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

It is nice to know that those opposite have some real-life experience.

A deal was done between Business SA and the SDA. Obviously, Peter Vaughan deserves credit for being far-sighted. I think David Di Troia from the LHMU deserves credit for being far-sighted and embracing this. It means a lot to his members indeed. Of course, Premier Weatherill deserves a lot of credit as well. It takes some courage for a new Premier to support a fairly hard-fought and contentious issue for business. There is often a lot of shying away from business lobby groups and bowing and kowtowing to them. We see a lot of this from the opposition. The member for Mayo likes kowtowing to the mining industry a lot. But Premier Weatherill did a very good job and I think Peter Malinauskas has proved himself to everybody in South Australia as being one of those very good union leaders, concerned with his membership, concerned with delivering real benefits to his memberships—real money in the pocket.

While we all ascribe to Ben Chifley's vision for the light on the hill—it is not just about putting a sixpence in someone's pocket—in a very real way, the labour movement to me is about putting something back in workers' pockets; in this case, penalty rates on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, which should be family time. I am sure the member for Mayo is spending Christmas with his family; I know how important his family is to him. It would be wonderful if could find it in himself to extend that same benefit to retail workers, fast food workers, policemen, ambulance drivers and all those who work on New Year's Eve and Christmas Eve.

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