Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with many members on this side of the House in lending support to the Fair Work Amendment (Restoring Penalty Rates) Bill 2018. We know that this out-of-touch government just does not understand the crucial role that penalty rates play in assisting families with their everyday lives. Families are under cost pressures, and the cutting of penalty rates affects their ability to pay bills, put food on the table and meet mortgage repayments. For many families in my electorate of Fowler, in south-west Sydney, penalty rates are crucial. They are the reason they give up quality family time, to which there is a penalty attached. The reason so many Australians sacrifice weekends is that penalty rates are not simply that little bit extra; they make a real and significant difference to the lives of many.

Labor will continue to fight to support penalty rates and, indeed, to support all working Australians. Unfortunately, this government has repeatedly demonstrated a total lack of regard for battling working-class families. This government shows no understanding of the daily household pressures—rising health costs and rising cost of living in general—that families are faced with at a time when we have stagnant wage growth. This is a government that engages in policies to advance wage stagnation, restricting the growth of workers' wages while starving the economy of spending and, more importantly, starving the economy of confidence.

On the question of wage growth, it must be quite embarrassing for those opposite that the government's then Treasury secretary, John Fraser, stated this:

There are a number of structural trends that are undermining our capacity to raise the revenue that we have come to expect from a growing economy.

One such trend is a shift in the composition of growth away from wages and towards corporate profits.

Yet this is the mob that wants to give an $80 million lift to the big end of town. Despite the evidence, the government has persisted with its misplaced policies. It also created the vacuum allowing the Fair Work Commission to cut penalty rates. The government gave no incentive not to do that, and it did not join with Labor in opposing it. As a matter of fact, the government did not take any of the eight opportunities to join with Labor to oppose the cutting of penalty rates.

This is a cut of up to $77 a week for the lowest paid workers—people in retail, people working in accommodation and people working in hospitality. In my electorate of Fowler, this represents almost 10,500 people—the last census showed—that work in accommodation, hospitality or retail. They are low-paid workers. Mine's not a rich area. There are many things to be particularly proud of in my area, including being the most multicultural community in the country, but it's not a rich area, and $77 a week means a hell of a lot to those families that are struggling as it is. People might want to say they are aspirational. I think they do want to deliver better lives for themselves and their families. They work very hard to do that. This government has shown no inclination to support them. It's certainly shown more than an inclination to support the top end of town. If you're one of the four banks, all those caught up in the royal commission at the moment for nefarious activities involving normal people, you'll get a big tax break too. But the government attempted to buy these people off with a $10 a week tax cut, and yet they will lose $77 a week by losing their penalty rates.

This is a government that is hopelessly out of touch. This is a government that does not understand what it is that working families need to do to put food on the table, to make a difference in the lives of workers and their families. The government doesn't know what it needs to do to assist these families in the long run. We've seen what the government wants to do in terms of education. We've seen what it wants to do about health. Now we see what it wants to do about moving the parameters towards big business and not working families. This is just another example that this government is out of touch. (Time expired)

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week's national account figures confirmed what millions of working Australians already knew: Australia is in the midst of a wage crisis. While company profits continue to climb, workers' share of GDP has fallen to record lows. In fact, company profits are now growing at five times the rate of pay packets. That's right—five times. Meanwhile, household costs are at near record highs, thanks to the failure of this government to rein in distorted tax concessions, and power prices look set to climb thanks to the gaping void currently sitting where the government's energy policy should be. Unsurprisingly, given all this, household savings are at a decade low. Whatever measure you consider, it is clear that life is getting harder and harder for many Australians.

The government have proven time and time again that they just couldn't care less. A compassionate government, faced with this diabolical set of figures, would have done all they could to boost wages and give working Australians a leg-up. But, no, not this lot. When looking at the acute cost of living pressures and stagnant wages facing millions of Australians, what do they do? They cut penalty rates. They refuse to reverse their opposition to increasing the minimum wage. They reiterate their plan to give people earning $200,000 a year a $7,000 tax break, while a retail worker earning $35,000 gets a measly tax break of $3.85 a week. This tells you everything you need to know about the priorities of the Liberal government. While the personnel may have changed over the last couple of weeks, the antiworker agenda remains exactly the same. Don't be fooled by this new Prime Minister's honeyed promise that he's your best mate and that he's got your back.

The loss of penalty rates at the hands of the Turnbull and Morrison—and whoever might be next—governments has been a vicious blow for some of the lowest-paid workers in Australia. In my community of Newcastle as many as 13,000 people, or one in five workers, work in industries affected by the cuts, and they're losing as much as $77 per week from their pay packets. Penalty rates are a legitimate recognition of time spent working antisocial hours—time that you cannot spend with family and friends. They mean that hundreds of thousands of Australians can afford to pay their power bill, send their kids on a school excursion and fill the tank of the family car with petrol for the week.

