Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

And the person goes on to say:

It was an agreement that worked well even though some casual employees at the time lost more money in penalty rates than they gained in base salary.

Some workers were even worse off, and the trade union movement sanctioned it, five years before John Howard was elected to government. And yet they run around this country suggesting that this is somehow an extreme agenda, when the trade union movement itself negotiated these sorts of agreements because it knew that the workplace was changing and people’s habits were changing. The article continues:

So long as penalty rates can’t be taken off people against their will, the fact that penalty rates don’t have to be paid or equivalently cashed out in every situation is fair, and will help create more jobs.

Why did they do this? Because in this day and age employing people on Saturday afternoons or on late-night trading is hardly strange or unsociable, especially where the employee is, say, a university student for whom those hours are actually preferred.

So a case is made out that Australian workplace agreements trade off penalty rates—and they may well do. Of course, what Senator Wong told us about aspects of the Australian workplace agreements was only half the story. Yes, conditions were traded off, but she did not tell us about the increase in wages, the increase in family-friendly provisions and all the other benefits in those agreements.