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

I rise to continue my contribution on the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill 2017. This debate verifies and confirms how out of touch this government really is. Not only is this government joining with the decision that has been made to cut penalty rates for some of the most vulnerable and lowest-paid workers in this country, but it has continued its attack on Australian workers to the extent that it is almost laughable. The government come in here and try to defend themselves and say that the Prime Minister did not go on radio to confirm his support for cutting penalty rates. First they go after penalty rates and now they are trying to hold a minimum wage increase for the lowest-paid workers in this country.

In contrast to Labor's submission to the Fair Work Commission's annual wage review, the government's submission just lists arguments against increasing the minimum wage, including this argument, which states: 'increasing the national minimum wage is not an efficient way to address relative living standards or the needs of the low paid'. I would say to those people listening in the chamber and those reading the transcript that this shows once and for all that Malcolm Turnbull and his government do not care about Australian workers. Australian workers and their families have been neglected time and time again by this government. We know the attacks they have made on family payments.

The real issue here is that individuals rely on these penalty rates to be able to make their budgets balance at home. The money they get by having to work on Sundays and Saturdays is about ensuring that they are able to provide for their families, just like everyone else who may have better, higher-paying jobs. They have to make very tough decisions at times. Minister Cash has said in this place and also in the media that she believes this is only a minor or moderate impact on the people who will lose out when these penalty rates are cut. For the benefit of Minister Cash, government senators and others who are supporting penalty rate cuts: this money is about people being able to fill up their tank with fuel. It is about whether or not their children can get a new pair of school shoes. This is about whether or not they are able to meet their mortgage payments or their rent. These are real issues that these people have to deal with, time and time again.

On top of everything else that this government has done in relation to cutting family payments, we see now that this arrogant and out-of-touch government is again going after the very same people—those who earn the least amount of money. They are now saying that those hardworking Australians do not need a pay rise. I can assure you that, contrary to what those on the other side have contributed to this debate thus far, there will not be any new jobs created when they cut penalty rates. That just will not happen. What will happen is that those people who rely on penalty rates will in fact have to work longer to earn the same amount of money, which means they will be away from their families for longer periods of time. It will mean there will be increased pressure on students who are trying to work their way through university. They will have to make decisions that will impact on their ability to meet their university commitments. Quite clearly, this government does not understand. They do not want to understand that the attack that they are making just increases inequality in our community, and the sector this is going to impact the most will be women.

I want to talk a little bit about the real consequences of this penalty rate cut. We know and have spoken about it in this chamber time and time again that there will be over 700,000 Australians worse off. We know that in Senator Bilyk's and my state there will be at least 40,000 Tasmanians who will be worse off. Not one of the 700,000 Australians are going to be better off. Can you imagine that you have suddenly been made aware that you are going to have this enormous cut in your take-home pay? And the real impact is that it will take 17 years for you to get back to where your current wage is today. The thing that those on the other side do not understand is that when families are impacted and have a cut like this to their take-home pay they never make up the difference. They keep falling behind. They do not have any reserves. If their washing machine breaks down, they just do not have the money to go out and buy a new washing machine. We who sit in government and in this chamber do pretty well on a monthly basis when we get our pay cheques, but these people do not. If you have never had to walk in the shoes of somebody who has to scrape their dollars together to be able to buy milk at the end of the week or to be able to pay for their children to go on a school excursion, then you have no understanding.

This is confirmation of the arrogance and of how out of touch Mr Turnbull and his liberal government are. They just do not understand what is happening out there in the community. Realistically, they have the opportunity to support this legislation. We can vote on this, and I clearly believe that they will be the last people standing. They are alone in this debate, because there is no greater conversation going on in my community. I see this when I go out and talk to people. They are everyday people who are having to confront the issues of trying to balance their weekly budgets, trying to meet their mortgage and trying to ensure their kids get a good education.

They can vote in support of this bill and get a little bit of credibility back. Quite frankly, nobody in the community trusts this government because, no matter what they touch, it turns to stone. We have seen in here the cuts that they have tried to make in budget after budget after budget. I met with the registered nurses who work in the aged-care sector and heard first-hand about the dilemmas that they face because they really feel that their penalty rates are going to be attacked as well. It is very powerful when you have a mature woman crying when trying to explain to you what the real impact is going to be.

