My Speech at Small Business Association of Australia 2023

Small Business Association of Australia Conference, Melbourne, 22 September 2023

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you, Andrew. And I want to thank the organisers of this wonderful conference. And I want to thank every single person in this room for being here. It is a delight to be here with you. I enjoyed the two days up in Surfers a couple of years ago, Anne, fabulous. So I’ve decided to stay the whole two days as I did in Surfers.

I also want to acknowledge every Australian and I want to acknowledge every human, I’m very, very pro-human. Business and politics are all about humans. We seem to forget that at times. And people, I want to remind people of this, our constitution is the only constitution anywhere in the world in which the people have voted for the constitution. Did you know that? The only constitution. And who’s in charge of the constitution? The people of Australia. Very, very important.

Before speaking on industrial relations, there’s news I need to discuss. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday called for a review into the Commonwealth Government’s response to Covid. It breaks his promise to us all before the last election for a Royal Commission. The review lacks the power to compel witness testimony, to discover documents and lacks the power of indemnity that a Royal Commission enjoys, including the ability to protect witnesses. Extremely important.

Australia’s Covid response substantially damaged our whole small business sector and transferred $4 trillion of wealth from everyday Australians to the world’s most wealthy billionaires. The Albanese government has sold out small business owners hoping to see a Royal Commission make recommendations to protect small business next time, sold them out. Instead of justice and a clear statement of intent to defend his constituents’ freedom, the Prime Minister has framed an inquiry that will endorse the actions taken. In so doing, he encourages our autocrats to exceed their moral and legal authority even more next time.

This review is a dark day for small business and for those who understand that transparency and due process are the bedrock of a democratic society. And I made a promise in the Senate three years ago that I would hound down those responsible for this attack on small business and on personal freedom right across the country. Today I commit, I recommit to my promise to those responsible for the atrocities of COVID, I will hound you down.

Now turning to the point, to the hot topic of the moment, Labour’s deceitfully named, Closing Loopholes Bill, I’ll discuss that in the bigger picture. Labor’s set of reforms is just the next episode in a long list of policies crushing small business. The appalling state of our industrial relations system though isn’t only the Labour government’s fault. The slow motion car crash known as our industrial relations system has been unfolding for decades.

So let’s step back for a minute and assess the wider picture of industrial relations and how we got here. The Fair Work Act is 1,265 pages long. Double what it was just two years ago. It doesn’t even come in one book. For printing, it’s now split into two volumes. The government’s so-called Closing the Loopholes Bill is an additional 284 pages of new chapters and changes, plus an explanatory memorandum. That’s 521 pages of brief explanation of what the government is trying to do with each clause of its 284 page bill to change the 1,265 page act.

Now don’t feel ashamed if you’re struggling to keep up. Drafters want that. They want you confused. They want us confused. The Fair Work Act hasn’t been crafted with small business in mind. The act is littered with exceptions for small business, which is an implicit admission that the requirements are simply too onerous and burdensome for business to function.

In a sign of how out of touch our industrial relations system is, in some sections a small business is defined as less than 15 employees. One of our staff team in the Senate pointed out, the corner bakery that he worked for in high school had more than 15 staff. So how did we get here? Anne talked yesterday about the need for policy change. Anyone in business knows change is necessary. So why hasn’t it happened?

The Fair Work Act, to be blunt, is a Frankenstein child of decades of lobbying from what I call the industrial relations club. Remember this, the industrial relations club. The armies of consultants, industrial relations lawyers, union bosses, large industry associations and multinational corporations. Recognise them? All of these players benefit from industrial relations being made more complex, not easier. The lawyers want companies forced to employ them to make sense of the act. That means more fees. If employees and employers were instead allowed to talk with each other to agree on pay, union bosses wouldn’t be able to insert themselves in the middle and extract their pound of flesh, their cold, hard cash. Union bosses like to rope everyone into the expensive and deliberately difficult bargaining system.

The large industry associations and multinational corporations like to keep industrial relations complex. Complexity helps big companies keep out competition, especially from small business. The multinational corporations, the Bunnings, the Woolworths, the BPs can afford teams and teams of lawyers to make sure they’re ticking every box in the Fair Work Act no matter how complicated. Yet even they still get it wrong.

So what hope have small businesses got? Small operators simply don’t have the resources or the time to comply with all of the requirements that come with giving someone a job today. We see it every day. Many small businesses giving up and closing shop. You mentioned that yesterday, Anne, and you did it so well.

This is in large part due to the complexity that the industrial relations club has fabricated and forced on us. To summarise how we got here with this Frankenstein industrial relations framework, IR lawyers, industrial relations lawyers, like their fat fees, the more complex the legislation, the more money they make. Union bosses need ways to insert themselves into every agreement. Big corporations are fine with complexity because they can afford to comply and they know their competition in small business can’t. All these groups have a lot of money and a lot of lobbying power. They’re the ones making submissions to parliamentary inquiries, appearing in the media and lobbying politicians. They steer the national industrial relations conversation.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the country barely get a shoe in the door. In this area, I acknowledge the great work of groups like the Small Business Association of Australia with this wonderful conference. Thank you so much Anne, and your team, marvellous work.

