Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises the decision handed down by the Federal Court of Australia upholding Fair Work Australia's decision to allow students covered by the retail award to have a minimum engagement period of 1.5 hours, which will allow students to work after school to gain independence, important workforce skills and the experience of work while still at school; and

(2) commends young aspirational Australians who will be able to start in the workforce as a result of this decision.

The decision handed down by the Federal Court took too long. It meant that for 2½ years young Australians were not able to work after school. The decision also needs to be expanded, because currently young Australians who want to work before school, doing such things as a paper round, cannot do so. How we got to the stage where we have a government which is intent on putting laws in place which will prevent young Australians from working before or after school—before this Federal Court decision was handed down—is beyond belief. It goes to show the ineptitude of our current Prime Minister, because it was when she was the minister for workplace relations that these laws were first put in place.

The history of this motion goes back to 2010. I received a phone call from Jane Spencer, whose son Matthew had just been told by the manager of the Terang Cooperative, Charlie Duynhoven, that he could no longer work after school. She was incredibly confused by this decision. She said that Matthew was incredibly confused by the decision and that the manager of the co-op, Charlie Duynhoven, did not want to take the action that he had to; he was forced to because of the new government bureaucracy and the laws which had been created by the reregulation of the workplace under Julia Gillard. Once I examined what had happened, I soon realised what the unintended consequences were of this law. There were actually six students who had been leaving their local school in Terang at 3.30, going to their local cooperative and starting work at four and working through until 5.30 when the cooperative closed. In most country towns the stores usually close at 5.30 or six. They are not open until seven, eight, nine, 10 or 11 o'clock at night. But what had the then workplace relations minister decided? That there needed to be a minimum engagement in the retail sector of three hours. So these six young students could no longer leave their school at 3.30, go to the cooperative at four o'clock and work for an hour and a half. Instead, they were told by this government, 'Go and play on your PlayStation. Just go home and sit and watch television, rather than get some work experience and some pocket money and save to buy your first car.' This is no joke. This is the message that was being sent to young Australians.

Two of those cooperative workers—Leticia Harrison and Matthew Spencer—decided that they would not put up with this. They said, 'This is inexplicable. This is wrong. No government should prevent young Australians from working after school if that is what they want to do.' They decided to take up a petition. They got a petition in the space of three or four weeks of over 2,500 signatures, which they took down to the then workplace relations minister's office, the now Prime Minister's office. They presented it to her and said, 'We want our work after school back. Could you please give it to us?' What happened? Nothing. Although she said she would fix the problem, what did she do? The then workplace relations minister sat on her hands and did nothing. This was the start of what the Australian people were to see—a Prime Minister who said one thing and then did another, a Prime Minister who to this day is haunted by her lack of credibility because she seems to have problems delivering on what she says—for instance, when she said, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.'

Matthew and Leticia were not dismayed. They did not give up. They continued their fight. Backed by the retailers associations, they took it to the Federal Court. Unfortunately, the processes of decisions and appeals took over a year and a half, which was far too long. But eventually we had the Federal Court coming down with a common sense decision. It said, 'These students can go back to work and they can work for an hour and a half if the employer and the employee agree that this is how long they want to work for and if, on behalf of the students, a parent or a guardian gives their approval.' That was a fairly common sense way to approach the decision. Yet why did it take so long for this to occur? It meant that by the time the Federal Court took this decision these two young Australians, Matthew Spencer and Leticia Harrison, had left school. They could no longer do their work because the period of time the decision took meant that they were out in the workplace themselves. But given the experiences they had at the Terang Co-op they are both gainfully employed and out there working.

That is one of the lessons that we should learn from this. If young Australians are given the opportunity to do some work before and after school, it is fantastic experience for them and gives them the skills that they need to make sure that they go on after school to enter the workforce. It gives them independence. It gives them that sense of confidence and self-worth which comes with having a job. We should not forget this. This is why this government should act to allow students to work not only after school but also before school.

