Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to talk a bit about the economic pressure that is on families and communities, in particular the sort of pressure that is being placed on the community of South Australia. This pressure is caused by people needing to have dual incomes to pay mortgages and having to work long and antisocial hours. People do it grudgingly, but it takes a big toll on marriages, on the rearing of children and on community life. We often hear politicians talking about this. It is what is called the 'barbecue stopper'—work-life-family balance. But often politicians do not act nearly as often as they talk. I have noticed that some political parties have even included 'family' in their names. It is part of a political movement, I suppose, to encapsulate these anxieties that people have about modern life in the political discourse.

The Weatherill Labor government in South Australia is acting to give families extra time around particularly important and special occasions in the community's life, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. The proposal is to make a part-day public holiday that would start after 5 pm, which is both affordable and practical for the community. We all know that after 5 pm on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve is family time and community time. It is time for friends and family and if you are working you miss out on that time. This unique proposal has the support of unions, of small family businesses, of Business SA, of city trading groups and of the Adelaide City Council and it is opposed by the Liberal Party and their paymasters, the pokie barons. These pokie barons are extracting enormous profits from the community generally, and we know that they extract enormous profits on New Year's Eve and Christmas Eve. We know that they make a king's ransom on those nights; they make very large profits. They are refusing to share those profits with their workforce.

The South Australian Legislative Council has the balance of power on this question, as they do on most other questions. We wait to see whether Family First members Dennis Hood and Robert Brokenshire and Independents John Darley and Ann Bressington will decide to side with the working families of this country and with the Labor Party and the Labor Party's proposals in South Australia for part-day public holidays or whether they will side with the Liberal Party and the pokie barons. We need to know whether they are on the side of ambulance officers and coppers and shop assistants and aged care workers and nurses and bar staff, the people who work to help us have a happy and safe New Year's Eve, or whether they are on the side of a very small part of the business community which is a very profitable part of the business community. We need to know whether or not they are on the side of families.

This agreement has broad public support and, let me tell you, Mr Speaker, we are not alone in acting. In 2007 the ACT government proclaimed Family and Community Day, a new public holiday just for families and communities, which will be celebrated on 8 October 2012. So we are not alone amongst state governments in enacting new public holidays. These are special occasions. I defy anybody in this House to say that Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are not special times of the year which people would prefer to spend with their families and friends, and they are notably antisocial times to work. We know that people would prefer not to volunteer to work at those times, yet they do so to make sure that we have a happy and safe time. This agreement will come to the South Australian parliament shortly. Those Independents, and Family First, have to decide whose side they are on—whether they are on the side of working families or on the side of the big end of town, whether they are on the Liberal Party's side or on the pokie barons' side. I can promise them that if this issue is not resolved in workers' favour and in the favour of the 80 per cent of South Australians who want these public holidays, then it will become an election issue. It will be pursued as an election issue, and it will give everybody every reason to vote Labor in South Australia—not just in the lower house but in the upper house as well. I commend this to the public.

See this speech in context