Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I am aware of that report. That shouldn't happen. It's disgraceful. This government has done more on the compliance front, both legislatively and as a matter of practice, than any recent government in this country's history. That absolutely should not happen. When you ask us what further there can be done to ensure that sort of compliance, it is interesting that, of the five areas we looked at, in 150 hours worth of working groups, one of those areas was compliance. And the bill that we will introduce to parliament will, for the first time ever, create in this country at a Commonwealth level an offence of wage theft—for the first time ever. It will significantly increase civil penalties on top of the tenfold increase that we had already instituted. It will also have new principles whereby the civil penalty can be either/or: either the 50 per cent increase or a new concept, which is called 'benefit gained'. So you can actually look at the amount of underpayment that has occurred from the employer and you can fine them, effectively, either two or three times that underpayment. They're the sorts of things—

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