Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I accept that. Through you, Madam Deputy President—this is an opportunity for senators from the NXT, the Nick Xenophon Team, to show whether or not they really care about hospitality workers, retail workers, workers in this country who rely on penalty rates in their take-home pay or not. Are they going to prioritise a secret deal with the government to take money off working families over a bill that will protect the take-home pay of vulnerable workers in this country?

Let me turn now to the PHON, the Pauline Hanson One Nation team. The Senator Hanson and her team say they stand up for battlers. Well you have an opportunity now in the vote that will come up. You have an opportunity to stand up for battlers, because the bill that will be debated, should you support this motion, is the bill that Senator Cameron introduced this week which will protect penalty rates. Let me tell you, despite the fact that Senator Brandis does not understand what penalty rates mean to the take-home pay of workers, Australian workers do and Australian families do. They understand the impact of a decision that removes penalty rates, without any other equivalent compensation, for low-paid workers. They understand what it means to their take-home pay. We on this side—and, to their credit, the Greens—on this issue have been very clear about why this decision by the Fair Work Commission is wrong.

A government senator interjecting—

And it is true—I will take the interjection from the lawyer. Yes, we did establish it, and it is only in the most extreme of circumstances that you would see the Labor Party walking away from a decision by the Fair Work Commission. But this is one of those decisions, because this is about vulnerable workers—many of them young people, many of them women—who rely on penalty rates for their take-home pay. I am always astonished by those on the other side who seem to forget—or maybe have never known—what it is like to actually struggle to pay the bills at the end of the week. I remember when I was an industrial officer and a lawyer acting for women and migrant workers who relied on penalty rates; let me tell you those workers depended on penalty rates to make ends meet. I will never forget that, but those opposite have never known that. You have never known that. You have never cared about low-paid workers, and your attitude today and the sneering laughing from the Leader of the Government in the Senate is a disgrace. He has never cared about low-paid workers, just as he has never cared— (Time expired)