It is not just Labor and the crossbenchers talking to their community about the impact that this is going to have. The strongest voices in this debate are those people who are going to be directly impacted. If those on the other side continue to campaign to attack the lowest paid workers in this country and also attack the multicultural society that we have developed in this country, with the racist changes that they want to make to section 18C, they do so at their own peril. You cannot keep cutting health and education without having an impact. You cannot change the child-care system in this country, so that some of the most disadvantaged young kids will not have the same opportunities for early childhood education, without having an impact.

I read in the newspapers Mr Turnbull's response to all these genuine issues in the community that people raise with us day in and day out. We have been taking phone calls. My office has never been so busy with constituents after the attacks on families and the Centrelink debacle where you attacked one person after another and it was totally unfounded. You cannot keep doing this without there being a reaction. If you keep attacking the most vulnerable in the community, they will rise up and ensure that you are banished. People cannot take the pressure that this government is continually putting on them. We have the highest level of underemployment in this country. You have increased the debt. Every other senator who comes in here wants to blame the previous Labor governments, but the reality is that the buck stops with you guys. You have now been in government for four years. It is time to take responsibility for your own actions. The Prime Minister promised so much before the last election but has delivered absolutely nothing.

A government cannot walk away from their responsibility to ensure that we have a good, strong workforce and highly skilled Australians. We have lost the car industry. We have lost the skills that are so important to this country. Sooner or later you will have to go to an election, and I have no doubt at all that people will not forget this. These are not issues that people will forget overnight. When you attack people's ability to support their families, they will not forget. We will continue to stand up in this chamber and in the community day in, day out. We are never going to walk away from those in our community who depend on us to do the right thing, to protect them. We will stand with Australian workers and we will defend their right to earn penalty rates.

James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to be speaking in this debate today on the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill 2017, but I have to say that I wondered whether we would get here at all. I wondered whether we would get to this bill at all. I wondered whether the Labor Party were in fact at all sincere about debating this issue today because they chose to spend the first hour this morning attacking the Attorney-General yet again, attempting to smear the Attorney-General's reputation yet again and engaging in another fruitless personal attack against the Attorney-General without any evidence or support for their arguments. I wondered whether we would eventually turn to an issue that they tell us is so important, that they tell us is a top priority for them and their constituents, that they tell us they hear from the community so much about and that they tell us should be the focus of the Senate's and the parliament's work. But we have got here eventually, and isn't that a wonderful thing?

It is also always a pleasure to follow Senator Polley in a debate. I listened careful to her contribution. She made a very sincere case for her cause in this instance. She certainly talked a lot about what the consequences could be for people if they were to be paid thanks to the Fair Work Commission's decision less penalty rates than they are currently paid. I had to say that, unfortunately, there were a fewer omissions from Senator Polley's contribution to the debate. There were a few facts that she neglected to mention, which if you did not know you might have a different view of this debate. I think it would be helpful if I took this opportunity this morning to put those facts on the record so that people can judge for themselves how this decision came about, who is responsible for this decision and what the Labor Party are walking away from with their bill here today.

I think the most important thing for people to realise is that what we have seen here this morning is just a stunt from the Labor Party. It is not sincere, it is not genuine and it is not actually an attempt to resolve a policy issue; it is an attempt to take credit for concern that they and the union movement have whipped up in the community and it is an attempt to harvest political benefit from the anxiety that they themselves are responsible for stoking in the community. A very good example of that is Senator Polley's suggestion that this decision, which applies in fact very narrowly and to a very small number of occupations, will soon in fact apply much more widely and to other professions and other occupations. She did so without any evidence, without any support for her claims. She asserted it knowing that there will be some people out there in the community who will be fearful when they hear that, who fear that they will be affected. She asserted it knowing that the union movement will back her up in her claims and that they will peddle these mistruths in an attempt to scare people and gain political benefit from doing so.

If the Labor Party are genuinely serious about this issue, it marks a radical departure from their previous position on this issue and a radical change to industrial relations policy in this country. There are three different ways that wages could be set in this country. They could be set by the market, negotiated between employees and employers, and the best rate available would be negotiated and accepted. They could be set by the Fair Work Commission, carefully arbitrated and considered in a legal sense, with arguments for and against. Or they could be set by the parliament.

