TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - SKY NEWS - FEBRUARY 11, 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS MORNING BRIEFING
THURSDAY, 11 FEBRUARY 2021

SUBJECTS: Labor’s plan for more secure jobs with better pay; Scott Morrison’s scheme to cut workers’ pay

LAURA JAYES, HOST: He's the Shadow Industrial Relations Minister. And I'm sure he will want a right of reply to that claim of an “extinction level event” for Australian businesses.

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: That’s right, you bet.

JAYES: Tony Burke, but quite seriously, businesses are facing a pretty tough time ahead in 2021, does this just add more pressure?

BURKE: No. If you look at what businesses are going to need coming out of the pandemic, is they’re going to need people to have the confidence to spend. We're going to be more reliant on domestic demand than we've ever been. And as we come out, we're either going to come out of the recession and out of the pandemic with people in secure work, or we're going to have more insecurity than ever. And if people have security, it means they can afford to spend, they can have the confidence to spend, it determines whether or not they can get a loan, it makes a massive difference to their lives to the demand that business will face. And to getting the economy moving again. What Christian Porter seems to want is just to have a race to the bottom. And so I think yesterday really showed what the dividing line is going to be as we head towards the next election. We all know, as the economy comes out of a hole, the only way out of a hole is up and there will be more jobs. But people are either going to be given a ladder to get out of that hole with a bit of security, or they're just going to be thrown a rope. That's effectively the difference that we're looking at. And Christian Porter has clearly, he’s made clear, the government's not interested in job security. They're not interested in doing anything about those circumstances where people are being paid less than what would otherwise be the legal minimum. And they've still got legislation within the parliament that makes work less secure and delivers people a pay cut.

JAYES: Okay.

BURKE : But I reckon we're going to have very clear dividing lines here.

JAYES: Letting contract workers transfer leave and other entitlements between jobs, business will have to pay for that. Have you done modelling on how much it will cost?

BURKE: Well, that's why on that one and I, Christian Porter made a whole lot up yesterday. And that entire figure that was in that package was based on a policy that he had designed, he had invented, attributed to us, had costed and then got really angry about. What Anthony said in the speech last night is we'll be consulting with business, consulting with the states and territories, and consulting with unions to work through where portable entitlements can be extended. We certainly saw a problem with the absence of entitlements for a third of Australia's workforce.

JAYES: Ok, but can I just go back to the cost. Christian Porter says it's a bit of a policy that - You say, okay, you're going to consult, but as you're consulting with these businesses and these workers, are you giving them a more accurate figure as you see it?

BURKE: Well, what I'm saying is what he did was he designed an entire portable leave scheme. That's on him. That's not on us. He then created -

JAYES: These workers they were scared thinking it will cost, businesses are scared thinking it's going to cost them $20 billion dollars. What are you coming back with? Are you saying that it's going to cost far less than that? Do you have some kind of idea how much this plan will cost?

BURKE: All we've said, is we need to have a look at where these might be able to be extended. That's all we've said. And so you know, the cost at the moment is the cost of consultation. There are some areas where the Commonwealth is the entire funder. There are some areas where the cost of business is effectively zero. There are other circumstances where some portable leave entitlements exist in some industries, where overtime, it has, in fact saved businesses money because of the improved earnings that then happen on the held entitlements, and their contributions over time have gone significantly down. There's a whole lot of different ways this can be designed. It doesn't mean that it’ll go across every industry. We're starting the consultation on that. I don't know how on earth you wack a price tag on that. But we did see during the pandemic, a problem where we were asking people to isolate with nothing to live on. And that means we need to have this conversation.

JAYES: What about JobKeeper and JobSeeker.

BURKE: Well, not all of them. No, if you're on a visa, you had neither. And we had public health measures where we needed people to isolate for the good of public health, and they had nothing to live on. So, the answer to that is no.

JAYES: If a lot of this costs is going to be borne by business or perhaps the taxpayer, how can you guarantee that it won't translate into lower wages?

BURKE: Well look I think, Laura, if we go to other measures other than the one that Christian Porter’s invented, then we can talk directly about the cost. So if we talk about the announcement last night on “same job, same pay”. Now, that means that if a company is currently using labour hire or outsourcing to undercut what has been agreed to be the lawful minimum rate at that workplace, then yeah, that will cost that company more. And for the absolute good reason that it should not be the case. You have two workers working side by side, where one person is being paid radically less than their co-worker, and they're doing the same job with the same responsibility at the same workplace. So, where you have some rogue employers who are behaving that way, then yes, it will cost them more. And at the same time, that then means the good employers, which is the vast majority, aren’t facing unfair competition from people who are just undercutting wages.

JAYES: The problem is post pandemic and perhaps post JobKeeper is that people will increasingly just be happy to have a job. I know you talk about rogue employers, but is there a situation where a business is asked to bear these costs? They argue that they're under pressure, their profits have dwindled. They're trying to keep their businesses open. Is there a mechanism in your plan that would stop them from, I guess, lowering wages in order to cover this new transfer?

