Self Employed Australia

"Everyone needs an Advocate"

“Everyone needs an Advocate”

Self-employment

Tax bureaucrats try to sneak one through

by

robertWho runs Australia? Is it the politically accountable politicians elected through the democratic process? Or is it the unidentified, unelected, bureaucrats who hide behind closed doors?

A situation happening now indicates that at least some Commonwealth bureaucrats think they run the country and democracy can go jump!

In the April budget last year, the Morrison government announced that the Tax Office would no longer be able to collect a small business tax debt while in dispute and under appeal. That’s a damn good policy move for tax fairness.

robertThe Small Business Minister stated in Parliament:

“We are backing small business in over the ATO. No longer will the ATO be able to garnishee and takeaway while the dispute is in train …”

A recording of the Ministers statement in Parliament can be viewed here  (23 sec)

A key job of the Commonwealth Treasury department is to draft legislation that puts government policy into effect. Last week, nine months after this very clear policy statement, Treasury released draft legislation that does the opposite of what the government promised. (See here and here.)

The draft legislation would not automatically stop the ATO collecting on a disputed debt. It would force a taxpayer to apply to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (a very expensive process) for a pause. And a taxpayer would have to prove that their application did not “restrict …administration of tax law…” In our view this is a sneaky bureaucratic way of killing off the Morrison government’s attempt at small business tax fairness.

Yesterday we lodged a submission condemning the draft law and calling for it to be put in the trash bin. Here’s our submission (3 pages).

Robert Gottliebsen in The Australian took the same view with the headline ‘Tax bureaucrats try to sneak one through.’

Why ‘sneaky’? The draft legislation was released for ‘consultation’ on 12 January, smack bang when most people are on holidays, and during the height of the Djokovic mess and while the government was/is handling supply chain and other Covid ‘crisis’ issues. And Treasury has given only seven days for responses. The draft legislation is short and tax bureaucrats have had nine months where they could have done something. Looks sneaky? Probably is sneaky!

We’ve said in our submission:

The job of Treasury is to faithfully draft legislation that accurately reflects the government’s policy intent … we submit that this draft legislation undermines the government’s policy intent and the process of democracy in Australia.

We’ve made it clear what the legislation should look like.

Normally we admire the professional integrity of the Australian public service and their respect for the democratic process. This situation is a dark smudge on that professional integrity.

Covid ‘rebels’ and the Eureka Stockade

by

eureka-stockadeThere’s a band of people who see themselves as the ‘keepers’ of the Eureka Stockade tradition, and they are much miffed by anti-Covid lockdown protesters who wave the Eureka flag. The ‘miffed’ are principally unionist, republicans, and avowed leftists who hold that their causes shine bright under Eureka’s Southern Cross. To them, lockdown protesters are engaged in the theft of (their) sacred symbol.

But there are parallels between the Eureka rebellion and the anti-lockdown protests that give the current-day protesters some justification for flying the Eureka flag.

Eureka The Unfinished Business by Peter FitzSimons gives a highly detailed account of the ‘massacre’ (the term used by the Melbourne media at the time) just after dawn on Sunday, 3 December 1854. Some 30 ‘diggers’ were killed in a brutal 20-minute attack by colonial soldiers against the Eureka Stockade at Ballarat. Soldiers fell along with unknown other diggers – potentially several hundred – that died subsequently from horrendous wounds.

The seeds of the massacre were laid some short 20 years earlier when Melbourne was founded by a near lone explorer, John Batman. The ‘village’ and Victoria exploded in population to some 250,000 after gold was discovered in 1851 – not just ‘gold’ but massive nuggets were literally sitting under the soil, easily picked up by the lucky finder.

The Victorian colonial government appointed from London had a degree of local parliament, but the representatives were elected only by landholders (squatters). These lucky first settlers of Victoria had received huge land grants from the government, paid a small annual rent to the government, then acquired wealth on the back of wool and related grazing activity. These 4,000-or-so elite individuals were effectively a social and political nouveau riche aristocracy.

The gold rush induced not only a huge immigrant population explosion, but a rush of squatters’ workers and every other type of worker to leave their jobs for the lure of riches in the goldfields. The colonial government faced a big revenue shortage and so imposed a monthly mining levy on every goldfield digger whether the digger had found gold or not.

This levy, often violently enforced by the police, was the core reason for the Eureka revolt. Their ‘revolutionary’ theme was ‘no taxation without representation’.