There were other students who were also laid off as a result of this decision. In Avoca there were four kids who used to do the paper round there before school, but because they could not work for three hours doing their paper round, they had to stop doing it. What a message to be sent to young Australians. The government is saying to them, 'We no longer want you out on your bikes early in the morning doing your paper rounds.' One of the largest employers in the town of Avoca said to me: 'I always look for the kids who have got up early and done the paper round when I am thinking of employing people, because I know there is a work ethic there that they will carry on with them in their careers after school. It is one of the key criteria I look for.'

Yet what have we done? We have shut down the ability for students to work before school in the retail sector. This is the next thing we should look to change with regard to the laws that reregulated our workplace.

I implore the House to support this motion. I am hoping that both sides will do so. I am hoping that both sides will see reason, that Federal Court has righted a wrong in this instance. I am hoping those opposite will stand as one and say, 'Yes, the Federal Court got it right' and 'Yes, the Federal Court, having got it right, should now look to do so before as well as after school.'

I will be listening with interest to hear what the government has to say about this motion. I might be jumping the gun but from feedback in my electorate of Wannon and what people are telling me is: it is decisions like this that the Gillard government has made and that Julia Gillard made as the minister for workplace relations which has caused the dismay with this government. It is one of the reasons why I think a lot of Australians are waiting with bated breath for the ballot box to come either this year or next year so that they can send a loud and clear message that they do not want to be governed by people who do not want to encourage young people to work before and after school. They want to be governed by a party which encourages people to work and especially young people to work. I commend this motion to the House. It is a good, sensible motion. It acknowledges the work that is done by the retailer associations, Leticia Harrison and Matthew Spencer. I ask the House on both sides to support it.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government supports the wording and the sentiment of this motion but would not be supporting some of the presumptive arrogance in the member's speech. We would not be supporting the use, I think, of particular situations as a stalking horse to get rid of minimum engagements for casuals. I have some experience in this area: I was an official in the shop assistant's union for about 11 years or so. We had these provisions—

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A union official?

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, no. We had these provisions in the retail industry award in South Australia and they operated perfectly well. They were in the retail award, because in the old days there used to be trading hours acts across the country in states, which had six o'clock closing—and sometimes 5:30 closing. Often these clauses were necessary so that schoolchildren could work. It is less of a problem now in the city, because of course Coles and Woolies and most of the retailers trade well into the evening, and so there is not the need for very short engagements.

I take the members point that country towns might be the exception to this. We would not want to stop young people from the country being able to work these hours. All these sentiments that the member said about young people being able to work, get a bit of pocket money, be able to save a bit of money for cars and that sort of thing are all perfectly sensible. But of course what he misses out is that, as part of the Fair Work laws, there have to be awards set. In the process of setting these awards, there are contests between unions and employer associations about things like minimum engagement.

The Labor government and I are happy to support and protect three-hour minimum engagements for casuals. What the retailers' association were doing in this case is using these children as a graphic example of a way in which they could undermine minimum engagements. What they are seeking to do with this early morning engagement is find a relatively small number of people who are doing a particular brand of this work—in this case delivering newspapers—and use it to undermine the overall concept of three-hour minimum engagements. We all know what the retailers want. They want a situation where they can pull somebody in for work, have them work for an hour and send them home. That is what retailers want. That is their wish list. That is what the retailers association wants, and I have seen it happen. I have seen a great many retailers and fast food organisations try it on, both requesting it in awards and implementing it in their shops until unions and other independent associations come around and enforce the rules. We know that is what they want and we know that is what their representatives in this parliament want. What this motion from the member represents is a stalking horse to reintroduce elements of Work Choices that undermine things like minimum engagements, overtime and penalty rates. That is what the opposition wants—and that is who you are, not the government. You have to wait for the election before you—

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We're waiting!

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is the thing. You have to wait for the Australian people to make a judgment before you jump the aisle, as it were. But we know what we would get from them in government. We will have all these cases: 'Five people want to work for just an hour. What harm would it do?' Of course, it is all designed to erode the minimum standards. That is what it is all about.

