Interview with Peter Stefanovic, First Edition
26 August 2024
PETER STEFANOVIC: The Government's closing the loophole workplace laws come into effect today. What that means is employees have the right to disconnect after hours and not return that call or that email to the boss unless it's reasonable to do so. Joining us live now, the Shadow Finance Minister, Jane Hume. Jane, Murray Watt, he was just on the programme. He painted the picture that this is good for business despite protestations to the contrary. What's your view on that today?
JANE HUME: Yes, I heard Murray Watt this morning say that this legislation is going to spark a conversation between employers and employees. Well, it isn't going to spark a conversation. It's actually wrapping employers up in additional red tape and making some jobs completely unworkable, as you mentioned. I think, Pete, your job requires you to be on call. My job requires me to be on call. I was talking to kids in the studio here this morning. Their job requires them to be on call. This is going to very much change the nature of employment for so many employers, but more importantly, for small businesses who don't have a compliance department, who don't have a human resources department, who don't have insourced in-house legal counsel. Well, how are these businesses going to manage these new requirements? Not just the right to disconnect, but indeed a whole raft of new industrial relations laws that are making it just tougher to get business done to do business and to make your company profitable.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Yeah look, it comes down to this vague question of what's reasonable or not. So a senior staffer would be expected to return communication after hours, but a junior staffer wouldn't, because in this world of super connectivity, they need a break. Do they have a point on that front?
JANE HUME: Well, these are conversations that employers have been having with employees for many years now, and we don't need legislation to make sure that it happens. This is all about a reasonable conversation, a reasonable relationship between an employer and an employee. It's about embedding things into agreements and employment contracts, but adding more red tape, adding rights, more rights for workers, for something that is just part of a normal working relationship is unreasonable, particularly for small businesses here who just need to go and get the job done. Productivity in this country has gone backwards. It's gone backwards by 5.8% just in the last two years alone. We'd be kidding ourselves if we didn't think that the new industrial relations reforms that have been brought in by the Albanese government weren't a part of that. It's making it that much harder to grow the economy sustainably.
PETER STEFANOVIC: So has the horse bolted here, Jane, or would you roll it back if you won next year?
JANE HUME: Well, the Coalition have already said that we would take a look at those, those industrial relations reforms, and particularly the right for casual employees to automatically roll into a permanent position, which again, is hamstringing businesses, and particularly small businesses, creating a lack of flexibility, not more flexibility in the workplace. Without flexible industrial relations laws, we are simply putting a handbrake on productivity, which is the only driver of economic growth and the only way we can have wage rises that aren't inflationary.
PETER STEFANOVIC: I know this isn’t in your space, but the other story out of Canberra this morning, Jane is the Government's Aviation White Paper, airlines and airports will be made to pay for unreasonable flight delays and cancellations. What do you think of the advanced detail that's out this morning?
JANE HUME: Well, this has been a long time coming. This white paper over a year ago now, both Qantas and Virgin appeared before my cost of living inquiry. We knew that the airlines were in crisis back then, that there was a lack of competition and that there were government decisions at that stage, particularly about, you know, Qatar and additional slots at Sydney Airport that were artificially inflating airline prices. So it's taken a long time coming. At that stage, we heard in that inquiry that Qantas had no intention of refunding airfares to those that had had their flights cancelled. The idea of an ombudsman is something that is not unusual. In fact, Senator McKenzie and Senator Smith have already put forward some legislation, a private senators bill, to enable refunds for those customers that have found themselves delayed unexpectedly or unavoidably by those airlines that seem to have you know, there was no redress, no recourse for them. So that legislation is there and ready to go. The fact that we're now just having a white paper two and a half years into a government is very frustrating, I think, particularly for those people that have had their air fares either artificially inflated or cancelled entirely.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Jane Hume, Shadow Finance Minister, we'll leave it there. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you again soon.