Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

We might be able to vote on the bill fairly soon, but a number of the things that have been put by Senator Abetz require a response. He is quite mendacious in the way he has constructed his argument. Senator Abetz is very good at picking up on one aspect of something that has occurred previously and using it to put his point. The example he often uses is that unions have previously negotiated these types of provisions and, therefore, we should support them in the legislation. So, often, he conveniently overlooks anything that might have been negotiated in addition to those provisions. It is extraordinarily inaccurate to argue that, because penalties might have been traded away in a previous union agreement, it is okay for the government to give employers the ability to unilaterally remove penalty rates—that if penalty rates or other entitlements had been dealt with under the pre Work Choices arrangements by unions in general, you would see a range of other additional entitlements that they received, and unions or employees might say, ‘We agree to have a lower level of penalty rates across the week in return for other entitlements.’

But Senator Abetz never talks about what other entitlements or advantages the employee gets. Remember that the context prior to the ‘Work No Choices’ legislation was that there was a no-disadvantage test—a test against the award—so you could not be worse off overall. That is what the government removed. So now you can have an agreement where you are worse off. That is the core of the government’s legislation. What you are saying is that you want employers to be able to tell employees they are going to remove penalty rates, overtime rates, shift allowances, leave loading, redundancy, rostered days off and so on. But guess what? The Howard government does not think you deserve any compensation for it. That is your policy, so do not come in here, Senator Abetz, and say that unions used to do this, or this used to happen, because you know that the context was entirely different. The reality for employees was entirely different. People were entitled to get something for something. If they gave something away, they were entitled to get something for it. Your legislation says, ‘Give it away without getting anything back’—and you know it.

Senator Abetz says that the government legislated five minimum conditions. Whoopee doo! Through awards, employees had so many other conditions as a matter of right—well above the minimum five conditions. So do not come in here and say to people, as if they have been given something, that they have five conditions in law. They had them anyway—and many more. You just took away the many more. You chucked a few conditions into some legislation and tried to tell people that you were making things better. The reality is that you are actually making things worse. If we are going to talk about what has occurred under previous agreements, perhaps we could have a little more honesty and detail in the debate. Senator Abetz could acknowledge that, previously, where things were given away, people had to get something for it—but now they do not.

I think Senator Abetz, because he can never resist having a whack at a trade union—he is like Pavlov’s dog; you say ‘trade union’ and he jumps up—