Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We're incredibly proud of our focus on driving down company tax for all companies across this nation. Yes, there are certainly some issues with many companies. We know some companies, including the banks, have done the wrong thing. We have a very strong regime of laws of enforcement and penalties—criminal laws, in some cases—to hold to account any company in this nation which does the wrong thing, but we should not be using tax policy to do that. As the Treasurer said in question time today, already we have imposed a levy on the banks which is raising a couple of billion dollars a year, and that's important reform, along with the many other reforms that we have made in the banking and financial services sector.

The member opposite referred to penalty rates. I think it's important to put on the record that the Labor Party, again, in a very unprincipled move, is now trying to unwind the Fair Work Commission—the very industrial relations system it put into place. We have seen the Leader of the Opposition, in another unprincipled move, reverse a position that he previously held very strongly. Perhaps the most alarming decision that has been made in relation to penalty rates is the infamous Cleanevent deal agreed to by the Leader of the Opposition in 2006, when workers were stripped of their penalty rates in a very grubby deal that the Leader of the Opposition did—

An opposition member: It's called enterprise bargaining.

oh, there's justification for it?—driving down the hourly rate for Cleanevent workers, without their knowledge, from $50 an hour to $18 an hour. The interjection from opposite was, 'That's enterprise bargaining.' No, that's not enterprise bargaining; that's wage theft. We've seen many other sleazy deals that unions have entered into, particularly the shoppies union. For instance, at McDonald's, young people working weekends for three years would be $15,000 worse off compared to the award rate; at Big W, they would be some $13,400 worse off—both deals done by the SDA. At Woolworths they would be over $9,600 worse off, and at KFC they would be over $13,000 worse off compared to the award. These are some of the sleazy deals that were done between the unions, endorsed by Labor. But, of course, as we know, the worst possible deal was done by the Leader of the Opposition himself, hitting some of the most vulnerable workers in our community, who, as I've made very clear, were not informed about what happened to their hourly rate of pay.

I want to place on the record very strongly my pride in our government, which is standing up for workers, driving investment across the economy and driving down company tax. There was previous bipartisan agreement on this very important policy for our nation, and Labor has deserted this, like they've deserted their own industrial relations system that they set up. We now know that with the announcement today another 20,000 businesses, employing 1.5 million Australians, will be hit. I condemn Labor and again I reiterate my very strong support and pride in our government for driving jobs growth and investment and the growth of this economy.

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