TURNBULL GOVERNMENT HAS NO IR AGENDA

The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the Minister for Employment Senator Cash were embarrassingly caught out in a press conference today as their hollow industrial relations agenda was exposed.

Asked three times what their forward industrial relations agenda is comprised of, they had nothing to say - because they have no plan. 

The ONLY thing on their forward agenda is yet another attack on unions and workers.  Malcolm Turnbull and Michaelia Cash are obsessed with unions, but couldn't care less about workers. 

This Government is bereft of a plan to deal with the inequality we are seeing in today’s labour market – the flat wage growth, the proliferation of insecure work, the falling share of GDP accruing to employees, and the relative impoverishment of low skilled workers.

All they have is the deficient Vulnerable Workers Bill that is consistently delayed. The Government has no plan to deal with sham contracting; labour hire exploitation; using the termination of enterprise agreements as a bargaining weapon; and the overuse and misuse of temporary work visas and the people employed under them.

All we have seen is this Government attack unions and workplace rights through politically motivated royal commissions, and by the establishment of the ABCC and Registered Organisations Commission.

We have seen the Turnbull Government actively foster a shifting balance of power in industrial relations, which has emboldened too many employers to avoid their workplace obligations.

In the absence of leadership from this Government, federal Labor will continue to lead the way to remedy the inequality we are seeing in our labour market.

Under the Turnbull Government, we are headed towards an easy to hire, easy to fire society, which is distorting job security and income distribution.