Unfortunately, the huge lobbying power of the Canberra industrial relations club can drown out the good work of those few small business groups. In the end, union bosses, big corporates, consultants and IR lawyers all get a piece of the pie. The interests of small business and the productivity of our country are left in the dust. That’s how we get here and got here. As comedian George Carlin said, “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.”

Now let’s generally discuss what we’re facing in the Albanese Labor government’s Closing the Loopholes Bill, the so-called Closing the Loopholes Bill. A chief concern that I have is that this bill is going to drive up costs for the small businesses which can least afford it. With no or little benefit for workers. There’s been little meaningful consultation with the small business sector. In fact, there’s been almost no consultation with anyone from this government.

The Labor government resisted sending this bill to an inquiry with enough time to investigate the effects of all the 805 pages of law and explanations. Thankfully, One Nation, as part of the Senate cross bench with the opposition, extended the inquiry report date to February, ensuring this bill will be properly investigated. We still need time to fully appreciate this bill’s effects, although an initial look makes very unpleasant reading.

The new bill includes changes to the definition of a casual worker. Although this may be beneficial, it will be the third definition in three years. Another example of just how off the rails is industrial relations. We face comprehensive changes to the so-called gig economy, blurring the distinction, the clear distinction between contractors and employees. For decades, businesses have relied upon well-defined tests and court decisions to understand the difference between employees and contractors. This bill seeks to introduce an entirely new third category. How this new category of employee-like contractors fits into our economy is still not clear. And it’s something we will investigate in coming months. It’s clear though that Labour has not thought it through, with many concerns already raised about the impact on anyone that holds an ABN.

Among the concerns raised with me already are whether business owners will be forced to make an assessment and pay their contractors’ superannuation and leave entitlements. Do these changes mean for example, a sole operator hairdresser will have to add a superannuation and leave loading as a line item on their invoice because their clients have regular appointments and will be treated as employees? Does a web developer who may be on a small retainer to update a small business website have to charge superannuation and leave loading to their client? Taken together across all the suppliers of services a business may use, how many full-time equivalent positions will a small business now have to in effect directly employ with all the overheads that entails? This is madness.

Many basic and concerning questions like this must be answered as we pick apart each chapter of this bill. And I’ll get onto the reason why they’re doing this. It’s got nothing to do with the reasons they’re saying. Even without the results of the coming inquiry, some portions of this bill are clearly wrong.

In particular, the potential open slather that this bill will enable for union bosses to intervene in the normal operation of small businesses. On the face of it, union bosses may be able to enter premises for the sole purpose of recruiting membership. If a union boss suspects wage theft or underpayment, they would have permission without notice to enter premises, including homes. How do we validate that an overzealous union boss’s suspicions are legitimate? And why should these powers be available to a union boss, not to the enforcement body, the Fair Work Commission? If a union boss abuses these powers, the only way a business could immediately challenge it is with a costly court application and lawyers’ fees. This used to be the job of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the ABCC, that took misbehaving union bosses to court. Of course for doing such a good job and taking the burden off businesses, the Labour government disbanded the Commission.

Casual definition, gig economy contractors, union bosses powers are just some of the issues we’ve seen in Labor’s Closing the Loophole Bill. All 805 pages of law and explanation will require careful evaluation and we hope the Senate inquiry will give us the opportunity to do that so that we can weigh up all the pros and cons.

Now it’s true that there are some measures in this bill making it easier for first responders to receive PTSD compensation, protection for victims of domestic violence and measures to control silica health harms and the enhancement of industrial manslaughter laws that One Nation may be able to support once we more closely examine the legislation.

On principle, I will always stand for free enterprise over the government nanny state dictating every detail of what we can and can’t do in our lives and businesses. The key to pulling our country’s economy out of tough times is unleashing small businesses to do what you do best: delivering goods and services and employing everyday Australians to grow the wealth of our nation. Decades of regressive governments have done the opposite. It’s only gotten harder to make things and employ people, and small business feels that the most.

We’re witnessing one of the greatest wealth transfers in our history happening right before our eyes. Government policies are ripping money out of small businesses, out of our local communities and pumping up the profits of multinational corporations. Whether or not it’s the government’s intention to do this, it’s the undeniable chilling result of their policies. It’s fact.

Everyone remembers when every small business had to shut down during the deceitful Covid mismanagement. Yet Bunnings was allowed to stay open. Coles and Woolworths had record revenues, while hundreds of thousands of small businesses folded, families were destroyed. It’s a decades long attack, a decades long attack on small business and communities with major parties on both sides of the political aisle beholden to vested interests.

Our country’s industrial relations laws are harming the workers. Australians have always been told that this country’s industrial relations trade-off is to pay to protect workers. That’s why you put up with the pain. In reality, our current industrial relations framework makes it harder to do business while failing to protect workers. The complex powers of legislation often become box ticking exercises rather than genuine protections. Instead of fixing the cracks that workers are falling through, more complex legislation creates more loopholes for the big corporates with their teams of lawyers to make.