We used to get the same thing about penalty rates when I was a union official. 'If only the penalty rate wasn't there, we could afford to have a few more workers on a Sunday or at 12 o'clock at night.' I used to hear those arguments a lot as well. We used to hear the same arguments about overtime. 'If only overtime payments weren't there, they could work extra hours, couldn't they?' 'If only I wasn't limited to 38 hours a week, I could work more, get more hours.' That is the argument that the opposition, retail associations and other employer groups use to undermine things like minimums.

If you look at what the Federal Court actually did, it said that schoolkids should continue to be able to work a minimum of 1.5 hours after school, between 3 pm and 6.30 pm, and that their parents or guardians had to agree to it, which I think is a pretty good set of circumstances. Parents or guardians should agree to these things for people under 18. The court also said this applies where employment for a longer period was not possible—that is, the shop is closing. That is a fair set of circumstances, but we would not want a situation where you have fast food outlets employing young people, 16- or 17-year-olds, for 1.5 hours simply to get out of the three-hour engagement.

The reason why the three-hour engagement is there is that people have to drive to work. They have to buy uniforms. There are costs associated with work. So for casual workers, if you only get an hour's work, if your minimum engagement is just an hour or 1.5 hours, you might find yourself in a situation where it is costing you as much to get to work as you are getting paid. That is why the minimum engagement is important. It is a fairness thing, which is why it has been upheld in the Federal Court's decision.

We have this particular circumstance which was taken into account by Fair Work Australia and by the courts, not through political direction or through petitions but through a rational way of looking at these things. This is not done through sentiment but evidence. We have a three-hour minimum established because that is what is fair. We are not going to run our workplace relations system on emotion or on one person's individual circumstances. We are going to run the Fair Work system on what is fair overall. We are going to have hearings and we are going to have people arguing their case. We are not going to run it on sentiment or politics.

But we know what the opposition would do, as they do in so many things. They have worked out that Work Choices is like a loaded dog; it is a dog with a bit of dynamite in its mouth and they are all running from it as best they can. That is why, every time we mention it, you can see the nerves and you can see the smiles. Then they say, 'It is dead and buried.' Sometimes there is laughing and scoffing: 'As if we would do that!' But we know now what they are going to do. They are going to cut the onion slice by slice. They are going to come up with various circumstances and situations and they are going to try to push for erosions to the safety net. That is the member's intention here—slowly but surely to cut out things like the three-hour minimum.

The three-hour minimum is a very important fairness mechanism for casual workers. We know that some 20 per cent to 30 per cent of workers are now casual. That is a lot of people who are on insecure incomes and a lot of people who are dependent on the hours they get. In the retail industry, my union has worked very hard to make sure that those workers do get some notice and do have some security. Often there are casuals who have been working regular hours at a place for years and years. One day they rock up to work, thinking they have a level of permanence, and find they have a new manager, or that someone has had a change of heart, and their hours have been reduced. I have seen workers who have had their hours reduced from 37 to three in the space of a week, sometimes with even less notice than that. We know that people have issues with insecure work and I would not like to see their situations made even more insecure.

We support the motion and we support common-sense decisions by the courts. We support young people having a work ethic and we support that in the member's electorate—I think those young people should be commended for their work ethic. But we do not want to see a situation where retail industry associations and others seek to deliberately, as a strategy, undermine the safety net bit by bit and cut away—cutting the onion, slice by slice—at people's entitlements and security.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion proposed by my colleague the member for Wannon on the minimum engagement for schoolkids under the Fair Work Act. If you graphed the performance of employers and employees, I am very confident that you would find that that performance has the shape of a typical bell curve. You have good employers and you have not-so-good employers. You have good employees and you have not-so-good employees. But the majority of employers and the majority of employees fit within that middle section of the bell curve, which means that they do their best on any given day. Sometimes they just make the 50 per cent mark; sometimes they are a little bit either side of it. But I think that we need to accept that both employers and employees generally fit within the middle section of the bell curve.