The Eureka revolt is a symbol for some modern Australian republicans because some diggers, mainly Irish, added a republican agenda to the diggers’ cause. This divided the diggers.

Karl Marx himself, who wrote his Communist Manifesto in 1848, showed great interest in the diggers’ 1850s rebellion. In 1855 Marx opined that the rebellion was the workers’ proletariat rising up against the ruling bourgeoisie just as he predicted. This was enough for today’s political Left to grasp Eureka as their symbol of the inevitability of the workers’ revolution.

It was out of this Marxist idea of the endless struggle of the workers versus the bosses (however defined) that was – and remains – a central idea of the Australian union movement and the Australian Labor Party. As the primary funders and factional controllers of the ALP, Australian unions fly and display the Eureka flag at all opportunities.

But here’s where the truth of Eureka breaks from the symbolic myth and connects to the Covid ‘rebels’, particularly in Victoria.

The diggers were self-employed. They were ‘workers’ and ‘bosses’ all in one. This shatters the Marxist, Leftist, unionist myth. The Eureka revolution arose from ‘workers’ who deserted their ‘bosses’ to become their own bosses. They took their luck in the marketplace of gold prospecting. Their revolution was against the bureaucratic government elite who sought to (and did) distort their free market, thereby creating massive harm. The elite cared not for the harm they did.

Likewise the Covid ‘rebels’ are drawn heavily from the ranks of the self-employed. Under Covid, self-employed and small business Victorians have carried the financial burden, with some pushed into comparative poverty. These are the people most damaged by the world’s longest and harshest Covid lockdown – all staged in Victoria.

Look at the Victorian ‘revolution’…

Construction workers massed against and attacked their own union. A huge police presence was needed to protect the union ‘bosses’ in their Elizabeth St Melbourne citadel. Repeated weekend after weekend, huge but peaceful (even polite) rallies stretched from the gold rush funded Victorian Parliament House to the end and beyond of the 3 km Bourke St main city strip. Drone footage interposed with computer analysis put crowd numbers around some 120,000 at its peak.

And where do these Covid rebels come from? Mobile phone tracking analysis identifies the bulk of them from Melbourne’s outer ring of suburbs. These are the homes of the mortgage strugglers and low-income earners, says the analysis. They are heavily the self-employed hairdressers, personal trainers, tradies, and more.

These are the people who’ve carried the financial burden of the Covid lockdowns. Anyone on the financial teat of a heavily indebted, harsh, authoritarian Victorian Covid government has financially sailed through. Here is where the Covid government played the politics of dividing the community; to oppose the Covid policies was – and is – to be considered as scum.

Such was the story also of colonial Victoria. The Colonial Governor ran the line that the Eureka rebels threatened the very safety of the colony and the population.

Both the colonial and Covid Victorian governments resorted to harsh, even brutal police action. The Eureka Stockade massacre was the end product of increasingly brutal police tactics in enforcing the diggers’ licence. The firing of rubber bullets by Victoria’s anti-terrorists squad into the backs of fleeing Covid demonstrators was the end product of months of police activity arresting demonstrators for not ‘locking down’.

In 2020, Victoria police arrested a pregnant mother for ‘sedition’ because she expressed her anti-Covid policy opinion on Facebook. Thirteen of the Eureka ‘rebels’ were likewise charged with sedition and High Treason. All 13 rebels were found not guilty at trial. Common to both the colonial and Covid Victorian governments was the affront they took toward anyone seen to be defying their authority.

Sedition is the ‘crime’ of inciting people to rebel against authority. So obsessed were both governments with enforcing their authority that they blinded themselves to their own massive mismanagement that caused the defiance.

The colonial Governor repeatedly insisted on enforcing the diggers’ licence even after many deputations warned him of the consequences. The ‘Covid Premier’ Daniel Andrews oversaw a months-long disastrous hotel quarantine program that lead to 801 deaths and then reacted by imposing the world’s harshest and longest lockdown.

The Victorian Colonial Governor’s own inquiry found that it was the government’s maladministration caused the Eureka disaster. Similarly, the Victorian Covid government’s inquiry also found that it was government maladministration of hotel quarantine that lead to the initial wave of 801 deaths in 2020.

It is these similarities between the Eureka and Covid rebellions that stand out most in giving the Covid ‘rebels’ the right to wave the Eureka flag. Such similarities overpower unions, Leftists, and republicans who also claim a right to use the flag.

