Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has canvassed the second tranche of Labor’s industrial relations agenda it will pursue this year, after last year’s controversial industry-wide bargaining changes.
The government oss now looking at the gig economy and labour-hire, which Albanese said could not be used as an excuse to drive down wages. He also warned business that Australia could not afford to go the way of the US in leaving large swathes of the population economically disenfranchised. “If labour hire is used for specific purposes, some companies need to have contract things out, then that is a good thing. That’s a necessary thing. But when you look at economic insecurity, business has very much an interest in working people having a stake in the system,” he said.
“The disenfranchisement that led to a previous election in the United States, I think, people in industrial areas [were] feeling like they just had been left behind and not having a stake in the system,” he said, attributing it as a factor in the storming of the US Capitol. He said Australia had not had that experience, but industrial workers needed more flexibility and rights, and that there has been a decline in mass strikes since his government’s proposals at the Jobs Summit last year.
How can Australia have lost our competitiveness? We dig holes and buy houses and we’re the best at that in the world!!! We’ve got the biggest holes and most expensive houses in the world!!!