The issue we are discussing today is, I believe, far too important for us to be engaging in adversarial industrial relations. What we are talking about today are the needs of the youth of Australia and how we can properly engage them in the workforce. The issue of after-school work—and I have heard the member for Wannon raise the issue of before-school work—is quite critical to them for a number of reasons, which I will start to cover shortly. In my opinion, industrial awards should not contain provisions which serve to reduce productivity at the workplace or prevent employees from working.

This is particularly relevant for our school students, who have such limited opportunities, as it is, to engage in the workforce. They already have to fit in any employment they undertake around the work they have to do at school, the hours they need to attend, their homework and their additional study. It is not a new concept for our secondary school workers to be working in the retail sector after work. That has been commonplace in Australia for many years. There is also increasing evidence that engaging in extracurricular activities after school is beneficial to our secondary school students; that activity can be participating in youth groups or in any number of clubs. That argument can be extended quite easily and readily to working after school, where these students are normally engaged in activities with adult supervision and it is a structured activity for them.

It provides a significant number of benefits. It identifies and potentially starts a working career, as all jobs are potentially resume building. It can demonstrate a positive work ethic to a future employer when he or she sees that the potential worker has been engaged in part-time work at school. It assists with time management; it is not just turning up to work but is also learning how to structure your tasks and responsibilities. It gives independence. It generates teamwork. It promotes leadership skills, perhaps to others in the workforce but also potentially to classmates and to other family members. And of course there is the financial reward and the concept of earning a living, which I believe is critical for our young people to be learning and developing so they can understand that mum and dad or their carer is not always going to be there to provide them with the money that they need. They need to save and they need to earn some money so that they can save.

The minimum engagement of three hours, I believe, was a significant negative for our students, and I am very pleased to see the variation by Vice President Watson back in September 2011. I think it recognised very clearly that school students in particular need the opportunity to work after school and, potentially, before school as well so that they can develop the skills that are necessary. It was very disappointing to see this matter appealed by the union that really should be supporting workers and the students. I think the matter should not have been appealed at all; it should have been allowed to stand as it was. I would have expected that the union would be significantly across the issues of underemployment in Australia and would have wanted to do something for these students who wish to get out there and to be part of the workforce both now and in the future. I am very disappointed that the union took the action that it did and I do not support them at all.

I do, however, support the motion by the member for Wannon and congratulate him on all the work that he has done so far and will continue to do.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to support the motion of the member for Wannon regarding a recent Federal Court decision concerning the minimum retail award and the hours that can be worked. It is not often in the 43rd parliament—outside the sporting field—that I can necessarily agree with the member for Wannon, but I do on this private member's motion. This, in effect, has been operational since October last year, when the retail award was amended to allow secondary school students a minimum of 1½ hours of work after school, so it is hard to disagree with him. In fact, this side of the House welcomes the positive comments that he has made. I think there were some positive comments in the speech of the member for Wannon; I had to sift through the politics, but there were some positive comments.

This is about the tension between an award that helps everybody and the people who are not helped and do not benefit from an award. I know that in your previous calling, Deputy Speaker D'Ath, you would have seen these occasions. Certainly I did when I was in unions. Industrial relations is becoming a much simpler lot of laws. It is not great work if you are an industrial advocate in either a union or an employer organisation, but the reality is that, under the Rudd and Gillard governments, we have simplified—sorry, I should say the Howard government as well; they did take some steps towards doing it, though not, I would suggest, necessarily for the best interests of workers. But they did take some steps towards simplifying from the days when you had a million different awards and three different lines in the state of Queensland. You had to find out who was covered and what they were covered by, and tracking it down was quite complicated. So it is good to see a simplification.