In 2004, on the 150th anniversary of Eureka, Eureka author John Molony stated, ‘Democracy is much more than a system. It is an ideal and a spirit born day by day in those who believe in it.’ How true.

Perhaps it is a strange quirk of Australian history that the core of both the Eureka and Covid rebellions is in Victoria. The starkest reason is that with Eureka and Covid, the Australian state with the harshest, most authoritarian, unyielding, manipulative, and even violent government occurred in Victoria. Strange indeed.

The Colonial Governor and government had a military victory in crushing the Eureka rebellion. Within a short year or so the government’s authority amongst the people had crashed and the Governor resigned. By 1859, along with a wave of democratic reform, Victoria had the vote for all males in a new Legislative Assembly. (Women had to wait another 50 years!) But the dominance of the landed elite was suppressed, spelling the death of a looming landed gentry class.

The Victorian Covid government seemingly won the lockdown battles of 2020-21. But history is yet to play out as to whether their authoritarianism prevails over a living day-by-day democracy.

Small business hugs Karl Marx? That’s a turnaround!

by

karl-marxIn the nineteenth century, the father of communism, Karl Marx, ‘created’ class ideology where ‘evil’ capitalists always exploited the working class (who were little more than wage slaves). The worker–bosses war has been fought ever since. Workers have been allowed to strike and bargain collectively through unions to secure their rights against the exploitative bosses.

However self-employed, small business people upset this simple idea because we are both the worker and boss in one. How is it that we can ‘exploit’ ourselves? This has resulted in confused law. It’s confused unions who try hard to force self-employed people to be employees so we can be ‘exploited’ and join the union class. It’s pretty silly really.

But the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) has come to the rescue. The ACCC regulates the economy, checking that big businesses doesn’t use their dominant power to exploit consumers. But now the ACCC has taken another step to stop big businesses using their dominant power against self-employed, small business people. The ACCC is making it really easy for small businesses to bargain collectively with big businesses.

Small business collective bargaining has been available for a few years, but you needed significant legal knowledge to do it correctly. And you had to receive ACCC approval. Now it’s very simple. It:

Only requires a one-page form. No lodgement fee.

Authorisation is then automatic.

Your business turnover must be less than $10m a year.

The ACCC link is here.

What does this mean in practice? Here are some simple examples:

If you are (say) an IT contractor supplying services to (say) a government department that applies a standard pay rate across all similar services, a group of IT contractors could get together to negotiate a different rate.

If you are a retailer and want to bulk buy a product from a supplier, you could get together with other small retailers to negotiate a better price if you buy collectively.

If you are putting in a tender to supply (say) HR services to a large company, you could get together with other HR independent contractors to put in a collective tender.

This collective bargaining process offers opportunities to at least partially match the bargaining power of big business and government by self-employed, small business people. It creates real, additional opportunities for small business.

Combine this with the new pay-on-time laws and the planned ‘beefing up’ of the unfair contract laws and Australian small business people are really starting to receive a fair go in the Australian economy. These are big, important reforms.

The only problem is that unions and others who passionately believe in Karl Marx’s workers–bosses war might feel a bit annoyed. If class ideology is suppressed by new, fairer market regulation, how do unions and others still maintain the battle?

Unfair Contracts BIG Beef UP. Fantastic! Bank of Queensland slapped down

by

dragon-slayerWith all the focus on Covid, it’s good to see that major reform efforts are still underway. Last week the Morrison Government released the Bill to ‘beef up’ the unfair contract laws. It’s a ripper. It’s a game changer.

In 2015 the Coalition government passed unfair contract laws for small business people. As Self-Employed Australia was the primary, often the only, advocate for the laws (we campaigned for seven years) the laws achieved about 70 per cent of what we wanted. This new law will make the laws really strong.

The new Unfair Contract Bill

The Exposure Draft Bill has been negotiated with and supported by the states. It applies both to consumers and small business people.

The Bill Expands the definition of small business to businesses of up to 100 employees. Currently it’s only 20 employees. The Bill applies no limit on the value of the contract. Currently it’s only contracts to $300K. Plus the Bill clarifies what is a ‘standard form’ contract to one where the contract has been used before.

The Bill also expands the scope of Court Orders. If a clause is declared unfair in one contract, it will be unfair in all contracts. Fines can be imposed for using unfair clauses. A person can be banned from ‘managing a corporation’ for using unfair clauses.

