Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.<\/p>\n
Many politicians do outrage, but none do it as Jacqui Lambie does. This week she said she\u2019d tried to take a cool look at proposed changes to workplace laws. Maybe so, but she didn\u2019t stay cool for long while speaking about them.<\/p>\n
She set out to explain on Thursday why she was voting for government proposals to improve workers\u2019 conditions. The big miners\u2019 lobby, the Minerals Council, described these changes as a \u201cdeclaration of war\u201d against business.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Illustration by Jim Pavlidis<\/span>Credit: <\/span> <\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cWe give you a little bit, and you take the whole kit and caboodle,\u201d said Lambie as she told big business why firms are now to be banned from using labour hire companies to cut costs. \u201cThis labour hire crap, I will tell you now, is way off the radar.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes,\u201d she said, \u201clabour hire works. But you big corporations are abusing it … and you\u2019re cutting corners to beef up your profits. Quite frankly, you should be ashamed of yourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Lambie cited Qantas as an example, then moved on to the minerals sector: \u201cSeriously, with the amount of profits that you people make \u2013 big mining, big gas \u2013 you do not pay your people properly. You have brought this on yourselves.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sick and tired of hearing of miners who are doing the same job getting paid $30,000 less than their mates or of having their mates coming to me and saying, \u2018It\u2019s so unfair that I get an extra 30,000 bucks because I\u2019m not working for a labour-hire company.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Labour hire workers will now need to be paid at least as much as direct employees when doing the same work.<\/p>\n Senators Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock with Labor\u2019s Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Tony Burke on Thursday.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Alex Ellinghausen<\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cSo you\u2019re going to lose a little bit more of your profit,\u201d Lambie mock-empathised with BHP and Rio. \u201cI tell you what \u2013 it wouldn\u2019t even be a sneeze in a hanky. You won\u2019t even notice it.\u201d<\/p>\n BHP claims the change will increase its costs by $1.3 billion a year. The company\u2019s profits last financial year were up by 16 per cent to $US40.6 billion ($61.5 billion) at a record profit margin of 65 per cent. Memo BHP CEO Mike Henry: Don\u2019t ask Jacqui Lambie for a hanky to cry into. Or enter a popularity contest against her.<\/p>\n And that was over just one of the Albanese government\u2019s workplace law reforms that passed the parliament this week \u2013 with the support of Lambie and her colleague Tammy Tyrrell, fellow independents David Pocock and Lidia Thorpe, and the Greens. It was opposed by the Coalition.<\/p>\n Some of the other measures? Wage theft is now a criminal offence. So is industrial manslaughter. A second set of the government\u2019s workplace reforms is due to go before the parliament next year.<\/p>\n Lambie\u2019s outrage is effective for two reasons. First, it\u2019s genuine. She\u2019s a pretty reliable fairness compass.<\/p>\n And it works for her electorally: \u201cOther than the Northern Territory, Tasmania probably is the most economically disadvantaged jurisdiction in the country and it saw the least benefits from the mining boom,\u201d says Emma Dawson, executive director of the think tank Per Capita.<\/p>\n This defeat is embarrassing for the Minerals Council. It committed $24 million to an advertising campaign against the government\u2019s reforms to labour hire. The council\u2019s head, Tania Constable, stung by the loss, called the change \u201ceconomic vandalism\u201d and vowed to campaign for the law\u2019s repeal.<\/p>\n Minerals Council of Australia CEO Tania Constable says the government\u2019s workplace law changes are \u201ceconomic vandalism\u201d.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Alex Ellinghausen<\/cite><\/p>\n The Workplace Relations Minister, Tony Burke, has some advice for her and her members: Instead of spending your money campaigning against the government, pay your workers properly.<\/p>\n The bigger picture is that Australia is grappling with entrenched unfairness. \u201cFor the last few decades we\u2019ve experienced the dominance of an economic system that rewards people already doing well and makes it harder for people to build a life from their own hard work and effort,\u201d Dawson says.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no wonder, then, that Australians are losing confidence that their work will be rewarded fairly. The annual Scanlon Institute report on Australia\u2019s social cohesion, taken in July, found that only 12 per cent of the 7500 respondents agree strongly that hard work is rewarded.