.

KARVELAS: I'll get to industrial relations in a moment but I want to ask you about this breaking news. I'm definitely going to get to it, I can assure you.

BURKE: Good.

KARVELAS: A third Crown director has resigned after a scathing report halted the opening of its proposed Sydney casino and James Packer's CPH no longer has representation on the Crown board. Are you satisfied or do you think more need to go?

BURKE: I'm sorry, and I try to be across every question for you, Patricia, but I've heard headlines, I've heard nothing more. And I'm just not going to be in a position to offer what you need on that issue. I apologise for that but I've been back to back interviews on industrial relations
and meetings basically since midnight this morning. I apologise. I just wasn't prepared to get across that story at all.

KARVELAS: Alright...

BURKE: I know it's big but it's the nature of my day.

KARVELAS: It's huge. I’ll park it but we are going to revisit it because that issue around Crown is huge. Let's talk about your industrial relations policy. Let’s start here though. If the Government gets its new definition of casual passed into law with crossbench support, what's going to happen next? Would a Labor government seek to change it again if you're elected?

BURKE: The thing that would happen next is you'd see more casualisation than ever. You'd see a massive reduction in the rights of casuals. And you would see a situation where any employer who wanted to make sure that someone never became permanent would simply make sure someone never became permanent. Those changes are a disaster for casual workers. It gives all the power to the employer and if you ever wanted to fix it you can't do a thing for the first 12 months and after that you can only do something

if as a casual employee you can afford to go to the Federal Court of Australia. There's no way we'd leave something like that in place. But right at the moment we're fighting it.

KARVELAS: It's been bubbling away though for a few years. Why haven't you got your own definition yet?

BURKE: The principle is the definition should be an objective definition. It should be based on what you're actually doing. What the government is putting forward is to say that the employer defines you as a casual on day one. And even if you are treated as a permanent, every day after that, there's nothing you can do about it. There has been a common law definition of a casual for a long time. Our view is that, that's the basis for the objective definition that should be written into the Act. But on the specifics of word by word what you'd put in legislation, that's something nobody does from Opposition. You only do that in terms of getting the advice from the Department if you’re in government. But the principle of having an objective definition based on how people are working, that's how casuals should be defined.

KARVELAS: How much would your policy cost? Is it a $20 billion tax on business or cost on business, let's call it, if we don't want to use the very contentious word of ‘tax’ on business as the Attorney-General says?

BURKE: Do you know who's policy he was talking about? I saw that..he was describing a policy that’s not ours…it’s not in the speech tonight…

KARVELAS: How much would yours cost?

BURKE: What we saw from Christian Porter in that media conference was absolutely next level weird. He invented a policy that's not ours, then got a cost about it, and then got really worked up about the cost of the policy he had invented. He's describing something that's not in the speech, that's not in the announcement, that's not our policy and he's really angry about it. Well, good on him but I've got to say, that media conference, he either knew he was lying or the bloke's just lost it. The policy he was describing in no way represents anything that we’re announcing tonight or that we have decided on.

KARVELAS: You’re saying it's inaccurate, it’s not based on your policy. He says it's $20 billion. What do you say it will cost?

BURKE: But what I’m saying is it's not even the costing that's wrong. The costing is based on a policy that doesn't exist.

KARVELAS: My question is not about him now. It's on your policy which you're across. How much does it cost?

BURKE: Well, for what we're announcing tonight it has a saving to the Budget.

KARVELAS: OK. Who would pay for a worker to have these portable entitlements then? It obviously would cost something.

BURKE: You've gone back to that. Patricia, that's the exact policy that's not in the announcement tonight.

KARVELAS: But they’re portable entitlements right?

BURKE: I spoke on ABC Radio this morning and made clear that with respect to portable entitlements, all we're saying is we are interested in where they might be able to be extended and we would be consulting with the states and territories, with unions and business, to work out where that's appropriate. I was already on the record on that this morning and the Attorney-General has just invented the policy in the terms that you quite reasonably just put it to me because you'd heard him say it.

KARVELAS: It's not based on your policy, it’s a logical question. Would the cost burden fall on the new employer, the old employer or would the government...

BURKE: Patricia, it's not our policy. I'm not going to get into where would the cost burden apply on something I'm not proposing. That's bizarre. That's what the Attorney-General did. This is why I'm saying that media conference is one of the strangest things I've ever seen.

KARVELAS: Are they portable entitlements?

BURKE: We're simply proposing - there are portable entitlements that already exist in a number of industries. We're simply proposing that we would consult with state and territory governments and with unions and industry to work out where it might be appropriate for portable entitlements to be extended. Remember what portable entitlements are. They're entitlements that already exist and they would follow the worker. What Christian Porter did today was he invented new entitlements that don't currently exist and then added a value to them.

KARVELAS: OK but you’re suggesting some new entitlements….

