It's all well and good being marginal BUT if you can't meet the legal minimums for pay, then you shouldn't be operating.
Hmmm... well not an Aussie and never lived there, but it would seem to me that if the employer was paying a wage that is illegal under the law over there, it would be a relatively simple matter to force compliance with the law, or shut the company down, n'est pas?
If not, either your Labour department, unions, or government(s), take your pick, are thoroughly useless.
It seems more likely that employers are getting around the law by defining the job in a certain way, in which case there is nothing illegal about it and let the employee beware.
As an aside, I do a little consulting and for a recent project, determined that the operation would be marginal initially but should be profitable within a year, but only if certain economies could be implemented. One of these was the use of First Officers who would pay for their type rating, and then fly for little or no pay (the incentive being twin turbine time). The idea that they should pay to fly was also tabled.
Now there's a conundrum... do you go down that route, and allow ten or so inexperienced pilots to gain extremely valuable multi turbine time that they would otherwise have no chance of getting, or do you bin the whole project because you can't pay a proper salary?
I can assure you that that my initial research proved that the offer of multi turbine time for no pay would be MASSIVELY over-subscribed. Pilots were phoning me on the mere sniff of a possibility of such a gig.
Which is better for the industry? You tell me. Personally, the idea of not paying F/Os a proper salary appalls me, but I have to recognise that in todays market, potential F/Os would be lining up around the corner to get the gig...