Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to commend the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017 to the House. This bill will protect the take-home pay for the 13,000 workers in my electorate who are facing a take-home pay cut if this bill does not get support in this chamber. In the electorate of Lalor there are 8,866 retail workers and 4,660 food and accommodation workers. One in seven workers in my electorate will be impacted if this piece of legislation is not passed to protect the take-home pay of workers and to protect penalty rates. My community is one of the hardest hit electorates. Modelling shows that, out of all 150 electorates, we will be the ninth hardest hit.

This is an electorate which cannot afford this hit on its local economy. This is an electorate where I have stood for the past four years with my Labor colleagues to defend against the zombie cuts that would have damaged our local economy. And here we are again, fighting to protect our local economy. Those on the opposite side of this House claim to be standing up for small business, but I know that many small businesses will be impacted detrimentally if these cuts come through on 1 July.

This is just a small piece of my electorate and in my community of the 1.7 million Australians working in the retail, food and hospitality industries, and the up to 700,000 who will be directly impacted by the cut to penalty rates. The decision impacts on workers in pubs and hotels; in fast food and take away stores; in retail stores and businesses; and in pharmacies and chemists. It impacts on workers earning less than $40,000 a year. We are back in that place where this government's attacks on vulnerable Australians continue.

This bill is an opportunity for those opposite to think about the people who live in my community and who face a $77 a week pay cut; to think about the people they rent from; to think about the people who run the small businesses where they shop; to think about the impacts that this will have on our local economy and on individuals and families within Lalor. And this is just the start. If the Fair Work Commission is allowed to have a unilateral cut to people's pay rates it will not stop there. There are already reviews being called for into other industries. So the impacts from here could grow.

It is imperative that this bill be passed in this parliament. It is imperative that we act to protect the vulnerable workers around this country who face a real wage cut. I cannot fathom that I am standing in this place in 2017, confronted with the notion that there can be a direct pay cut delivered by this parliament. It is an absolute disgrace—an absolute disgrace! The impact in my electorate is on young people, on women and on low-income families—families for whom two incomes might add up to $60,000 a year, and they are going to take a cut. In some families, both wage earners will take a cut. It is an absolute disgrace. I implore those opposite to think about what this means for workers in this country, to think about what it means for families and to think about how they would feel if they were facing a very real cut to their wages.

We have heard a lot about this; we can stand here and pick out individuals and talk about the impact on their families. But, for me, one of the strongest memories is sitting in this chamber when Margarita was upstairs here at a question time. I want to make it really clear that on this side of the chamber we stand with Margarita and workers around this country who are facing this very real cut. I stand with Margarita and those on this side of the House stand with Margarita, and we stand with everybody else who she represents. Unlike those opposite, we will not attack Margarita because she is a member of a union, because we understand that she is a member of a union to try to save herself $77 a week. Anyone in this country who has not seen the writing on the wall and moved to join a union really needs to start listening and to start reading Hansard, to know what this government is up to and how much it wants to attack workers in this country.

See this speech in context