Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move the following motion:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition introducing immediately a bill for an Act to amend the Fair Work Act 2009, and for related purposes, the bill being given priority over all other business for passage through all stages, and if consideration of the bill has not concluded by 4.30 pm on Monday, 27 February 2017, any necessary questions to complete consideration of the bill being put without delay.

Leave not granted.

Today I am offering the Prime Minister the chance to work with us to work with us to protect penalty rates and the take-home pay of hard-working Australians. I am offering the Prime Minister the opportunity to fix penalty rates on a bipartisan basis with no political rancour.

I know the government are busy worrying about each other, but Labor are here because we are concerned with the conditions of up to 700,000 of our fellow Australians and having their take-home pay cut. We believe that standing orders should be suspended so that we can vote to stop the cut to hundreds of thousands of Australians' take-home pay going ahead, and we want to prevent it from ever happening again in the future.

This is a chance for the Prime Minister to show some leadership. I remind him of what he said at the National Press Club only this month. He said:

We keenly understand how many families are just managing right now; the cost of everything seems to be going up much more than wages.

This is a test for the Prime Minister and the government: cooperate with Labor to protect the conditions of ordinary people or vote to cut their pay. The government can stand up for hardworking Australians or it can choose to attack us. I have a feeling about what this government will do: they will attack us rather than deal with the substantive issues. Let's be clear: a decision to not act, a decision to not remedy this decision of the Fair Work Commission, is a decision to support it. There is no playing in the traffic on this issue, there is no fence that this government can sit on, there is no table to hide under, there is no Tony Abbott to blame for this one. This is an important issue. It is an important issue. Up to 700,000 Australians in retail, hospitality, pharmacy and fast food will cop a pay cut. Ironically, the only circumstances in which they will not cop a pay cut is if they are covered by a union agreement for the time being.

Let's be clear on the consequences of what we are talking about—just facts. A full-time or part-time retail worker who will work a full eight-hour shift on a Sunday will lose up to $77 a week. For a part-time retail employee who earns $30,000 per year, this will be the equivalent of cutting 11 per cent of their annual income. This is a bad, bad, bad decision. It is bad for women workers, it is bad for young people, it is bad for lower and middle-income earners, it is bad for the regions, it is bad for enterprise bargaining and productivity, it is bad for confidence and consumer spending, it is actually bad for the economy, it is bad for jobs and it is certainly bad for growth.

The cut to penalty rates is straight out of Liberal economics 101. If you have a choice between giving the banks and the biggest corporations in Australia a $50 billion pay cut or going after carers or people relying on Medicare or low-paid workers, the government always chooses the big end of town over the rest of Australia. This could not be a wage cut at a more inauspicious or poor time. Our economy is wallowing in mediocrity. Fifty-seven thousand full-time jobs have been lost in the last 12 months. We have record low wages growth and we have inequality at a 75-year high. The top 20 per cent of households in Australia now earn 12 times more than the bottom 20 per cent. The government has policies which effectively reward people for speculating on housing but punish working people with cuts to their wages. The question the government should answer is: why should the lowest paid Australians pay the price for economic change? Why should the most vulnerable bear the burden of this government's economic failures?

The Fair Work Commission acknowledged that the cut in pay would not be matched by more hours, saying:

... most existing employees would probably face reduced earnings as it is improbable that, as a group, existing workers’ hours on Sundays would rise sufficiently to offset the income effects of penalty rate reductions.

They described the people who would be most affected, saying:

Many of these employees earn just enough to cover weekly living expenses, saving money is difficult and unexpected expenses produce considerable financial distress.

The government are itching to give the big end of town a tax cut, yet they stand by and do nothing as the people who serve them in the shops get a pay cut. We understand that the minimum safety net and penalty rates are an essential part of the Australian safety net. Unlike the government, we are not ashamed of having a strong and high minimum wage. Unlike the government, we are not ashamed that we have strong penalty rates. We have the strongest Medicare in the world when done properly and we have the best universal retirement income system in the world with superannuation. We do not believe that when Australia treats its middle- and working-class people among the best in the world it is a cause of national shame; it is a cause of national pride. Our opposition put in a submission defending penalty rates. Our opposition stands ready at the next hearing to again oppose this decision.

The government has form on penalty rates. More than 60 Liberals and Nationals, from the Prime Minister down, are on the record advocating for penalty rates to be cut. I did have the opportunity to study carefully what the member for Wentworth said in this place when he voted for Work Choices. He said:

You have to free the market to do its work and let the cost of setting the clearing price—be it for labour, shares, home units or loaves of bread—be as low as possible ...

The government is like the proverbial dog that has caught the truck. It now does not know what to do. Instead of doing anything about the decision, all the government is going to do is attack Labor. The problem for the government is that they are the government. Will they turn up at the hearings in March to support or oppose the decision? Will they vote for or against legislation to support the take-home pay of workers?

This is a bad decision for women workers. We have a gender pay gap in this country which is roughly 17 per cent, but these awards, covering nearly 700,000 people in retail, hospitality and fast food, are predominantly in industries that employ women, so this will exacerbate the gender pay gap. Many young people work in these industries. They are working two jobs, supporting themselves at uni or TAFE. They contribute in the economy in ways that previous generations have not had to. Australia's young pay their HECS, they pay their Medicare, they cannot get into the housing market because of the policies of this government, and now they face a pay cut when they go to work on weekends, and they get no guarantee in return: no guarantee for more hours, no guarantee for a pay rise, no guarantee for better job security. And this is bad for the regions—not that we would need to tell the Nationals about that. The regions already have a seven per cent pay gap. The average wages in the regions of Australia are seven per cent lower than the cities. If penalty rates and lower wages deliver more jobs, why is it that, even with lower wages in the regions, unemployment is what it is in the regions?

Of course, it is time for the Nationals to stand up. The problem for the Nationals is that they are so scared of One Nation that they cannot think clearly about the issues affecting their voters. Here is some free advice to the government, from the Prime Minister to the Nationals: 'If you want to beat One Nation, you don't do it by joining them. If you want to beat them, you do it not by moving to the right of One Nation. Instead, vote with us in a bipartisan fashion to stand up for these rates.'

But of course the government instead, when it has got this decision—you can just see them in Liberal Party headquarters, or 'damage control bunker' as it is affectionately known—say, 'What will we do? Do we back the decision or do we oppose the decision?' and then of course their default position is: 'No; we'll just attack Labor. We'll just call Labor names instead of dealing with the issue.'

Well, Labor will stand on its record, and we have an opportunity here for the government to stand up for penalty rates. The government think that the electorate do not like them because of Mr Abbott's and Mr Turnbull's fighting. That is not right. The real problem here is that the people of Australia do not like the government because they are so hopelessly out of touch.

The Prime Minister has and his spokespeople have sought to lecture us about the umpire's decision. Well, remember what they thought about the umpire's decision in the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal? They were so unhappy with that umpire's decision, they sacked the umpire!

But let us be clear: we are taking this decision on penalty rates to a bigger umpire—the Parliament of Australia. And this Parliament of Australia can decide if it agrees or disagrees with the decision of the Fair Work Commission and we do not. But if this parliament, because the government has the numbers, decides to defeat protecting the take-home pay of workers' conditions, if they decide to do this and defeat our legislation, then what we will do is: we will take this decision to the biggest umpire in Australia—the people of Australia. We want to fix this with you, but if you will not join with us we will go it alone every day up to the next election. We are happy to put to the most important umpire in Australian politics, the people of Australia, our case to protect the take-home pay of the lowest-paid workers in Australia, and we will do that every day between now and the election.

See this speech in context