Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I guess people interested in the debate and are listening to the debate will know whether it should be corrected or not, but clearly the Commonwealth employment law covers people under the age of 18. The minister can try and say otherwise, but the exploitation we have seen of people under the age of 18 since this government introduced its legislation—and we will continue to see it with the independent contractors legislation—is not the responsibility of anyone other than the Commonwealth.

The other point I want to briefly touch on is the no-disadvantage test, again just to correct the record. Senator Abetz wants to constantly say that they replaced the no-disadvantage test with five minimum conditions. What in fact they replaced in the no-disadvantage test was all of the other conditions, including the five minimum conditions which they have now legislated for. They took them away. The point that was made by my colleagues on this side of the chamber is absolutely correct: if there were going to be some changes to the award structure, there had to be a no-disadvantage test applied against all of the conditions so that in total people could not go backwards. If a condition was traded away—and this happened on a regular basis—it had to be compensated for in another way so that the totality of the package remained intact. People did not go backwards. People were unable to go backwards in totality under the old legislation.

Work Choices has taken that no-disadvantage test down to five minimum conditions. We see with the Commonwealth Bank issue that is bubbling away at the moment that 46 award conditions are going to be removed under the AWA and then tested against five conditions. For the minister to try to argue here, very disingenuously, that there is no real quantitative difference in what used to happen under the old legislation and what is now happening is simply wrong, and it simply seeks to mislead people about the truth of the effects of this legislation.