Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I rise to speak to the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill 2017. This bill, introduced by the Labor Party, seeks to amend the Fair Work Act 2009 to ensure that awards cannot be varied to reduce the take-home pay of an employee, including any reduction in take-home pay as a result of a reduction in penalty rates, or the hours to which penalty rates apply. It will also prevent decision AM2014/305 of the Fair Work Commission from taking effect.

As a strong supporter of workers' rights and as the voice of the battlers, the union members, workers, small business and taxpayers, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party will be supporting this bill as a matter of principle and after listening to our constituents widely. However, it should be noted that this bill is an act of gross hypocrisy by a party whose own leader, Mr Bill Shorten, has been responsible for the erosion of penalty rates through crooked, secret deals to create enterprise bargaining agreements when he was a union leader that do exactly the same thing.

Let us look at the facts. The honourable Leader of the Opposition, Mr Shorten, has a long, colourful history as a union hack—a history checkered by kickbacks extracted from employers and secret commissions that betrayed the workers, who gullibly trusted him. As the former—