Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Dawson has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the amendment be agreed to.

Cathy O'Toole (Herbert, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am proud to rise in this place to stand up for around 13,000 workers who are being dealt nothing short of a devastating blow by the Turnbull government with their complete lack of understanding of and action on protecting penalty rates for vulnerable workers.

This government uses the language of the fair go and they talk about fairness, but the reality is that they are completely out of touch with low-income families and our veterans and ex-service personnel. This government's trickle-down economics is not creating jobs, but it is creating an environment where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer; consequently, inequality is at an all-time high. Townsville's unemployment is just under 10 per cent and our youth unemployment is at an all-time high of over 24 per cent. The net result of this government's failure to take action to save penalty rates has left around 13,000 people in my community facing a massive pay cut or working longer hours for the same take-home pay. This is not a fair go or fair in any man's language. Less money in our community will mean less spent in locally-owned small businesses such as coffee shops or boutiques, which reduces cash flow in the general economy. This is in stark contrast to the Turnbull's government's rhetoric that there will be a great flow-on effect from this massive pay cut. That is simply false. The Turnbull government's trickle-down economics doesn't work, has never worked and will never will work, and it will certainly do nothing for workers in Townsville.

Queensland Senator Ian Macdonald said this would be a good thing for the north. I beg to differ. Judging by the workers I have talked with, nothing could be further from the truth. Some of the lowest-paid workers are getting one of the biggest pay cuts ever. How could this possibly be called a good thing? I can assure Senator Macdonald that the 13,000 workers in the Herbert electorate don't think that a pay cut is a good thing.

Townsville hasn't felt the projected uplift, but big businesses have extra money in their back pockets. A cut of $50 a week might not mean much to our multimillionaire Prime Minister and other wealthy cabinet members, but it means a lot to vulnerable workers in Townsville. Losing $50 a week from someone's take-home pay may be the difference between being able to pay the rent and buy groceries, or to simply just get by, or not. A loss of $50 a week for someone like Jaidyn Bar in my electorate of Herbert means a lot because for him it may be the difference between being homeless or not.

The Turnbull government is hell-bent on Americanising everything in Australia. They want to privatise Medicare, ruin our public and Catholic education systems and create a clear class divide. They want the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. And they want to cut wages to over 700,000 Australians. In fact, the only thing that this government isn't following America in is legalising marriage equality.

I stand here today to say to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that the Herbert community doesn't want your top-hat thinking. We want to be able to access affordable and quality health care when we are sick, we want all of our children to have access to quality education and we don't want your wage cut. Inequality in Australia is at an all-time high and growing. It appears clearly evident that this fact has totally escaped the Turnbull government because nothing is being done to address inequality.

This government is also spruiking that this pay cut supports small business. The member for Leichhardt, Warren Entsch, said that penalty rates were a huge impediment in Far North Queensland, wiping out small business and adding to the region's unemployment. How out of touch can one be? I have met with a diverse range of small business owners over the last 12 months and every single owner has mentioned two major problems: the rising cost of electricity and commercial leasing. Penalty rates do not and have not rated a mention. The business owners that I talk with recognise that their employees are their greatest asset. While businesses are closing across North Queensland, the Turnbull government and the member for Leichardt are turning a blind eye to the real issues facing North Queenslanders: the desperate need for a national plan to address the sky-rocketing cost of electricity, and that does not rely on a pamphlet solution.

In my experience as a small business owner, it was clearly evident to me that the people I employed were and always will be any business's greatest asset. It is also widely acknowledged that there is inequality between male and female wages and superannuation, and cutting penalty rates does nothing to address this major issue. There is absolutely no reason why this government and large clubs cannot support their workers in the north by not cutting penalty rates.

Brothers Leagues Club owns a few clubs in Townsville. Their website says that all profits go back to its members and the community. Surely there could be no greater community benefit than ensuring low-income workers receive a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. (Time expired)

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I start by saying it's very disappointing to see the continuation of this gesture based, grandstanding, virtue-signalling politics from the opposition through moving this amendment to the second reading motion for the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017. In the end, what this government is focused on is outcomes for the Australian people. What we actually had with the Fair Work Commission was a Labor reference to a Labor-created Fair Work Commission and a Labor-appointed commissioner, and the response that came back is the one they are now opposing. Someone would almost have to say that they question whether the political judgement of the Australian Labor Party in bringing this issue forward and bringing forward the reference which led to the outcome is so that they can simply get up here and spout out how much they disagree with it. It's almost like it was a political arrangement that occurred in the first place. It's deeply disturbing to be able to draw those conclusions, but it seems kind of self-evident. That's what we're seeing today: gesture politics and virtue signalling.

That's when you have to recognise just how out of reality and out of step and out of touch the opposition are. They're not interested in delivering better outcomes for young Australians, who need more work opportunities and more creation of jobs so that they get their first taste in life of the kernel of opportunity, of work and of the dignity of work, particularly for a lot of women who want the opportunity to be able to work and often, particularly when they're balancing out some other family arrangements, are more likely to be able to work in casual arrangements. This government is a government that is committed not just to the opportunity of the few or the interests of one sectional interest or another but to the opportunity for everybody to have a country where people who want jobs and opportunities can secure them and not be priced completely out of the market by regulation and legislation or bad decisions by the previous government that make it harder for them to get jobs. Imagine that: a legislative and regulatory arrangement that makes it harder to get jobs, pushed by a party that claims it wants better outcomes for workers.

