E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC RADIO MELBOURNE MORNINGS WITH VIRGINIA TRIOLI

WEDNESDAY, 10 FEBRUARY 2021
 
SUBJECTS: Labor’s Secure Australian Jobs Plan; Labor’s policy agenda; industrial relations; insecure work; Federal Election; ExxonMobil; Crown Casino Sydney.
 

VIRGINIA TRIOLI, HOST: Anthony Albanese is Labor's Opposition Leader and joins me now, again. Anthony Albanese, good to talk to you. Good morning.
 

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Good morning, Virginia.
 

TRIOLI: Is IR the big issue for you in 2021? Is it bigger than the pandemic right now?
 

ALBANESE: Well, it's certainly a huge issue. Of course, our priority immediately is to get through the pandemic. But we have to start talking about what sort of society we want coming out the other end. Are we going to continue to have insecure work? Are we going to continue to leave people vulnerable? Because security at work is so important if you want to get a mortgage, if you want to plan a family. And at the moment, one of the things that has been identified by this pandemic is that it's the most vulnerable who were the first to be laid off. It was casuals who didn't get support through wage subsidies. It's people who feel like they've just been left behind. And that's been exacerbated by the pandemic, which is why our alternative plan to the Government has three key planks. We want job security, better pay and a fairer system.
 

TRIOLI: How exactly do you achieve those three things?
 

ALBANESE: First, you include job security as an objective into the Fair Work Act. It's not at the moment, so they can't take that into account. Secondly, we need to recognise the economy has changed. Now, we've all benefited from Uber to drive us around, or Menulog or other forms to deliver food, or Airtasker to do jobs around the house. But what we haven't done is keep up the industrial relations system with this form of gig work as it's known. So, we want rights for gig workers through the Fair Work Commission. Because it's been extended, not just for those sorts of jobs, but take the NDIS, at the moment, a lot of the service provision is being done, essentially, through apps. So, people have to bid to perform tasks to assist people with disabilities. And of course, it becomes a race to the bottom. If someone will do a job for $10, someone else will come in and say, 'I will do it for $8'. And what that does is drive down wages and conditions. We need portable entitlements for workers in insecure industries, recognising that they'll change their employer. But how do they carry things like superannuation across?
 

TRIOLI: I'll just pause you there, if I can, Anthony Albanese. Speak to me specifically about that. Because you'll immediately, of course, hear from businesses, small and large, and particularly the smaller and medium sized, worrying that means that an impost that was earned elsewhere carries across to them.
 

ALBANESE: No, we'll that's what we'll talk through with the commission which is that we just need to recognise that whereas when I finished school, I started work the next week with the Commonwealth Bank and expected to be there for 20 years. That was what happened. These days, we need to recognise that the nature of work has transformed and we need mechanisms in place that allow people to get a fairer deal. And that needs to be worked through, of course, with state and territory governments. But at the moment, the industrial relations system just hasn't kept up with the changes in people's lives.
 

TRIOLI: There's a great deal in what you've just described there, the three key planks that you want to make central and the changes you want to make, and in particular, have been recognised in the Fair Work Act, that is going to disturb, I would imagine, a number of businesses who want that flexibility and who don't want to go back to a system where every worker is defined in some way or another as a permanent or with some ongoing permanent obligation from the employer. And to be fair, there are a number of employees who want that flexibility too. So, how do you build that sophistication into the system?
 

ALBANESE: Of course. Casual work at the moment isn't defined in law. And we need to have that debate. And that's one of the things that we would do. Obviously, we would work with business. I've had discussions with business about the speech I'm giving today. I briefed all the major employer organisations. They understand that. And we understand that.
 

TRIOLI: And what did they say to you? Are they pleased with what you're about to announce?
 

ALBANESE: Well, that wasn't the basis of it. I expect that there will be some opposition to what we're announcing. Some businesses want to have just a free-for-all. That's the truth. But good businesses recognise that valuing their employees and having a starting point, which is a common interest between good employers and good employees, and one of the things I refer in speech today about is back to the time of the Accord, whereby, because business, unions and government cooperated, what we saw was the foundation that led to 30 years of consecutive economic growth that only stopped last year.
 

TRIOLI: You mentioned there about no definition of a casual. We already have one proposed definition, which is coming from the Federal Government's own IR bill. And their proposal defines an employee as casual if there's not a firm commitment of work in their job offer, rather than relying on the actual conduct of the employment relationship. Do you have a problem with that? Or would your proposal be something similar?
 

