Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017 shows why you need the Greens in parliament. The Greens and only the Greens went to the last election saying, 'Look, there's a chance that people's penalty rates could be cut by the Fair Work Commission,' and we went to the election saying, 'We will pass a law to make sure that the Fair Work Commission cannot cut people's penalty rates,' because the Greens understand that there are people working nights, weekends and public holidays—at a time when the rest of us get to rest, do our shopping or spend time with our families and friends—who rely on penalty rates to make ends meet. We said that, if the law allows the Fair Work Commission to cut people's rates of pay at a time when wages are actually going backwards in many parts of the country, the law needs to be fixed. Most people in this country would be horrified to think that the laws allow your wages to be cut when you are doing work at a time when many other people do not want to work and it comes at great inconvenience to you. When we took that position to the election, we expected the Liberals to say, 'No, we don't support you on that.' What we did not expect was the Labor Party was to oppose us, saying that they were quite happy if they won the election to allow people's rates of pay to be cut. But that is what they did, and the Leader of the Opposition said, 'There's no need for these kinds of laws because it's not going to happen. Aliens may come down from space! Don't worry about it. It's not going to happen.'

The Greens could see that there was a hole in the law that needed to be fixed. I am very pleased that, since the election, the opposition have changed their mind and Labor have now come in the behind the Greens' position and are willing to change the law so that the Fair Work Commission is not allowed to cut people's penalty rates. That is a good thing because we know that there are people who are working to get through university or TAFE and are working shifts in order to pay the rent—rent that is going through the roof in many capital cities; if you want to live near where you are studying, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do that—and people are reliant on working on weekends, working late at night at the bar, working in a cafe or working in some other form of hospitality or in the retail industry. Perhaps they are working around the clock so that we can go and do our shopping late at night. We know people are reliant on those penalty rates to make ends meet. So you should not be allowed in this country to change the law so that people's rates of pay can be cut, especially when we talking about some of the lowest paid workers in this country and we are talking predominantly about women.

By taking the stand that we did at the election—and, yes, we were the only ones doing it at the time and, yes, we were pilloried by Labor and the Liberals for doing it—we have changed the debate. I am very pleased that the opposition have now brought forward a bill to close the hole that we pointed out a number of times. It is now up to the government to support it and to support the passage of the bill before 1 July because that is when a lot of the cuts are going to take place. If the government as a whole will not support it, perhaps there are a couple of backbenchers who might cross the floor to support it. I have to say that, after last week, I have my doubts. All of these people talk very big about crossing the floor to protect penalty rates and to have a royal commission into the banks and then, when push comes to shove, they never do it. No surprise there. They take positions that they know people want to hear and then they fail to back them up when they come to the floor, but this might be a chance if we can bring it on for a vote and bring it on for a vote soon.

There is another area that we have to fix up—and some members have referred to this—and that is that many people who work in retail or fast food or hospitality are, in fact, not going to see their penalty rates cut because they have never been able to get their penalty rates in the first place. There are many workers in Coles, Woolworths, Hungry Jacks and KFC who have not been getting weekend penalty rates in the first place because of very bad agreements that have been done—agreements that should never have been approved by the Fair Work Commission. We need to fix them up as well, and the Greens have a bill in parliament to do that because we do not believe that an 18-year-old working in McDonald's over the weekend should be paid less than the award wage, but that is what is happening at the moment. That is what is happening right around this country. I have heard members of the government point that out and say, 'We've these bad agreements in place, so you're hypocrites,' and all the rest. Well, government: if you are actually concerned about it, then support the Greens' bill to fix it. Support the bill to fix it so that small businesses do not have to pay more than big business counterparts and people are not getting done over for working on weekends.

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