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Treasurer’s “Jimbonomics” Australia’s road to ruin

Treasurer Jim Chalmers, with no real-world business experience, no firsthand knowledge of free markets and no life outside the machine of politics has decided to tear down Australia’s economic system and rebuild it—hammer in one hand and sickle in the other.

The Treasurers, “Jimbonomics”, form of command and control will only benefit Labor’s billionaire masters.

Transcript

I speak as a servant to the many different people who make up our amazing one Queensland community. I have not yet had a chance to make fun of Treasurer Jim Chalmers’s ode to soviet glory titled ‘Capitalism after the crisis’, so let me start there. A Treasurer with no real-world business experience, no firsthand knowledge of free markets and no life outside the machine of politics has decided to tear down Australia’s economic system and rebuild it—hammer in one hand and sickle in the other. Reinventing capitalism is not visionary, as Jim Chalmers hopes; it’s a cliche.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Cox):

Senator Roberts, can I just remind you to address people in the other place by their correct titles.

Senator ROBERTS: Mr Jim Chalmers?

Senator ROBERTS: Worse, it confuses political theory with economics. The Treasurer has studied only one of those, and it’s not economics. Mr Jim Chalmers has studied political science and now sees every problem as a political one. The Treasurer knows nothing about economics and clearly dismisses the need for it. How ironic that Mr Jim Chalmers’s now legendary article opens with a quote from the Greek philosopher Heraclitis, when he says:

No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man.

What? It’s not without merit that Heraclitis is known as the ‘obscure philosopher’. This nonsense may make the Treasurer sound smart at a dinner party for pseudo-intellectual lefties, yet, to everyday Australians struggling with the rising cost of living, falling real wages and a housing shortage, it’s nothing more than intellectual masturbation.

When you hear ‘command capitalism’ from the Treasurer, what he’s really saying to the Australian people is this: ‘I don’t trust you. I don’t respect your choices. I don’t recognise your freedom. Everything you have belongs to the state, and you will do as we command.’

Commentators refer to this fantasy as Jimbonomics. That’s their view. In reality, it’s about threat, force and regulation designed to herd businesses into supporting fringe activism that rewards the elites at the expense of everyday people. It’s about control over ‘we the people’. Rather than the state owning everything directly, all the wealth in the Treasurer’s economy will be owned by the billionaires that own the UN and the World Economic Forum.

Already, woke politics has engineered a rapid descent of employee privacy, with governments ranking businesses based upon the race, religion, sexual preference, gender and disability of their staff. Human beings have become commodities in the implementation phase of the great reset, the new world order.

The recent Workplace Health and Safety Amendment Bill 2023 from this government actually requires an employer to know the vaccine status of their employees and to bar those people from the workplace if they are not vaccinated—inhuman. Pfizer says, ‘Cheers for that bill. Thank you.’ Treasurer Chalmers has lit a fire at the heart of parliament that seeks to destroy everything good and prosperous that everyday Australians, across the 235 years of Western settlement in Australia, have built.

As many have said in criticism of the Treasurer’s treatise on communism, there can be no democracy without capitalism, and there is no capitalism without the free market. It’s time we started asking if Labor is planning on reimagining democracy itself. Is it? The Albanese government have introduced legislation that clearly shows this is their intention, so at least the Treasurer has been honest about his intentions.

Listen to this. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Energy Price Relief Plan) Bill 2022 was nationalising the gas industry. The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023 represents the government distorting the free market, taking it upon themselves to direct investment in manufacturing, using government money, and to stop key investments in our future.

The Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting) Amendment Bill 2022 imposes egregious controls on industry, with ministerial direction to provide all of the details in the future—unfettered power. I’m sick of these bills that are all shopping bag and no shopping.

It’s not the purpose of the state to give the government of the day a bill with nothing actually in it so the government can fill in all the important bits later, as it wants. Shame on the Greens and the teals for going along with this insult to the Westminster system of government. It must now be clear that George Carlin was absolutely correct: it’s a club, and everyday people, everyday Australians, are not in it. Australians have never wanted the economy to be subservient to its political leaders. We have never wanted that.