And as I’ve exposed in the Hunter Valley and Central Queensland, the mining union bosses are complicit, making money off stripping workers’ entitlements and basic protections. Union bosses stealing from workers, with the help of government and major corporations.

The fundamental problem is that no one can imagine and create an encyclopaedia of laws that will ever perfectly apply to every business, every employee in every situation. Yet the government says it can.

A shameful case I’ve been pursuing for over four years proves our industrial relations framework is not protecting workers, despite the huge burdens the system is putting on small businesses. The very union bosses who are meant to protect coal miners in the Hunter Valley have thrown workers to the wolves. Simon Turner was a miner injured on site. Under the Black Coal Award, he’s entitled to a safety net, compensation and minimum rates of pay. Instead, he was employed as a casual under a fraudulently endorsed enterprise agreement that union bosses and labour hire companies signed. And that is what this bill is protecting. There’s no loophole, all they have to do is enforce the Fair Work Act. The enterprise agreement stripped Simon of 40% of the pay he would have been entitled to in a permanent position. Workers’ compensation and sick pay gone. In fact paying less than the award and national employment standards.

The Hunter CFMEU entered into a written agreement with labour hire company Chandler Macleod to not pursue the Chandler Macleod company over any infringements of workers’ rights in relation to the agreement. Signed in writing. Soon after, almost half a million dollars changed hands from the multinational employer to the union.

Simon has been living without lawful compensation for nine years while totally and permanently disabled as a result of what his union did. I’ve been trying for four years to have these dodgy dealings punished and Simon and thousands of workers to get justice. It only needs enforcement of the current Fair Work Act using the Fair Work Commission and the Fair Work Ombudsman. Yet even with the thousands of pages of industrial relations law and rock solid evidence of these issues, no one in their entire industrial relations system has yet been able to deliver justice to Simon. No one. Nor justice to thousands of miners. This is just one of the examples I’ve seen in our warped industrial relations system with its thousands of pages of laws and regulations failing to protect workers. Deliberately.

Those in our industrial relations system can’t see the forest for the trees. Don’t despair though. Despite all the problems I’ve talked about, I don’t want you to think I’m a pessimist or a cynic. I’m angry. And I’m determined. But I’m not a pessimist. In fact, my staff team are often gobsmacked about situations I see as optimistic and hopeful because I have enormous faith in humans.

It’s true that small business is one of the toughest jobs. It’s true that the government is making it much harder. To make things better, we first need to acknowledge the reality in which we find ourselves. Yet I believe we can unlock a prosperous and abundant Australia. And the proof of that lies in the facts and our history. Don’t believe it? We’ve already done it.

Early last century, Australia had the world’s highest per capita income in the world. I’ll say that again. Highest in the world. Australia wasn’t just punching above our weight, we were world champions. And simultaneously we were building infrastructure still in use. And students of history will be aware of the United States Lend-Lease programme for World War II. The Lend-Lease programme provided the war winning materials and products to the allied forces against Nazi Germany. What fewer people know about is reverse Lend-Lease in which Australia instead provided materials to the United States. In the 1940s with only seven million people Australia provided in today’s dollars $15 billion worth of wartime products and materials. That’s what this country did. And I see an honourable former service man right here. Thank you, Warren. A huge contribution of things we made here in Australia.

All of this was in addition to the contribution of troops we sent away to foreign lands. Australia today has enough energy resources, coal, oil, gas, uranium alone to keep our lights on for thousands of years and export globally. We are the number one exporters of energy in the world. That’s before we discover even more deposits. We are the world’s largest exporters of energy, yet we cannot use it here. Our country’s potential is nearly unlimited. We don’t need to send iron ore and coal mined here to China so they can use it to make steel wind turbines that we buy back from them and ship back to Australia and increase our power prices. We can make what we need here and forget about wind turbines. Just use the coal to make cheap electricity.

We can be the best in the world again, it just needs putting people with guts into parliament. Politicians who aren’t afraid to upset the vested lobbying interests, and instead have the country’s interest at heart. People not afraid to run a fire through our current industrial relations system and clean out the dead wood. People willing to call out the government’s destruction of small business. People willing to point out the United Nations net zero climate scam has taken us from the world’s cheapest power without wind and solar to now among the highest prices due to wind and solar. People willing to point out that the Reserve Bank is raising interest rates to send mortgage holders broke while trying to fight the inflation the Reserve Bank caused due to printing $500 billion out of thin air to respond to the government’s gross mismanagement on Covid. People willing to point out that we wouldn’t have a housing crisis in this country if net immigration wasn’t running at 460,000 a year, plus another 540,000 student visas, plus working visas totaling 1.2 million arrivals a year.

Now do you see why housing prices are shooting through roof and rentals are increasing? Every time I’m listening to constituents, to business owners like you, whether on the streets of the city or the streets of small rural towns, I see our economy’s heroes.

Please make submissions to the Senate inquiry, and write and call and visit your local MPs. They work for you. They’ve forgotten that. Just remind them. I see you, Australia’s small business owners, you will save this country and our economy just doing your job. That’s how you’ll save this country. I just want to get government out of the way so you can keep doing your job and so you can keep the rewards you are due. Thank you very much.