Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I have answered this question and I will say again: what we did do before the election was to listen to the Australian people, to listen to working families about the effect that the then coalition government’s laws was having on their take-home pay and their conditions. What we did was listen to the Australian people; we listened to the fact that there was clear evidence—despite the then government’s best efforts to hide it—of Australian workplace agreements removing substantive rights such as penalty rates. This argument really is rich from an opposition that, when in government, promised conditions such as penalty rates and overtime would be protected by law but then allowed these conditions to be stripped away without any compensation. This line of argument is rich coming from a party that said workers would be protected by a so-called fairness test but then designed a test which did not provide full compensation for loss of important award conditions like overtime and had no protection for key award conditions such as redundancy.

Let’s be clear about the position from that side of the chamber, which was about removing those protections, and let’s be clear about the bill that is before the chamber which is about restoring a no-disadvantage test against the awards.