The idea that cutting penalty rates will create jobs is just about as senseless as the idea that handing over tax cuts to the multinational companies will somehow do the same. Businesses take on more staff when there's greater demand for their products and services, not just because their coffers are growing. Thanks to this government, workers now have less to spend in local businesses, meaning that there's less money flowing in regional economies, like mine in Newcastle. This is just the thin end of the wedge. Today it's retail, food and accommodation, but we've already seen other industries mobilised to drive down pay for their workers too.

If Mr Morrison is genuine about being on the side of Australians, he needs to stand up and reverse these cuts. I suspect he won't. The recent savage ousting of the member for Wentworth from his job and his seat creates a window of opportunity that means we need only one or two Liberal-National MPs to find some courage, cross the floor and roll back these damaging cuts. Given this, I urge members opposite to think of the working Australians in their electorates who are being slugged with the triple whammy of insecure work, skyrocketing living costs and cuts to their penalty rates.

Whatever happens here today, one thing is crystal clear: Labor will restore the penalty rates of up to 700,000 Australian workers. Not only that but we're going to reform the Fair Work Act to put the bargain back into enterprise bargaining. We will call time on the exploitation of so-called permanent casuals. We'll lead a national crackdown on dodgy labour hire companies and ensure that those who do the same job get the same pay. While the Liberals are determined to back the privileged and the powerful, only Labor looks after Australian workers.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to rise today to support the Fair Work Amendment (Restoring Penalty Rates) Bill 2018. This private member's bill was introduced by the Leader of the Opposition quite some time ago now, but it remains increasingly evident how important this bill actually is.

We were faced with the decision by the Fair Work Commission to cut penalty rates for some of the lowest-paid workers across our communities. In response to that, Labor called on the government in a bipartisan way to legislate to protect penalty rates so that the Fair Work Commission had guidance from the parliament about not cutting the penalty rates of workers, particularly unilaterally. We're all aware that there's a better off overall test and sometimes a negotiated outcome is reached where someone gets the offset of an improvement in a benefit for a change in penalty rates. That's a process that legitimately goes on in bargaining. This was not that. This was a unilateral cut to an entitlement that so many workers needed to make ends meet. The government was incapable of coming to an agreement that we should do something about it, so we persevere with this private member's bill.

I think it is rather telling that, as this bill comes up for resumed debate in this place over these sitting weeks, there are very rarely any speakers from the other side who are keen to jump up and defend this particular outcome. I think that says a lot about how much they know it's really affecting people in their local areas. Just as an example, in my own seat of Cunningham, where there are just over 66,000 workers in total, there are 6,054 who work under the 2016 retail trade agreements; under accommodation and food services there are 5,190; and under retail, accommodation and food there are 11,244. So, in my electorate alone, there are well over 20,000 workers who are under the awards that have been affected by this decision, and it means significant loss of income for them. For example, if you were on the fast food award as a casual level 1, you would be losing $1,098 a year. That's a lot of money for a low-income earner. Under the hospitality award, if you were a full-time or part-time level 6 worker, it is $1,271. If you're on the retail award as a full-time or part-time level 6 worker, it is $1,792. These are families who really rely on that compensation for working hours when the rest of us are having time with our family and in our communities. They're working those hours, and they're losing the compensation that was appropriately paid for that sort of work. While we're all able to continue to go to a restaurant, have a coffee or do a bit of shopping on the weekend, they're losing pay because of their requirement to work those sorts of hours.

I think the most frustrating part of this is that the Fair Work Commission and advocates, particularly across the business sector, told us that this would be great. In fact, the member for Gilmore in my own area said it would be a gift and that we would see more jobs and people working longer hours.

An honourable member: The Gilmore gift!

As the member says, the Gilmore gift. I think that has been proven to be a very inaccurate description of this decision.

I just want to draw the House's attention to an Illawarra Mercury report that came out at the end of last year on some work that was done by Dr Martin O'Brien and Dr Eduardo Pol from the University of Wollongong and professorial fellow Ray Markey from Macquarie University. They asked the question: after the application of this cut for a certain amount of time, had it actually created more jobs or given people additional hours? They surveyed 1,000 workers across the sectors. Their findings were very clear that this had not increased jobs and, in fact, existing workers were not getting additional hours, so they were doing the same work and getting less pay. That was the reality.

The brake that it's put on confidence, particularly in rural and regional communities in places like Cunningham, is that people no longer have that additional discretionary spending and they're not spending in their own local little businesses. They're not going out themselves, so it has a cost to our local economies, and you can see that in some of the data that comes out about retail sales and so forth. So it's bad for the individual families, it's bad for our local communities because of its impact on the small business sector, and it's bad for the national economy. A really bad decision needs overturning. (Time expired)

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.