Command capitalism is anticompetitive. It allows the Albanese government to decide which Australian businesses get to succeed and which fail. Why does Mr Jim Chalmers feel the need to reinvent capitalism? Why does he feel that he is the first Treasurer in Australian history that must take this step off the cliff into the abyss? I’ll tell you why. The free market doesn’t like what Labor is selling. The Australian people do not want to spend their money on inferior eco-products and self-serving CEOs who, so long as they achieve their carbon dioxide footprint, would happily see Australian families starve or freeze.

Net zero policies are all fun and games until the lights go off and the bugs are served cold because, well, gas is now selfish and the power has gone off again—so cold it is. Why is it that the only environments the Labor Party doesn’t want to help are the investment environment and the human environment? If the market doesn’t want Labor’s globalist vision, then the Prime Minister and his Treasurer must accept that. They have no right, and they were not voted into power, to dismantle capitalism, reimagine it or duct tape it to a chair in the basement.

It took Mr Jim Chalmers 6,000 words to explain that values based capitalism means, ‘You will do as we say.’ The Soviet Union fell 30 years ago, but Treasurer Chalmers is doing his best to drape its banners all over our parliament. Treasurer, give it up. Russia has. ‘Jimbonomics’, as some call it, will harm small and medium-sized businesses and transfer wealth to the people at the big end of town whose market power allows them to comply with the Treasurer’s demands. To comply is easy for them: pass the cost on to the consumer. That’s all. From the perspective of everyday Australians, green is the new red. From the perspective of the billionaires who shadow-wrote the Treasurer’s opus, green is the new gold.

The only part of the Treasurer’s opus that was not lifted from the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset was the part that was deliberately left out: you will own nothing and you will be happy. Who will own what everyday Australians are no longer allowed to own—the houses, cars, furniture and electronics? Why, it’ll be the predatory billionaires for whom Jim Chalmers is just a mouthpiece.

Commanding the market during COVID has wrecked the market. Wages are falling, inflation is out of control and economic activity is down. Exports have grown in countries that ran their economies better than we did. They have the demand and the economic strength. Now Jim Chalmers wants to use more command economics to get us out of the hole in which command economics has buried us.

Australia will not survive a second round of abuse from a treasurer who is handsy with other people’s money. Markets do not belong to Mr Jim Chalmers. They do not belong to the Labor Party. Markets belong to the people and their private businesses. They belong to Australians. The big business investors in whose pockets the Treasurer so often resides, bankers in particular, would like nothing more than to kill off their market competition and to bury the small and medium-sized businesses in a new mountain of controls and regulatory bondage.

Their deaths will be celebrated in the name of saving the planet. Make no mistake: destroying small and medium-sized businesses is the goal, not the unintended consequence, of green politics.

For Labor, dealing with a handful of powerful CEOs is easier than dealing with 10 million small directors. But those directors are the ones keeping Australia back from the brink of ruin. The safest economies in history have been the nimble free markets. It has been repeatedly proven. They adapt to disasters, bounce back after injury and seek out the best solutions for the future. Free markets are far smarter than Jim Chalmers.

The beauty of free markets is that they are smarter by far than any individual or group, and sensible, honest people know this. Competent people know this. Jim Chalmers and his Soviet counterparts are too arrogant, or maybe too fearful, to understand that basic truth. The secret to being a truly great treasurer is to step back, relinquish power, cut regulation, lower taxes and let Australians do what Australians do best: lift themselves up through their own hard work and enterprise.

Businesses are not ideological vessels to carry Labor’s election slogans, tied to the Greens and the teals. Businesses are not fodder in the insatiable thirst for more money, more power and more influence from the billionaires at the World Economic Forum. It is about control.

Shame on the Treasurer for reaching well beyond his mandate. Put your greedy paws back in your pockets. It’s time for the Treasurer and the Prime Minister to tell their billionaire masters, ‘No.’ We have one flag, we are one community and we are one nation, founded as a penal colony.

I’ll be damned if the One Nation party will let you take us back there again.

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Media Release: One Nation advances equal pay for equal work

One Nation’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Bill 2022 ensures the rate of pay for casual labour hire workers are the same as or better than full time workers doing the same job.

Senator Roberts said, “The exploitation of casual workers stops here and now, and my Equal Pay for Equal Work Bill will ensure casual workers are remunerated fairly.

“Companies need to re-invest in traineeships and apprenticeships for their future labour requirements, rather than contracting casual positions on lower wages.”

