Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

it's going to be under the Labor Party, because the Labor Party's policy is to force casuals to take up permanent work. That's expected to cost $153 a week. That is typical of the Labor Party because they are all about command and control. Don't give the workers a choice as to whether or not they want to stay on casual conditions and earn a 25 per cent loading. 'No, we're going to tell you what to do and how to do it.' What will that do? It will reduce flexibility and, if you reduce flexibility, you're going to destroy jobs. That's what the Labor Party does.

This government has created over 1½ million jobs. We've got 80 per cent of the people who lost their jobs in the initial COVID outbreak back into work. If it weren't for the Labor state premiers shutting their borders and causing lockdowns at the drop of one or two COVID cases, we'd probably have 100 per cent of people back in work.

This is the thing with Labor. If you go and look at Labor's record, after they introduced the Fair Work Act, wage theft went up because the laws were so complicated. This wasn't just big business. This was the ABC. This was Maurice Blackburn. Maurice Blackburn, an industrial relations law firm which Senator Watt and Senator Green have both worked for, couldn't even pay their staff properly. That tells you just how complex the Fair Work Act was when it was introduced by the Rudd-Gillard government.

Let's not forget which party raised penalty rates for the retail industry. Do you know who that was? It was the Liberal-National party. Saturday rates went up from 140 per cent to 150 per cent, and loading from six to nine o'clock on weeknights went up from 130 per cent to 150 per cent. That's because we know that it's important to reward people when they're working those hard hours. I know, as a former stay-at-home dad, those hours between six and nine o'clock at night are very important when you've got children. You've got to bath them, feed them, read to them and get them to brush their teeth, and anyone who's been a parent will know how hard that is when you've got three little guys running around. So make no mistake that under the coalition, only under the coalition, we will create jobs. What we are doing with these IR changes is to actually give workers the choice so they can convert from casual to permanent. We know Senator Watt. He's been very quiet as the shadow minister for resources lately. He's not doing a very good job there. We don't see much of him at all. It is a bit like 'Where's Murray?' when it comes to supporting the coal industry and the mining industry. We will be the party actually giving workers the right, if they choose—we're not going to tell people what to do—to go permanent.

The other change that I think is a very good change is the fact that we want to make it 21 days to finalise a negotiation. I've got to admit I've had a lot of jobs over the years. Most of them have been off award. When I was a student, I worked under award conditions. I didn't need three weeks to work out my pay contract. Basically, you get a salary, you get four weeks leave, you get two weeks public holidays and you get two weeks sick leave. All of these awards are in place, so why do you need so long? Of course it's just a racket for the industrial relations lawyers to make more money, to milk employers, to milk employees and to keep everything as complex as possible so Labor can keep their IR mates in a job and basically destroy industry.