E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO MELBOURNE
THURSDAY, 21 MAY 2020

SUBJECTS: Centrelink closures; Online services; Casual employment; Watpac Federal Court Case; Trade; Australia-China relations; 2019 Federal Election.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI, HOST: Joining you up next is Bill Shorten, the Shadow Minister for National Disability Insurance Scheme & Government Services, you would have heard the information yesterday afternoon that the Centrelink office in Abbotsford is going to be closed and the Federal Government’s been accused of leaving people without a local service. The Minister responsible there, Stuart Robert, said it’s going to close on Thursday and says that an equivalent building could not be found in the area to replace that building after the lease was not renewed. Bill Shorten, good morning to you and thanks for joining us.

BILL SHORTEN, MEMBER FOR MARIBYRNONG: No worries Virginia, good morning.

TRIOLI: What do you make of this?

SHORTEN: Oh I don’t think a crocodile would swallow what Minister Stuart Robert just said, across Melbourne from Abbotsford to South Melbourne apparently the government couldn’t find a building? This is, there are landlords out there who are begging for tenants at the moment, there’s 31 staff who will lose their jobs, some will be relocated to South Melbourne, but most importantly, I know we're using more and more of the Internet to do business, but we still need face to face services, and at a time where you've got record unemployment, record, record, record unemployment, they're shutting an office? And the government's best excuse is you couldn't find another building somewhere?

TRIOLI: So what's it really about then, do you think?

SHORTEN: I just think they’re winding back government services, they would rather save money than serve the people. I mean, there are a lot of buildings in Abbotsford.

TRIOLI: There are indeed, I made the point earlier that Abbotsford is not almost exclusively made up of buildings like this, but a lot of it is, that, as you say, there are tenants. But look, a lot of these services are moving online anyway, is that not a logical and in a sense for a government that now’s going to be - any government, really, that would be running record deficits. Is that not a sensible movement, direction to keep going in and to have the majority of services online?

SHORTEN: The majority of services will go online, that's true. But in the meantime, we've got millions of people making Centrelink claims, so this is exactly the wrong time no matter what your faith in technology solving problems is, to take away counter services, door to door services. Like, if you're someone who can't access the Internet and maybe a lot of middle-class people find that hard to believe, but there are a lot of people who can't. You've got to get two buses, so you've got to get a train and a bus to South Melbourne, not everyone owns a car and sometimes people are sick of talking to a machine, an automated service. I mean, I've been helping work on the class action, I don't put all my hopes in technology solving the woes of the vulnerable, just have a look at the Robodebt case which has got tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who were ripped off by the government. So there's a lot to be said for face to face services.

TRIOLI: We know that the area there, Abbotsford, in particular, has almost more public housing than anywhere in the country. The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, was saying that yesterday it had some of the largest queues when the COVID-19 crisis struck. Do you think that after a couple of days, if indeed this turns into a talking point of any significance and power, that the government might back down and change its mind?

SHORTEN: You'd like to think so, but they've done this in Frankston this year, they've done it in Newport over Christmas and they’ve done it up in Tweed Heads and in Newcastle. I think the government thinks they're a law unto themselves and I think they treat Centrelink customers as second class consumers, second class customers. So I think there should be outrage, I do think that we need to have a network of face to face counter services and I think it's worth fighting for. Whether or not this government listens, I don't know - the current minister for Centrelink, I think is genuinely one of the most out of touch politicians since Federation.

TRIOLI: It's a big statement, we will let others be the judge of that.

SHORTEN: Big shoes to fill, but he is in the running.

TRIOLI: A couple of other questions I just want to ask you while I had you here, Bill Shorten, a landmark court ruling confirmed that some casual workers are actually entitled to paid leave, but if casuals can now ‘double dip’ to use that phrase by claiming both annual leave and casual loadings, and sometimes that can be 25 per cent of their pay. What would that do to businesses and smaller ones in particular?

SHORTEN: Well, disagreeing with part of your question, they're not double-dipping. The reality is the casual loading doesn't cover all the benefits and entitlements that a regular worker accrues over a period of time. What this case was about, was that the people who, in the long term have been doing regular shifts, that they should get payments on top of their casual loading. The casual loading doesn't fully cover everything, so it's not a double-dip. Now, of course, there will be an economic impact on a company, but of course the company also gets the economic impact of regular workers, a regular worker by their nature because they've got job certainty, I think is a highly productive worker and they often align their objectives, personal objectives more with that of their employer when they know they've got a permanent stake in the business.

TRIOLI: The problem is, I mean, they may not all go on to double-dip, as you say, but that still is not nonetheless a clear and present concern for organisations like the Industry Group, talking about perhaps people turning around after a period of time and a period of employment, years later, say, and claiming entitlements of a permanent employee like annual leave, it does open the door to that according to a number of readings.

