Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Work Choices may be dead, buried and cremated, but the coalition government's determination to drive down wages and conditions for working Australians is alive and well. This is the government that has virtually done away with labour market testing and outsourced mineral and gas projects to foreign entities, who in turn bring in foreign labour to do work that could otherwise be done by Australians. It is a government that appears oblivious to the growing claims of overseas workers being exploited. It is also a government that has included special labour mobility provisions in the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement. Indeed, we are currently debating in this place shipping legislation that effectively outsources Australian jobs to foreigners. It is doing all of this because it wants to drive down wages and conditions for working Australians.

Now, it wants to abolish penalty rates. In doing so it will hit some of Australia's lowest-paid workers the hardest, people who often have only part-time work and who do the jobs and the hours that most other Australians would refuse to do. Cutting penalty rates is not industrial relations reform but mean-spirited policy direction by a government that has become a puppet to big business and cares little for those doing it the toughest.