Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill will protect the take-home pay of 700,000 low-paid workers, and this is at a time when inequality is at a 75-year high under this coalition government. Inequality is huge in this country. Wages growth is at a historic low and unemployment is at historic highs. These cuts campaigned for by the Prime Minister and members of the government affect 700,000 Australians and will have a particularly devastating effect on women, migrant communities, young people and regional communities. The McKell Institute's analysis states:

For many, the changes are dramatic: full time or part time retail workers who work a full 8-hour shift, for example, will lose at least $72.90 per week. Annually, this equates to a $3499 loss.

This is the equivalent of a 10 per cent pay cut for these workers—10 per cent out of the lowest paid workers in the country. In relation to regional communities, the McKell Institute estimated a partial abolition of penalty rates in the retail and hospitality sectors would result in:

… workers in Rural Australia losing between $370.7 million per annum and $691.5 million per annum … a loss in disposable income of between $174.6 million per annum and $343.5 million per annum to local economies in Rural Australia.

How could One Nation, who say they stand up for the battlers but do nothing about it? How could One Nation and Senator Hanson sell workers out for this amount? How could they do this? They run around the country telling people that they stand up for the battlers, yet they are going to take $3½ thousand out of the pay packets of rural and regional workers. What else will they do? They will destroy local economies because these are the workers who actually go out and buy the fish and chips, Senator Hanson. They use the money to buy fish and chips. They do not put the money in the bank. They do not go on cruises overseas. They use their money to go and maybe once in a blue moon buy some fish and chips in the local fish and chip shop, and keep that fish and chip shop profitable. That is what they do, Senator Hanson, but you do not understand it. But now you are not a fish and chippie; now, you are a senator.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Cameron, may I remind you address your remarks through the chair.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Now that Senator Hanson is in here on a $200,000 base rate, she does not care about the battlers. She does not care about regional communities. She does not care about poor families or migrant families that are battling to put food on the table. She is absolutely unconcerned about the problems that there will be. What a fraud One Nation is! What a fraud of a party it is! What a fraud is the leadership that they have! They are running around this country telling people they care about the battlers, yet they would cut social security and they would cut penalty rates. Nothing could be further away from looking after battlers than what this mob are going to do over the next couple of weeks.

The government are also attacking working-class people. The Liberal Party have been attacking workers' rights and their penalty rates for as long as I can remember, and the National Party—the lapdogs of the Liberal Party—have been in there supporting them. How could any National Party member in this place support a $3½ thousand cut to the lowest paid in the community, especially in rural and regional Australia? We know the form of the Liberal Party. They spent $46 million on a rorted trade union royal commission to try to weaken the capacity of workers to bargain collectively. They set up the ABCC under Nigel Hadgkiss, the most incompetent, biased, politically motivated public servant this country has ever seen.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A good man.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Abetz says 'A good man.' Senator Abetz, we know that he is your mate. We know what he is up to. We know that the ABCC is simply about taking money out of building workers around this country and taking away capacity for them to get decent wages and conditions. Some young workers will be threatened with pay cuts. Many young workers may not remember Work Choices, but I remember listening to the Work Choices debate in the Senate. Senator Abetz, when he was on the frontbench and had not been kicked off the frontbench, argued for Work Choices to cut workers' wages and conditions. He was the Work Choices warrior in the Senate. He stuck his hand up to cut the wages and conditions of ordinary workers to make sure that workers had no capacity to bargain effectively. That is the Work Choices warrior that Senator Abetz is.

What is really happening here is that, even though he is sitting on the backbench in exile, Senator Abetz is actually exercising a lot of power from exile. That is the reality. That power is making sure that the weakest Prime Minister ever in this country, Mr Malcolm Turnbull, supports these cuts to workers' wages, because it is the extremists in the right wing of the Liberal Party who are pushing these cuts through.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is why I want to grandfather it.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minority have control. Senator Abetz is controlling and manipulating the Liberal Party from the backbench. We know they are a divided, chaotic party, and Senator Abetz is in there, his tentacles all over it, controlling the Liberal Party.

The Liberal Party's view on Work Choices was clear: destroy the safety net for working people and destroy the trade union movement. They undermined the capacity of workers and their unions to bargain. They stripped back the safety net. They got rid of the no-disadvantage test that ensured workers' entitlements did not fall below the standard set in the awards. Senator Abetz was in here arguing for that day in, day out during the Work Choices debates. Do you remember those workers' entitlements that John Howard told us were protected by law? Penalty rates, overtime, allowances, basic provisions for low-paid workers. In the first year of Work Choices, workers on 70 per cent of non-union agreements in the retail and hospitality sectors lost either all or part of their weekend penalty rates, their entitlement to overtime and their allowances, amongst a long list of other enforceable rights. The coalition used their control in the House of Representatives and the Senate to come in here and smash the rights of working people in this country. Senator Abetz and the right-wingers in here clapped each other on the back when they destroyed the rights of workers in this country.

Under Work Choices, low-paid workers had their wages cut by up to 30 per cent as a direct result of Liberal-coalition policies. Nothing has changed. If the government gets their way, an average worker will lose $77 a week. If they think that is insignificant, then they do not understand the world from most people's position. They simply look at this from a position of power and privilege. Penalty rates mean the difference between registering your second-hand car and not being able to afford to buy a second-hand car. Penalty rates mean the difference between putting decent food on the table for your family and not having the weekly earnings to manage to do that. They mean the difference between your kids' netball and football fees being paid and your kids missing out. This money means the difference between celebrating important events and holidays with your family and facing the prospect of relying on charity at Christmas and birthdays or going into debt—debt you cannot be sure you will ever be able to pay back. Those in the government have never experienced it, so they just do not get it. These are decisions they will never have to make. I warrant they are decisions they have never had to make, otherwise they would not be pushing these cuts.

If the coalition understood what this meant, if they were actually in touch with the struggles that people have in this country, they would not be doing this. But they are so out of touch, they are so divided, they are so controlled and manipulated by the extreme right wing of the party that they do not think twice about doing this. The Prime Minister is doing this as part of the push to save his job. That is the reality. He is a weak Prime Minister, a Prime Minister who is just buffeted around by the right wing, pulled and pushed wherever the right wing wants to pull him and push him, a Prime Minister who shows no leadership and no capacity to stand up for what is right.

We heard from Ann Sudmalis, the member for Gilmore. When one in five workers are likely to be affected by these cuts—one in five workers in her constituency are going to be affected by this—she described cutting wages of young people as 'a gift'! How out of touch can any one individual be? How out of touch with your electorate could you be? Mrs Sudmalis has not got a clue. She went on to say that: 'We should look more broadly than our own hip pocket.' Well, her hip pocket is filled with 200 grand every year! But the workers that she wants to take these penalty rates from earn 35,000 bucks a year, and this is a 10 per cent wage cut. It is the equivalent of $20,000 coming out of Mrs Sudmalis's pay. So this is a huge hit on poor people.

Senator Ian Macdonald calls these cuts 'a step in the right direction'. What breathtaking hypocrisy from a politician who is willing to cross the floor on securing lifelong privileges for himself and supporting the anachronistic parliamentary gold pass. Senator Macdonald fires up when it is his own entitlements and privileges; he never fires up for working people; he never fires up for the poor and underprivileged. But take away the anachronistic gold pass and what do we see? We see a volcano erupting over there with Senator Macdonald: anger, threats and indignation, 'because you dared to take the gold pass away from me and my mates,' and yet workers are battling, even with the penalty rates, to put food on the table. How obnoxious can this lot over there get?

So 'a step in the right direction' said Senator Macdonald. Well, a step in the right direction to what? What does this mob have planned next for working people in this country? They may not want to call it Work Choices, but that is what they mean. What does the Prime Minister have to say about cuts to penalty rates—that weak, jelly-backed Prime Minister; that Prime Minister who only thinks about his own job, day in, day out, battling to put a decent economic thought together and jumping from one position to another? People know that he is hopeless. His own back bench know that he is hopeless. This is what he says about penalty rates:

… we've got to find solutions to create a more flexible, dynamic, 21st century economy out of which everybody wins.

Well, people do not believe that smarmy doublespeak about 'flexibility' and 'dynamism' from this government. Let me translate the babble from Malcolm Turnbull. They do not care about working people—that is the bottom line. They did not care when it was Work Choices, and they do not care today. The members of the government do not care about whether the rents get paid—unless, maybe, they are a landlord. Maybe Senator O'Sullivan might care, seeing as he has got 30-odd houses out there, as a landlord; he might care about it. But I do not think anybody else cares.

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is 101 class warfare isn't it? 101 Class warfare!

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They just don't get it. They just don't get it.

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Class warfare!

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They don't care if you can't afford to keep your car roadworthy and replace bald tyres.

Senator McGrath interjecting—

And again I am being accused of class warfare. Well, if that is protecting workers' penalty rates and protecting workers on $35,000 from attacks by this rabble of a government, then I plead guilty: I am a class warrior, and I will be a class warrior every day—

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Class warrior! Guilty as charged!

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

looking after working people, looking after the poor in this country—looking after them against the 'privileges' that you would impose, from your point of view, against ordinary working people. You are an absolute rabble.

Senator McGrath interjecting—

You are an absolute disgrace. You don't want workers—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Cameron, resume your seat. Senator Cameron has the right to be heard in silence. Please respect that right. Please continue, Senator Cameron.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So if looking after poor people in this country is being a class warrior, I am in it. I will be in it every day, because I do not want this country to end up like the United States. I do not want this country to end up where retail workers have to depend on tips to actually make a decent living in this country. That is unacceptable, because this country was built on egalitarianism. It was built on decency. It had a worldwide reputation for being a country that looked after everyone in the country. But, under this mob, whether it was former Prime Minister Tony Abbott or, as it is now, that weak-kneed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, they do not care. What they are about is getting labour as cheaply as possible, to suck up to business in this country. If they could introduce slavery they would do it, so that they could get a pat on the back from their mates that hand over the brown paper bags in the back seat of the Bentley to Liberal Party members in Newcastle. No wonder they are bowing down to the business group in this. They want a reserve army of labour where it is cheap. And how cheap can they get it? They want a society where low-paid workers spend hours on buses coming in from satellite suburbs in the dark hours of the morning to clean their offices and make their cappuccinos without any penalty rates—that is what this mob want.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like Clean Event?

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And Senator Abetz interjects again. Well, this is the man who cut the wages of the cleaners in Parliament House! This is the man who stood up for Work Choices, who pushed Work Choices his whole time here, and then cut the pay of the poorest workers in here: the cleaners that cleaned your office, Senator Abetz—that cleaned your toilet after you. And you cut their wages. That is what you did. What pathetic human beings some of you mob are over there.