SHORTEN: Isn't it a fairness proposition at its heart, if you rely upon an employee who turns up shift after shift, week after week, month after month, year after year. I mean, it's a bit opportunistic to say you’re casual. At a certain point -

TRIOLI: That's used to always be the case, of course, after a certain period of time and a number of contracts.

SHORTEN: Sure, they also used to pay women less than men until we decided that wasn't fair.

TRIOLI: No no no, I was saying something different Bill Shorten, which is after in certain industries after a number of casual contracts were renewed, you actually did become a permanent employee, that's what changed, yes.

SHORTEN: That has changed, and what's happened is that I think some employers have relied upon a deregulated labour market and technical definitions of casual. You're a casual because they pay like a casual rather than looking at the full picture of the work they do and in fact, many more attributes of their job are those of a permanent worker, not a casual.

TRIOLI: But you've got no concerns here? I mean, look, I'm arguing the position here and I think it needs to be represented in this conversation of the smaller or medium-sized employer, who may be concerned about this, you have no concern about the potential financial hit to them?

SHORTEN: I've got a concern that you have to pay people more money in some cases, but I think that is balanced out by the fact that they've had this employee year in, year out as a permanent worker. I mean, it's not a one-way street. When you pay someone and they are a regular worker for years in and years out, you are getting something back for that. I don't think this decision applies to a chippie at McDonald's whose just, you know, working part-time at a university job over the summer. People should think by this ruling that not everyone who has a casual becomes a permanent, you have to have certain attributes of a permanent worker. So perhaps that would assist some people who are concerned this means that “oh, is everyone a permanent’, no, they're not. It just means that where you worked in a pattern of work similar to the decision made by this Federal Court case of Watpac, a contracting company in the mining industry. Then yes, you are a permanent, you can't just be defined as a casual when nearly all of your attributes are those of a permanent worker.

TRIOLI: Bill Shorten is with you this morning, the Shadow Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and Government Services. I'll take your calls in just a moment as well, a number of people waiting on the line following our discussion about the cost of pathology, 1300 222 774. On another matter, Bill Shorten hasn't Victorian Labor now got itself into an untenable position with its Belt and Road agreement with China, while Australia's joined the EU inquiry into the origins of the Coronavirus. State Treasurer Tim Pallas, well, he appeared to me to really overstep by attacking the Federal Government when his own government's financial self-interest given that agreement is nakedly clear to see.

SHORTEN: Well first of all on the federal inquiry into the causes of the virus, Labor supported that, I supported the actions the Government’s taken with it, the Federal Government, I think it has been such an economic and indeed human catastrophe that we need to know how it happened so that we can prevent it happening again.

TRIOLI: Well that goes to my question, that Tim Pallas is on the attack against the Federal Government when there seems to be a general agreement, this is a good thing.

SHORTEN: But I think looking at behind the surface of the remarks that what Tim is doing and he can speak for himself, is he's just saying there are also good investment projects, which China makes in Australia and in Victoria, and we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, that we are a trading country and that we still need where possible to encourage investment from China and other countries.

TRIOLI: Given what we know and what we're about to investigate and the fact that it's perfectly clear now Australia's over-reliance on China in that economic sense. To return to my original question, Bill Shorten, has Victorian Labor got itself into an untenable position now with its Belt and Road Initiative agreement?

SHORTEN: No, I don't think so, states are allowed to make investment relations with other countries. I think the long term solution is not to overly rely upon China, but you do that by having good deals with them, but also by diversifying, I think our, we rely not just on China, but too many other parts of the world, we should have a stronger domestic manufacturing industry. We should be training more apprentices, we should recognise that there are sections of our economy which are fundamental and Australia should have a say over like, dare I say aviation. I certainly think the Federal Government, for example, got it wrong when they sold the Port of Darwin on a long term lease at a very cheap rate to a Chinese state-owned enterprise. So I'm not sure anyone comes to it with clean hands and I think the big lesson of COVID-19 is diversify and rely on our own national sovereignty to make things, you know, from the steel industry to the aluminium industry, to medical supplies, to training our own young people.

TRIOLI: And just one last question, it's just recently been the one year anniversary of the Coalition gaining government and winning the election that you thought you would win. I remember my predecessor here, Jon Faine, asked you shortly after that time if you were a broken man, have the wounds healed for you?

SHORTEN: The wounds have healed, I didn't accept what Jon said and I miss Jon, but I didn't accept that I was broken, but it was a massive disappointment I felt for a lot of people who wanted a more progressive country. In Victoria I think that it did end up voting Labor/Liberal two-party preferred 53 per cent, but it was disappointing, a lot to learn about yourself, a lot to learn about how the government campaigned, so it's been a year of learning.

SHORTEN: I'm sure it has been, Bill Shorten, I'm glad you joined us, thank you.

SHORTEN: Thank you very much.