Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I want to take this opportunity to summarise the government’s position in relation to these various amendments. Before I do that, I want to thank the people in the department who have been involved in the work on the fairness test: Finn Pratt, John Kovacic and Natalie James; Jenny Burnett from Attorney-General’s; and also David Bohn from DEWR. I also take the opportunity to thank my staff, Richard Clancy and Rod Whithear, and Jamie Briggs in the Prime Minister’s office, who undertook a hell of a lot of work in preparing this fairness test.

The government will not be accepting the member for Calare’s proposed amendments. Firstly, in relation to amending Australian workplace agreements made between 27 March and midnight on 6 May, our view is that it would create significant legal risk to disturb existing contracts—contracts that were obviously willingly agreed to by employers and employees. It might even create significant compensation issues under the Constitution for disturbance of property. Not even the Labor Party, I understand, are supporting this amendment requiring retrospectivity. Secondly, in relation to the salary limit of $75,000, it is meant to be a safety net. It would be very rare to see an award that pays more than $75,000 as a base salary. It is not meant to apply to higher income earners; it is meant to apply to those who are most vulnerable. It covers over 90 per cent of workers on AWAs. Also, from an administrative perspective, the cost of retrospectivity—and I know Independents do not worry about this—in looking at over 300,000 contracts would be literally half a billion to a billion dollars, if not more. So it is totally unrealistic and we will not be accepting it.

The government will not be accepting the amendments moved by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. The first set of amendments would replace ‘fair compensation’ with ‘full compensation’, but we do not know what ‘full compensation’ is because the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has not provided us with a definition. It certainly sounds as though it is totally inflexible, and one of the things we pride ourselves on is that flexibility is not thrown out the back door when it comes to Australian workplace agreements and collective agreements under the Work Choices policy. So we will not be accepting those amendments. Secondly, in relation to redundancy pay and changes of hours under protected award conditions, we view these proposals as inflexible. Currently, protected award conditions strike about the right balance. The government have already preserved redundancy entitlements and agreements for up to 12 months after an agreement is terminated.

In relation to public holidays, I noted that the amendments proposed by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition protect, in her view, Good Friday but not Easter Sunday. What about Easter Sunday for all those Catholics and Christians out there who believe Easter Sunday is of equal importance to Good Friday? We think Palm Sunday is very also important, and other religious festivals—

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