My Bill applies to the Black Coal Mining Industry Award 2010 and the Aircraft Cabin Crew Award 2020, both of which have a history of claiming flexibility requirements but undercutting wages.

This Bill will include the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Enterprise Award 2016, the Fire Fighting Industry Award 2020, the Maritime Offshore Oil and Gas Award 2020 and the Seagoing Industry Award 2020.

Senator Roberts said, “While some of these industries do not have a history of casualisation, they all inherently need to maintain high and consistent standards of safety using a stable workforce.”

One Nation accepts the need for casuals to cover sudden spikes in labour demand.

Senator Roberts said, “We need to make sure casual workers are just that, a short-term requirement to address business demands, and that employers in these specific industries shift their perspective to an investment in longer term workforce planning and permanent employment.

“The overuse of casualisation has driven down wages, making it a struggle for a sole breadwinner to provide for their families.”

One Nation has achieved many positive changes for casual workers in the black coal mining industry, along with introducing casual to permanent conversion rights and protecting small business from red tape when implementing casual conversion. “This Bill is award-based and allows for wage negotiation between the employee, union and employer, which is an investment in the employer and employee relationship,” added Senator Roberts.

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Labor has no solutions for IR problems

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Labor has no claim to the high ground on industrial relations, they have abandoned the working class. A graph of our median and average wages over time is untroubled by changes in government.

Liberal, National, Labor or Greens, it makes no difference; workers just keep going backwards. Only One Nation has a vision for the future that returns our productive capacity, manufacturing and better wages for Australians.

Transcript

This motion is one of the least self-aware that I’ve seen out of the Labor Party. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I note that the median wage has not increased in real terms over the last 30 years after adjusting for dramatic increases in the cost of housing, health care and education, yet Australia’s gross domestic product per capita has increased over that period from $13,600 to $65,400 in real terms—as are all my figures today. Gross domestic product is up by a factor of five, and the wages of everyday Australians have not increased. Where’s the money gone? Average wages for Australians at the upper end of the scale have seen an increase of 50 per cent, and at the very top end the increase is over 100 per cent. A graph of our median and average wages over time is untroubled by changes in government. Liberal, National, Labor or Greens, it makes no difference; workers just keep going backwards.

Wages as a share of GDP have fallen from $116 billion to $96 billion over 30 years. The share of our gross domestic product being paid to Australian workers is at an all-time low yet corporate profits have grown from $20 billion to $120 billion—six times. Globalist economics has crushed the wages of everyday Australians and deposited the spoils from an expanding economy into the pockets of the big end of town in salaries, bonuses and dividends. Globalist free trade agreements have seen more than one million high-paid, skilled manufacturing and heavy industry jobs moved overseas. Labor is a big fan of globalism—voting in favour of every one of these free trade agreements.

Recently the Senate voted for a UN funding bill to direct money into funding economic development in countries with which we have a free trade agreement. This facilitates increases in their productive capacity to take yet more Australian jobs. One Nation was the only party to oppose the funding bill. The Labor Party voted in favour—in favour of losing yet more jobs overseas.

COVID restrictions have had a role to play as well. The government’s COVID restrictions measures have moved consumer spending away from small businesses who employ everyday Australians to corporate retailers who pay minimum wage. Online growth has gone to Amazon, owned by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos. Social media are calling the COVID restrictions on businesses ‘a war on capitalism’; it is no such thing. In corporate Australia, the biggest crony capitalists have record sales, record profits and have paid higher dividends and bonuses. As a result of government coronavirus restrictions and measures, the world’s 400 richest people have increased their wealth by $1 trillion. Much of this new wealth is money that was once spent in local communities—in hardware stores, community supermarkets, butchers and grocers. This was money that held up real wages paid by local businesses to their loyal staff. Now those businesses have been forced to close or to sack workers. So the real outcome from coronavirus measures has been the largest transference of wealth from small businesses to foreign-owned or controlled corporations in Australian history. We expect this sort of thing from the globalist Liberal Party and their sell-out sidekicks—the Nationals—yet this has been brought to you by Labor in Queensland, Labor in Western Australia and Labor in Victoria. Almost every government measure during the COVID period has been waved through the Senate by the Labor Party, working in conjunction with the Liberals and Nationals.

