Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to a statement by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations on Friday of last week in response to the Spotlight 2c an hour AWA:

... the evidence from the Office of Employment Advocate is that the vast majority of agreements ... continue to contain things like penalty rates and overtime.

I refer to the Senate estimates earlier this week, which revealed that 6,263 AWAs have been lodged with the Office of Employment Advocate since the commencement of the government’s legislation. Of those AWAs sampled, 100 per cent—all of them—excluded at least one protected award condition, 63 per cent removed penalty rates, 52 per cent removed shiftwork loading and 16 per cent removed all award protected conditions. Prime Minister, why did the minister not tell the Australia public the truth last week?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition did not tell this parliament the truth about that company in South Australia. I therefore do not accept on face value what the member for Perth has claimed my colleague has said. While I am on my feet, what I can inform the member for Perth to be the case is that the sample survey of 250 AWAs in April showed that 84 per cent of the AWAs had higher wage rates than the comparable awards.