Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I must admit that I am a little confused about this debate. We have heard the member for Wakefield and the member for Moreton come to the dispatch box and rabbit on about supposed cuts to penalty rates for nurses and emergency services workers. I know of no such proposals. No-one in this country is suggesting that our nurses and our emergency services workers, who do a very important and valued job, should have their penalty rates cut. The only people that are talking about this are the Labor Party. Sadly, it is nothing other than a shameful scare campaign. To go out there and to scare workers—to scare nurses and emergency services workers—into thinking there is some plan to cut their penalty rates is absolutely shameful. But that is what we have seen in this chamber this morning—just a shameful, misleading scare campaign.

A concept everyone here agrees with is: if someone works unsocial hours, they should be paid a higher rate of remuneration. We must look at this as overtime rates rather than penalty rates. The distinction is a penalty is a deterrent to employment. We cannot have penalty rates set in certain industries that become deterrents to employment. Where that becomes important is not at all in our Public Service areas, because their wages are funded by government, whether they are state or federal, but in the private sector, where the only way those penalty wages and those overtime rates can be paid is through the profits of the business. If the business is not making a profit, it cannot pay those overtime rates. So there is no point if a business is closed because those overtime rates are too high. We must remember that, if the wage being paid is zero, it does not matter what the overtime rate is, because it simply becomes a deterrent to employment.

That is what we are seeing in some areas of the hospitality industry today. That is all that we are talking about. That is all the discussion is through the Productivity Commission. That is the only very narrow area in this economy. The question is: in some limited areas of the hospitality industry are the penalty rates on a Sunday actually set at a rate that is costing jobs? No-one benefits if a business is closed and the workers get no jobs because the penalty rates are set too high, and that is exactly what we are seeing. I am glad that the member for Wakefield moved this motion. There was an example recently in his home state on Australia Day where a business put up a sign out the front apologising to their customers that they were closed because they simply could not generate enough profit on the day to pay a penalty rate of $48 per hour plus superannuation. They would have had to raise profits from that business at $50 an hour to pay their staff, and they did their sums and they could not do it. So the penalty rate actually cost jobs. Where members of the Labor Party feel sorry for and give examples of people who are concerned they will have their penalty rates cut, I am concerned about people who are getting a wage of zero on a Sunday because the penalty rates are set too high.

There is another case where we have seen disparity. The unions have signed up agreements to cut penalty rates with the big supermarkets, so now we have this two-tier system where our larger supermarket chains are paying a much lower penalty rate on the weekend than small businesses are—signed up by members of the Labor Party. They are the ones who cut the penalty rates of their own workers because of their nice cosy deal with the big supermarkets. In this economy we want as many people to earn as many dollars as they possibly can. That is the ultimate aim of this government, but we cannot do that if in the hospitality industry in some small areas it is actually costing jobs. (Time expired)

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