BURKE: And we're having a discussion about something - I don't know how much of the interview we can spend me telling you it's not our proposal. It's not our policy. He's made up a big fat lie. It's not that I'm quibbling with the costings. The basis of the policy is already wrong. It's entirely an invention. And the Attorney-General of Australia has just occupied the attention of the whole Australian media with something that I hope he knows is not true and I hope he's not that deluded, because the whole thing’s loopy.

KARVELAS: OK but if you want workers to be paid entitlements that they’re currently not paid, which is actually your proposal, someone has to pay for it, right?

BURKE: Sorry, Patricia, sorry...

KARVELAS: I know you seem very frustrated but in everything that's been leaked in relation to your leader's speech, there is to be pay that workers currently are not getting. Someone has to pay for it,
right?

BURKE: Can I give you the area,, we're a bit stuck on portable entitlements.

KARVELAS: We are stuck on it because it's a reasonable question, right?

BURKE: I've answered that the announcement that's being described with respect to portable entitlements is not in the speech. It's not what we've decided. What we're doing with respect to portable entitlements I've now already explained twice. The areas that we are announcing tonight that would go directly to payments where workers are currently being effectively robbed of money that we believe needs to be fixed are two-fold. One, same job, same pay. When labour hire outsourcing occurs in a company, it should be for the proper reasons of dealing with a surge of the workforce or something like that. But you should never have a situation where labour hire is used to undercut the wage rates that are otherwise legally enforceable at a workplace. Now for most workplaces that won't make a difference because most employers are smart and respect their workforce and don't play those sorts of games. But some, particularly there are some elements of the coal mining industry in Queensland where you get workers working side by side doing the same job and the labour hire worker is being paid significantly less than the person employed by the host company. That, our policy would address and it would address it by making sure that you can't be paid a lower rate than what the applicable rate is at that workplace. The other area where there is an additional cost is with respect to what I'm amazed is even a contentious principle which is to say no worker in Australia should be being paid below the minimum wage. But in parts of the gig economy, that's exactly what's happening. I wouldn't have thought in this day and age that we're still having the arguments that were held in the Harvester judgement at the beginning of the last century, but that's where we are. I met with some gig workers the other day, where people are on pay rates around $10 an hour. Now, because the company and platforms are employing them through an algorithm, you end up with effectively there being an argument, "Are they an employee, are they a contractor? How do we deal with this?". We have already decided in Australia that people shouldn't be paid that sort of money. We’ve decided there shouldn’t be third-world working conditions in a first-world country. So what we do is we would give the Fair Work Commission the power to deal with these circumstances where they're not empowered contractors running their own business. They're workers in an employee-like situation and that gives the Fair Work Commission the same flexibility that the platforms have in trying to make sure that we can get some minimum standards there. Because as you know and as you previously reported, it's not only a wage issue, it's also a safety issue on the roads.

KARVELAS: Let's talk about the gig economy and what you're trying to do there to ensure gig economy workers are paid better wages and conditions which you’ve been talking about for some time and will be outlined in this speech. Will the cost be passed on to consumers? For those high wages?

BURKE: The gig economy - and I'm not going to, let me just deal with the breadth of it and I'll get to the specifics. The gig economy is much bigger than the apps you might have on your phone. Whole sections of the care economy including the NDIS now run through the gig economy where the money being paid by taxpayers isn't in full reaching the worker and there's an undercutting going on. So we're talking about something that's quite insidious in its reach. Areas like that clearly the money being paid by taxpayers is meant to reach the worker and needs to reach the worker. And the platforms would suffer a penalty. They wouldn't be able to rip the system off the way they've been doing. Good. In terms of the ones that you might have on your phone that a lot of people are more familiar with, during the different shifts and different hours where people are being paid the legal rates within Australia, there's no change. Obviously there's no change there. In circumstances where someone is being paid rates of pay that are otherwise unlawful in Australia, then, yes, more funding would be required for that.

KARVELAS: And would consumers ultimately…

BURKE: We're talking about the difference over the course of an hour between someone is getting $10 or $20.So in terms of what does that mean for the number of deliveries they might do in that time, we're not talking big bucks in terms of the consumer…

KARVELAS: But there is some bucks in terms of the consumer. I’m not debating the principle, but ultimately the consumer will have to pay more. You're just saying it won't be as much more as perhaps some people may think, right?

BURKE: That's a fair way of characterising it. Let's not forget that the rates are so low and so far below what is otherwise allowed in this country. That's why you see riders in some of our major cities running red lights, riding between the lanes where someone opens a door and suddenly they're lying down beside the traffic. It's why last year we had in a very short space of time five deaths on the road of riders who are experiencing working conditions that are just horrific. I want the technology. I use the technology. But it has to be possible to have 21st century technology without saying that we're also going to have 19th century working conditions.

KARVELAS: Tony Burke, I spent most of it on industrial relations. Are you happy?

BURKE: I am. We spent a bit on something that wasn't my policy but I think we got there.

KARVELAS: You're going to speak to me about Crown next time we speak. Thank you for coming on the show.

BURKE: No worries.

ENDS