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

Thank you, Chair. The point that I was making is that here we have the youngest workers in the country earning some of the lowest wages because their salaries have been deducted from and they get zero penalty rates on a Sunday because of union deals. Worse than that, the unions are able to put their hands into those kids' pockets and pull out their union fees, and for what? Hallelujah—they get their penalty rates cut. What an absolute disgrace!

We know why the Labor Party are so upset about this and why they will not tell the truth. They will not tell the truth, which is that this does not affect workers from Coles, or Woolworths, or Big W, or Target, or K-Mart, or David Jones, or McDonalds, or KFC, or Pizza Hut, or Red Rooster, and so on and so on. It affects none of those workers, because they have already been done over by their own unions, having their penalty rates ripped off them. We have a situation in the country that is even worse. We have a small business that might want to employ someone like the member for Lyons, who used to work at Hungry Jack's. He might say, 'I could give you 26 bucks an hour,' but he is not allowed to. An independent business could say to the poor worker getting $21 an hour: 'We want to employ you at $26 an hour. We want to give you more money. We want to give you a raise.' And do you know what? Under current legislation they cannot do that, because they are all stitched up by the Labor Party. You guys, we are going to talk about these penalty rates for as long as we want, because you are a pack of hypocrites on this. (Time expired)

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