Then they say, 'We will simply stop the hardship overtime.' This was a bad decision. Dr Jim Stanford, from the Centre for Future Work, has said this would make matters worse, if you tried to spread it out, and it would take 17 years to get the real purchasing power of wages back and inflation could make it 22 per cent worse. This was a bad decision by the Fair Work Commission. This was a decision that nobody in their right mind expected. This was a decision that was not based on the evidence that came before it, because there will be no jobs created. It will simply create hardship, and this mob is loving it. This mob are so bad they love workers getting their wages cut.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The hyperventilating hyperbole we have just had to endure from the ALP is shamefully and simply designed to ensure that our fellow Australians do not understand what is actually at stake. I stand here as somebody who represents not only the state of Tasmania but also the Liberal Party. It is a party that was founded on a principle of looking after the forgotten people. The forgotten people in this debate are the unemployed, the underemployed, the Australian consumer and Australian small businesses.

Let us be very clear in this debate: big unions and big business have traded away penalty rates day after day. Indeed, the person who would have to be the champion of trade union leaders doing deals with big business to trade away penalty rates is none other than the alternative Prime Minister, Mr Shorten. He traded away penalty rates for the Chiquita Mushrooms workers and for the Clean Event workers and then got payments made to his union. How dare Senator Cameron assert that somehow I had reduced the wages of cleaners in this place. It is untrue. But I can tell you who has reduced the wages of cleaners: the Australian Workers Union, as led by Mr Shorten, with the Clean Event enterprise agreement. This is where those opposite, in their former careers as trade union officials, were day after day negotiating away penalty rates and doing enterprise agreements with big business whilst forgetting about the unemployed, the underemployed, the Australian consumer and small business.

One thing that we do know is that if somebody is employed their mental health is in a better state, their physical health is in a better state, their self-esteem is in a better state and their social interaction is in a better state. So we as a community need to ensure that opportunity, which is such an important individual, social and economic good, is afforded to as many Australians as possible. What we had, not in this government decision but in this Fair Work Commission decision, was an acceptance of the reality that penalty rates in certain modern awards that had previously been established by the Fair Work Commission had been set so high as to undermine the opportunity of the unemployed and the underemployed to gain employment.

So why is it that the Australian Labor Party, the Greens and Senator Lambie would seek to ensure that these people, the unemployed and the underemployed, continue to be denied the opportunity of employment, of that important individual and social good? That is what the Australian Labor Party, the Greens and Senator Lambie really need to come to grips with in this debate. Why is that, when they know that if this bill were to be passed people would be denied the opportunity of employment and, as a result, they would be on the social scrap heap of unemployment? That is what they wish for with this bill. That is the crassness of this bill. That is the social inequity in this bill that needs to be fully understood by all of my colleagues in this place.

The unemployed seek employment. The underemployed seek more employment. The Australian consumer, not unreasonably, seeks services on a weekend. And today in Australia we have many service providers and businesses closed on a Sunday for one simple reason: they cannot afford the labour cost and, therefore, they are closed. And if they are open, many of the mums and dads who run these small businesses are working the businesses themselves, which denies them the opportunity to spend time with their families. The Fair Work Commission, in considering all these matters, saw the social good in reducing the penalty rates for certain categories of workers. We should be reminded that this is something that was a decision made under which legislation? The Australian Labor Party's Fair Work Act. Indeed, as the Rudd government was in its death throes in 2013, Mr Shorten, as the then Minister for Workplace Relations, forced through this place, with virtually no debate, an amendment to the Fair Work Act requiring the Labor Party's appointed Fair Work Commission to consider penalty rates. An amendment, forced through this place by Mr Shorten, specifically required the Fair Work Commission to have a look at penalty rates. So this requirement for penalty rates to be considered every four years is all Mr Shorten's own doing in the legislation. Be careful what you wish for.

That aside, who made the decision? There were five Fair Work commissioners on this full bench, all of whom were appointed by the Australian Labor Party. When I went through the names, I was reminded that four out of the five were appointed whilst I was the shadow minister for workplace relations. Indeed, the Australian Labor Party, in pretending to consult—underline the word 'pretending'—advised me of the names that they were intending to appoint. I objected to all four. So here we have a Fair Work Commission bench stacked out by Labor appointees which we on this side of the chamber did not favour. But they heard all the evidence. The Labor Party and the trade union movement could not have hoped for more favourable legislation or a more favourable full bench considering this decision, but that bench was mugged by the reality that the previously set penalty rate regime was costing Australians jobs. That is the reality, and that is why, if you believe in social equity—if you believe in the opportunity for the underemployed and the unemployed to take a step on the ladder of employment—you would acknowledge that this decision of the Fair Work Commission is a good, right and proper decision from a social justice point of view because it does allow people to step on the ladder of employment. What do the statistics tell us? In very rough terms, within 12 months 75 per cent of our fellow Australians who start on the most basic and minimum of wages move up another rung of the employment ladder. The great debilitator is getting onto the ladder. As soon as they are on the ladder, the vast bulk of Australians are then on a trajectory to move up the ladder of employment. The balancing act is: where do you set that first rung on the ladder to ensure that people are properly remunerated but not denied the opportunity of employment? So, in carefully considering this decision under Labor's legislation, Labor's Fair Work Commission appointees were mugged by the reality that social justice demanded that some of these penalty rates be changed.

Indeed, the hyperventilating Senator Cameron, in his contribution, was unable to tell us why it is that, at the moment, if I am a pharmacy assistant, I get 200 per cent, or double time, for working on a Sunday but somebody who is slaving over a hot stove cooking hamburgers, doing the hard yards, only gets a penalty of 175 per cent. Where is the justice in that? Where is the rationale? Where is the logic? It defies logic and defies rationale. Nobody can explain it, other than that it was 'historical'. Well, some people actually think it is nearly hysterical. How can you justify these sorts of inequities where somebody in relatively good employment in a pharmacy who does not have to do as much physical and hard work as a person in a fast-food outlet is not remunerated in the same manner? But the gross injustice here is that, if I am a worker at McDonald's working on a Sunday, I get paid literally dollars less per hour than my colleague working in the independent hamburger shop down the road. Why is that? Because the trade union and the big business, McDonald's, have traded away my Sunday penalty rates. So the small, independent, mum-and-dad owned hamburger joint down the road has to pay their worker a lot more than the multinational McDonald's. Where is the justice in that and how come the McDonald's workers get paid less? There is only one reason: the trade union bosses have traded away their penalty rates. That is how it occurred—and do you know what? I do not think that what the trade union movement did was unjust. They saw the reality themselves. They saw the importance of having a business model that would keep these people employed.

The sinister part of this is: where do the unions get their membership from? It is from the big businesses. That is where they collect their membership from. The small, mum-and-dad, independent hamburger joint down the road are like a little family. They look after each other, so that is not a unionised workforce. So from the union perspective, and indeed the big-business perspective, if that independent hamburger joint down the road can be priced out of business, that is good for the union because then, hopefully, there is more work at McDonald's and, therefore, more union members. And, of course, it means more business for McDonald's when the local independent hamburger shop gets closed.

So let us take a reality check of what this is all about. It is, yet again, the Australian Labor Party and the Greens and Senator Lambie wanting to do dirty deals with big unions and big business at the expense of the unemployed and underemployed Australian consumers and Australian small business.

This is an absolutely galling piece of legislation. Mr Shorten, the would-be Prime Minister of this country—and this was, if I recall correctly, on the Neil Mitchell program on 21 April 2016—was asked, in relation to this pending penalty rate decision by the Fair Work Commission, 'Would you accept the decision of the Fair Work Commission?' His answer was, yes, he would. Allow me to find the actual quote. Neil Mitchell said:

… the Fair Work Commission will report soon on … penalty rates. They're an independent body, in fact you had a lot to do with the way they operate now when you were Minister. Will you accept their findings given this is an independent body assessing penalty rates for Sunday, if you're Prime Minister.

Bill Shorten said:

Yes.

MITCHELL: You'll accept them?

SHORTEN: Yes.

MITCHELL: Even if they reduce Sunday Penalty rates?

SHORTEN: Well, I said I'd accept the independent tribunal …

That was Mr Shorten's position to the Australian people before the federal election. He did believe in the independence of the umpire and that sometimes the umpire might make a decision that you do not like, but you have to abide by it. That was Mr Shorten's position before the federal election. And of course he, who had helped negotiate and trade away penalty rates for workers in the jurisdiction of the Australian Workers' Union, would not have had a difficulty with this particular pending decision of the Fair Work Commission.

But now we know that the new trade union boss, Sally McManus, is of the view that, if you do not like a law, you just break it. The concept of abiding by the rule of law has gone out the window. So what does Mr Shorten do? Yes, if you do not like the decision of the umpire, you just trash the umpire, try to blame somebody else and try to make cheap political capital.

But, as I indicated earlier, what is also galling about this is that the whole regime that has led to this decision on penalty rates was designed, was created and was legislated by none other than Mr Shorten and the Australian Labor Party. If that was not enough, of the appointees to the Fair Work Commission who made the decision, four out of the five were appointed by Mr Shorten himself. But still that is not enough for him.

The simple fact is that this is a decision that does seek to provide social justice. I am on the public record—and this is, I suppose, one of the characteristics of being 'extreme right wing', as Senator Cameron sought to describe me—as saying that, when modern awards were created under Labor in 2009, no worker should be worse off. I moved an amendment in this place in 2009, as the shadow minister, seeking to put into the Fair Work Act that, when the modern awards were created, no worker would be worse off. That amendment was defeated courtesy of the Labor Party and the Greens combining to vote down that amendment. That is their legislative record. When given the opportunity, they voted down that amendment.

I have been consistent. That is why, when the Fair Work Commission announced its decision and said, 'We now have to decide how to implement this decision,' I was relatively quickly out of the blocks to say that I believe that for those workers, especially the full-time and the permanent part-time people who rely on these penalty rates today, their wages and entitlements should be grandfathered. But supposedly that is the characteristic of being extreme right wing—seeking to ensure that no worker would be worse off.

Senator Cameron's Labor Party voted against that in 2009 and now seeks to condemn me in 2017 for still supporting the view that no worker should have their wages cut in circumstances such as the Fair Work Commission has recently determined. I am still of that view and have been heartened by the support from, indeed, some trade union officials, the Council of Small Business, Ross Greenwood and many other commentators who see the common sense and justice in ensuring that no worker is worse off.

What it will ensure is that new people will be able to get the benefits of employment. The unemployed and the underemployed will be able to step onto the ladder of employment, move up it and enjoy the benefits of mental health, physical health, self-esteem and social interaction—all those benefits that come with employment. That is what that Fair Work Commission decision seeks to achieve. That is why we support it, and that is why I believe there needs to be a balance in the implementation of this decision to ensure that current workers' rights are protected, but we are enabled to engage new Australians in the benefit of employment.

Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At a time of growing inequality, when the gap between the superwealthy in this country and ordinary people is growing, we know that something is badly wrong with this country's laws when some of our lowest paid and youngest workers can have their pay cut. This bill, the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill 2017, if passed by the parliament in this sitting fortnight, will prevent the unfair Fair Work Commission decision from coming into effect. We know that many people, especially young people in this country, are being screwed over right now. We just need to look at what is happening with the cost of education, the cost of housing in particular, the rising cost of health care and so on. We know that what is happening in this country right now is that young people are being screwed over. Many of them rely on their penalty rates to make ends meet, to pay their rent or their mortgage and to put food on the table.

Right now, the rules of the Fair Work Commission allow them to reduce the living standards of these people. They allow the commission to take things backward, and that is why they need to change. This bill will maintain the independence of the commission, but it will change the rules—which, we have seen, are unfair—so that young people and vulnerable workers cannot go backwards.

It is time right now for the crossbench to decide where they stand. Senator Xenophon, Senator Hanson and Senator Hinch need to decide whether they stand for protecting wages or for cutting them. They often talk a big game in their home states about standing up for ordinary people, for battlers, but what we have seen, particularly from the One Nation party, is that when they come to Canberra they vote with the Liberals time after time. In this case, doing so would be an attack on people's rights at work.

The Greens are very proud of having led the national debate across so many areas. Obviously we are the party that took on the issue of dangerous global warning at a time when no-one in this parliament was even talking about it. We have been leading the debate on housing affordability and, in fact, led the charge on reform to negative gearing and capital gains tax reform. We are very pleased that the Labor Party has shifted its position and has joined us on that, as it has on the debate on a royal commission into the banking and finance sector. Before the last election, the Greens were the only party that committed to legislating to protect weekend penalty rates of pay, and now we can see why that has to happen. We are indeed pleased that the Labor Party has changed its position and that Senator Lambie has joined us, so that we can stop this decision from coming into effect before it is too late. Initially, we had some concerns about Labor's bill still allowing the commission to phase in penalty rate cuts over years by offsetting those cuts against cost-of-living wage increases, but this new, agreed, joint bill is now bulletproof.

It might be hard for members of the government to imagine it, but I ask them to look at the world that young people are facing right now. We have an unaffordable housing market. People are being locked out of it. The drawbridge is being pulled up in front of them as baby boomers, who enjoyed affordable housing, are now looking to enter the property market to purchase their third, fourth or fifth home while young people are being locked out of purchasing their first. We are seeing low levels of student assistance. We are seeing massive HECS debts. All of those mean that the cost of living is rising. So cutting weekend rates of pay, which are often the only thing that allow people to pay the rent and keep studying or do other things that they need to to get by, would place them under immense pressure.

This government has made its priorities crystal clear. It is using this week in parliament to make hate speech easier. We have seen in the lower house, just today, legislation being introduced to give huge, big tax cuts to the big end of town. We are seeing an attack on the social safety net. Indeed, quite literally at a minute to midnight last night we saw passed legislation that would take money out of the pockets of families who are doing it tough right now. Besides opposing all of these moves that will deepen income inequality in Australia, the Greens say that one of the most important things that we can do over the next week or so is stand up for young people, for those workers who rely on penalty rates to make ends meet. Make no mistake, those people are waiting to see if parliament is going to act to stop those cuts. Those hundreds of thousands of people are set to lose many thousands of dollars. They are inching closer and closer to a future that is becoming more uncertain, more difficult, one where they are going to have to sacrifice even more time to make ends meet. There are even some reports today that the effect of these cuts will be felt for many, many years. The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work released a report warning that at current levels of wage growth—we have to remember that wage growth has been stagnant now for a number of years—it would take 17 years until higher base wages for retail workers offset lower penalty rates. That is what this government is doing. Let us be really clear about this: in an environment where housing prices are out of control and where wage growth is stagnant, the government is taking an action that will ensure that the losses from these cuts may not be recouped for at least 17 years. It is doing this at the same time as it is saying, as the member for Deakin did: 'Well, what you need to do if you want to buy a house is get a highly paid job. Just get a better job.' Too bad if you are trying to crack into the housing market at a time when wages are stagnant or indeed being cut.

This bill lays down a challenge for the government, which says that it is doing all that it can to help ordinary people. That has been shown to be a lie. Indeed, that was shown just last night, when we saw those big cuts to social security payments. But it is a challenge also for members of the crossbench, those people who sit here, who talk a big game in their home states about standing up for the battlers and yet vote with the Liberals almost every time and attack people's rights at work. The question is: are Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, Nick Xenophon and Derryn Hinch simply a branch office of the Liberal Party? Have they become simply a faction of the Liberal Party?

Our job in this Senate is to hold government to account. That is what people elect the Senate to do, to be a check on executive government, to hold government to account. The Greens have shown that we are prepared to do that, that when it comes to seeking to be a check on executive power it is the Greens who are the genuine alternative to politics as usual. People know that the Greens will stand up to this government. We now know that the Labor Party, which has changed its position, will stand up to the government on this issue. We know that some of the Independent crossbenchers will do that—Senator Lambie has indicated that that is also her position. So the question now is for Senator Xenophon, Senator Hinch and Senator Hanson. What will you do when you are forced to decide whether to support this government, indeed its big business mates, cutting the wages of ordinary people? Will you side with them or will you side with those voices in this parliament that want to do something about growing inequality?

This parliament acts far too often in the interests of a privileged few. They act for their powerful mates, mates in big business, mates in the coal industry, mates who are big Liberal Party donors. And, too often, they act against the interests of people in the community. This week we have seen that on display. We have seen cuts to the social security net, we have seen cuts across a range of areas like health care and education, and now we are seeing a Fair Work Commission cut to penalty rates. We have seen the government refuse to take on the issue of housing affordability by tackling what we know is the critical policy reform required in that space—that is, negative gearing and capital gains tax reform, along with other measures that the Greens have put forward. The Greens, the Labor Party, and Senator Lambie have put this challenge to the government, front and centre. We are in a situation where people's livelihoods might go backwards. We have to decide whether we are going to do something useful in this place and stop it, or whether we are going to see the growing gap between the super-wealthy and everybody else continue to get bigger.

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill 2017, a bill that is co-sponsored by Labor, the Greens and Senator Lambie. The purpose of this bill is to protect the take-home pay of the millions of Australians who this Prime Minister has abandoned. It will ensure that the penalty rates that they rely on are not cut. It is a fair bill that all in this place should support. It clarifies the Fair Work Act to ensure that the spirit of the original bill is upheld—that a relevant and fair minimum safety net is provided through the award, which is relevant to the needs and expectations of the community; and that additional remuneration is provided for employees working outside of normal hours, such as working on weekends, overtime, late nights or very early mornings, as many workers around the country do.

It is without doubt that the spirit of the Fair Work Act was misinterpreted by the Fair Work Commission in its recent decision. As such, it is incumbent upon us all—as we often do in this place—to pass a simple bill that closes the interpretative loophole. In this case, it is to protect the take-home pay of Australian workers by protecting penalty rates for Sundays and public holidays—because the Fair Work Act must never, never be used to cut the pay of workers. I believe in strong penalty rates for overtime, weekends, public holidays, late nights and very early mornings. There is a clear need to better remunerate workers for taking on these unsociable hours that are often essential to a business but mean valuable time away from friends and family. Working these hours when others are relaxing, when others are taking their time of leisure, has clear costs on the individual that must be remedied through improved wages. It is Labor's clear belief that the commission's decision to allow a reduction in pay for low- and middle-income Australians does not maintain a relevant and fair minimum safety net, and is not relevant to community expectations, and that therefore the commission's decision is contrary to the spirit of the Fair Work Act. This bill will right that wrong. It will close that interpretative loophole. It will ensure that the recent decision of the Fair Work Commission which cuts the pay of workers in the hospitality, retail, pharmacy and fast-food industries cannot take effect. It is important to note that the bill maintains the independence of the Fair Work Commission, while guiding its future decisions to ensure that wages cannot be cut.

Paying penalty rates has clear benefits to workers, to employers and to the entire community. This bill gives the Prime Minister and all members of this parliament the opportunity to use their vote to support working Australians and their families. I hope that the crossbench, particularly the Nick Xenophon Team, support this bill. I hope that the government supports this bill. Supporting this bill is right and it is a just thing to do. However, I am not confident that we will get the support of the government—because, for the past year and a half, we have had a Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, who is willing at every turn to cut wages and cut government support to low- and middle-income families, while pushing for tax cuts for millionaires. In my time in the Senate, and in my 20-odd years in the union movement before that, we have seen a Liberal-National coalition that is dogged on one thing—that is, the need to cut wages and support for working Australians and divert the benefits of labour to the owners of capital. Some may say it is an old cliche, but it rings very true with this current government.

They do not try to govern for all Australians. They do not even try to govern for 50 per cent of the Australians who voted for them. No, time and time again, the government prioritise the owners of big business at the expense of the Australian community. In this case, they couch cuts to penalty rates in the notion that business needs a fair go on Sundays and public holidays, and they say that cutting wages will lead to more jobs—a total fallacy on both counts. It is a total fallacy that business needs to cut their wages bill, as there has been strong growth over the past few years in the sectors covered by this Fair Work decision. While there are some businesses that do not open on Sundays and public holidays, those that do open—and pay their staff penalty rates while collecting additional revenue from customers—are very likely doing well. As we have pointed out, time and time again, if Sundays and public holidays are sacred to the head offices of business, then they should be sacred to the working people of this country as well. I say that when the head office of a major business is closed on Sundays and public holidays but their workers are working on those days, they should be paid such penalty rates as to compensate them for the lost time with family and friends—and that rate should never decrease. The second fallacy is that cutting penalty rates will lead to more jobs, and therefore make society better off overall. It is common sense that if a business is going to offer additional hours just on Sundays and public holidays, those hours are going to be offered first to those workers who are suffering a cut in their wages. So workers will have longer working hours to try and scrape together the same take-home pay, seeing their families and friends even less. And they will receive nothing extra for working on those days, when compared to before the Fair Work decision.

Then we have Senator Xenophon's position, which is similar to a recent thought bubble from Senator Abetz—the bizarre idea that, by cutting the wages of new employees only, existing workers will not be worse off. How do these senators propose to regulate such a move to ensure that no existing Sunday employee loses shifts to new employees? That is the question for them. It will not be just a cut of 25 or 50 basis points to their penalty rates; their Sunday pay is likely to drop to zero as they are priced out by new entrants. And what if an employee moves jobs once, twice, three times, which is quite often the case? At what point is their take-home pay no longer protected? No, we should not phase in this decision for new employees only; we should not phase in this decision at all. The best way to stop this decision from taking effect is to give full support to this bill. The position put forward in this bill is the simplest, it is the fairest and it is the only option that can be supported, going forward.

