Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

If anyone has been keeping a tally, this would probably have been the most popular debate in this place over the last decade. Hearing the two sides trot out the same ministerial talking points can get a little tedious, so I want to stray a little, if I may, from the issue of penalty rates to the bigger picture of whether employees are better off overall with rising standards of living, income and economic growth, which have to be the focus on this side of the room.

Penalty rates are the big selling card of union membership, and we know why those from the other side of the chamber have to perennially push the topic. But, in reality, when we know that an employee can look at their salary and see it increasing, whether it happens on a Friday, a Saturday or a Monday is not terribly germane to them as long as over the pay cycle they are better off overall. Of course, this is something that the unions will simply never move away from because it is, as I have said, their calling card to union membership, so we understand where they are coming from.

In the Capalaba Sports Club a new salary agreement was trialled last year, one that had been approved in the Fair Work Commission by none other than the then head of Unions New South Wales, who ticked off on the agreement saying that it left workers better off overall—and I will repeat that phrase regularly to remind those on the other side. It caused world war III in Queensland when the agreement was rolled out in a community club. Of course, employees did not quite understand, because in most cases their pay was no different. It was just that they were paid more through the week, and the large penalty rates on weekends came back to just $6, $9 and $12 per hour bonuses on top of the hourly rate. If you increase the weekday salary then it is all swings and roundabouts and the salary is no different, and most employees are smart enough to see that.

If you are a union member, though, and you need to find a fight, then fighting for penalty rates is about all you have left, so I do not blame them for doing it. So what did they do? They called in Fair Work. They got an order from Fair Work and raided the club to look at their pay sheets. This raises one very important question: why are unions picking over the pay forms of non-union members at work? Why should non-union members have unions crawling all over their salary slips and their pay forms? Why should they be photocopied and taken out of the employer's office with tax file numbers on them, for goodness sake? How do I know that privacy is being protected when unions crawl over pay slips on the pretext that they are checking whether the employer is doing the right thing? That is a definite issue of privacy for non-union members that is not currently protected in the act.

A second issue is that when you know where these teenagers live the next logical step is to go and knock on their doors, which is precisely what happened. Unions, calling themselves official investigators, went around to the homes of teenagers and told them, 'You are thousands of dollars worse off because you are not getting your penalty rates.' That is an abject falsehood, but you will say anything to get a new member, so of course you would do it. Trying to purloin union membership using home address details that potentially are not removed before they are handed over is a genuine concern. I think it is a far greater concern than whether you are paid your salary on a Saturday, a Monday or a Friday. If you are better off overall you would be way more worried about having pay slips under the arms of official union investigators. What on earth are those positions? Where does that exist in the act? But, no, there they are, leaving their business cards under doors: 'Your child would be way better off as a union member, and they are thousands of dollars worse off.'

Your leader—this Leader of the Opposition—had the temerity to bring one of those employees down here and make out that they were thousands of dollars a year worse off. When challenged, they simply said, 'Oh no; she said she was worse off, so we just took that at face value.' Then there was a Facebook post with two payslips showing that the amount was the same but they could not see a penalty rate on the other side because they were paid more through the week. This is a simple and better overall test that everybody understands. This is a pay agreement approved by a Labor New South Wales commissioner; but, no, 'We'll fight that one to the hilt.'

So what do we know? We know that if we touch penalty rates we will be off to the Federal Court. We know that cashed-up unions have really got nothing else to fight for and so they take on small cafes and clubs, because they know they have got deeper pockets. In the end, it is the employers who know they are paying better wages and the employees know they are getting the same amount of salary. This beleaguered club dropped the agreement because they could not afford to go to the Federal Court. The next week: out came the old award pays, and all the staff looked at their payslips and said, 'But are we getting no more money?' That is right, because you were never getting any less. You are better off overall. This is a fight unions will have as long as we have unions. (Time expired)

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