The Bill gives real teeth to the laws. Big businesses and their managers will be in major trouble if they try to use unfair contract clause under this proposed legislation. It truly will make for a greater power balance between big businesses and consumers/small businesses.

Bank of Queensland slapped down

Take this example: The Bank of Queensland (BOQ) has known about unfair contract laws for six years. They were dumb if they didn’t! Yet they ignored the laws. The Federal Court has now slapped down BOQ. They had clauses in small business contracts that (1) let them change contracts at their whim, (2) allowed BOQ to declare a default anytime, (3) allowed BOQ to charge customers for BOQ negligence and (4) forced the customer to disprove a debt if BOQ declared a debt. These are all bastard clauses that have now been removed by court order.

But under the new Bill, BOQ and their managers would be in real trouble for having these unfair clauses. Their executives, lawyers and managers could face been banned from being a manager in banking or any corporation. Are you listening big business managers? Now it’s serious.

The Bill is subject to further consultation. We’ll be putting in a submission of STRONG support. Here’s our summary of the Bill.

Is the ‘gig’ up? Is a ‘secure’ job a fiction? We say it is!

by

security-blanketThe Senate is currently holding an inquiry into ‘insecure’ work. The Terms of Reference state: “…to inquire into and report on the impact of insecure or precarious employment on the economy, wages, social cohesion and workplace rights and conditions….”

Well we, self-employed, independent contractors, gig workers, contractors and so on—that is, people who are their own boss—are seen by labour academics and unions as doing ‘insecure’ work. And they see that as a huge social problem that has to be fixed. The Victorian government wants to ‘fix’ us as a problem by outlawing us. Some fix!!

We say that ‘secure work’ is a “figment of imaginations searching for legal expression”. In other words, ALL work is insecure. What people need is not a ‘secure’ job but continuity and certainty of income. This is a more sensible way of approaching the issue. Trying to manufacture ‘secure’ jobs is just the old left-vs-right thing. It’s plain dumb and doesn’t get us anywhere.

We say that self-employed people need ‘protections’ through commercial regulation, such us the unfair contract laws and pay-on-time laws. These sorts of things provide real, practical solutions.

We were asked to appear before the Senate Committee which we did on Tuesday 27 July (this week).

Here’s our one-page summary of our stance on the issue.

And here’s the 37-minute video of our discussion with Senators on the issue.

If you owe the money, pay up! That’s damn good policy

by

pay-on-timeMy heart was gladdened recently by the spectacular collapse of Greensill Capital, once a darling of the financial and (some) political elites in Australia and the UK.

Greensill was a ‘leader’ in reverse factoring, also known as supply chain financing. In its simplest formulation, reverse factoring enables a supplier to receive faster payment of money owed to it by paying a fee to a finance company. The finance company pays the supplier and takes over the debt. It can be good.

But the way it was working under Greensill had the stench of ‘come in sucker’.

Greensill claimed to have hundreds of clients, all of whom seemed to be big-end-of-town types such as Telstra.

But the trick that was happening under Greensill is that its clients seemed to routinely screw their small business suppliers by extending payment terms out to 90+ days. The deal then was that the small businesses would pay a commission to Greensill so that Greensill would pay them the money they were owed by the conglomerate.

In summary, the conglomerate takes money from the small business by extending payment terms. Then the small business had to pay Greensill to be paid. For small business it was rip-off territory.

But what was really on display here was capitalism at its grubby, manipulative worst.

Market economies and societies are not Wild West, unrestrained capitalist societies. Successful markets regulate behaviour. Good market regulation is as ‘light touch’ as possible. In the Greensill case, the regulators had moved in on this reverse factoring model and went further.

In the 2019 Federal Election campaign the Morrison Coalition made a firm commitment to introduce a package of small business pay-on-time laws. This included the government paying small business suppliers within 20 days, as well as requiring large businesses contracting with government to do the same. And further, establishing a compulsory small business pay-on-time reporting system for all large businesses.

As of now, each of these promises has been implemented or is in the final stages of implementation. Cross-party political support has been firm.

In this case of Greensill the damage to small businesses by the exploitative reverse factoring game was limited. The regulatory push moved in comparatively early. Too often, if the market is unregulated and left to ‘self-correct’, the damage to individuals is horrendous. Harm done to a few cannot be justified by the alleged benefit of the greater good in the long term.

In this ‘pay on time’ story we can witness perhaps an example of quality, ‘light touch’ regulation.

And there’s one simple principle in play. If you owe money: Pay!

Without doubt, for small business people, being paid on time is the BIG issue!