In recent years, they have not been set by the parliament. Those opposite are suggesting that we now do so because they are unhappy and unwilling to stand by the decision of the Fair Work Commission. It reveals a lot about their attitude. It reveals their lack of support for small business and their lack of understanding of how difficult it is to run a small business, particularly on the weekend. It reveals their lack of understanding of how difficult it is for small businesses to compete with large businesses that are able to secure sweetheart deals with large unions. And it reveals in many ways an attitude which is becoming more readily apparent, which is that the union movement and the Labor Party are only able to accept decisions of the independent umpire or of the parliament if they are decisions that they agree with.

The Labor Party's rejection of the Fair Work Commission's decision in this instance mirrors very closely the rejection of the rule of law by Sally McManus, the new head of the ACTU. She has said, and she repeated it only yesterday at the National Press Club, that she thinks it is completely fine for unionists to only abide by laws which they agree with, which they approve of, which they think are fair and just. But if they do not agree with them, if they do not approve of them, if they think they are unfair, if they think they are unjust then it is absolutely up to them to completely disregard, disobey and break those laws and that is a perfectly fine thing to do.

The Labor Party has adopted the same attitude here. It will abide by the Fair Work Commission's independent decisions on wages as long as it agrees with them, as long as they are favourable. The Fair Work Commission—which Labor appointed, whose legislation Labor wrote and passed through this place enabling them to make these decisions, whose review was begun only because the now Leader of the Opposition and then Minister for Workplace Relations required them to do so—made a decision Labor did not like. They made a decision under Labor's rules, by Labor's appointees, and the Labor Party is rejecting it because it is not a decision that it liked.

It was the then Minister for Workplace Relations, Bill Shorten, who amended the Fair Work Act in 2013 to specifically require the commission to consider penalty rates as part of the four-year review of modern awards. That was a four-year review of modern awards that was established under the Fair Work Commission when the act was passed. That was a Fair Work Commission that was established by the Labor Party. And the commissioners who made that decision were appointed by the previous Labor government. So the owners and the authors of the decision that we have seen in recent weeks are, in their entirety, the Labor Party and, in particular, Mr Shorten.

It is not a surprise then that on Melbourne radio not that long ago, when asked whether he would abide by a decision made by a system that he set up and by people that he appointed and under rules that he wrote, Mr Shorten said yes. He was on Neil Mitchell's program on 3AW. Neil Mitchell asked:

MITCHELL: The Fair Work Commission will report soon on Sunday 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?

SHORTEN: 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 an interview on Neil Mitchell's program on 21 April 2016. That was not so long ago, and it is not clear what has changed in that time. There are a couple of things that could be true given that. It could be the case that Bill Shorten was not being clear and straightforward with Neil Mitchell when he was asked these questions or it could be that Bill Shorten has changed his mind since then. If he has changed his mind, it is not clear why he has done so. He knew then, as Neil Mitchell warned him, that there was a risk that the decision of the independent umpire would be to reduce Sunday penalty rates. And, knowing that, Bill Shorten said he would accept the decision. As we know, he has now not accepted that decision.

Of course, Bill Shorten does not always have a problem with accepting the reduction of penalty rates. In fact, he presided over the reduction of penalty rates as union leader at the Australian Workers Union. Workers at Clean Event were stripped of all penalty rates, with no compensation, under a 2006 agreement for which he was responsible. At the Melbourne and Olympic Park trusts, agreements were approved by Bill Shorten in 2001 and again in 2003 which stripped workers of all penalty rates and overtime except for one 125 per cent penalty rate for work performed between 1 am and 6 am. I did not hear Bill Shorten running to the parliament then saying we needed to abolish the role of the independent umpire and have wages set by law and by politicians voting on them. I did not hear him objecting to those changes. In fact, he could not have objected to those changes, because he signed off on them as a union leader.

Bill Shorten wants to make a radical change to our industrial relations policy. The private member's bill that we have before us today is a bad idea for many reasons, one of which is that it is fundamentally unworkable. The bill would require the Fair Work Commission to act inconsistently. On the one hand the commission is required to ensure awards are fair and relevant, taking into account the impact on business employment costs and employment growth, which means more jobs. On the other hand it could never reduce take-home pay, no matter how small or sensible that change might be or what might be traded off.

