Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017. I was sent here to represent the interests of the people of Burt and this country. The people of Burt are facing hard times—the sluggish economy, especially in Western Australia, low wages growth and many complex issues including high crime and intergenerational unemployment. Many people in my electorate are low-paid workers, and they rely on the rates to get by—to put food on the table and to keep a roof over their head. So the last thing they need is a cut to their wages. That is what the Fair Work Commission's decision to cut penalty rates will deliver from July this year: a 20 per cent reduction in Sunday wages. The Turnbull government's agreement with the Fair Work Commission decision to cut penalty rates for workers in Burt and across Australia is a travesty. The government's decision not to support Labor's legislation to protect penalty rates is a kick in the teeth to the low-paid workers of Burt, Western Australia and across Australia. It is also a kick in the teeth to the WA economy. We need people to have money in their pockets, not just so they can pay for the essentials of life and support their families, but so they can spend money in our shops and businesses and grow more jobs in Western Australia.

The Turnbull government's refusal to protect penalty rates shows them for who they really are: out of touch, antiworker, anti-WA and un-Australian. Under the Fair Work Act, the Fair Work Commission must ensure that modern awards, together with the National Employment Standards, provide a fair and relevant safety net of terms and conditions. This must be taken into account when varying modern awards. However, this decision reduces Sunday penalty rates for retail award workers from 200 per cent to 150 per cent. It reduces public holiday penalty rates for employees in the hospitality, restaurants, fast-food, retail and pharmacy awards. It varies late-night penalties and also varies the fast-food award late-night loadings.

The Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017—from Labor—ensures that modern awards cannot be varied to reduce penalty rates or the hours for which penalty rates apply if the variation is likely to result in a reduction in the take-home pay of an employee. This amendment ensures that modern awards are a safety net for the take-home pay of employees currently under an award or of prospective employees under an award. For the avoidance of doubt, it amends definitions to take-home pay to make it clear that all employees under modern awards are to receive the full benefit in their take-home pay of any increases to minimum wages.

But why are we here? Part of this is the eternal lie that the need to be open on Sundays somehow makes us a more attractive international nation. But those who have ever gone on a walkabout on a Sunday through the streets of Barcelona, New York or London—international cities all, and none seemingly failing in attracting international tourism—have seen that all have many shops and businesses happily closed on a Sunday. The question really needs to be asked: why is it that we are seeing a continuous attack on staff costs, which is never matched by attacks on inflated rents and other business costs that also act to stop businesses from opening a Sunday?

The effect of this decision from Fair Work is supposedly to increase employment—something most critical in Western Australia, where unemployment is much higher than the national average. It is also supposed to help address underemployment. However, most places open on a Sunday are already operating at an efficient capacity; they are unlikely to be putting on more staff or giving staff more hours. Even so, this dastardly opinion about having to work longer means that the option is given to workers that if they want to try and keep their take-home pay they are going to have to work more hours just to match what they were already on—but, seemingly, this will be actually unavailable. In addition, while there may be some establishments that are able—with these changes—to now open on Sunday when they previously did not, for most that is not going to be the case at all. The RBA has been saying for a long time that we need wages growth and that economic growth is being held back by a lack of wages growth. We finally have inflation back into the target range, at 2.1 per cent, but wages growth is only 1.9 per cent. Workers are going backwards at the moment, and the government, by opposing this bill and making sure that we entrench the cuts to penalty rates, is making all of this worse. This is worse for the economy and is not going to provide any growth at all.

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