The National Retail Association has blasted the Albanese Government for setting a public submissions deadline on its Closing Loopholes Bill for September 29.
National Retail’s deputy CEO Lindsay Carroll said the Government had cynically set the deadline even though the Senate Committee is not due to report until February next year.
Carroll said the move was an echo of the Government’s three-week timetable it allowed for examining its previous IR legislation last year.
“This is Groundhog Day for employers, as the Government rushes to avoid any serious scrutiny of its latest round of employment laws,” Carroll said.
“We said last year there was no need for the government to act with such indecent haste in relation to law changes that will have a very significant and widespread impact on employers and the economy in general. And yet here they are playing the same games again.”
Carroll said the only reason to restrict the time for public submission of the Bill would be to avoid proper scrutiny and assessment of the economic impacts.
“If this debate is to be anything more than just business-as-usual IR rhetoric, it will take time to conduct credible economic modelling of the impact of the Bill,” Carroll said.
“If the Government is confident about its position, it should have nothing to fear from genuine scrutiny and discussion.
“However, employers know that this is a bad piece of legislation that will have very negative impacts on businesses and jobs. Based on their efforts to hide from scrutiny, it’s fair to say the Government knows this as well.”
The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023 will criminalise wage theft, introduce minimum standards for workers in the gig economy, close the forced permanent casual worker loophole, and close the labour-hire loophole.
In a speech earlier this month, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Tony Burke conceded that the Bill will lead to higher complexity and higher costs.
“If we're going to be a nation where you don't have to rely on tips to make ends meet, then there needs to be some extra regulation and words on the page – and that has to be done,” Burke said. “Businesses put to us there’d be some aspects and ways we could regulate that would create a real problem in complexity for them. So, we have evaded that.”
“Underpaying people is cheaper – yeah it is. Slavery is probably cheaper too. There is some modest pass-through here. We are talking about some of the lowest-paid people in Australia, and if that means there's a tiny bit extra you pay when your pizza arrives to your door and they're more likely to be safe on the roads getting there, then I reckon it's a pretty small price to pay.”
Burke said that when Secure Jobs, Better Pay legislation was introduced to Parliament last year, those against it said it would lead to unemployment, strikes and a failure to get wages moving.
“On all of that, the results are now in,” he said. “At the exact same time that inflation has been moderating, what's been happening in our workplaces? Wages have gone up.
“The Wage Price Index at the moment at 3.6 per cent has a ‘3’ in front of it - something that didn't happen under the previous government, where low wage growth was a deliberate design feature of their management.”
“In fact, not only did it not have a ‘3’ in front of it – the Wage Price Index in the entire history of the index has only had nine quarters where it's been below 2 per cent – and all of those have happened under Coalition governments.
“In terms of the threats as to what all this would mean for jobs - we had, as a new incoming government, the best new jobs growth of any incoming government. We now have more than half a million jobs that have been created.”
Ragtrader reached out to Tony Burke’s office for further comment.