Bill Shorten is proposing that the Fair Work Commission not be able to make decisions that he himself made as a union leader. If this bill were passed, it would not even be possible for the Fair Work Commission to, for example, agree that Sunday penalty rates should be reduced and other rates of pay should be increased in compensation. That is something that the Fair Work Act allows a union and a business to do when they agree. They are the sorts of deals that Bill Shorten presided over many times as a union leader, and, I suspect, many of the former union leaders who are in this place and the other place would have presided over such deals, but the Fair Work Commission would be prevented from doing so by this bill.

Secondly, the bill would prevent the reduction of take-home pay for any employee covered by the award, with no consideration given to the magnitude of the reduction or why the reduction was taking place. Even a variation of an allowance in an award by a few cents—for example, in exchange for more annual leave—would be prevented by this bill. This cumbersome law would make the industrial relations system massively more rigid, reduce flexibility and reduce employees' ability to access benefits that they sought and were happy to receive.

Finally, the bill would, extraordinarily, also prevent variations from being made due to errors or inconsistencies. It would prevent variations to remove payments or allowances that are no longer relevant to the award. For example, one of the issues that the Fair Work Commission recently considered was the potential doubling up where annual leave loading and shift loadings are paid while a worker is on annual leave, based on the wording in the Electrical, Electronic and Communications Contracting Award 2010. So, if this bill were to pass, an error in an award could not be corrected by the Fair Work Commission and would be forced to persist. The bill is an extremely unworkable, inflexible proposal to change the award system.

As I have said, the penalty rates decision was independent of government. It was made by the Fair Work Commission. It was not made by people that we appointed. It was not made under a law that we wrote. It was not made under a law that we even voted for. It was made by a law pushed through this place by those opposite. Let's get some facts on the table about what has happened with this decision. Public holiday rates are being reduced from 250 per cent to 225 per cent for permanent staff and from 275 per cent to 250 per cent for casual staff in five industries: retail, hospitality, fast food, pharmacy and restaurants. This is a decision which reflects the reality of modern shopping trends. It may be the case that, when these awards were originally designed and agreed to, Sunday shopping was not a common thing, but many consumers want to shop and many people want to work on Sundays, and this just reflects the reality of that. Workers in these industries who are covered by enterprise agreements—for example, those in a major supermarket or a fast-food chain—are not directly affected by this change. That is something which the Labor Party recently discovered after putting up at a press conference a worker from a major supermarket who claimed to be affected by this change but in fact was not affected by this change, in addition to being a Labor Party branch member and volunteer. No other industries are affected. This is important. The commission specifically said in its decision that it sets no precedent for other workers who work on weekends, such as nurses or emergency service workers. You may be forgiven, having listened to Senator Polley's contribution earlier, for not realising that that is the case, but Senator Polley did not truthfully reflect the statement made by the commission. Affected workers will still get weekend penalty rates, but Sunday rates will be brought closer into line with Saturday rates, which remain unchanged.

I have said before in a contribution to this debate that I find it very amusing to see the Labor Party defending Sunday penalty rates given that the historical reason for why people are paid more on a Sunday compared to a Saturday is that it was the Sabbath and it was deemed to be immoral to work on the Sabbath and we should discourage and, in fact, penalise people who wished to open their businesses and work on the Sabbath. I wonder, in 21st century Australia, in the multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious society that we are, where not everybody views Sunday as sacrosanct, as some Australians once did, whether it is still relevant and appropriate to pay much more on a Sunday than a Saturday. I look forward to hearing, in further contributions to this debate by senators who think that this decision was unjustified, why we need to protect the Sabbath, why religious doctrine should influence rates of pay and why Sunday is more special than Saturday.

