Mr ORGAN (9:46 AM) —On 20 July, the Australian Greens employment policy was launched by Senator Bob Brown and me in Wollongong, a part of Australia where the unemployment rate remains around 10 per cent. The policy outlines a commitment to full employment. A key aspect of this commitment is support for the Job Guarantee initiative, which is an initiative of Professor Bill Mitchell of the University of Newcastle and business and union groups in the Hunter region. This initiative will see the federal government become more actively involved in job creation.

As the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's July 2004 survey points out:

This is true, but the ACCI has left something out. There are thousands of working poor in Australia at the moment, and much of this has arisen because of the increasing trend towards casualisation of the work force. The recently released ACTU report on how casual work affects employees, households and communities in Australia highlights this problem. The casual rate now stands at a record high of 27.9 per cent, and this is something that we as a country should not be proud of.

When we talk about jobs and employment, we must talk about a living wage—adequate wages and conditions so that workers can provide themselves and their families with the basic necessities of life, so that they can have financial security, and so that they can go to work and return home safely at the end of the day. The living wage is something which is easily forgotten—meaningfully or otherwise—in material from organisations such as the ACCI and this government. Buried beneath terms such as `increased flexibility', `efficiency improvements', `industrial relations reform', `simpler minimum standards' and `decentralisation of the wage fixing system' are the harsh realities of lower wages, loss of entitlements and increasing casualisation.

Casual work is just that: short term and casual—a stopgap, interim measure which is insecure and transitory. Casual employees do not have access to holidays or holiday pay, long service leave, sick leave, sick pay, maternity leave, appropriate superannuation, financial security, wage increases or staff development programs. Last week, I heard the story of Telstra call centre employees in Wollongong. Permanent employees there are paid approximately $20 an hour with conditions, but the casual employees who sit right next to them, and who are doing exactly the same work, are paid $16 an hour. Some of them are being told that they must work 37½ hours a week, and some of them have been doing this for up to three years—with no holidays, et cetera. This is a disgrace. The flexible workplace the Prime Minister is so proud of is becoming more and more exploitative, denigrating and inflexible. Many of these people are now the working poor. They deserve better and this country can provide them with a lot better. We must strive for full employment in Australia, and we are a long way from it at the moment.