Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to stand up for the 13,000 people in the seat of Lalor, living and working in my community, who face a penalty rate cut on 1 July. I rise at a time when inequality is at a 75-year high, when we have 1.1 million Australians saying they are underemployed and 700,000 people who are unemployed. I rise 24 hours after the Minister for Human Services, the member for Aston, vilified my community of Werribee—not making jobs, not coming in here to vote with us to protect penalty rates, but running around briefing journalists to vilify communities across this country.

I rise to stand up for the people in my community today and to ask those opposite with a conscience, those opposite who know what $77 a week is going to do to a family's budget and to my local economy—I ask them to speak to one another, to cross the floor and vote with us to protect the penalty rates of the 700,000 workers across this country that they are going to have a detrimental impact on on 1 July. It is a time of great inequality. We have global financial crisis rates of unemployment, and this government needs to come in here and start speaking for Australians, stop working against Australians, stop vilifying Australians and act to pay workers properly.