Deliveroo decision is NOT a win for unions. Just normal stuff!

by

There’s a lot of excitement coming from the union movement over the recent ‘Deliveroo’ decision. ‘This is the end of gig’ they say.

They are excited because the Fair Work Commission (FWC) has declared that Deliveroo food deliverers are employees and not independent contractors.

However  there’s nothing at all unusual about the decision. In 2018, a similar company to Deliveroo, the German-based Foodora, left Australia after its delivery people were declared to be employees. Conversely, in April  2020, Uber Eats delivery people were found to be independent contractors not employees.

You might ask, ‘is there some inconsistency here?’ Well, no! In fact the FWC (and the courts) are being entirely consistent. What the law requires is the application of the standard common law tests to distinguish an employee from a self-employed person.

The process involves considering up to about 20 or more factors such as: Did the worker have to work certain times? Was the worker ‘required’ to work? How was the worker paid? The task at law is to look at all the  factors and give an overall assessment.

Even though Foodora, Deliveroo and Uber Eats appear to do the same thing—organise riders to collect food from restaurants and deliver the food to customers at home—in fact they each have different contracts and manage the process differently. That’s why the rulings differ.

I’ve examined both the Deliveroo and the Uber contracts. I’m not surprised by the Deliveroo decision. There are major operational differences between the companies. The fact is that the Deliveroo decision supports the legitimacy of the gig economy.

In 2006, Federal legislation secured across the country the ‘common law’ test for employee vs contractor determinations. The Independent Contractors Act followed on from a 2006 International Labour Organisation declaration which secured the right of people to be self-employed. Australia is a signatory to that international obligation.

Further, Australia has done more than any country to protect and defend self-employed people.

The Independent Contractors Act has unfair contract provisions. In addition, we have specific Federal unfair contract laws for small business people that are currently being ‘beefed up’. Then there are the current moves to create pay-on-time laws for small business people. The JobKeeper and JobSeeker benefits were made immediately available to self-employed people during 2020.

At the same time, there is no tolerance for sham contracting, with specific laws against that practice.

These Australian protections for self-employed independent contractors are world-leading.

But this regime that protects the right to be self-employed is hated by Australian unions and labour in general. They run scam media plays trying to boost the argument that self-employment is on the way out.

This ‘we hate independent workers’ movement is deeply embedded in Australian Labor.

The Victorian government is proceeding with an agenda to kill off self-employment. But Victorian Labor’s plan is confronted by the Independent Contractors Act which overrides state laws on the issue. This then explains the hype around the (very normal) Deliveroo decision.

Labor is eager to turn ‘gig’ into an election issue. But it’s up against the most advanced package of self-employment protections in the world. Labor’s agenda threatens those protections.

Australian unions see flying ‘gig’ pigs landing from the UK

by

You may have seen reports that the UK’s top court has decided that Uber drivers are not independent contractors. The UK decision seems to support the unions’ campaign against the gig economy. It gives the appearance of international support for Federal Labor’s anti-gig (anti-small business) policy announced earlier this month.

However, sorry to disappoint the small business-haters in the unions and Labor, but the UK’s decision has no relevance to Australia.

The facts in Australia are that Uber drivers have been declared to be independent contractors by:

And last year (2020) the FWC declared that Uber Eats delivery people are independent contractors. In this 2020 decision the Commission looked at the UK law above and stated that its irrelevant to Australia. Here’s why.

In Australia we use the well-known common law tests which identify whether there is a commercial contract or an employment contract. All independent contractors (self-employed people) earn their income through a commercial contract. This is locked in under Australia’s Independent Contractors Act 2006. It protects the right of people to be their own boss.

In 1998 the UK created statutes which say that even if you’re an independent contractor you can still have access to some employment ‘rights’. This is the ‘little bit pregnant’ idea. The UK statute says that someone working under a commercial contract can be a ‘little bit’ an employee. This is the statute that has been ruled upon by the UK Supreme Court last Friday in the Uber case.

The UK has made, and is making, a mess of its treatment of self-employed people. Self-employed UK people have been treated as economic trash during the Covid crisis, receiving little if any income support. For 20 years the UK tax office (HMRC) has been trying to stop the self-employed from having business tax rights. The Uber decision now throws massive uncertainty into commercial contract law.