Labor don’t get to complain now; they should have seen this coming. The only thing that was not in this profligate spending was a permanent increase in JobSeeker. The constant pressure from One Nation in this place directly with the government across many years has today had a result. One Nation will continue to stand up for everyday Australians. The destruction of wages and entitlements for Australian workers has many other causes. At the heart of the problem is supply and demand for workers. At the same time that Australia is sending jobs overseas, we are importing workers. Over the last 30 years, Australia has added 10 million new Australians. While many of these do not go into the productive economy, the bottom line is simple: we are importing workers for jobs that have already been exported to lower-cost destinations, especially China. There are more workers than jobs and that can only have the effect of reducing wages. Labor defend Australia’s high immigration rate and suggest One Nation are racists for wanting a reduction in the rate of arrivals. The use of the word ‘racist’ means they have no argument to counter us. All One Nation are doing is standing up for everyday Australians who will never get a decent pay rise a as long as the government keeps bringing in more new arrivals than there are jobs. The Rudd Labor government and the Gillard-Rudd Labor-Greens government increased permanent migration from 160,000 in 2007 to 205,000 in 2013. Labor cannot pretend to care about workers when it was Labor that initiated the largest spike in arrivals in the last 30 years.

The other issue around stagnation in real wages is foreign temporary workers. The Senate inquiry into temporary work visas found temporary migrant workers experienced widespread wage theft and gross violations of Australian minimum work standards including: failure to pay minimum wages, long work hours and lack of health and safety training leading to workplace injuries. Temporary work visa holders are being exploited to drive down wages and conditions. Indeed Bill Shorten, as minister, set the record for temporary work visas in this country, a record that Labor still holds. I don’t hear Labor complaining about this.

This may be because their beloved free trade agreements facilitate foreign workers. The Indonesian free trade agreement section 12.9 removes labour market testing and allows additional contract workers across 400 skilled occupation. It allows for 4,000 temporary working holiday-maker visas per year, and these workers are highly exploited because they’ll be deported if they lose their jobs. Wage theft is not entirely restricted to vulnerable foreign workers, although it does account for most of the cases. The problem of falling real wages, job insecurity and wage theft, which Senator Walsh mentions in this motion, results from Labor Party policies. One Nation is accused of wanting to wind the clock back. Well, on this issue we do want to wind the clock back, back to when workers got a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. We need to start putting Australia and Australians first, back to when workers settled here, became Australian citizens and contributed to the future of our marvellous country.

Full Motion: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansard_Display?bid=chamber/hansards/c18a4b03-69cc-4413-9438-08e33693f884/&sid=0102

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Further information on One Nation’s Enterprise Agreement Vote

Three examples of Labor MP’s gutting jobs and workers and an expression of appreciation for three Labor MP’s who approach us face-to-face and honestly deal with issues.
The Labor party as a whole no longer protects workers.

Today’s Labor party savages workers and families. Labor has lost relevance and instead of caring about workers and being honest many Labor MPs tell lies and omit facts.

What works with us and what we like is for MP’s to approach us openly, bring data and share it freely to back up their request, and above all, to be honest.

Transcript

Following last week’s parliamentary sessions in Canberra here’s a longer video with more facts on policies hurting workers and a compliment to one New South Wales senator who approached us openly and respectfully on an issue.

Let’s set the record straight on a recent change to federal regulations, to allow employers and employees to quickly amend an existing Enterprise Agreement to deal with the COVID-19 crisis and keep their business going and employing people.

For businesses that are struggling to survive due to COVID-19, this allows employers to ask employees to vote on changes to an existing EA more quickly, in as short as 24 hours, rather than the normal 7 days. Unprecedented times call for flexibility for employers and employees.

We agree that some businesses need this and workers in those businesses understand. It was One Nation though that negotiated with the government to add the 12-month sunset clause, so that if employees agree to amend their EA for COVID, all pay and conditions would return after 12 months.

That’s fair. Typically, Labour then spread the lie that these temporary changes with a shorter voting period would be permanent, when they’re not. Remember, the regulation does not force you to agree. If you lack adequate time to vote on it, you can vote no.

So, to Labor’s Tony Burke and Joel Fitzgibbon, you have been caught lying to the workers you claim to represent. Labour seems to hate that it was One Nation who negotiated with the government to improve the bill, and made amendments to protect workers and workers’ rights.