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole Western world has done this \u2013 building aggregate growth in the economy while taking the eye off the distribution part,\u201d Dawson tells me. \u201cI\u2019m not a communist but if we don\u2019t effectively regulate and people despair, then we\u2019ll end up with Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n Hyperbole? The US is an extreme case, but it is, indeed, a case study in the results of the corrosion of faith in a socioeconomic system. Trump represents people who feel left behind, overlooked and disdained, an underclass of hopelessness. Trump supporters vote for him not because they genuinely believe he\u2019ll fix a broken system but because they think he\u2019s standing with them in protesting against it. To the point of wrecking it.<\/p>\n Treasurer Jim Chalmers: \u201cIt\u2019s pleasing to see the progress we are making in getting inflation down and wages up.\u201d<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Alex Ellinghausen<\/cite><\/p>\n Australia is far from America, but it\u2019s been trending in the same direction. Systemic change is needed. Housing is a pressing example. A Per Capita research paper due next week makes this striking measurement of government housing support: \u201cIn 2023-24, federal government tax breaks for property investors will be worth more than 11 times the amount spent by the federal government on all social housing and homelessness services.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo it\u2019s a clear comparison between what we give to people to allow them to acquire more assets at the expense of what we give to people to keep a rented roof over their heads,\u201d concludes Dawson.<\/p>\n The Albanese government has a suite of policies designed to correct some of the glaring inequity in Australia\u2019s system. Next week\u2019s mid-year update from Treasurer Jim Chalmers will show that housing has been allocated multi-billions in new support, just in the past seven months, for social and affordable housing.<\/p>\n Dawson gives the government credit for \u201csmart, well-targeted measures to reduce the cost of living\u201d. Its wages and workplaces policies, including those passed by parliament this week, are making a difference. Real wages, long in decline, have started to head up in the last two quarters as a result.<\/p>\n Chalmers says \u201cwe see in the wages data that our bottom-up approach to wages growth is working, and our cost of living measures are helping too. Long way to go, but it\u2019s pleasing to see the progress we are making in getting inflation down and wages up and that\u2019s how we make it easier for people doing it tough.\u201d<\/p>\n How does all of this affect the big picture? On the biggest measure of how income is divided in Australia, the share going to workers peaked in the 1970s and has been sliding pretty much ever since.<\/p>\n This metric, the so-called labour share of GDP, stood at 55 per cent in the late \u201970s. Last year it was under half \u2013 49.8 per cent. While the profit share went up, doubling from 16 per cent in the 1970s to last year\u2019s 32 per cent. This represents a vast, long-term reallocation of national income from people to corporations.<\/p>\n But this year, there has been a rare revival of the labour share of the national earnings, back over 50 per cent to 52 per cent. While the profit share eased back to 30.6. \u201cA good story for Jim Chalmers,\u201d says Dawson.<\/p>\n The Albanese government can take credit; the pendulum may have started to move back towards fairness and away from American hopelessness. But, as Chalmers acknowledges, there is a very long way to go as real household disposable incomes continue to slump.<\/p>\n And Emma Dawson points to the huge intergenerational transfer of wealth that is about to occur as the Boomer generation bequeaths its housing wealth to its kids, potentially entrenching a stark divide of haves and have-nots.<\/p>\n \u201cGenerationally, things are really dire,\u201d says Dawson, \u201cbut it\u2019s not irreversible \u2013 we are at a tipping point. The government\u2019s been tinkering with a broken system.\u201d It\u2019s a task for an Atlas, but Archimedes showed that even a mortal can move the world if he or she has a lever long enough and a place to stand.<\/p>\n In the meantime, Jacqui Lambie has a year-end cheerio for the government: \u201cIf they gave a shit they\u2019d fix the ACCC [to impose tougher competition laws] \u2013 and that\u2019s just for our groceries.\u201d<\/p>\n And she has one for big businesses, which has been dining out on the profit share of national income in recent times at the expense of workers: \u201cQuite frankly, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Merry Christmas to you!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n