Wednesday, 9 February 2022

On-demand workforce

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:16): (1728) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Industrial Relations and concerns his government’s consultation paper Fair Conduct and Accountability Standards for the Victorian On-Demand Workforce, released in December last year. The minister provides a gushing foreword, noting the consultation’s origin, the inquiry led by former Fair Work ombudsman Natalie James. He describes it as a ‘national first’ which closed a ‘critical knowledge gap’ and ‘forensically and extensively’ examined work facilitated by apps matching workers and clients. It is indeed an important contribution, and he is right to note that the increasing use of digital platforms by workers and businesses is a significant development. Yet the Treasurer inexplicably ignores the central thesis of the report. In a paragraph titled ‘The commonwealth should lead’ the James report’s very first recommendation is that:

… the Commonwealth Government, in collaboration with state governments and other key stakeholders, lead the delivery of the recommendations in this report regarding the national workplace system.

His own consultation paper is subtitled ‘Implementing recommendations 13 and 14 of the report of the inquiry into the Victorian on-demand workforce’. Yet when we look at those exact prescriptions we find that the commonwealth should collaborate with stakeholders, including state governments, to lead the development of fair conduct and accountability standards. What is going on here?

My concern is that these proposed standards are simply the latest bottom-up federalist Victorian usurpation of commonwealth responsibility for industrial relations. Just like innovations in wage theft laws, industrial manslaughter, labour hire licensing and long service leave, they subvert commonwealth responsibility. They will create a patchwork system that will not only make Victoria even less competitive, something we have heard a lot about with the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry report released today, but will make life impossible for digital platforms operating across state jurisdictions. Victorian workers and Victorian consumers will be the losers yet again. At a time when business is on its knees the Andrews government is introducing more regulation of the Victorian workforce that will stifle our economic recovery. In the same breath the government is cementing its creation of a shadow industrial relations system, pretending it is following the recommendations of an independent inquiry when it is in fact directly defying them. It is extraordinary. So I ask the Treasurer to explain this discrepancy. Is his defiance of the recommendation that reform be led at the federal level a pre-emptive action, a vote of no confidence in Mr Albanese’s electoral hopes?