Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I know Senator Cash always hates it when I point out that, under the legislation, the Fair Work Commission has certain rights. That's the way our industrial relations legislation has always worked. It works when we have Labor governments, and it worked when Senator Cash was the IR minister. There are a range of matters left to the Fair Work Commission. Senator Cash, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. It's been a long tradition in Australian workplace laws that there are a range of matters left to the Fair Work Commission, or whatever it was called previously, to determine—and this is no different.

Senator Lambie, again, the arrangements and the enterprise agreements that apply to personal staff and ministerial staff across almost all of the roles, if not all of them, include an overtime allowance. For electorate office based staff—which, I'm guessing, is probably what most of your staff are—you would be familiar with the fact that there are what are known as ESA points, extra allowances that can be paid to electorate office staff, again in recognition of the additional hours that they're required to perform. It'll be a matter for the Fair Work Commission to decide that, but I would expect that the Fair Work Commission would take into account the fact that people in this line of work are paid additional allowances in recognition of their unusual hours, and it would therefore be difficult for such an employee to say that they cannot be connected in those unusual hours.