Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do wonder if the previous speaker has had a conflict of interest about penalty rates. The previous speaker has a large organisation of businesses that employ United Voice workers, people working in hospitality. Does this big boss, who is now in this House, have a view on penalty rates? Does he agree with all the other backbenchers that have said, 'We need to cut penalty rates'? If the previous speaker, the member for Reid, really does care about the people working in his establishments; and, if those opposite in this chamber really do care about working people, then why have they not ruled out attacking penalty rates?

I note that government backbenchers are very quick to talk about Sunday penalty rates, but they do not talk about the rates that workers in hospitality earn on Mondays. They do not talk about the base rate, the rate that most of these low-paid workers earn from Monday to Friday. They are very quiet about the Monday rates but they are very quick to talk about the Sunday rates.

Let's talk about another way that this government is attacking the working conditions of Australians. Let's talk about their attacks on the minimum wage. That is right: from their own terms of reference that they put before the Productivity Commission, they want to review the minimum wage rate. There is a reason why we have a minimum wage. It is historical. It was a decision made to say that people in this country need a basic income and standard of living to survive and to support their family.

In my part of the world, Bendigo, we have a history with this. John Arthur, who was a former federal member for Bendigo, was involved in the basic wage case. He was involved in that case to ensure that there was a minimum-wage safety net, a minimum rate of pay, for Australian workers so they could support their families. Now that condition is under attack. A hundred years on, that condition is under attack. This government wants to be the first government in a century to go after the minimum wage.

It is appalling the way this government is failing to support the lowest paid workers in this country. They are failing to protect the standard of living of working people. Every single measure in their budget attacks working people. It attacks their children. It cuts funding from their schools. It attacks their children who might want to go to university, by introducing $100,000 degrees. It attacks health and it attacks hospitals by cutting funding. This is an attack on working people and their living standards. It attacks their parents and goes after their pensions or part-pensions. It sees increases in the cost of petrol.

If you on the other side actually spent time talking to working people, you would discover that things are a lot tougher today than they were a decade ago. The cost of the basics, the costs of living, are going up. But, rather than supporting workers, rather than putting in a submission to the Fair Work Commission that says, 'Yes, our hardest working, lowest paid workers deserve a decent pay rise,' this government wanted there to be no increase. This government did not want to see our lowest paid workers get a decent wage increase.

The best example of how the government are going after low-paid workers is the attack on their own cleaners. This Prime Minister stood up in this parliament and said no cleaner would be worse off because the government abolished the Clean Start guidelines. What did we see a few months later? We saw a $6,000 pay cut—not a $6 pay cut, not a $600 pay cut, but a $6,000 pay cut to their own cleaners working in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It is outrageous that this Prime Minister has misled not only this parliament but the cleaners. These are people on the lowest incomes, who are surviving because of penalty rates.

It does not matter which way you cut it, this government is going after our hardest working, lowest paid Australians. Whether they be cleaners, nurses, people working in process work, people working in construction or people working in retail, the government has them in its sights. It is going after their children through cuts in education. It is going after their parents through attacks on the pension. It is going after our regional communities, which are some of our most disadvantaged communities. And we have not seen the end of it. This government is going after our lowest paid workers. It has failed to protect the living standards and working conditions of Australian workers.

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