Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to rise to support the Leader of the Opposition's bill, the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017, in this House. We just heard from the member for Lalor; it is always hard to follow her, because she does a great job in this parliament, both as a whip and as a speaker.

The reason she got to speak was that the government have put up such a forthright defence in their backing of the Fair Work Commission's cut on penalty rates. They put up one speaker: the member for Fairfax, who swept in here with his delusions about the way the industrial relations system works, and then he swept back out again. Then we had the member for Hughes up here. He was going to give us his normal rate and rave, but even he did not have his heart in it today; he sort of wandered out of the chamber. And then I thought that that member for Barker was going to make a contribution, but he walked up to talk to my honourable colleague at the dispatch box to find out if he would speak at his AGM!

That is the government's defence for their backing of probably the first cut to penalty rates in living memory; it is probably the first since the Great Depression. This is from a government whose opening lines in the budget was a sort of apology for the fact that Australian workers have not had a pay rise in a long time. The apology about wages growth got spat out of the Treasurer's mouth at about the fourth or fifth paragraph. What do we find from the ABC News article on 17 May—Michael Janda was the reporter:

Wage growth remained at record lows …

The ABS figure is 1.9 per cent. The article goes on to state:

… the lowest on Bureau of Statistics figures that go back to the late 1990s, and probably the slowest rate of pay rises since the last recession.

So what we have here is a government that, on the one hand, is bemoaning the fact that Australians have not had a pay rise, acknowledging that it is a problem in the macro economy and telling everybody, 'Oh, this is a terrible thing,' and apologising for it in their budget, but, on the other hand, backing—not rolling into this House and defending—a decision to cut $77 a week from 700,000 workers. My colleagues have pointed out the extraordinary effect this will have on local economies, but let me just tell you how it will affect South Australia. The McKell report into penalty rates and how it would affect local economies said on page 18 of the report:

In South Australia the study estimates that:

… A partial abolition of penalty rates in the retail and hospitality sectors would result in:

Workers in Rural South Australia losing between $34.7 million p.a. and $66.2 million p.a. …

This is money that comes out of local communities. This is money that comes out of local cafes. This is money that comes out of local economies, which are already suffering from a low demand situation. It is a strange situation where at least one of the members opposite wants to come in here and defend the government's backing of the Fair Work Commission but most of them are hiding under their desks because they dare not come into this chamber and say that cutting penalty is a good idea. Workers in rural South Australia and rural communities all over the country and workers in city cafes all know it is a terrible idea for our economy.

You just think to yourself: what is going on in this government that it would oppose a bill that sensibly restricts the Fair Work Commission from hacking into the penalty rates of hospitality and retail workers and the further flow-on effects that would have? We all know that employers, having taken one small bite of the workers' apple, are not going stop there. Everybody who has ever bargained on behalf of workers knows that if you give up $77 to 700,000 workers it will not be enough; they will come after the rest in the very next bite of the apple. Everybody who has worked in industrial relations knows that.

The government want to talk about the Labor Party. They want to talk about the union movement. They want to talk a lot. But the time is to act. And they can act by backing Bill's bill, which sensibly protects take-home pay, it sensibly restricts the Fair Work Commission from hacking into workers' wages and it protects the overall economy when we do that. We protect the overall economy and every business, small or large, within it.

Debate adjourned.

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