What is often forgotten in all of this by those opposite is that $30 or $70 a week might not seem like much, but, for people who rely on penalty rates, for families on low and middle incomes, a cut of between $30 or $70 a week is the difference between scraping by to make ends meet and keeping your head above water. In the case of working Sundays and public holidays, it is also about compensation for missing the most precious occasions with your family and friends. For low- and middle-income Australians who rely on penalty rates, the extra cash they get for working on the weekend is necessary, but many would give it back for memories shared with loved ones on weekends.

Coupled with the government's continual cuts to family payments and welfare measures, this move by the government to cut penalty rates will drive more people below the poverty line. It is mean, it is nasty and it is unnecessary. It will not create jobs. It will not improve the lives of low- and middle-income Australians. It will simply deliver greater returns to business owners.

For thousands of people across the country, particularly those in outer suburbs, small towns and the regions, like people in my home region of the north-west and west coast of Tasmania, penalty rates are vital for their families. In north-west Tasmania, around one-third of families are experiencing rental stress. In comparison, in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, where the Prime Minister lives, only around one in 10 families are experiencing rental stress, despite the high rents in Sydney. Many of the families experiencing rental stress in north-west Tasmania rely on family tax benefits and penalty rates to make ends meet. This cut to penalty rates, coupled with the low wages growth over the past few years and this government's cuts to family payments, will only make this stress more pointed.

This cut to penalty rates will severely impact regional communities right across the country. Workers who rely on penalty rates typically spend all or most of their income within their community's economy. They buy hardware, clothes, food and fuel. A cut of around $70 a week is $70 less that each worker will have to spend in their local shops. Add that up across a community where 500 people are set to have their Sunday penalty rates cut, and that is tens of thousands of dollars a year less going to local shops. It is bad for jobs. It is bad for workers. So what is the purpose of this decision?

When this decision was handed down, my local newspaper, the Burnie Advocate ran an editorial in favour of the decision. They used the headline 'Penalty rates winners must not be sidelined'. The editorial attempted to argue that the unemployed and underemployed, as well as those who want cafes and shops open on a Sunday, were the winners from the decision. As I have argued and will continue to argue, at best the so-called benefits to the unemployed and underemployed are theoretical; at worst they come at the expense of existing workers. In regards to cafes and shops opening on a Sunday, the author of the editorial would have done well to read the decision: the relevant award for cafes was not amended by the Fair Work Commission, so how could it be relevant? And, in retail, some shops may open on a Sunday, but, with most people spending time out of our CBDs on weekends, who knows if the wage cut will matter anyway? I would have thought the major driver would be that the turnover on a Sunday would not justify opening for many smaller shops. The cut to penalty rates of 25 to 50 percentage points will mean a lot to the worker who is currently working, but will it really be enough to encourage the shop owner to open or to extend their hours?

The comments on TheAdvocate's Facebook page after the editorial were quite insightful as to the community's view of this proposed cut to the take-home pay of workers. I hope Senator Duniam in particular, whose office is located on the north-west coast of Tasmania, paid attention to the comments. The article was on 24 February, if anyone cares to take a look. I do not recall any comments being in support of the editorial. If there were, they were drowned out significantly by people talking about their personal circumstances in relying on penalty rates, or talking about the flaws in the logic that the journalist attempted to employ. The overwhelming majority did not believe that the decision would create jobs or make it easier for people who are working on a weekend. The clear majority told it as I see it: people will either lose take-home pay or have to work longer hours to make ends meet. A more appropriate headline for the story would have been 'Penalty rate losers must not be forgotten'.

The day after the article ran, the member for Braddon, Justine Keay, and I were joined by 32 union and Labor Party members from across the north-west coast at the Beach Hotel in Burnie. We went to the Beach Hotel because their licensee, Ben, has made the brave decision to not pass on the cut to the award wages of his staff—and I commend Ben for his leadership. Thank you to chefs Di and Jess from the Beach, who joined Justine and me for a story in the newspaper. Di said that she felt for young workers who need that Sunday rate. 'It helps them live,' she said. Jess said that a cut to rates will affect staff morale at other businesses. She said, 'Why should we give up our weekends if it's not worth it?'

It is really important to note that the retail, fast-food, pharmacy and hospitality industries are staffed mostly by women. The gender wage gap in this country is still at 18 per cent. Yet instead of boosting the wages of low-paid working women, instead of seeking to reduce that wage gap, this government is going to stand by and let women's wages be cut. Well, there is no way Labor is going to stand by and let that happen. This bill will protect women working in those industries by ensuring that they can provide the basics for their families after working all weekend and missing birthdays, sports matches and other special events.

The facts are that inequality is at a 75-year high, wages growth is at a 20-year low and almost 5,000 full-time jobs have been lost in Tasmania over the last year, yet we have Prime Minister Turnbull and Premier Will Hodgman cheering this wage cut. The performances of the Premier and the Prime Minister in this debate have been shameful. In Tasmania, we already have severe skills shortages across a number of the industries affected by this decision. What we need is for our Prime Minister and our Premier, Will Hodgman, to have plans to improve skills and jobs, not a plan to cut those wages. What we need is better support for our TAFEs and our apprentices. What we need is a proper fibre National Broadband Network to connect every community in the nation. What we do not need are cuts to the take-home pay of working Australians.

This bill seeks to draw a line in the sand on workers' take-home pay. If the commission can cut Sunday and public holiday penalty rates in the hospitality, fast food, retail and pharmacy awards then there is every chance that nurses, firefighters, aged-care workers and others can expect the Prime Minister to support their wages being slashed as well. It is why we need all parties to get behind working Australians and support this bill. We need all parties to put behind them past comments and votes and to vote to ensure that the take-home pay of Australian workers is not cut.

It will be interesting to see where the Nick Xenophon Team land on this bill, for on Monday afternoon this week they were missing in action. The motion on Monday afternoon is an indication that the Xenophon team are, again, the deciding vote. Senators Xenophon, Kakoschke-Moore and Griff were notably absent on Monday. Where were they? As a result of their absence, Senator Cameron's motion was lost. This bill gives the Xenophon team a great opportunity to right that wrong. I hope that the Xenophon team senators move on from their attempt to have it both ways on penalty rates and get behind not only South Australian workers but all other workers around the nation.

I am firmly of the belief that workers should never face a cut to their pay and conditions. It is a basic principle of our workplace relations system that, as productivity increases and as our economy grows, workers should receive wage increases that reflect their invaluable contribution to their employer and the ever-increasing costs they face to buy goods and services. Never should a worker face a wage cut.

What is particularly galling is that wages are currently flatlining in this country. Wages rose less than two per cent over the past year, and underemployment is already at 8½ per cent, one of the highest levels in recent years. This underemployment is already placing pressure on wage growth as competition for work reduces workers' bargaining power. This reduction in penalty rates will be the double whammy on working Australians of slow overall wages growth coupled with cuts to penalty rates, so the cuts to penalty rates are even more savage than they might have been at a time of moderate or high wage growth.

Also, this week the government did a secret, grubby deal with the self-styled workers' and battlers' friends Senator Hanson, Senator Hinch and Senator Xenophon, a deal that will make workers, students and battlers worse off. I hope that Senators Hanson, Hinch and Xenophon have a long, hard think about that grubby deal. I hope that Senator Xenophon and Senator Hinch think about why they were part of the same sneaky deal as Senator Hanson and One Nation, because, after that grubby deal, how can any of those senators have any credibility whatsoever when they say that they care about workers and battlers? They do not care at all.

With this bill, they can come into this place and right that wrong. They can come into this place and vote for this bill instead of voting to cut, cut and cut. Instead of supporting a government that is hell-bent on making the lives of working Australians even harder, they can vote to ensure that the Fair Work Commission does not have the capacity to cut the take-home pay of Australian workers.

This bill represents clearly the two competing visions between the Labor and Liberal parties, the alternate governments of this country. On one side, we have the Labor vision that, if you look after the working and middle class; if governments provide a strong safety net, including proper family payments and through decent wages, including penalty rates and a strong minimum wage; if governments give our children the best chance at school through targeted, needs based funding; and if there is a healthy, well-funded Medicare, it does not matter how rich you are or how rich your parents are, because this Australian society is about a fair go for all, where hard work is rewarded. And, if you fall on hard times, you are not persecuted as being weak but supported to bounce back, bigger and even better.

On the other hand, there is the flawed trickle-down economics of the Liberal-National-One Nation coalition, an idea that, if you take from the poorest and the middle and give tax cuts and handouts to business, somehow the magic pudding will trickle down into the bowls of the poor and the middle class and keep them full at night. It is a flawed approach that has failed in Australia. It has failed in America. It has failed in Great Britain. Cutting wages of workers will not deliver a better standard of living, and it will not create jobs.

In that, I support the bill, and I urge all in this place to support the bill.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to this debate on the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill 2017. I want to talk about umpires in various industries—people who make decisions and bodies that are set up. In 1982 we had a terrible drought. It was widespread right throughout New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia. I do not know how it was in the west. In August 1982, the Australian Workers' Union through the shearers went on strike for more money. That was their right, but the problem was that we had ewes heavily in lamb, and we had to get the wool off them. You cannot let your ewes lamb in full wool. They will get down, and they will not get up; it is as simple as that. When the strike went on, my brother, I and a couple of friends went on shearing. Then the union finished the strike and came back to work. In October 1982, the shearers of the AWU went on strike again. My late dad said: 'Next time they go on strike, sack them. I have had enough.' The sheep were poor and the drought was so severe that we had to get those sheep shorn.

In March 1983 the umpire made a decision to allow wide combs to be used in the shearing industry. The old narrow combs were about 2½ inches wide. They were convex, which means the centre of the teeth would often scratch the sheep and you would cut them a lot more. The wide combs were introduced, and the umpire said, 'You can use these if you wish too if the boss agrees and the shearers agree.' So we started using wide combs, and a hell of a blue erupted. It was March 1983, and we had to sack our shearers, which ended friendships. My brother, Peter, was a great mate of Wayne Murray, the AWU rep. Wayne used to shear for us. Peter had to go and tell him he was no longer employed It caused a huge amount of division.

