TRANSCRIPT - RADIO INTERVIEW - ABC TROPICAL NORTH WITH MEECHAM PHILPOTT - THURSDAY, 3 MARCH 2022

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC TROPICAL NORTH WITH MEECHAM PHILPOTT
THURSDAY, 3 MARCH 2022

SUBJECTS: Visit to Mackay, secure jobs, same job same pay.

MEECHAM PHILPOTT, HOST: In town today is the Federal Labor industrial relations spokesperson Tony Burke. Good morning, Tony. Welcome to the program.

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: G'day Meech. Great to be here.

PHILPOTT: So what brings you to Mackay?

BURKE: Shane Hamilton was keen to get me up just to be having some meetings with some workers about what's happening with insecure work. You’ve got a really unusual situation here in the tropical north where you've got lots of people in work but it's also Australia's capital of insecure work. And it needs to be the situation that when work’s available people who want secure work need to be able to get it again. We just can't keep sacking a permanent workforce and replacing them with lower paid casuals.

PHILPOTT: Now, one thing that we've heard time and time again, from the guys in the blue ties, is the big problem is there's actually no definition of casualised job in this country. Is that still the case? Or is that changed now?

BURKE: Well there's a definition but it's a rubbish one. So the definition’s there but it's a definition that basically says if the employer says you're a casual, you're a casual. So the situation where people get a 12 month roster with every shift locked in for 12 months – if the employer says they're casual then effectively they are. And so a lot of fuss was made a year ago about this legislation that was going to mean that casuals could convert to permanent. It has been a complete fail. Something like 97 per cent of the letters that go out, say oh look there's particular circumstances in your case, and we can’t offer you a permanent job. But the thing I want to add to it though Meech is insecure work’s not only casual. It can be labour hire, it can be people on short-term contracts, where at the end of a one-year contract you're on another one year contract. You can be there long enough for long service leave but you're still effectively on your probationary period. All these things add up to the same thing (inaudible).

PHILPOTT: That’s the story that we hear time and time again. But it's been dragging on for so long Tony. I mean, is there a silver bullet? Or are we missing something that's blatantly obvious that perhaps you've seen?

BURKE: (Inaudible) There's not one aspect of insecure work that you need to deal with, you need to deal with insecure work in every possible different way. So where people are now working on the gig economy, you need to be able to regulate that. Where people are on short term contracts, you need to limit how many times it can be one short term then another for an identical job that is in fact permanent. You can't have a situation where labour higher is simply used to undercut the rate of pay. That completely undermines the rates of pay at a workplace. It gives people insecure work, when secure jobs were in fact otherwise available. And at the end of all of that – there's just a justice issue. I don’t see how you can have two people in the same uniform on the same shift doing the same job. They've been there for the same length of time, and they’re on different rates of pay.

PHILPOTT: Well the pub test has shown that most Australians agree with you. Something I don’t get though was the Skene case was massive, where Skene was shown that he was given his rosters, you know, six months ahead, booked his flights and whatnot. And that went to the highest court in the land. So that set the precedent. But how does labour hire continue though, where it's been proven in court that you can't do that.

BURKE: The case was overturned one day in the Australian Parliament. We voted against the change - but effectively the case was overturned by government legislation backed in by One Nation. So a whole lot of noise had been made by members of the government and members of One Nation that they were going to defend coal workers. When it came to the vote Skene got overturned. And that was the exact moment, at the beginning of the interview Meech you asked me about definition of a casual: that was when that rubbish definition was put in. And so all that concept, you know, you’re not a casual if you’re on a fixed roster, point one. And most people would have thought over the years you’re not a casual if you're being paid less. Like all the elements of what's meant to be a casual worker, none of it applies there. But we now have, because of a vote of the Libs, the Nats and One Nation, we have a vote that just in one moment stripped all those rights away from workers. They said “If the employer says you are casual that's pretty much the end of the story”.

PHILPOTT: All right. Now I understand, Tony, you've got a workers forum on, is that today?

BURKE: Yeah, that's right. That's right. So Shane Hamilton is taking me out to Harrup Park. And we've got a forum this arvo. And look what I've found at these forums, like my job is to be inside the legal stuff, everything that happens at work. But the big stories that happen whenever I hold a Secure Jobs Forum, they're often not about what happens to people at work. Often you get stories about how insecure work affects the rest of your life. Things like your mortgage isn't casual, your rent’s not casual, your energy bills are not casual. Something as simple for people who have insecure work where there's absolutely no fixed roster at all: the simplicity of an aged parent saying, “Oh, look, I was going to have a picnic for my birthday on this date. Can you make it?” And you don't know the answer. I had one bloke say to me that he wanted to coach his kids’ sporting team but he didn't know whether he'd be available on a Saturday. All of these issues. It gets talked up by a few politicians on the other side of politics to me, by the Libs and the Nats, that this is all flexibility. Well, flexibility can be very one way. There'll be some people who always want a completely flexible job, you always get students or someone who's just trying to get some extra money, and what I've described could be exactly what they want. But if you're trying to support a household then you need income and a life that is secure in the same way that all the bills and everything that have been fired your way are absolutely locked in.

PHILPOTT: But I mean, again, that's part of the problem, though, isn't it? For instance, just where we are, so in the Bowen Basin, we were talking about mining casualisation, not overly popular. But you go to Airlie Beach in the Whitsundays, most people want that casualisation. So trying to balance off one against the other. One size does not fit all is I guess is what I'm saying.

BURKE: And that's where everything I've just described Meech will always exist. So there will always be some labour hire for surge workforces and things like that, there'll always be some outsourcing, there'll always be some casual work, the gig economy the apps we've got on our phones - it'll all still be around. But for people who want and need a permanent job at the moment it's almost impossible to find one. And that can't be the case. And that's why as we said before, there's no silver bullet but there's a whole lot of different measures. You put them together and we can get secure jobs in Australia again.

PHILPOTT: Alright. Tony what time's the workers forum at Harrup Park?

BURKE: One o’clock. I just checked with Shane. He’s across it all.

PHILPOTT: Tony look great to have a chat. Thank you. Welcome to Mackay. Enjoy and no doubt we'll see you and more of your colleagues up here over the next couple of months I daresay.

ENDS