Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for the question. Today is the day that the opposition finally gave up that, yes, they do want to cut people's pay. Today is the day that they finally decided to make the announcement. We've gone through a decade where wages were being kept deliberately low, and every time this government came forward with proposals that would get wages moving, we knew that they'd vote against them. But it wasn't until today, when we saw today's papers, that it was there, crystal clear, as to the fact that they intend to repeal the laws that have got wages moving.

We've referred to them wanting people to work longer, and the Leader of the Opposition had committed, before today, that they were going to repeal the right to disconnect—for every worker to be on call 24/7, whether they're paid to be or not. But, when they say that they'll repeal the laws—and they're clearly talking today about same job, same pay—you need to realise the sorts of amounts of money that they are taking to the next election as the cuts to household income. When we exercise our right to disconnect on Thursday afternoon, a whole lot of us will fly home. When people fly home, are you going to tell the Qantas flight attendants what you're intending to do to their pay? For a long time, the labour hire loophole—and it was legal—was used by Qantas, and other companies used it as well, and the pay differences were not small. You had an enterprise agreement that had been negotiated, and then you could use a labour hire company, in this occasion that was also run by Qantas, and undercut the rates that were agreed to.

For the flight attendants you might be seeing on Thursday afternoon, if they're employed directly, it's $68½ thousand a year that they're on. If they're employed through the labour hire company—

See this speech in context