Of course, the AWU, then led by Ernie Ecob, just promoted the disturbance, disruption and division. We stuck to the umpire's decision, and here we are all these years later. Every shearer uses a wide comb. Narrow combs do not exist. The argument then was that, if you allow wide combs to come in, they will break the award down and they will pay you less. That was never going to happen, because the umpire made decisions about the pay rates as well. You are never going to have the pay rates go down for shearers. Every cent a shearer earns they deserve, I can assure you from experience.

And the division was terrible. We had the police involved, blues in the pubs, threats to burn shearing sheds down, black banding our wool—you name it. It was really ugly because one side would not accept the umpire's decision. And we have moved on. I do not think you will find a shearer now in the AWU. They have their own organisation. They simply get on, work hard and do their job—and do a magnificent job. I think the first export Australia had after European settlement was a bale of wool. It is good to see the record wool prices back now after the crash of the early nineties with the oversupply. We used to have 180 million sheep. We now have just 70 million sheep in Australia.

So that was the experience for me. Of course, Acting Deputy President Sterle, you would be well aware that a separate umpire—the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal—made a decision last year that on 4 April a pay rate for owner-drivers had to come in. What happened then? The Transport Workers Union asked the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal to delay that order until October. The ATA and Nat Roads, trucking organisations, along with the government asked to delay it till 1 January this year. A court order delayed it. Then the Transport Workers Union went to the court and had that delay overturned. What happened then? The government got together with some support from the crossbenches and abolished the tribunal, because 35,000 owner-driver truckies had their families' future put at risk. If the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal had listened to the TWU and listened to others, it would probably still be there today.

Here we have an umpire now established as Fair Work Australia. They were put in by Labor and the Greens in government. I am just amazed that Senator Urquhart is blaming the Turnbull-Joyce government for their decision. We did not establish Fair Work Australia; those opposite did in government. I remember being in here when the former Prime Minister was here as a minister celebrating the passing of the bill.

Penalty rates are damaging and severe to small business, but they are also essential to workers. Nurses working night shifts, police working through the night, the ambos, the fireys—all those people who do that shift work deserve to be paid more for the hours they work. But I said to a publican only a few months ago: 'Why didn't you open on Easter Monday? Why'd you shut your pub in a small country town?' He said: 'Simple as this, Wacka: I had to bring three people in to work. They were going to cost me $70 an hour.'

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

Yes, it is a small country pub, Senator Bilyk. You probably do not understand about small business and small country pubs.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Of course I understand. I'm from Tasmania. Of course I understand a small country pub.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don't blame Tasmania because you do not understand it.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Of course I understand it.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I continue now?

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ignore the interjection.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will ignore the interjection. That is a very good piece of advice. I will take that advice on board and I will ignore it, because they are still barking over there.

So this publican said to me: 'I had to bring three people in for seven hours. That was $500 each person cost with wages, workers comp and superannuation.' He said, 'My gross takings for the day'—gross—'were about $2½ thousand.' That is the gross takings, so he said, 'I would lose $1,000 if I opened my pub on Easter Monday,' so the pub did not open. No-one got any work, the boss did not make any money and he had the day off with his wife. As John Laws has said for decades, 80 per cent of something is better than 100 per cent of nothing. In the case of this pub on Easter Monday, there was nothing. No-one earned any money.

I am quite amazed at the attack because, as I said, Fair Work Australia was set up by Labor and the Greens when they were in government. It is just amazing. The umpire has made a decision. The Fair Work Commission was set up by the Labor government in 2009. The commission was tasked by Labor to review all awards every four years. Those over there commissioned the review every four years. You got it. This decision is part of the four-yearly review of modern awards as established by the Labor government in 2009. The Minister for Workplace Relations in 2013, Bill Shorten, amended the Fair Work Act specifically to require the commission to consider penalty rates as part of that process. Mr Shorten induced the commission to consider penalty rates as part of this process. Labor appointed all members of the commission who made the penalty rates decision. I will repeat that. Labor appointed all the members of the commission who made the penalty rates decision, so Mr Shorten owns this decision. We see that he is now the one complaining about what he constructed with the support of the Greens. That umpire has now made a decision.

Recently Mr Shorten said he would accept the decision of the umpire. No, he will not. He is now protesting and introducing legislation to change it. So get the facts straight. The Labor-Greens alliance in government established the Fair Work Commission, they made sure the rates are reviewed every four years and now the same lot will not accept the decision of what they established. I find that quite amazing. It is amazing what Senator Cash put out on small business yesterday.

Let us have a look at some hypocrisy on penalty rates. You often see family-owned news agencies open every Sunday morning. In country towns especially you see people going down to the paper shop to get their papers and have a chat to the locals. What is the rate for a family-owned news agency on a Sunday? $37.05 per hour, which has been the award penalty rate since 2014-15. But look at Officeworks; what is their Sunday rate? $7 an hour less—$30.05 per hour—

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What does the 'better off overall' clause say?

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A union agreement—so the big end of town get their labour $7 an hour cheaper than a small business—

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's not true.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is a fact, and I am sure the truth hurts, Senator Bilyk. If the truth hurts, you just have to take it on board. What is the flexibility for a small business as far as these weekend rates go? None. There is no flexibility. The flexibility for big business was established by Labor. Yes, they have the flexibility. I want to quote some of what the Ai Group have said. In a letter to me, they said:

First, penalty rates are not being abolished.

And that is a fact. The rates are not being abolished, and people deserve to be paid more when working inconvenient days, especially holidays. They go on:

The Sunday weekend penalty rates for Level 1 fast food workers will be aligned with the Saturday rate of 125% for permanent employees and 150% for casuals. This is a relatively modest reduction from 150% and 175% respectively. Even higher penalties will apply to fast food employees classified at Levels 2 and 3. The public holiday penalty rate will be adjusted to 225% for permanent employees and 250% for casuals. A similar modest reduction.

Second, the adjustment in Sunday penalty rates will be phased-in over at least two annual increments, commencing on 1 July this year. The incremental adjustment in Sunday penalty rates will occur on the same day that employees will receive a minimum wage increase through the Commission's Annual Wage Review.

And when a pay rise comes through, the umpire will put it through, and business will pay it. They have to, just like we did in the shearing industry. When the award was changed and the pay rate was increased the employers paid it. The Ai Group say:

Third, penalty rates for nurses, firefighters and indeed all workers are not under any threat whatsoever. The Commission's decision only concerns fast food, retail and hospitality industry workers. There are some unique issues in these industries and no-one is suggesting that penalty rates for nurses or firefighters should be changed.

I have a lot to do with small business, being involved in farming small business all my life, and this is what has been happening. I will give you an example. When the school kids would finish their day of schooling and go and work at a local business, the business had to pay them a minimum of three hours. They would only work an hour and a half, so what would happen? One, the business would not employ them, which was a terrible situation when youngsters, 14-year-olds and 15-year-olds, would get their first job, as all of my three children did. They learn a work ethic and learn about getting paid and learn to save some money. The rule used to be that you had to employ them for three hours, so businesses were doing one of three things. Firstly, they would not employ them. Secondly, they would employ them for an hour and a half over two days and then say, 'Here's your three hours wage,' which was wrong. Thirdly, they would simply pay them cash and not put it through the books. That is what happens. That has been changed, thankfully, for the youngsters. If they do an hour and a half's work now they get paid.

Likewise in businesses like the coffee shop in Sydney. What happens if on Sunday they cannot afford to pay the casual rates? Firstly, the proprietors run the shop for the day. If you get out to country pubs on the weekends, who is running the pub on a Sunday? It is the publican and his wife, and they do not employ people or employ very few. The proprietors will run their business with very few or no people employed. Secondly, they will not open a business if they are going to lose money. Thirdly, they will take the illegal option and say to some university student who is wanting some cash on the side, 'Come down to work for me on Sunday morning and I'll pay you $30 an hour cash.' It happens. I know it happens and business knows it happens. As John Laws says, 'Eighty per cent of something is better than 100 per cent of nothing'—as I said, they simply do not open the business. Business is there to make profit. They are not a charity. In fact, business derives the nation's wealth. Businesses employ people, and they pay taxes and that is what keeps the government going. The more you harm business, the more it will bring our living standards down in this country.

I am a big fan of the Pharmacy Guild. Let me tell you what the Pharmacy Guild has said, where they welcome the Fair Work Commission's penalty rate decisions. I will quote their media release:

The Pharmacy Guild welcomes the Fair Work Commission decision on penalty rates which is reasonable, balanced and evidence-based.

This was all done by the Labor Party and the Greens, by the way. Remember, they established it and they ordered the commission to review the penalty rates. The commission has made a decision, and now the very bodies, the Australian Labor Party and the Greens, who established this, are the ones complaining the most.

The Pharmacy Guild says:

Once implemented, this decision will help enable community pharmacies to continue to provide access to vital medicines and other services across weekends and public holidays.

The commission ruled today that 7am-9pm Sunday penalty rates for full and part-time pharmacy employees will be reduced from 200 per cent to 150 per cent and for casuals from 225 per cent to 175 per cent. The rates for public holidays have been reduced from 250 per cent to 225 per cent for full and part-time pharmacy employees, and from 275 per cent to 250 per cent for casuals.

On public holidays, 275 per cent is a big bonus. That is two and three-quarter times the hourly rate. A spokesman for the Pharmacy Guild said the Guild welcomed the decision as a sensible way forward that balances—and I underline 'balances'—the interests of patients, pharmacy staff and local community pharmacy small businesses. They are small businesses and they have suffered. We have even seen pharmacies going into receivership, with administrators and liquidators selling them up. That is something I have never seen in my life. They are a small business and in many respects they do it tough. They go on to say:

It has never been in anyone's interest for pharmacies to be unable to open on Sundays or public holidays.

How true that is. I will repeat it:

It has never been in anyone's interest for pharmacies to be unable to open on Sundays or public holidays.

This decision will help pharmacies to meet community expectations that they will be able to access vital health services seven days a week. I am familiar with this. Just recently my wife had a terrible cold and had to get some medication. Luckily, at 6 o'clock on the Saturday or Sunday afternoon she went into the local pharmacy and got the medication she required on the recommendation of a very good friend and ophthalmologist, Professor Minas Coroneo.

I find it amazing that Mr Shorten and the Labor Party, the huge critics of this whole program, are the ones who established it. Let us look at Mr Shorten's form on penalty rates. When he was the leader of the AWU, Mr Shorten reduced or removed penalty rates for some of Australia's lowest paid workers. I will give you an example. Workers at Clean Event were stripped of all penalty rates under Mr Shorten, as the AWU boss. Workers at Clean Event were stripped of all penalty rates with no compensation under a 2006 agreement for which Mr Shorten was responsible as National Secretary of the AWU. So they were stripped of their penalty rates under Mr Shorten's leadership with no compensation.

