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

Of course we won't admit that, because that's not true. It's not even close to being true. There was a part of the bill which would have extended a provision that was inserted into the Fair Work Act by Labor. It would have extended it, in our view, in a very modest way. We will remove that from the bill. Why are we doing that? Because we take a practical, pragmatic approach. We want to see as much of this bill as possible find passage through the parliament, because the bill contains a range of measures that will grow jobs, put upward pressure on wages and help businesses survive through COVID.

I might say also that removing this small, modest part of the bill does have another upside: it removes the smokescreen that Labor have created as to why it might be that Labor would not support tougher penalties to stamp out wage theft. Why would Labor not support the first-ever Commonwealth criminal penalty for wage theft?

Ms Rishworth interjecting—

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