I guess only focusing on the interests of the people who are members of a union is what the modern Labor Party is about these days, particularly for public sector workers. They don't worry about unemployed people. They don't spend any time thinking about them. They don't stand up for the interests of people who don't have jobs and want to secure an opportunity to build the foundations of a happy and successful life, to afford their own home or to hold the dignity of work to provide for their family. That's the foundation of a Liberal philosophy. It's one of the core reasons why I'm a Liberal: we believe in the dignity of work and the opportunity it provides. The only position that comes from the opposition at the moment is to make that hard for people.

I do not know what's going through their brain sometimes. They don't actually seem to have any understanding. It's not just harder for the workers; it's harder for people who want to create economic opportunities for them. I speak to a number of people in my electorate who are aware of the challenges of employing people and get so frustrated, and I understand their frustration. They're actually trying to do good for this country. They're actually trying to create opportunities for more people to expand their businesses and employment opportunities, and the response is heckling and hectoring from the opposition, who want to make it harder. They can't understand why the opposition wants to make it harder to employ more young people and give them an opportunity in life and why the opposition, the modern Labor Party, is making it harder to employ women who want casual work arrangements to balance out their lifestyles and men who are in exactly the same situation, particularly when they're doing their best to create opportunity while at the same time building the opportunity for a family life.

One thing I will agree with the previous speaker on is that there are other priorities and issues for businesses as well. They're particularly concerned about rising electricity prices. We have a federal government that is, for the first time, sitting down and focusing on electricity prices in the right way, which is worrying about reliability and making sure people can afford supply, as well as the environmental challenges, rather than just being obsessed with appeasing a Green vote. It is actually thinking about what the country needs to secure the opportunities so that people can go and employ people and pay for people's salaries and jobs. But really, if their confected outrage about this issue—the virtue signalling they do in the other place and here—is sincere, let's sit down and have a proper conversation about industrial relations reform. If you're concerned about the decision of the body you set up, on the reference that you set up, by the appointed person who you put in—if you're so concerned about it—let's sit down and have a proper conversation about it. But we're not. We just get more and more fluff that's being put out there in the community because they want to be able to gesture to their communities that they're trying to defend them, when it's a complete lie. (Time expired)

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think there's probably something seriously wrong at the heart of the member for Goldstein's Liberal philosophy. I'm certainly not speaking in this debate today because I want to grandstand or because I'm out of touch with my electorate. I'm making a contribution here in support of the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017, like many of my Labor colleagues, because I represent an electorate in which large numbers of people—even if they are fortunate enough to have jobs—are really struggling to make ends meet. They struggle to find as much work as they need to sustain their families. They struggle to meet the ever-increasing costs of living on wages that remain stagnant and are currently at record low rates relative to the cost of living. The reality for so many of these hardworking people is that penalty rates have become an essential component of their pay. It's the difference between just managing and not really managing at all. Cuts to penalty rates in the retail and hospitality sector, in which many of my constituents are employed—even only partial cuts—would have the effect of a cut of up to 10 per cent of these workers' wages. That 10 per cent cut is just not possible. My constituents cannot take that hit. When you're talking about modest pay packets to begin with, this is, as I said, a devastating cut.

We know that those who will be most affected will be the young people; they'll be women; and they'll be the migrant workers. We all know that young people in particular who juggle work and study are already at risk of being exploited, underpaid and treated as expendable by many employers. The evidence is in, in relation to the exploitation of young people. Women, too, who are often the sole supporters of their families and who juggle numerous paid and unpaid jobs at the same time, stand to be affected, as do migrant workers who have limited working choices because of language barriers and because they lack the networks, and who may be highly qualified, as many of my constituents are, but not have those qualifications or experience recognised in the local employment market.

Of course, there will be many working men equally affected, as women will be, by cuts to penalty rates and to take-home pay, particularly those in my electorate who after years of dedicated service have found themselves the victims of a declining manufacturing sector and are forced to make do with irregular, casual and part-time work. The loss of the local car industry due to the neglect and outright hostility of this government has for so many local women and, in particular, men in my electorate led to insecure and often poorly paid work. Now, this unemployment and insecurity for men in particular is further compounded by the devastating impact it creates on their sense of identity as providers for their families. It's a devastating hit at a very personal level, affecting their sense of purpose and their contribution to the broader community and to their families.

Coherent industry policy and fair wages policy are vital because they have a real impact on real lives and communities, such as those that I represent. They impact upon the ability of working people to feed their kids, to pay rent and to enjoy, however modestly, their lives. The ability to enjoy life is not some indulgence that should be reserved for highly paid white-collar workers, as some on the other side here seem to believe. If we're serious about economic stimulus and growth, we need a society where people can afford to participate. It does take a community of properly paid people to ensure that more people like them can actually get jobs.

Just last week I was speaking to one of the last industries that still exist in my electorate, and that is the caravan-manufacturing industry. This is a very important local industry that employs local people. Their view is that, if people can't afford to buy caravans, because they can barely afford to pay the rent, what will happen to those jobs? That's a real issue for us in the federal seat of Calwell.

The protection of take-home pay is not only vital for fairness and for justice but equally important for the health of our economy. I strongly reject the argument that cutting wages at this time of already historically low wages will somehow lead to employment growth. It won't. It does not. It has not and it never will. Anyone who says that is propagating a myth.

I support this bill because it protects the take-home pay of some 700,000 low-paid workers. That is in our national interests. I support this bill because it is in our national interest to do so.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for the debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.