In Australia, the concept of the fair go remains one of our most enduring principles, saturating our cultural and political discourse. A concept so emblematic of Australia ­­— the lucky country — where fairness, egalitarianism, and mateship shape our national character, it has permeated Australian industrial relations, from the 1907 Harvester Decision to the 2022 Aged Care Work Value Case.

The Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) took this very Australian notion of the fair go, and built around it ‘a new workplace relations system ready to meet the needs of this nation in the 21st century’. Key to this was the inclusion of a fair and comprehensive safety net: a set of minimum employment conditions, which cannot be stripped away. But today, too many workers find themselves excluded from this safety net, falling through loopholes in our workplace laws. The prevalence of casual employment and other forms of non-standard work have exacerbated a growing crisis of insecure work in this country, blighting our Aussie fair go.

For many of the 2.6 million casual workers in Australia, their jobs are not characterised by the notions usually associated with casual employment: flexible, irregular, or absent a firm advance commitment of continued work. Instead, the real characteristics of casual employment are: low pay, low power, low safety and low security. This paper calls for real reform to better support those people employed casually.