Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition supports the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2014 and we absolutely support the amendment. This amendment delivers wage justice for cleaners. While those opposite might say now that they support the amendment, we all remember them sitting on this side of the chamber to try to vote against wage justice for cleaners only this week. This week began with the Prime Minister saying on Monday:

I want to make it absolutely crystal clear that no cleaner's pay is reduced.

On Tuesday, they introduced a bill that would have the impact of reducing the pay for cleaners. Under the Clean Start rates, cleaners who were being paid $22.02 per hour had the capacity to go down under the next tender round to the equivalent of $17.49 an hour—to lose up to $344 a week as a result. No-one should be in any doubt that those opposite are willing to attack the pay and conditions of the lowest paid workers in this country. No-one should be in any doubt that, when it comes to low- and middle-income earners, people on this side of the chamber—the Labor members—will be the ones who stand up for them.

We heard from Minister Cormann in the Senate and we heard it again from the parliamentary secretary—and any low-paid worker should remember these words—that the government continues to 'not be supportive of the guidelines'. Australia's low-paid workers should know that, any future attempt by the government—whether it be by regulation or whether it be by a new bill—to cut the wages of Australia's low-paid workers, Labor will stand up for them and stand in the way of those opposite.

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