BURKE: Well, Australia has made a decision more than a century ago that we were going to be a nation with minimum rates of pay. We weren't going to allow a complete race to the bottom, we weren't going to be a nation, l where if people were desperate for work you can just pay them anything. There are some countries in the world where that happens. It does. It's not meant to happen in Australia. Now with labour hire, and with aspects of the gig economy, we're finding some rogue elements where people are effectively being paid less than what the established legal minimum was meant to be. Now, if the government wants to be upfront and defend people being paid less than what has been established as a minimum legal right at a particular workplace, let them make that argument. But I'm telling you, that is something that Labor will always stand against. Always stand against that.

JAYES: Let's look at the unions. Don’t they bit answer for here? Over the years, you're looking at individual enterprise bargains that have been struck, and it's the unions that have traded away some of those penalty rates on a Sunday, some of those add-ons that you talk about, what responsibility do they have?

BURKE: Well first of all, what the unions and working people have done over the last 12 months has been extraordinary. And we would not have made it through the pandemic. And there would be a whole lot of businesses that would not be in business today were it not for the cooperation and work of the union movement in seeing us through the last 12 months. And I think whenever we talk about the role of the union movement, we need to absolutely acknowledge the level of cooperation that has happened over the last 12 months in particular. Now, in terms of a series of enterprise agreements, people will get the best deal for their members that they can based on the rules that are in front of them. But what you've just described in terms of where there might have been an agreement where there was a variation on a penalty rate to get a higher ordinary hourly rate -they've been issues that have gone to gone to the membership and then being tested whether or not they pass a better off test by the Commission. What the government is proposing right now has none of those protections in the sense of what the government is proposing that we have legislation in the parliament right now, that says exactly what you just described, Laura, can happen, that all those penalty rates can be gone, every single one of them, every allowance, every penalty rate. And the hourly rate, the base hourly rate wouldn't even need to increase. Now that's what's being put to the Parliament right now. That means for someone stacking shelves at night, you're looking in the order of an $8,000 pay cut over the course of the year -

JAYES: Let's look about the example of Uber drivers then you've concentrated on. Can you guarantee the cost of food delivery won't go up?

BURKE: In circumstances where, we're talking about multinational companies, huge, multibillion-dollar companies that we're talking about with a whole lot of these outfits. And we're simply saying that it shouldn't be right that someone is paid less than what Australia has said is the lowest amount anyone's allowed to be paid in Australia, and we are finding examples of that, now it’s not every delivery …

JAYES: Yes sure, but what about food delivery, you could see an increase?

BURKE: Look there will be at the margins. There'll be some deliveries where there would be a cost of that, or there would be a shift in the costs. But I’ve got to say you talk to people - we want the technology but it's not like we want exploitation to be part of the package. And it's not like we're saying people would be on exorbitant rates of pay. But, you know, if we've decided that the lowest rate someone should be paid is in the order of about $20 an hour, how is it that someone who has to provide their own vehicle ends up being paid less than that on some platforms at certain hours of the day? Now, there are different times of the day in different platforms where people are being paid more than the minimum wage. So, it's not like the entire industry is always a problem. And that's why when you say, you know, would it always be an increase? The answer to that is no. But there are some platforms at some times of where if someone's falling below the legal minimum that you should be allowed to be paid in Australia. We can’t, we can’t agree with that. And I'm astonished that in this day and age, we are in fact having a political argument between us and the Liberal National Government, the conservative government, as to whether people in Australia should be paid the legal minimum. But that's what's going on now. You know, does that ultimately potentially have a cost impact? Yes, it does. But yeah, Foxtel subscriptions could be cheaper. If everybody at Sky News was paid less than the minimum wage - but it would be a ridiculous thing to do. Everything could be cheaper around Australia.

JAYES: Pretty cheap anyway. And everyone should have one indeed. Before I let you go, I just want to be absolutely clear on this - what is Labor’s commitment? It seems like it is only a commitment to consult. So, you're not guaranteeing any changes in a Labor government if you won the next election?

BURKE: Oh, no, no, no, we committed yesterday to “same job, same pay”. We committed yesterday, for example, to expanding the powers of the Fair Work Commission to be able to deal with insecure work and the gig economy. We committed yesterday that job security will become an objective of the Fair Work Act. The only of the issues where we said okay, this one's out for consultation because there's further complications, you know, and it's very complex to do, is to work out where we would go on portable entitlements. The problem is, that's the one that Christian Porter has said, well, he'll design and he'll invent it and then he'll cost it. So, every time you hear that, you just have to know. That's not our policy. It's not true. And everyone's got to make a decision about whether they run something that Christian Porter has said that we all know to be untrue.

JAYES: We still want to know the cost from you and we will get that another time, I'm sure but we've got to leave it there. Tony Burke, thanks so much. We'll speak soon.

BURKE: Thanks Laura.

ENDS