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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 4283 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

option desirable for many people seeking to balance work and personal commitments, the Young Christian Workers report demonstrates that many young casual workers would prefer to work on a permanent part-time basis if full-time work cannot be found.

It is important to note that some employees benefit from short-term casual working arrangements-short-term holiday work, for example. My concern is about the substitution of full-time and permanent part-time workers with long-term casuals. I believe that moves to improve the conditions of long-term casuals need not impinge on genuine casual employment opportunities.

The trend to lower paid and less secure jobs is fundamentally altering Australian society and is an issue that needs to receive community attention. The challenge for the government is to find new ways to raise awareness of award and certified agreement entitlements amongst employers and employees. I believe that secure and predictable employment for workers, with decent entitlements, can be achieved without compromising the reasonable requirements of employers for flexibility to deal with genuine operational fluctuations. I welcome the constructive and energetic approach that Minister Gallagher has brought to the Industrial Relations portfolio and I am greatly encouraged that the issues raised today will be addressed by the minister in the months and years ahead. I commend the motion to the Assembly.

MS TUCKER (10.44): The Greens are happy to support this motion. There have been significant changes to the Australian workplace over the past 25 years. Michael Pusey, in his book The experience of middle Australia: the dark side of economic reform looked at the impact of that economic reform which has transformed Australia from one of the world's most protected economies to one of its most open, including the privatisation of what were public enterprises and the shift to decentralised wage bargaining.

The information in his book is based on a detailed quantitative analysis of the economy over that time and qualitative discussions with 400 people above the bottom 20 per cent and below the top 10 per cent of income earners in various locations around Australia. He concluded that the real incomes of the bottom 70 per cent of the population are lower today than in 1976 and that Australia now has a substantial class of working poor at one end of middle Australia, balanced by an even larger class of time poor at the other.

The other notable evidence that comes out of that book is that most of the people surveyed believe they are worse off due to what is called economic reform or that society itself has been disrupted and damaged by it. It is worth noting that the Commonwealth department that has had carriage of those reforms particularly linked to deregulating the workplace, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, is itself the most highly unionised and organised department in the service. It is clear to those people at least that there are real human costs to a regime that favours flexibility and competitiveness over an assured standard of living.

I am pleased to support this motion because it calls on the government to ensure that workers in the ACT, at the very least, are aware of their entitlements and that they do not miss out on the statutory protections of OH&S standards. In dealing with the casualised workplace and the growing range of employment and contracting arrangements that are a feature of it, the role of OH&S inspectors and good OH&S practices are going to be particularly important.

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