Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Capricornia for her question. I know that she is very committed to ensuring that workers get a fair deal at work.

I can report to her that the government has done a range of measures, and there are four that come to mind immediately. First, after the long, dreary years of the Howard government's industrial relations, we introduced a bargaining system that has now seen 2.2 million Australian workers covered by over 16,000 agreements. That is one tick. The next tick is that we extended unfair dismissal protections to cover seven million Australian workers so that people at least have some remedy against unfair dismissal. That is another tick. Indeed, since Labor was elected at the end of 2007, we have seen 800,000-plus jobs created. That is good news for workers and another tick. The fourth provision is that we increased compulsory superannuation from nine to 12 per cent, which means that Australians will have more money to retire on than they would have if the coalition had been in power.

But I can report to the member for Capricornia that last night there was a further development to improve the protections for Australian workers. I am referring to legislation that was passed called the Fair Entitlements Guarantee. Last night this Labor government put into statute the existing protections that exist in an administrative scheme known as GEERS.

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