In May this year, when the Federal Court released a decision which upheld the Fair Work Australia decision to reduce the minimum engagement period for secondary school students working after-school shifts under the general retail award 2010, it was an outbreak of common sense. The effect of both the Fair Work Australia and Federal Courts decisions is that secondary students working under the retail award will continue to be able to work a minimum of 1½ hours after school between 3 pm and 6:30 pm. That is in circumstances where the employee and a parent or guardian have agreed and where employment for a longer period is not possible, either because of the operational requirements of the business, for example, closing time, or the unavailability of the employee, because they have to go home and do their homework and the like. This is a great initiative to slowly integrate school-aged children into the workforce and to give them some individual responsibility while learning the values of hard work and earning a dollar. As a parent of a seven-year-old and a three-year-old, I can say that they certainly know the value of the dollar, so long as it is my dollar. I look forward to their being able to understand how hard it is to make money in the workplace.

It was encouraging to see the member for Wannon recognising here today that the Fair Work system provides benefits for young Australians in providing a strong and stable safety net, such as modern awards, that allow for them to work after school but that it is also a system that does not allow them to be exploited—it does not allow their terms and conditions of employment to be undermined through a take it or leave it attitude, which is inherent in AWAs, or for them to be sacked unfairly with no remedy at all. However, one thing remains unclear: where exactly the Leader of the Opposition will take us when it comes to workplace relations. We know that policies have been developed but we are yet to see them. I would hope that these secret workplace relations policies will be released and that he will guarantee that they will not undermine the award safety net, especially when it comes to young Australians and women, who are the people who suffer most readily when you tinker with the industrial relations system.

The member for Wakefield touched on the big, insidious problem in our workforce: casualisation. That is fine if times are booming and things are good, when people can take the extra money that comes with casualisation, but it can also be a problem when the situation changes. It is particularly a problem for women—you see that in the cleaning industry and some of the other service industries, where they are at the whim of a boss. As we heard from the member for McPherson earlier, most bosses do the right thing and understand that by looking after workers everyone will make a dollar. But some bosses do let power go to their heads. I would hate to go down the road of the Walmart type of job in the United States, where nearly 15 per cent of the people who are employed are living in poverty. (Time expired)

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are times when we believe that common sense will out. The fact that it took about two years in this particular case has been a cause for great amazement in my electorate, as people, both employers and children who are employed by local businesses, came to me asking what on earth the government was doing in this area. I hold the premise that, if the parent is happy, if the worker—in this case the child—is happy and the employer is happy, surely should they should be able to get their heads together and make a deal. Parents, after all, have the primary responsibility for making sure their children are not exploited. One wonders just how we got into this space in the first place. I accept the fact that Fair Work Australia received an appeal on this and overturned its original rulings. It is disappointing that the union challenged. I am one of those people who think that unions play a very necessary part in the life of Australia, but they devalue the public's sense of their worth when they become welded to the ideological frameworks which are impossible to justify in a common-sense world.

At the time of this outbreak, it was brought to my attention that a number of kids work in the town of Wirrabara, which sits on the eastern side of the Flinders Ranges. The nearest school is at a place called Gladstone, which is about 30 kilometres down the road. They cannot possibly get back to Wirrabara before 4.30 in the afternoon, and the shop where they were working, the IGA, closes at six o'clock, so there is your hour and a half. The IGA may be able to find two hours work for them, but, effectively, they were ruled out of business. This became a severe complication for the business. Following their reports, many more people in my electorate came to me. I think, by and large, businesses were tending to ignore the rulings—I certainly would not like to name the ones that were—because they thought it was just too stupid to be true, and eventually they were proved to be right. One manager said to me, 'I run a family-friendly workplace here'—this is another IGA store. He said, 'I specifically employ mothers through to around about 3:30.' Then he lets them knock off, and they are replaced by the kids that are coming out of school. He said, 'It works great for families. It works really well for my business. It is really great for the children to get some experience in the workplace.' Effectively, the law as it stood overruled the possibility of doing that.