The Melbourne and Olympic Parks Trust agreement approved by Mr Shorten in 2001 and 2003 stripped workers of all penalty rates and overtime except a 125 per cent penalty rate for work performed between 1 am and 6 am. So exactly when does Mr Shorten support and when does he oppose cuts to penalty rates? As boss of the AWU he instigated the cuts with no compensation. Now he, along with his team over there, with the Greens, is crying crocodile tears about exactly what he has done to the lowest paid workers in this country. People wonder why politicians are branded with the term 'hypocrisy'. This is amazing.

You over there established the Fair Work Commission. You over there said that they would have a review every four years of penalty rates. That has been done. The umpire has made a decision and here you are crying crocodile tears about what you established and what you have done while your leader, when secretary of the AWU, was responsible for some of the lowest paid income earners in our nation getting a pay cut and having their penalty rates removed with absolutely no compensation. This is just amazing.

I go back to where I started. The umpire has made a decision, just like in the shearing industry when we had the wide comb dispute. It was a terrible fight. It is something I do not wish to raise, because there are sad memories of when we burnt friendships. We were good friends in the shearing sheds but we ended up political enemies over an umpire's decision. On one side was the Australian Workers Union, the very place where Mr Shorten comes from, which was then led by Ernie Ecob. He went to Dubbo, held meetings and told them all to go on strike. The union reps and the union bosses still got paid, but the shearers never got paid when they were on strike. We just went and shore more sheep. The dispute was terrible.

So the umpire is there. The umpire has been set up. You set it up. You abide by the umpire's decision, as Mr Shorten said he would. If you do not, then you are just wallowing in hypocrisy.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill 2017 before the Senate today is very important because it seeks to protect the take-home pay of some of this nation's lowest paid workers. I am disappointed that the Senate did not support Labor's motion to bring this bill on for debate yesterday when they had the opportunity, instead giving priority to the government's Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill. This bill is very worthy of the support of this chamber. As the Leader of the Labor Party, Mr Bill Shorten, said in the House:

… some issues in this parliament … are complex and … some … are dead simple. This parliament has never had a more straightforward choice than it does today. This parliament can vote with Labor to protect … the take-home pay of … 700,000 of our working Australians … or it can vote to cut wages in retail, hospitality, pharmacy and fast food.

It is just that easy.

I often wonder if those on the other side of the chamber have ever had to rely on penalty rates—not just get them while working a part-time job while living at home but actually rely on them. We are not just talking about students or young people, but 700,000 people. Mothers, fathers, carers and primary breadwinners: these are the people we are talking about. They really do need these penalty rates and the security that those penalty rates offer. They know that the extra rate on Sunday will allow them to pay the gas or electricity bill or to put new tyres on the car. They rely on them to pay for school supplies or new uniforms or to make sure there are a few dollars in the bank account if they ever need to go to the doctor. If those opposite ever had to rely on penalty rates, they would never accept them being cut. If those opposite really understood, they would side with our lowest paid workers and make their lives a little easier. They would vote with Labor to support this bill today.

As a member of Labor's Fair Work Taskforce I have heard first-hand from some of the Tasmanian people whose lives clearly demonstrate that penalty rates are no luxury. Carol is a receptionist who works 15 hours a week on a three-week rotating cycle. For this she earns $20,000 each year, with the penalty rate component accounting for 25 per cent of that amount. Carol supports a child and a profoundly deaf mother. She did not seek out working those penalty rate times—that is what is required of the job—and sometimes the hours are not convenient for her. But work is hard to get, especially in Tasmania. It took her 62 job applications over 33 weeks to find this position and she wants to hold onto it. Nobody in their right mind would envy Carol or think she was a profit murderer, but her employer once referred to her penalty rates as money 'supporting her lifestyle'. Penalty rates do not support an extravagant lifestyle; they support Carol's life. It is people like Carol, often in part-time or casual work at low rates of pay, that Labor is absolutely determined to stand up for. But they are not the only ones negatively impacted by penalty rate cuts.

What is possibly the most disappointing aspect of all of this is that, if these cuts proceed, if those opposite do not support Labor's bill, then on the exact same day as workers get a pay cut millionaires will get a tax cut. A retail worker on $40,000 will lose up to 10 per cent of their income for the year while someone on $1 million will get an extra $17,000 a year. Tell me if that is fair. It is completely and utterly unfair. Labor does not accept the failed, flawed and sterile view of this country that says you reward the very top and hope that something trickles down to everyone else. If we went out onto the streets of Hobart or Launceston, or Triabunna or Queenstown, or down in the Huon and asked people whether millionaires should get a $17,000 tax cut while our lowest paid workers gets a $4,000 pay cut, people would be utterly outraged. However, this is what is going to happen on 1 July 2017.

It is clear to see that the government's priorities are utterly wrong. They have looked at what is the right thing to do for the Australian people and then they have completely turned their backs. The last thing this country needs, the last thing Australians need, is a cut to household budgets which are already often stretched to their last dollar. When corporate profits are at a record high and wage growth is at a record low it is not the time to give multinationals a tax cut and workers a pay cut. The unfairness at the heart of the Liberal-Nationals economic plan is in plain sight. This is what it includes: a $50 billion tax cut for multinationals making record profits; a $7.4 billion bonus for big banks jacking up interest rates; tax cuts for millionaires; and a pay cut for working families.

The other policy agendas the government is supporting—things like cutting funding for the arts, watering down race-hate laws and backing away from fully funding Gonski—just show how out of touch they are. Labor will fight this unfairness. A mum working on Sundays in retail does not take any comfort from hearing the Prime Minister shout about Bill Shorten and Labor. One of the things I find really amusing is that those on the other side think that if they shout it somehow makes them more right. I think there is a competition between Senator Cash and Senator Nash about who can be the most theatrical in their shouting. It does make me laugh. Embarrassing as it is to say this, you should watch question time in the Senate just to see the theatrics. They obviously all go to the same theatrical school.

But what that mum working on Sundays in retail wants to hear is what the government will do to protect her penalty rates. A young person working in hospitality who stands to lose $77 a week is not remotely interested in the politics of finger-pointing and blame. Australians facing a cut to their penalty rates just want someone to fight for them. And that is exactly what Labor will do. Those opposite say that we should just accept the decision of the fair work umpire. We absolutely respect the Fair Work Commission but they have made the wrong decision here and we will not stand idly by while working people pay the price.

We would take the government's point of view much more seriously if it was not tainted by the utter hypocrisy they showed last year when they abolished the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. Between 2012 and 2016 the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal set pay and conditions for road transport drivers in the road transport industry. It did this by making orders for the people covered by the system, as well as approving road transport collective agreements and dealing with disputes. Some of my current and former Senate colleagues worked very hard to fight for the implementation of the tribunal. In fact, truck drivers and their representatives fought for 20 years for the creation of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal—and I would like to mention Senator Alex Gallacher and Senator Glenn Sterle in particular for their fight to ensure the tribunal came into force.

The tribunal handed down the Contractor Driver Minimum Payments Road Safety Remuneration Order 2016—which the government was opposed to. So what did the government do? Did they just sit back and accept the result? Did they say, 'Oh well, we'll accept the advice of the umpire'? No. They abolished the tribunal in its entirety! They rushed legislation through this place and the other place and scrapped the whole thing. Can you believe that? They refused to ensure truckers are properly paid—which is shown to improve road safety. It is therefore rank hypocrisy for those opposite to call for Labor to just accept this decision of the Fair Work Commission. We know it is a bad decision and an unfair decision. It is bad for workers, it is bad for families, it is bad for the economy—and we on this side of the chamber utterly reject it.

I would just like to take a few moments to talk about the importance of penalty rates to the broader economy. In 2015, research compiled by the McKell Institute, on behalf of the Shop Assistants Union and United Voice, revealed the effects of the partial or complete abolition of penalty rates on workers. I would like to thank these unions—the SDA, who I know do fantastic work in Tasmania protecting the rights of shop workers, and United Voice, who look after bar staff and some early childhood educators, among others—for commissioning this study.

The study estimates that a partial abolition of penalty rates in the retail and hospitality sectors would result in workers in Tasmania losing between $31.5 million and $58.7 million a year and a loss in disposable income of between $15 million and $29.4 million a year to local economies in Tasmania. A full abolition of penalty rates in the retail and hospitality sectors would result in workers in Tasmania losing between $78.9 million and $131.6 million a year and a loss in disposable income of between $38.2 million and $64.1 million a year to local economies in Tasmania. It would be an utter disaster for the Tasmanian economy if there was $131.6 million dollars less in Tasmanian workers' pockets to spend in their community.

The Catholic Commission for Employment Relations rejected the argument that cutting workers' penalty rates would result in increased job opportunities. Its executive director, Tony Farley, said back in 2015:

As a major employer, we simply don't agree with the argument that stripping workers of their take-home pay is going to be good for business or for employment.

He continued, adding:

There's no evidence whatsoever to support the claims that cutting low-paid workers' pay even further is going to be beneficial for us as a nation.

People can't spend money they don't have and cutting pay ends up hitting businesses between the eyes.

The Catholic Commission for Employment Relations, the ACCER, and the Catholic Commission for Employment Relations, the CCER, also made a submission to the Fair Work Commission's penalty rates case. They told the FWC that they:

… do not support the PC recommendations to reduce Sunday penalty rates in the hospitality, entertainment, retail, restaurants and cafe industries or to provide greater consistency in weekend rates in those industries where that would result in rate reductions. We do not support the requirement for the FWC to implement the reductions through the award review process.

ACCER and CCER oppose the applications in the Penalty Rates Case to vary specific awards in the retail and hospitality sectors to reduce penalty rates, in particular reductions to Sunday rates. ACCER and CCER reject legislative and other attempts to abolish or reduce weekend penalty rates due to concerns about the negative impact on the incomes of vulnerable workers and the detrimental impact of unsociable working hours on rest, recreation, and family time.

Research by the University of South Australia found that the abolition of penalty rates will actually have a negative effect on businesses themselves. The research found that 62.2 per cent of workers would stop working non-standard hours, if penalty rates or additional pay were not offered. In particular, according to the University of South Australia research, employees with household incomes below $30,000 were less likely to continue working non-standard hours, if penalty rates were not offered. To put it simply: many businesses will be struggling for employees, if penalty rates are cut. The abolition of penalty rates may make it impossible for the business to open at all.

We know that those opposite like to attack unions—sometimes I think it is their reason for living. We know it, everyone that has watched this place for more than five minutes knows it—and they have said a lot during this debate about unions. But their attacks on the union movement have been exceptionally dishonest. Those opposite should be ashamed of their dishonesty, but I presume you would have to have a conscience to be ashamed of your dishonesty.

