Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think it is important that I rise to illuminate the chamber with some comments on the effects of the Work Choices act. This week we have heard a great deal about the real effects of this legislation upon working Australians. There was no greater example of the adverse effect upon hardworking Australians than the recent effect imposed, unwillingly of course, upon Annette Harris, an employee of the company Spotlight. She has been asked to forfeit more than $90 per week of her ordinary weekly earnings so that the company can impose Australian workplace agreements upon its staff in one store. What we know, as a result of the way in which the legislation is constructed, is that this is likely to follow in other stores of that company and, as a result, will follow in other companies that compete with Spotlight.

This is a race to the bottom. I have had the great fortune to travel across Australia as chair of Labor’s industrial relations task force. We have managed to visit 20 electorates in the last five months. We have visited 15 government held seats. We have travelled to every state and territory of this land. We have spoken to hundreds of people. We have spoken to employees, to small businesses, to church groups and to community organisations about their concerns and anxieties about the Work Choices act. This week in parliament we saw an outrageous example of the effects of that on Spotlight employees.

This is just the beginning of a race to the bottom across this country. There is no doubt it will continue unless there are fundamental changes to the industrial relations policies of this nation. We have heard stories of maltreatment of employees by some employers in Lismore. We heard the same thing in Gladstone, in Townsville and in Launceston.

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