There was a time in this debate where I was beginning to wonder where we were going to find an out; that it was tied up in the industrial courts. I thought, 'This is a disservice, a disservice to our children.' In the case where I was talking about the employer who was running a family-friendly workplace not only did he raise the issue—because it is all tied up with the Fair Work Act that we have these other implications that are flowing through the system at the moment, particularly on penalty rates around the weekend. I know it is not specifically concerned with this, but it is under the Fair Work Act.

I was speaking to a restaurateur just recently. He runs a very successful place. He employers over 20 people. He operates 365 days a year. I said to him, 'How are you going on the holiday Mondays? How are you going on the days where you have to pay excessive penalty rates?' He said, 'I lose money.' I said, 'Why do you open?' He said, 'Just so I can say I trade for 365 days a year.'

It is a real problem for the retail industry. It is a real problem for the hospitality industry. I have other friends who no longer open on Sundays. They use a junior workforce but they are compelled to employ for longer periods on the weekends. If we want Australia to be a 24-hour economy, if we want Australia to have a flexible workplace, then we have to allow the workplace to be flexible and to operate in that manner.

Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The decision to cut the minimum hours engagement in the retail sector, firstly by Fair Work Australia and now by the Federal Court, will have a massive impact on young people who work in the retail sector. Young workers, especially students in this sector, have seen their conditions watered down by this decision with nothing in return. I think it is a step backwards for not only students and those young workers but all workers who will be impacted by the knock-on effects in this sector.

When making its initial decision in the national award, Fair Work Australia got the balance right. In most retail awards, including the major ones in New South Wales and Queensland, the standard minimum shift length was three hours, although it was four hours in the Tasmanian retail award. It was back in 1991 that retail employers in Victoria convinced the then Victorian Industrial Relations tribunal to reduce the minimum shift length to two hours. During award modernisation, Fair Work Australia selected the standard which applied to the greatest number of retail workers, which was three hours, as the basis for the national standard under the modern award. As a result, on 1 January 2010, the minimum shift length for the retail industry increased in Victoria, decreased in Tasmania and there was no change—repeat: no change—in the other states. This was the right decision as a national award should reflect the practices of the nation, not of course just one state.

In its recent decision, the Federal Court has taken a step that has changed minimum employment standards that will cut the conditions of student workers and, in reality, all workers, who will now be under pressure due to this decision. The decision will cut students hours by up to a half across the nation where, before workers in Queensland and New South Wales had the protection of a minimum three hours, they will now be cut back to 1½ hours only. It is possible that students could travel into work five days a week and work only 1½ hours for each of those days. That is a total of 7½ hours work for the five days. If you look at the rates in the award, it is not much: for a junior under 16 working as a level 1 retail worker, the award rate is $666.10 per week but, because they are a junior and under 16, it is only 45 per cent of that. If you work that out as an hourly rate, it comes out at around $7.89 per hour. For a student who works every day of the week after school, five days, that is $59.17. They may get a casual loading on top of that, depending on their employment arrangement. But in a place like Melbourne, which is a big city, not every job is actually next door to where the school is. In fact, in many cases, they are many suburbs away and students need to travel by bus or train to get to and from work. Not only does that take time; it also takes money. Even buying a concession ticket is going to add up to a few dollars each day. Taking that out of what is only $59.17 does not leave much at all.

As I said before, I think this decision will have implications for other workers. We have already heard this morning that the member for Wannon is not satisfied. He wants to strip back even more conditions from young and vulnerable workers. As he said, he is not happy with taking away minimum shift engagements after school; he wants to before school as well. The retail industry, as we know, is highly casualised. Around 40 per cent of retail employees are casual compared to an all-industry average of 24 per cent. So there are a substantial number of workers out there who can have hours cut and be replaced with student workers working the 1½-hour minimum. So other workers who are not directly impacted by this decision may find their shifts cut, no longer working nine to 5.30 but being asked to go home at 3.30 or four because students can commence and work until 5.30 at that starting rate of $7.89.