And I put on notice any employer that thinks of using COVID-19 to screw workers by taking advantage of new regulations when COVID-19 restrictions have not affected them. In places like mines with 24 hour shift-work, employers would be crazy to give only one day to vote because that would force some workers to come in to vote on their day off or after a long shift on night work.

And workers who are annoyed would likely vote against the amended EA anyway. Anyway, as far as we know from listening to miners, COVID-19 is not affecting most mines’ operations. Remember, the new regulation does not apply to voting on a new EA, only to changes to an existing EA.

The regulation that is part of the COVID-19 response package only improves the flexibility for those businesses where employers and employees need a quick change to deal with COVID. We all know that life is about making choices, especially in politics where we face so many different people’s competing needs. Quite often, we have to choose between two difficult choices.

On one hand the viability of employers to protect jobs, and on the other hand protecting workers and worker’s rights. To make sure workers are protected while giving employees and employers greater flexibility to negotiate changes quickly to keep people in work, One Nation added the 12 month sunset clause.

The government agreed and will change the regulation. That means that after 12 months an EA with COVID changes returns back to the original conditions. This was done by One Nation to protect workers from employers in case those employers later tried to make COVID changes continue forever.

We’re in unprecedented times, yet we will not let this pandemic be used as an excuse to drag this out any longer than it should. One Nation identifies real issues and protects workers’ rights. Let’s get the background facts on what happened.

Labour has been sidelined with two things, the focus on the government during COVID and a lame federal leader in Anthony Albanese after a distrusted leader in Bill Shorten. A few weeks ago a journalist asked me for comment on the possibility of voting on Labor’s disallowance of the regulation.

What disallowance? That was news to us. When there is a real issue though, Labour contacts us to get our support. Union delegates contact us. Yet we heard nothing from unions or Labour. It was not a serious issue and Labour did not make an argument for it.

Later, when we saw the disallowance motion on the senate agenda we contacted Labour and we contacted union delegates. Union delegates said they had no issue. We reviewed the regulation and realised that some employees and employers would want to negotiate changes quickly to keep people in work under COVID isolation rules, others would make no changes and others still would make minor changes slowly to remain viable.

The key though, is that we saw a loophole that needed to be closed. So we approached the government and explained it. The government agreed with us and is amending the regulation to protect workers’ rights. That change that One Nation senators proposed was to put a sunset clause on any changes to protect workers after the COVID crisis ends. To protect workers.

Now, desperate Labour MPs, like Tony Burke, Joel Fitzgibbon, Katy Gallagher, falsely and needlessly mislead and worry honest workers in an attempt for political gain. We though in One Nation got to the core issue and fixed it to protect workers’ rights.

By the way, let me remind you that Tony Burke, when he was Labor’s Environment Minister, pushed anti-coal measures that are still hurting our coal industry and therefore hurting coal miners. And raising electricity prices that are still hurting all workers and all family householders, and exporting manufacturing and processing jobs to China.

So let me remind everyone, that Tony Burke enacted drastic UN regulations that gutted our fishing industry and gave power over our country to faceless unelected UN bureaucrats. Now, he dares misleads people about the disallowance motion and forgets to tell people that One Nation negotiated changes in the regulations to ensure workers rights are protected.

As for Joel Fitzgibbon, after he was nearly tipped out as the rep for Hunter, last federal election, he started to talk more about coal. Yet his words remain hollow, because his Labour party bosses continue anti-coal policies.

Where the old and real Labour party protected miners and workers, today’s Labour party protects the UN and pushes UN policies. These days Labour does not care about Australian workers. Labour hurts Australian workers.

Labour tells lies to Australian workers and Labour hurts our democracy. Another example of Labour mismanagement of workers is immigration policies, immigration numbers. After One Nation alone for years called to cut immigration numbers, recently Labour senator Kristina Keneally wrote an article calling for immigration to not be the same after COVID as before.

Yet she and others had been viciously and falsely labelling our demands for immigration cuts as racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic. The reality is that we could see that huge immigration numbers suppress wages, raise house prices, put pressure on infrastructure like roads, hospitals, schools and drive casualization of the workforce.

So last week in the senate I moved a matter of public importance motion that became a test of her commitment to her new words. You know what? She hid the whole day until after my motion had been debated.

Labour MPs refused to back her call for lower immigration numbers. Remember, the largest intake of temporary visa workers in any year occurred when Bill Shorten was minister for workplace relations under the Gillard Green’s government and authorised them.