For over a decade, I was a union official for the Australian Services Union in Tasmania—a very fine union I am proud to support and to say that I was out there working hard to improve pay and conditions for membership. What those opposite haven't said—and what Senator Williams speaking previously did not speak about—is that when unions negotiate on behalf of workers, it is about making them better off overall. Taking the example of Sunday penalty rates in isolation completely ignores the benefits of the higher base rates of pay and better conditions. But that is what those opposite keep doing.

They love to talk about McDonalds—at McDonalds full-time senior weekly wages are up to $70 better than the award, because of union negotiations. And the EBA also delivers: guaranteed minimum shifts; family violence leave; compassionate leave and study leave. But the cut to penalty rates from the Fair Work Commission is just a pay cut. There is no compensation benefit of lifting the overall rate. The end result will be that people will work the same hours for less pay.

The Prime Minister either does not understand industrial relations or does not care about industrial relations. The Labor party does understand, and we do care about getting industrial relations right. It is the Labor Party and the union movement that have fought to get every employee every right at work they currently hold. I must admit: I have never had an employer come to me to suggest that they will improve the working rights of their workforce. I never once in 12 years of being a union official had the bosses come to me and say, 'We propose that we will give workers this in exchange for nothing'—never once.

It is the Labor Party and the union movement, as I said, that have fought to get every employee every right at work they currently hold. These include things like—let me remind people—penalty rates, sick pay, holiday pay, paid parental leave, work health and safety regulations. It is all down to the hard work of the union movement. Mr Turnbull and his friends opposite have only ever sought to cut pay and conditions.

I recently asked in this place whether those opposite were unknowing, or unfeeling, of the impacts their changes make on the most vulnerable in our society. I am sad to say that, given their continued and sustained attacks on the least well off in our society, supported by One Nation faction, I can only conclude that those opposite are fully aware of the hurt that these cuts cause, and they simply do not care.

Members of this place have a choice, as I have said, to vote with Labor to protect the take-home pay of working people or they can stand by and allow the harshest pay cut in living memory. You guys have talked the talk; now you have got to walk the walk. But if you go back to your states and say you care about workers—and I say this particularly to the Xenophon team; One Nation is just a faction, as I said, of the Liberal party, so I do not hold any hope that they will change their views—and yet you backed cuts to penalty rates, your words will ring very hollow.

I would like to finish by echoing Bill Shorten's words in the House:

There is a very clear decision to be made here. You can either vote to save the penalty rates—the Sunday pay rates—of young people, of women, of people in the regions and of workers who depend upon these penalty rates. You can vote to do that, or you can vote to endorse cutting them.

I call upon the Senate to pass Labor's legislation to protect our lowest-paid workers

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is great to follow Senator Bilyk, because she had a lot of interesting things to say and I wanted to respond to a couple of them before I got into other parts of my speech. Senator Bilyk was talking about the SDA. She was talking about what a wonderful union they are and that they had done this study about how cuts to penalty rates hurt. The SDA would know about that, because apart from Bill Shorten, the SDA would be the other contender for the world champion of cutting penalty rates.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Seselja, resume your seat, Yes, Senator Polley.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy President, I will just draw to your attention that, as this good senator would know, it is respectful to refer to other people in the other place with their correct titles. Those on the other side are always very quick—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Polley. I will remind Senator Seselja to address senators and others by their correct titles. Thank you.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely. It is interesting that Senator Polley did not address what I am saying about Mr Shorten, but I will address him by his correct title. Apart from Mr Shorten, the SDA would have to be close to the world champions. I was once an SDA member, believe it or not, in the 1990s, when I worked for Woolworths.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You should be proud.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They sold me out on penalty rates. I think we got time and a half in the nineties on a Sunday. I was young. I was 19 and I joined the SDA in good faith, hoping they would do me a good deal. It turned out like so many others in the union movement and like Mr Shorten: they sold me and thousands of other workers out as well.

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Seselja, please resume your seat. Yes, Minister. Order!

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy President, we have just listened to a contribution from the other side and we have respectfully listened—

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

I certainly have. We have listened respectfully in silence.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just resume your seat, please, Minister. The minister has risen to make a point of order. He has the right to be heard in silence. Thank you, Minister. Have you finished your point of order? Yes. Senators have the right to be heard in silence, so I ask people to try and not interject constantly.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The cacophony on the other side, I suspect, is because of the sensitivity from former union leaders like Senator Bilyk. I do not know if Senator Bilyk sold out workers when she was negotiating. I have no evidence, one way or another. We know that Mr Shorten and the SDA did. Senator Bilyk may have been one of the good union leaders who did not sell workers down the river. I make no comment.

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

I do not know, Senator Bilyk. You can answer for yourself but when it comes to—

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

They are very sensitive.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Seselja. Resume your seat.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy President, just a point of clarification. Senator Seselja, I was not actually a union leader. I was never a leader, but I was a union official.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Bilyk, that is not a point of order. Thank you. Resume your seat.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is good to be corrected. Senator Bilyk was not a union leader. She was a union official. Whether as a union official she sold workers down the river, I do not know. I guess that is something she will have to answer for, and I have no evidence one way or another in terms of Senator Bilyk's time as a union official, but we do have evidence in relation to the SDA, a union that was mentioned by Senator Bilyk. She said that they do a great job for workers. We have had a few examples in recent times where it has been highlighted that perhaps they did not do such a good job. I pointed to the fact that back in the nineties it was time and a half for Woollies' workers on a Sunday, so less than the award, and that was more than 20 years ago. In August 2016, we heard from Australian workers in retail and fast food outlets including Woolworths, Hungry Jack's and KFC being underpaid more than $300 million a year in a national wages scandal centred on a deal struck with the shop assistants union. That is $300 million in one sector where workers were being underpaid because of deals done by one of your favourite unions, Senator Bilyk, the SDA. If you are going to talk about the SDA—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Seselja, I remind you to direct your remarks to the Chair.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Of course, Deputy President. If Senator Bilyk, through you, Deputy President, is going to talk about the SDA, we might point out what the SDA and other unions have done for some of their workers. It goes on. The Fairfax Media investigation uncovered new evidence of some of Australia's biggest and best-known employers paying many of their employees less than the award under deals done with the SDA—Coles, McDonald's, Woolworths, Hungry Jack's and KFC—a number of businesses. This goes to the cosy relationship that the Labor Party and large unions have with elements of big business. There is no doubt about it. It has always been the case that they will always choose to do a cosy deal that suits union leaders and that might suit some big businesses over workers and small businesses who always end up coping it.

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

Senator Bilyk might think it is funny that small businesses and workers cop it, but we do not. In February 2016, we heard that the Fair Work Commission was told that the union representing low-paid workers at Coles stores knew some workers might be financially worse off under an agreement it struck with the supermarket giant but did not tell its members. An industrial officer for the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association also told the commission that the union knew some workers could be financially more worse off under the agreement than under the award when it signed a statutory declaration saying the agreement should be approved. The union that Senator Bilyk has chosen to rely on for evidence around penalty rates is a union that has systematically ripped off and sold out workers and systematically done deals that left workers worse off.

I need to respond to another point that was made by Senator Bilyk in this space. She claimed, in her contribution, that in fact when Mr Shorten, the SDA, the AWU and other unions are lowering the penalty rates, they are doing the workers a favour and that they are actually getting a better deal. Well, that is not true. Let's go through a couple of examples.

Under the McDonald's enterprise agreement, a part-time level 2 employee working a total of 20 hours during the day from Monday to Friday and six hours on Sunday would be $15 worse off in dollar terms under the agreement negotiated by the union than if they were paid under the Fast Food Industry Award. So a worker on the award is $15 better off. I wonder whether Senator Bilyk was happy with the deal under which a worker who worked 20 hours from Monday to Friday and a few hours on Sunday was left $15 worse off every week. It goes on. A part-time level 2 employee working two shifts of seven hours each between Monday and Friday and seven hours on Sunday will be $33 worse off. The union deal has left them $33 worse off. So they miss out on Sundays, but overall they have less money because of the deal negotiated by the paymasters of the Australian Labor Party, unions like the SDA. Further, a part-time level 2 employee only working weekends—seven hours each on Saturday and Sunday—would be $79 worse off under the agreement than if they were paid under the Fast Food Industry Award.

So there are more and more examples that we have seen of unions—big unions who fund the Labor party—not telling their workers that they are going to be worse off, and doing deals with large businesses that leave workers with less penalty rates on a weekend and less money in their pocket at the end of the week. Many of these workers, of course, have paid the union to represent them and cut their wages. That is what they have paid for. So they pay their weekly or fortnightly dues, and the SDA, or the AWU under Mr Shorten, go out and do dodgy deals which leave those workers, who are entitled to think that their union might be looking after them, much worse off. Any discussion around penalty rates needs to look at this fact.

Why would it be, do you think, that we would see these kinds of deals? There are a few theories, but before we get to the 'why' let's look at the disparity between large business and small business that the Labor Party supports, which makes it so difficult for many small and medium businesses who do not have the clout and cannot make the payments to unions to get them to commit to the deals that would lower costs for those businesses. Let's do the comparison. A bed and breakfast pays $10 an hour more than a five-star hotel. A five-star hotel in the CBD of Sydney would pay $10 an hour less than a bed and breakfast in a regional or outer suburban area. There are often pretty tight margins for a bed and breakfast, but they would pay $10 an hour more than a five-star hotel, normally owned by a multinational, often overseas owned—large companies. A family chicken shop must pay $8 an hour more than KFC. The Labor Party, of course, supports that. A family-owned takeaway pays $8 an hour more than McDonald's. A family greengrocer pays $5 an hour more than Woolworths. A pizza takeaway pays $8 more than Pizza Hut. A boutique clothes shop pays $7 more than David Jones. A family bookshop pays $8 more an hour than Target. A family newsagent must pay $7 more an hour than Officeworks. A family bottle shop pays $7 more an hour than Dan Murphy's, and a family hardware store must pay $5 an hour more than Bunnings.

So here we see the real-life experience when it comes to penalty rates. If you are working in a big business and you have a union agreement, which is ordinarily the case for these large businesses—Bunnings, Woolworths, Coles, McDonald's, KFC and any number of these other businesses—the penalty rates that are the subject of the decision of the Fair Work Commission were traded away a long time ago. So the bulk of workers who work for those large businesses have seen a reduction in their penalty rates a long time ago, and I pointed to some of those examples.

