Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise today to support the motion by the member for La Trobe, which recognises the importance of penalty rates. It particularly recognises the importance of penalty rates to our lowest paid workers and to those in our community who greatly depend on penalty rates as a very significant part of their income, and is an integral part of their income. Of course, the Labor Party has always had a very strong commitment to penalty rates and the rights and conditions of workers. We are also very proud of our record of job creation. We understand that penalty rates compensate workers for working shift work or very irregular hours. We understand the impact on individuals and we understand the impact on families. We understand there needs to be relevant and necessary compensation for those hours worked.

This is in absolute stark contrast to the Liberal-National Party, particularly in what we are hearing from them today. We know at a federal level they want to bring back Work Choices. We know that is what they are telling people and what they are saying. We know that that is actually their plan. When I look to my home state of New South Wales and the actions of the O'Farrell government, what we see there is workers' rights being stripped away. What we are actually seeing now in New South Wales with those rights being stripped away is a curtain-raiser to what a federal Liberal-National Party government would do right across the country.

These changes by the O'Farrell government are severely impacting the families in my electorate of Richmond in Northern New South Wales—their cuts are right across the board, but particularly their attacks upon workers. Of course, these changes in my area have had the full support of the local state National Party members; they voted to support all these changes. They have remained silent while the rights of local workers and local families are stripped away.

Penalty rates are an important additional payment to employees who work on weekends, late at night and on public holidays, and they have long been a feature of the Australian workplace relations system. Often the people who work these less family-friendly hours are among the lowest paid, particularly those workers in retail, hospitality and the services industries. The fact is that penalty rates comprise a very vital part of their salaries. Also, many emergency services workers—such as nurses, police, ambulance officers or firies—work irregular hours, and they deserve to be compensated as well.

I have often believed that you cannot have a full understanding of the challenges of shift work unless you have worked it yourself. As a former police officer, I spent many years working in shift work, and I understand very well a lot of the challenges and difficulties in working irregular hours, and some of the impacts that can have upon individuals and upon their families.

Fair Work Australia has reviewed public holiday and penalty rates provisions in a number of modern awards, as part of its two-year review of the awards. Under the Fair Work Act there are a range of ways to manage penalty rates, including through higher base rates of pay or annualised salaries as well, as long as the employee is better off overall—that is what is important—because removing penalty rates is a gross injustice, and that is exactly, as I have said, what is happening in New South Wales at the moment.

Since coming to government in March 2011, the O'Farrell Liberal-National Party government have made a devastating number of cuts to jobs, to funding, to workers rights and to services. We have seen them strip away public sector workers' rights and cap their wages. We have seen their plan to sack 15,000 workers from New South Wales hospitals, schools, child protection services and fire stations. Important frontline services will be devastated. We are seeing cruel cuts to community services and to disability services. This all comes on top of their massive $1.7 billion in cuts to schools in New South Wales, and every child in every school on the North Coast will be impacted.

We have also seen the O'Farrell government fully strip the New South Wales Police Force of their death and disability protection, destroying a very important safety net for police. We have seen them change the New South Wales Workers Compensation Act in order to reduce support and compensation to injured workers. We have also recently seen the O'Farrell government's plan to change 38 workplace awards, to cut leave-loading entitlements, parental leave, sick leave and penalties for shift workers. The O'Farrell government are systematically destroying workers' rights and, in doing so, they are vandalising local jobs and communities. The attacks just go on and on.

While all this devastation continues to occur, we hear absolutely nothing from the local state National Party representatives on the North Coast. They remain silent. The members for Tweed, for Ballina and for Lismore remain silent while services are being ripped away. But that is in fact the National Party way: hide out, pretend that it is not happening, hope that nobody will highlight it and do not admit to people that what you are supporting, what you are voting for, is severely impacting the lives of the people on the North Coast. What it shows to locals on the North Coast is that, at both the state and federal level, you just cannot trust the National Party. As I said, what we are seeing at the state level in New South Wales is a curtain raiser. It is the precursor to what we will see from a Liberal-National government at the federal level.

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