Labour hurts Australian workers. Labour does not care about Australian workers. Labour tells lies. I take this opportunity though to express appreciation to Senator Tony Sheldon from New South Wales who approached us about getting Dnata employees in airline catering to be put on the government’s JobKeeper programme despite the government saying that welfare would not go to 100% foreign owned companies.

Dnata is 100% owned by a Middle Eastern country. We asked Senator Sheldon for data and gave us some. We asked the government for data and got plenty.

We then realised that these days domestic flights usually provide minimal food such as packaged peanuts, no big meals International flights though cater for solid meals yet most of those flights won’t start again until early next year, maybe mid next year and JobKeeper ends in late September this year. Plus, JobKeeper payments are taxed.

JobSeeker though is open to Australian workers, are not taxed and often come with additional payments such as family allowance and rental assistance. We checked the data and JobSeeker payments are comparable with JobKeeper after tax is removed from JobKeeper.

More importantly, JobSeeker continues beyond September and into next year so Dnata workers will be better protected on JobSeeker. We made a decision on the facts we gathered and in our view it is better to put the situation openly to Dnata people, many of whom will not have a job after September and need to sign up for JobSeeker as soon as possible.

Now we appreciate Tony Sheldon’s care and his open approach to us to consider his motion, we trust Tony because he’s honest. He’s a former TWU union delegate, like Senators Glenn Sterle and Alex Gallacher, who we find are excellent to deal with in the senate and are knowledgeable and caring.

Like Pauline and me, One Nation values honesty.

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Enterprise Agreement Vote Explained

Last week in the Senate Pauline and I negotiated with the Government to change new COVID regulations to protect workers rights .Yet when some MPs feel like they are losing relevance, they panic and spread misinformation to score cheap political points. These MP’s show they do not care about workers and are not honest. See for yourself. One Nation will always protect workers and workers’ rights

Transcript

Let’s set the record straight on a recent change to federal regulations to allow employers and employees to quickly amend an existing Enterprise Agreement to deal with the COVID-19 crisis and keep their business going and employing people. For businesses that are struggling to survive due to COVID-19, this allows employers to ask employees to vote on changes to an existing EA more quickly, in as short as 24 hours, rather than the normal seven days.

Unprecedented times call for flexibility for employers and employees. Now, we agree that some businesses need this and workers in those businesses understand. It was One Nation, though, that negotiated with the government to add the 12-month sunset clause, so that if employees agreed to amend their EA for COVID, all pay and conditions would return after 12 months. That’s fair.

Typically, Labor then spread the lie that these temporary changes with a shorter voting period would be permanent, when they’re not. Remember, the regulation does not force you to agree. If you lack adequate time to vote on it, you can vote no. So, to Labor’s Tony Burke and Joel Fitzgibbon, you have been caught lying to the workers you claim to represent.

Labor seems to hate that it was One Nation who negotiated with the government to improve the bill and made amendments to protect workers and workers’ rights. And I put on notice any employer that thinks of using COVID-19 to screw workers by taking advantage of new regulations when COVID-19 restrictions have not affected them.

In places like mines with 24-hour shift work, employers would be crazy to give only one day to vote because that would force some workers to come in to vote on their day off or after a long shift or night work. And workers who are annoyed would likely vote against the amended EA anyway. Anyway, as far as we know from listening to miners, COVID-19 is not affecting most mines’ operations.

Remember, the new regulation does not apply to voting on a new EA, only to changes to an existing EA. The regulation that is part of the COVID-19 response package only improves the flexibility for those businesses where employers and employees need a quick change to deal with COVID. We all know that life is about making choices, especially in politics where we face so many different people’s competing needs.

Quite often we have to choose between two difficult choices. On the one hand, the viability of employers to protect jobs, and on the other hand, protecting workers and workers’ rights. To make sure workers are protected, while giving employees and employers greater flexibility to negotiate changes quickly to keep people in work, One Nation added the 12-month sunset clause.

The government agreed and will change the regulation. That means that after 12 months, an EA with COVID changes returns back to the original conditions. This was done by One Nation to protect workers from employers, in case those employers later tried to make COVID changes continue forever. We are in unprecedented times, yet we will not let this pandemic be used as an excuse to drag this out any longer than it should.

One Nation identifies real issues and protects workers’ rights.

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