This is of course the thin end of the wedge. For a long time the Liberal Party have been arguing for increased flexibility at the expense of employees' conditions. We, the people of Australia, saw what the Liberal Party did to those conditions when they imposed Work Choices on the working people of Australia. The election of a federal Labor government undid that great injustice. It is the reason many of us stand in this place today. I certainly think that cutting minimum hours for any employees is a bad move but particularly for those employees who do not know their own workplace rights and do not have people to help them find out where they can do things within their workplace.

Russell Matheson (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I speak on this excellent motion by the member for Wannon to support all the young people in Macarthur—and the rest of Australia, for that matter—who have taken the initiative to gain casual employment during their time at school. I would first like to commend the Federal Court of Australia for its ruling to uphold Fair Work Australia's decision to allow juniors covered by the retail award to be able to work a minimum of 1.5 hours after school between the hours of 3 pm and 6.30 pm. This decision allows students to work after school to gain independence, a strong work ethic, life skills and experience in a workplace while they are still studying. It is obvious that on the other side of the chamber that is not supported.

I know there are many students in the Macarthur region who need to work short, 1.5-hour, shifts to fit in with their schooling and with shop-trading hours and can do this thanks to the decision by Fair Work Australia in June 2011. I thank the member for Wannon, Dan Tehan, for moving this motion, and the shadow minister for employment and workplace relations, Eric Abetz, for his support of this important issue. Let us hope the other side are looking at this motion. It does not sound like it. I know they both lobbied together with the National Retail Association in 2010 and 2011 to scrap the minimum engagement hours for shifts for juniors and to ensure that the FWA ruling was not overturned recently. On behalf of the young people in my electorate who will continue to benefit from their dedication to this cause, I would like to thank them both. It makes me proud to be part of a coalition that appreciates and supports our young aspiring students in contrast to union bosses. It is a shame that a Labor government chose not to support our students through the deliberations of the Federal Court or Fair Work Australia.

In Macarthur we have a large number of retail shops and outlets that employ young people on a casual basis. Macarthur Square, Campbelltown Mall, Narellan Town Centre, Mount Annan Central and Mount Annan Marketplace join with many other retail stores and small businesses across the region to employ Macarthur's energetic young people, giving them a great start in life. My two daughters grew up in Macarthur and attended local schools. During their time at university they both worked casual hours in a local chemist, making their own money and gaining valuable life experiences. Alana worked at Brownhills Pharmacy in Campbelltown and Jessica worked at David Wilson Discount Chemist also in Campbelltown. As a parent I saw firsthand how a casual position gave both my daughters a greater level of self-confidence, maturity and professionalism that has stayed with them throughout their lives. It also gave them another avenue aside from mum and dad to pay for their shoes, clothes and handbags! More importantly, they learned about the value of money and the importance of saving it. Today they are both very successful, hardworking young women of whom I am very proud.

In Macarthur there are many high school students who choose to complement what they learn from their teachers at school with real-life experiences in the workforce. Some of them are lucky enough to live in towns where a big department store is open for a few hours after school, but there are many towns in my electorate that consist mostly of small businesses that close at 5.30 pm. There is a lack of public transport that would get these students out to the cities and suburbs with major shopping centres. We have so many fantastic small business owners in Macarthur's small towns who employ junior staff members because they understand how valuable a young, energetic quick thinker is to their business. Having a casual job whilst at school also teaches our young people to develop good time-management skills and strive for that perfect work-life balance that we all dream of. Today's world is moving at a rapid pace, so to master the art of time management at such a young age gives our youth a fantastic start to their working lives.

All too often we hear of our younger generations being labelled as lazy, hard to please and selfish. I disagree. This motion supports them getting into the workforce. I have met so many talented and enthusiastic young people in Macarthur who would be a great asset to any business they have worked for. That is why the push by the coalition and the subsequent decision by Fair Work Australia to allow students to work a minimum 1.5-hour shift after school was a good one. If you ask me, it is common sense, especially when the majority of schools finish at 3.30 pm and many retail stores in small towns and regional areas close at 5.30 pm on weekdays.

