Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Hansard source

I have just heard the member for Richmond turn a speech which was supposed to be on penalty rates into a far-reaching political attack on every aspect of every delivery program of every state government. I am going to speak on what the motion is about, which is penalty rates. I rise to speak on this motion brought forward by the member for La Trobe. This motion is particularly relevant to me in the electorate of Brisbane, which has some of the major restaurant, CBD and other hospitality precincts, including James Street in Fortitude Valley, the Caxton Street precinct and the fine hospitality establishments in the CBD. My electorate also has two very large campuses, being the universities based at QUT at Gardens Point and at Kelvin Grove, which have thousands of students. I know that a lot of those students work part-time in the hospitality industry, and I have had the pleasure of working with many students when I worked in the hospitality, restaurant and trade sectors many years back.

As we know, the hospitality and retail industries are arguably the most affected by the requirement to pay employees penalty rates for work outside of usual working hours. This motion is a political one. It is designed to try to pressure the coalition on an issue of penalty rates and industrial relations in general and, with great respect to the member for La Trobe, the motives behind bringing the motion to the House are very clear. The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations has also engaged in this political game-playing through a ministerial statement that he made to the House on 18 September. No amount of political game-playing or workplace bingo will change the fact that the coalition's position on penalty rates is very clear. We believe that the industrial umpire, Fair Work Australia, should make the decision on penalty rates and individual awards after hearing all of the submissions and balancing all considerations. After all, that is their task. Fair Work Australia is an independent umpire and is currently undertaking a review of modern awards, and part of that review is the consideration of submissions in relation to penalty rates. It should be Fair Work Australia that makes the decisions on penalty rates and individual awards, after considering the full range of submissions, and not the parliament.

It is very clear from feedback from the hospitality industry in particular that more flexibility is required. We know consumer expectations are that of a 24/7 trading environment, we know that the modern lifestyle is a lot different from what from that 20 or 30 years ago and we know that limiting the capacity of businesses to trade in the evenings and on the weekends can significantly undermine the capacity of those businesses to be viable. I recently became aware that a favourite little restaurant/cafe near my office has announced that it will not be open on a Sunday because it just is not viable. I know the local community is really disappointed because it is a great little cafe.

However, as I have said, our position is that we respect the decision of the independent umpire on regular reviews into modern awards and applications to vary those awards.

However it is not clear what the decision on this issue is within the Labor Party. After reading this motion and hearing Minister Shorten's recent remarks, imagine my surprise when I read an article on ABC News online, which said, 'Tourism minister backs penalty change push'. It went on to say:

Martin Ferguson told delegates at a national hospitality conference in Hobart he has received many appeals from businesses struggling to pay weekend loadings and penalties.

He said weekend and public holiday ''penalty on penalty" issues were a major obstacle for the industry in challenging economic times.

The minister said it was important the penalty provisions were considered in Fair Work Australia's review which was expected to be completed by the end of the year.

So we have it there. On one hand we have the workplace relations minister and the member for La Trobe saying that we should oppose any measures that undermine or remove penalty rates, and then we have the tourism minister saying that the umpire should give proper regard to submissions to remove penalty rates by the tourism industry.

In conclusion, the importance of penalty rates to some low-paid workers in our community is very important. However flexibility is needed and that is why the coalition believes that Fair Work Australia should make the decision on penalty rates and not have the waters muddied by politically motivated motions like this one.

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