Fortunately, in Australia since around 2006, we’ve developed policies to support and ‘protect’ self-employed people. This has included the same access as employees to the federal parental leave scheme (2010), JobKeeper and JobSeeker (2020) and the introduction of unfair contract laws (2016) and their planned ‘beefing up this year. Also, this year the full pay-on-time laws for small business should pass.

We ‘protect’ small business people by giving them access to a practical commercial ‘rule of law’ environment, backed by sensible access to social security support where needed. This creates a stronger economy with small business at its core. Let’s hope that the UK small business destruction disease doesn’t spread to Australia.

For a longer version of this article which includes a link to the UK Supreme Court ruling, click here.

California Attacks Santa Claus – A Victorian Agenda?

by

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

We’ve covered before the weird laws in California (called AB5) that have made self-employment illegal. On the evidence, it seems that these laws have pushed California’s unemployment rate to 50 per cent higher than the US average. The laws came into force on 1 January this year. But it’s now impacting on Christmas.

Patrick Turnbull has been a Californian Santa for 20 years. He doesn’t work as Santa all year round. That’s logical. Not much Santa work outside Christmas! So, he’s worked as an independent contractor Santa. Now the Californian AB5 law say that’s wrong. In this 4-minute video, Patrick (Santa) Turnbull explains why denying him his Santa ‘rights’ is so bad.

You tell ’em Santa! (click the image for the YouTube video):

What’s worrying is that Dan Andrews’ Victorian government also has an anti-Santa (independent contractor) agenda. We’ve told the government in very blunt terms, ‘leave us alone … we have a right to be self-employed.’ We ‘demand’ the right to be Santa if we want!! Viva la Santa revolution!

Oh yeh. And Merry Christmas! We all deserve it this year.

Oz unions’ weird desire to impose ‘permanent’ wage slavery

by

News just out is that private-sector union membership in Australia has plunged to 9 per cent of the workforce. Unions are rapidly becoming public-sector-only, with about 37 per cent of that workforce. Perhaps this is why unions are campaigning so hard to try and force ‘wage slavery’ onto all of us. They are fighting for survival.

The ACTU’s core campaign is against ‘insecure work’. It aims to impose ‘permanent’ employment on Australians. But it’s illogical. In particular their campaign has been mugged in the blink of Covid eye reality.

When planes can’t fly, ‘permanent’ airline jobs also ‘fly’. Empty hotels mean an emptying out of permanent hospitality jobs. When cruise ships no longer cruise, the impermanency of every ship job hits home. Economic reality determines everything. Like it or not!

The ACTU’s claim that ‘insecure workers’ are more likely to face unemployment is just plain wrong. No job type—permanent, casual, part-time or contract—escaped the Covid mugging.

The illogicality of the ACTU stance extends to statistics. Unions portray ‘insecure’ work as a growing ‘problem’. That is false. Recent analysis from University of Melbourne Professor Mark Wooden confirms the following.

Casual employment has remained at around 20 per cent of the workforce for 20 years. Labour hire and gig work is small, at less than 5 per cent of the workforce. Self-employment has sat at around 2.1 million people but declined slightly as a workforce percentage to around 17 per cent over the last 15 years or so.

What’s also illogical in the ACTU stance is the complaint about casual employees’ lack of access to ‘entitlements’ such as holiday pay. This is plain nonsense.

Casuals get paid 25 per cent plus more than permanents to make up for holidays and so on. Casuals receive holiday pay built into their hourly pay. Permanents get paid less upfront and get paid the money when they take holidays. In fact, casuals end up with more money than permanents because full-time ‘entitlements’ usually only add about 19 per cent to their pay. Casuals can receive up to 6 per cent more than permanents.

The Federal government’s proposed new workplace laws will allow casuals to access permanent part-time work after 12 months. They will allow part-timers to work extra hours. The ACTU continues to find problems even under these reforms.

Even the economic ‘war’ with China has taught Australia that there is no such thing as ‘permanent’. We now are fully aware that reliance on permanency of trade with China or any one big national market is massively risky. Trade security is found in having a wide range of trading partners. It’s the same with work for individuals. Having a range of work and income sources is safer than relying on one ‘permanent’ job. In reality, ‘permanency’ is insecurity.

Too often the ACTU agenda falls apart in the face of the facts. On this issue their ‘anti-insecurity’ agenda looks like a policy solution searching for a policy problem that doesn’t exist.

We need to focus on ‘solutions’ for a 24/7 economic reality in which Covid and China have both taught us that nothing is permanent. To pretend otherwise is to live with fantasies that will harm us.