Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Hansard source

I was just making the point about the difficulty of balancing work and family for many people who were on AWAs—the difficulty of knowing when you could pick your kids up, knowing what sorts of after-school things you could commit yourself to when you did not know when you would be working from day to day or week to week.

The Fair Work Act restores the balance that the opposition wants to take away, by extending equal remuneration provisions to include the right to equal pay for work of equal or comparable value, by allowing variation of modern awards for work value reasons, by strengthening the safety net and measures relating to women’s workforce participation, by providing access to multi-employer bargaining for the low paid and by enhancing protections from workplace discrimination. Work Choices and AWAs were killed stone dead by the Australian people at the time of the last election. There were many Australian women who voted against Work Choices partly because they were concerned about their own pay and conditions but partly because of the work environment that they wanted their kids and grandkids to have as they grew up. They voted against it and, if the Leader of the Opposition resurrects Work Choices and resurrects AWAs, they will vote against it again.

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