Chris Ketter (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to very strongly oppose the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2014 that is before us this morning. Firstly, I want to take up Senator Leyonhjelm's contribution. I noted that Senator Leyonhjelm talked about the fact that the Fair Work Act prevents employers from paying below a certain minimum hourly rate of pay. Senator Leyonhjelm is correct in making that point, but I understood him to say in a following point that there are provisions of the act which prevent employers from paying above that minimum rate of pay. I want to make it very clear that, in my experience as a trade union official, there are many examples in the industries that I have previously had experience with of employers seeking to pay rates of pay in excess of the rates provided for in the award. That is simply the sign of a good employer, and there are many good employers who understand that award conditions are a minimum and that, in order to attract good workers and to retain good workers, it is important that they be seen as the employer of choice in their particular industry. It is certainly not a breach of legislation. I hope I am not misunderstanding Senator Leyonhjelm's contribution, but it is certainly not a breach of the Fair Work Act for employers to make payments to employees in excess of those rates of pay. In fact, there is no discouragement anywhere. Unions would certainly encourage employers to pay in excess of the award rates of pay.

I just want to make the point that there seems to be a misunderstanding about award conditions in general. The awards system that we have in Australia, which has been built up over many years, contains a fairly modest set of conditions which many of us would be surprised at—the minimum hourly rates of pay that are contained in those awards are not a workers' paradise. They are not Nirvana; they do not allow people to live in the lap of luxury if they are paid in accordance with the award rates. They are very basic working conditions. I think this is important when one looks at penalty rates, which are a pretty prominent feature of the awards system. It is important to note that those penalty rates generally supplement a very modest, basic hourly rate of pay, and they are very important to those employees who are being paid in accordance with the minimum rates of pay of an award.

With that response to Senator Leyonhjelm, I firstly want to indicate that in respect of this particular bill I want to focus particularly on the proposed changes to the arrangements in respect of individual flexibility agreements. This is an area where as a former trade union official I have had some direct experience. These proposals by the government seek to reform the amendments to the individual flexibility arrangements which Labor first introduced in 2009. We introduced those provisions because we understand that flexible work practices can deliver benefits to employees and employers, but there have to be appropriate protections and they have to be applied appropriately.

IFAs should be looked at in the context of history. We note that Labor's Fair Work Act came after the scourge of Work Choices. As a union official at the time of Work Choices, I had direct involvement with Australian workplace agreements, which I considered to be the predecessor of these arrangements. I believe that this government wants to revisit those individual arrangements which they first brought about through the Work Choices legislation.

I think it is worth having a look at history in this area. I think the example of the Spotlight company is particularly instructive. This is a company which operates in the retail industry. In subsequent years, the company eventually saw the light and negotiated a collective agreement with the SDA. This was one of the very first companies which took up the option of Australian workplace agreements. These agreements were pretty horrific. I mention this because I believe that this is the government's real agenda—to go back to a situation where employers are able to dictate ways in which they can get out of the basic award provisions which I have referred to.

If we just want to refresh our memories about the Spotlight AWA, we might recall that there was a huge national controversy about this because this particular AWA sought to remove a whole range of award conditions—rights to overtime, penalty rates and a number of other conditions—in return for a wage increase of $0.02 an hour.