These changes to the retail award gave student's across Macarthur a valuable opportunity to gain work and life experiences as well as a chance to develop an impressive resume for future employers and learn about the importance of working hard and saving money, especially in the current economic climate. I think it is very inspiring that two teenagers kicked off these changes back in 2010 with a simple petition. When Matthew Spencer and Leticia Harrison lost their 1.5-hour shifts after school, they decided to fight this ridiculous rule that stopped juniors working short shifts after school. I applaud them for persistence and determination, as I do the coalition and the member for Wannon for supporting these young people every step of the way. Thanks to them, there are so many young people in Macarthur gaining valuable experience in our local businesses. For this I thank all those who are involved in making these changes to the retail award and ensuring these changes remain in place throughout the Federal Court's recent decision. I commend the member for Wannon on his motion today.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be speaking on the matter that the member for Wannon brings before the House today, a matter which goes to the heart of two important issues which have been the subject of much debate over the last 4½ years. The first of those issues is how we manage to balance through our workplace laws the need for certainty on the one hand—that is, the need for certainty in relation to working hours and take-home pay—with the capacity of young people to find and engage in work, particularly part-time work, while completing their schooling.

The stories that speaker after speaker from the coalition side got up and entertained the House with this morning would be compelling if they were the only side of the story. When you stand here and you talk about the needs of ensuring that you have a workplace relations system that enables a 14- to 16-year-old student to knock-off from school at three o'clock in the afternoon, jump on their bike or the local bus and get down to Coles or Woolies or a small hardware store in the main street of a country town and get a few hours work, a bit of pocket money and some work experience, it would be very hard to argue against that. In fact, I do not think there would be a right-thinking person on this side of the House who would argue against the importance of constructing a system which facilitates young people in this country having access to additional money and the value of work experience while completing their schooling.

However, we know that these circumstances do not operate in a vacuum. Those on the other side of the House often try to approach these debates on the basis that the workplace relations system can be dealt with by simple formulas and their propositions exist in a vacuum. If all we were talking about were the 14- to 16-year-olds then there would be no conjecture, but that is not all we are talking about. On the same hand, we are also talking about the many hundreds of single mums living in my electorate or older people working in the retail and related sectors, who need some certainty about the minimum number of hours they are going to work. If you have to travel on public transport for an hour and a half to get to your place of employment and then for an hour and a half to get home, you want to be pretty sure that you are not going to be spending more time on the bus than you are behind the counter. You are not being paid for your time on the bus—in fact, you are paying to get to work.

That is why on this side of the House we understand that you need to construct a workplace relations system that is able to bring into a happy medium these two competing needs. We on this side of the House do not believe that in this day and age, in a wealthy country like ours, it must be necessary that one person's benefit should be bought at the detriment of another worker. We look for solutions that ensure that the benefits that you provide to one worker do not cut the throat of another. That is why I am very pleased to say that we have scrapped Work Choices. We scrapped the system of AWAs where you had the fiction that a 16-year-old could sit down and negotiate with the head of Coles or Woolworths and come to a happy arrangement and they had some bargaining power in that—we got rid of that. That is what those opposite are advocating.

The member for Canning admitted in a debate I had with him on TV a few weeks ago that they had a secret industrial relations policy but they were not going to tell anyone about it. If they were really going to come clean, they would let people know what their policies were. Whilst I am on it, if they are interested in providing school-aged children with education and work skills, they will get behind our trade training centres, because that is where real skills and real workplace experiences are being garnered.

Opposition senators interjecting—

Instead of interjecting and making all the noise that they are making at the moment, like empty cans do, they would be informing themselves about the benefit of the trade training centres, with $2.5 billion being spent over 10 years and 370 projects, with 146 already built and operating and about 88 already underway, providing real education and skills to workers today.

Debated adjourned.