So what we are actually talking about is a range of small business that this decision would primarily apply to. It is worth looking at the situations for some of those small businesses. I have spoken to a number of these small businesses here in Canberra, such as local newsagents. Newsagents normally have a requirement to be open seven days a week. They do not have a choice as to whether to open on a Sunday. What ordinarily happens in those circumstances is that, because of the very high penalty rates, the family business owners normally work seven days a week. They will work on the Sunday, because they simply cannot afford the level of penalty rates that they have to pay but that some of the big businesses that they might be competing with in various ways do not have to pay. The Coles around the corner, which sells the newspaper and the like, has traded away penalty rates. Their penalty rates on a Sunday are much lower than the local newsagent has to pay. So what they end up doing, because they cannot close in many cases, is stay open. They do not have much of a family balance. They go in and work seven days.

So there are two impacts from that for that newsagent. One impact is on their family: it makes it just that bit harder for them to run a business and to have any sort of work-life balance. The second is on those in our community who are unemployed and looking for work and those who are underemployed. You might be working in the newsagent and only getting 15 hours during the week, and you would be pretty keen, perhaps, to get some Sunday shifts at time and three-quarters or time and a half, but that is simply not available, and what those newsagents choose to do in working for themselves puts more stress on them as a family and takes away the opportunity for the unemployed person to get a job or the underemployed person to pick up those extra five or seven hours that would make a big difference.

So these are some of the real-life impacts when you do not get the level of penalty rates right. No-one in this discussion argues that there should not be penalty rates. But the Fair Work Commission has looked at this independently and said there should be an adjustment to some penalty rates. I just make the point again that, for the big businesses dealing with the big unions, those penalty rates were traded away a long time ago. What would the motivation be for the unions to be doing this? What would the motivation be? We know what the motivation is because it was laid bare during the trade union royal commission about some of these corrupting payments—

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a joke! You are a joke!

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Polley can laugh at the corrupting payments, but these were some workers who seriously got sold out. Mr Shorten, in his role as a union leader, when he was selling out workers, did it for a pretty low price, it must be said. It did not take much in terms of payments to Bill Shorten's union to get him to wipe off hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially, in wages for the workers that he claimed to represent. I have laid out some of the examples of where large unions have left workers much worse off—not just lower penalty rates but worse off overall. If you are looking for examples of the motivation for that, let us look at Mr Shorten and his union.

Thiess John Holland paid AWU Victoria $300,000 plus GST whilst they built the EastLink freeway extension. The AWU issued false invoices to disguise the payments as training, back-strain research and AWU magazine advertisements. The false invoices—there is the guilty mind right there. They know these payments are dodgy. They know that, if their members knew about them, they would think they were dodgy. They are corrupting benefits, yet they were happy to accept them, but they certainly were not going to be transparent about them. They had to hide them because they knew—if you were to put it to the workers, 'Yes, we've been paid 300 grand, and, by the way, we've taken away some of your wages and conditions,' what do you think a worker would think? They would probably think that was corrupt, and they would be right.

ACI Operations paid AWU Victoria $500,000 while they laid off workers at their Spotswood glass-manufacturing factory. The AWU invoiced the payments as 'paid education leave'—again false; a guilty mind as they sold out workers under Bill Shorten and his union mates. Clean Event—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Seselja, I remind you once again to refer to those—

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed. It was Mr Shorten who sold out the workers. I do apologise. Mr Shorten sold out the workers for a pittance, it must be said. It was a very low price to get Mr Shorten to sell out workers. Clean Event saved tens of millions of dollars. Clean Event, as I understand it, normally worked almost exclusively on weekends and after hours. That was the work that Clean Event did. So they would have been expecting to pay some penalty rates for those unsociable hours, but they came up to Mr Shorten, and Mr Shorten was happy to help. He was happy to help save them tens of millions of dollars, and it did not take much. It took $75,000 to AWU Victoria to maintain the enterprise agreement, which saw the workers stripped of penalty rates, overtime and shift loadings. How many workers lost perhaps thousands of dollars a year? They would have lost thousands and thousands of dollars a year for Mr Shorten's union to get $75,000. They are not just corrupting; they are dirty deals done dirt cheap if I have ever seen them. Absolute dirty deals done dirt cheap—$75,000.

Unibilt paid Mr Shorten $30,000 for his 2007 election campaign manager—$32,000 while the company was negotiating an enterprise agreement with the AWU, for which Mr Shorten was national secretary. Of course, that was what helped him get into parliament. His first tilt at parliament was paid for, in part, by this kind of dodgy payment going back and forth: 'Don't worry; we'll sell the workers down the river. Don't worry about penalty rates. We'll get rid of all those.' But 32 grand for a campaign officer, who they called a research officer or something—they came up with some descriptor. He was on his campaign, so Mr Shorten's campaign was paid for and funded, in part, because of some of these deals.

It goes on. Chiquita Mushrooms paid AWU Victoria $25,000 whilst casualising its mushroom-picking workforce. Again the guilty mind of the AWU: they falsely invoiced the payments as 'paid education leave' and never disclosed the payments to the Chiquita employees.

Winslow Constructors paid AWU Victoria around $200,000. They had to pay a little more. It was a little bit of a higher bill when it came to Winslow for the sellout. They provided the union lists of employee names who were secretly signed up to the union. The AWU hid the payments again behind false invoices for OHS training, workplace inspections and similar. If you wanted motivation, there are half-a-dozen examples of the kind of motivation that leads some union leaders to sell out their workers.

Let us be crystal clear when it comes to the Labor Party talking about the rights of workers: they do not care about the rights of workers. If they cared about the rights of workers, they would not be taking money from the SDA, which has consistently sold out these workers. They would not be taking money from the AWU, which has consistently sold out these workers whilst receiving payments from some of those very big businesses. They would not care. They do not care if businesses pay employees less as long as the unions get their cut. As long as the unions can get a piece of the action and keep their inflated membership numbers and the money coming in, they do not give a stuff about workers. Anytime you hear Mr Shorten claiming to care about workers, remember who he is and what he did. It is all there in black and white in the royal commission, and Mr Shorten should be condemned for it. (Time expired)

David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill 2017. The bill would prevent the Fair Work Commission from varying an award if this is likely to reduce the pay an employee receives or the pay a potential employee could receive. This would prevent the Fair Work Commission from ever reducing any award wage, penalty rate or casual loading. This would cost jobs. It is bad enough that we still have so much government wage setting, but this would make the job of the government's wage setter nigh on impossible.

I oppose the bill, and I strongly suspect that Bob Hawke and Paul Keating also oppose the bill, because the bill is a betrayal of their legacy. Bob Hawke and Paul Keating spent years dismantling the idea that government sets your pay rate. They spent years dismantling the idea that wages should be the same across an industry. And they spent years dismantling the idea that if one wage goes up all wages go up. Because of the efforts of Hawke and Keating, we saw fewer people have the government set their wage over the 1990s and 2000s. This meant that pay rises increasingly depended on a worker's performance and the performance of the business they work for, rather than on government rulings covering the entire industry and economy.

But over the past decade more and more people have had the government set their wages. This is a result of Gillard's 'modern' awards, which ramped up award wages, leaving less room for businesses to pay above award wages. It is also the result of a rigid interpretation of the better-off-overall test in enterprise bargaining, which has made enterprise bargaining inflexible and therefore pointless.

With this bill, Mr Shorten and Labor want to further repudiate enterprise bargaining and further impose government wage-setting. It is backwards economics, and if Hawke and Keating were dead, they would be rolling in their graves.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill 2017, which will prevent the penalty rate cuts proposed by the decision of the Fair Work Commission from taking effect. The purpose of this bill is to amend the Fair Work Act 2009 so that the Fair Work Commission cannot vary a modern award to reduce the take-home pay of any employee. It will protect workers' take-home pay now and into the future.

In this debate we have heard from those on the other side some of the most unfounded and ridiculous comments in relation to penalty rates. Those from Senate Seselja were quite astounding. As usual, the minister, Senator Cash, in question time cherry picks from agreements that have been negotiated by various unions in the best interests of their members when they have been negotiating members' entire pay, not just Sunday penalty rates.

This bill ensures that modern awards cannot be varied to reduce the take-home pay of any employee. I do not think anybody expected that the Fair Work Commission would bring down a decision that reduced the take-home pay of some of the lowest paid workers in this country. It was certainly never envisaged that a modern award would be cut in the manner that the Fair Work Commission decision has proposed for these penalty rates. We never envisaged that but we should have, because we know the behaviour of those on the other side of the chamber. We know that this government has done nothing but attack the most vulnerable people in our community. It is in its DNA. It has always wanted to cut penalty rates, and it has succeeded in having the Fair Work Commission bring down this decision. But we on this side are not going to be in this place and not stand up and support those who need these penalty rates more now than ever before.

The Prime Minister and his Liberal colleagues campaigned for these cuts and they are responsible for 700,000 Australian workers nationally, and 40,000 Tasmanian workers, standing to lose $77 a week. That is a huge blow to the pay packet of Tasmania's lowest paid workers. It is also bad for our state's economy, because these workers will now have less money to spend. We know, as the government knows, that those people who earn the lowest wages in this country expend all that money. They do not use the money they receive in penalty rates to buy luxury items. They use that money to ensure that their kids can go on a school excursion. They spend their money in the local economy, so the coffee shops will continue and so that they are able to put food on the table by going to the supermarket. That is the real implication of the cut to penalty rates. It is not about these people saving up for a motor car. It is not about them spending it and wasting it, as those opposite purport, but it is about the benefits that penalty rates bring to those individuals and families and to the local economies and communities that rely on this money circulating within the economy. I can assure senators that when they go out for a Sunday coffee or lunch with their families while other people are working their coffee will not cost them any less and their meal will not cost them any less, because those establishments will not be reducing their prices.

We on this side will always stand up for those who are most vulnerable—it is in our DNA. We will always stand up for Australian workers, for the most vulnerable workers, who work hard for their families to save that bit of money to ensure that their kids have the same opportunities as everyone else. We are not going to abandon those people—not today, not ever. But those on the other side have campaigned against penalty rates for years and years. We are not going to go down without a fight; the Australian community expects us to stand up for them. We respect fairness in this country. We expect that everyone gets a fair go. We know already that this cut will not be just for the retail sector. It will not be just for pharmacy and it will not be just for takeaway outlets. We know that this decision poses a real danger to the area I have responsibility for—ageing and aged care. Aged care workers are some of the lowest paid workers in this country. They are the ones who look after our most vulnerable older Australians, and we know we cannot get enough of them to work in our sector. What does the threat of them losing their penalty rates say to older Australians?

It says, once again, that those on that side—Malcolm Turnbull and this government—do not care. They do not care about older Australians to the extent that they should. They do not care about the shortage that we have in the aged-care sector in trying to attract carers and people to work in the sector, because it is in their DNA to make sure that people stay down.

They look after the big end of town; they never look after workers.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Polley, your time has expired.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted. Debate adjourned.