ALBANESE: The problem with the Government's legislation is that if you're a casual worker and you want to be made permanent, and you question whether you're actually working on a casual basis, you can't go to the Fair Work Commission. What you need to do is to lawyer up and go to the Federal Court. Now, the idea that someone by their very nature who's in casual work is going to go through that process is, quite frankly, not good enough. It's one of the weaknesses that are there in the legislation. And one other major point that I'll be making today is the principle of same job, same pay. What we have, particularly in the mining sector, but in other areas as well, if you can have two workers who are working side by side, doing exactly the same work, one of them is a permanent employee, one of them works through a labour hire company, and they can be paid 10, 20, 30 per cent less without annual leave, without superannuation, without the sort of conditions that they're permanent buddy working next to them, doing exactly the same job. And that's a real concern as well. That is something that I've been raising for some time. I don't think that there are measures in the speech today, and the policy announcement I'm making, that will come as a surprise to employer organisations. And when I consulted them, there was nothing where they said, 'We didn't expect you to go in that direction',
 

TRIOLI: Anthony Albanese is with you this morning, the Opposition Leader, who is giving a major speech on industrial relations today in Queensland. On the issue of Queensland, I wonder if it's fair to suggest that the rest of the country might start to feel a bit neglected, Anthony Albanese, given your continued focus on Queensland. I turn on the TV and I see you in a high-vis shirt and a hardhat in Queensland over and over. Is that where the major focus of the Labor Party is going to be in attempting to win the next election? Will it be Queensland at the expense of the rest?
 

ALBANESE: Certainly not. I have visited Victoria as much as I've visited Queensland. And I intend to be right around the country. Every vote is important wherever they are. But Queensland is a big state. And it's a regional state. And you need to spend time here. I don't have Scott Morrison's plane. So, for example, I had to fly from Cairns back to Brisbane to then fly north again to Hervey Bay, Maryborough and Bundaberg where I was yesterday. Those regional communities do deserve representation. Queensland, of course, has been difficult to get to as has the rest of Australia there have been times where I've been in Sydney and not able to go anywhere else as like the rest of the country. So, it has been frustrating, actually, not getting out and about. But I'll be in Melbourne in the next couple of weeks.
 

TRIOLI: It was not so much a plea for Melbourne, I guess more, to take us through it, if we can briefly, a discussion of the fact that, and it's not really remarked upon often, that the Government holds the lower house really by one seat. It's seen that the next election is a bit of a shoo-in for the Federal Government, but that's not necessarily so. And reading Queensland in particular, if just a couple of seats go one way or the other, the Labor Party could actually win it. So, just looking at it coldly and logically, Queensland has to be your electoral focus if you're to be successful at the next election, yes?
 

ALBANESE: Well, Queensland is important. But we also need to hold on to every seat that we have. So, seats like Corangamite. I've got a visit coming up with Libby Coker there who is doing a terrific job. But it is a tough seat. It's one that swings either way. And my concentration will be on holding onto what we've got, but yes, winning a dozen or so seats so that we're in a position to form Government. Because without that, we won't be in a position to implement policies. And it's no good being in opposition, you can decide whether you're supporting or opposing legislation, but you can't make legislation. And I entered politics to make decisions.
 

TRIOLI: Let me just ask you a question about energy giant ExxonMobil. They are just about to announce the closure of its Altona refinery today. What's that an indicator of from your perspective, Anthony Albanese?
 

ALBANESE: Well, this is Government failure. Fuel security is an enormous issue. The truth is, we don't have enough fuel reserves in terms of the conditions that the International Energy Agency say are appropriate for an industrialised country. It is a threat to our security as a nation. And the fact that this follows the closure of Kwinana is just quite extraordinary that the Government, having had that occur at the end of last year, really has sat on its hands. Angus Taylor came up with the bizarre proposal that our fuel reserves were going to be kept somewhere near the Gulf of Mexico. That's not fuel reserves for Australia. And my heart goes out today to those workers who served at that refinery, I think it's been there for around about 70 years. And this will be an incredibly tough day.
 

TRIOLI: And Anthony Albanese, just finally this morning, if Crown is not a fit and proper organisation to hold a casino license in Sydney, is it a fit and proper organisation to retain the casino license here in Melbourne?
 

ALBANESE: Well, that's a matter for the appropriate bodies to consider. That should not be a political decision. And certainly, the decision in Sydney is one that will impact on jobs as well. And I think that will ripple through. We'll wait and see what happens in Sydney of course. The decision isn't to defer it inevitably. But these revelations are really disturbing. Issues like money laundering and others are very serious. And that's why they've been taken seriously.
 

TRIOLI: Anthony Albanese, we'll leave it there. Thanks for joining us today.
 

ALBANESE: Thanks very much, Virginia.
 
ENDS