One important aspect of this change, though, is that it gives small businesses a better chance to compete on a more even footing with large businesses. We discovered recently just how unfairly the deck is stacked against small business, and that is because big unions and big businesses have been doing deals for a long time which have eroded Sunday rates of pay and allow them to pay far less per hour to their workers on Sundays, which makes it much more affordable for them to open on Sundays but makes it very difficult for small businesses to open on Sundays and still be profitable, let alone compete with these major businesses and chains. For example, a bed and breakfast must pay $10 an hour more than a five-star hotel; a family chicken shop must pay $8 more per hour than KFC; a family owned takeaway must pay $8 more per hour than McDonald's; a family greengrocer must pay $5 more per hour than Woolworths; a family pizza takeaway must pay $8 more an hour than Pizza Hut; a boutique clothes shop must pay $7 more an hour than David Jones; a family bookshop must pay $8 more an hour than Target; a family newsagent must pay $7 more an hour than Officeworks; a family bottle shop must pay $7 an hour more then Dan Murphy's; and a family hardware store must pay $5 more per hour than Bunnings. Is there anybody in this place who seriously thinks it is justified that small business should be bound and forced to pay significantly more—in some cases, 20, 30 or 40 per cent more—to hire and provide employment opportunities for their workers and provide services to their customers on Sunday than big businesses pay?

Do we wonder why it is that a union would be willing to trade away the pay rates of their workers on a Sunday with a big business? What is the reason that a union would do that? Well, the modern union movement is a bit different from the union movement of old and the primary motivation of many union leaders today is very different to the motivation of union leaders in times past. They are primarily motivated today by the fact that the more members they have, the more votes they have in internal Labor Party forums. The more members they have, the more money they have to spend on running political campaigns to elect their mates. The more influence they have with the Labor Party, the better chance they and their mates have of finding their way up in this place after their careers as union officials. If they really cared about the workers they represent, and if they valued that more than they value a cosy working relationship with big business, which facilitates their ability to sign up workers and charge workers their union dues, they would instead never accept a cut to Sunday penalty rates and never accept trading off Sunday penalty rates for a cosy relationship with business. And, as we have discovered, occasionally, payments from those businesses to those unions in the midst of EBA negotiations, which, until the parliament hopefully deals with this matter, have been a matter which could be completely secret, concealed form union members and done as a deal behind closed doors by a union leader and a business and completely unbeknownst to workers.

It is worrying in the extreme that the union movement is willing to make these trade-offs and that many of those former union officials, who are now Labor MPs, are now hypocritically saying that the Fair Work Commission should not be able to set up the kinds of arrangements that they themselves have entered into when they were union leaders. Bill Shorten is the best example of that.

This decision has been welcomed by small businesses, because—

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

Senator Paterson, I remind you to refer to others here and in the other place by their correct titles.

James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy President; I appreciate that reminder. This decision has been welcomed by small business leaders, because they know how difficult it is to compete on the weekend, particularly, with large businesses who have done these cosy deals with union leaders. An example is George Kanellos of the Rose Hotel in Sydney, who says:

As a business owner it means we can hire more staff and have more working on Sundays which works best for customers.

Will Nevile from Wharf ONE in Cairns says:

It will certainly increase our ability to put on more people. In the current situation the consumer gets less amenity, staff get less work, the government gets less tax and businesses get less turnover. I fail to see a winner.

These are the small businesses who will benefit from this decision. It is their workers who will benefit from this decision by getting more hours, and the Senate should seriously consider the extraordinary hypocrisy of the Labor Party in proposing this change when they themselves have done these deals in times past in the union movement.

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Senator Roberts. Please resume your seat.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy President, on a point of order: I think referring to the Leader of the Opposition in that manner and referring to kickbacks in that manner is unparliamentary, and I would ask that these remarks be withdrawn.

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

Thank you, Senator Carr. I have just asked the Clerk to have a look at that. Senator Roberts, in the meantime, you may wish to consider the comment you made and withdrawing that remark. Thank you. Please continue, Senator Roberts.

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

As a former National Secretary of the AWU between 2001 and 2007, Victorian State Secretary from 1998 to 2007, and Victorian state president of the Labor Party from 2005 until 2008, the honourable Labor leader was a person of great interest to the royal commission into union corruption. The royal commission into union corruption heard that Mr Shorten accepted and failed to disclose large donations to himself from employers while negotiating for the union on behalf of employees—secret commissions to rip off his fellow union members.

The Leader of the Opposition admitted to the commission that he had failed to declare a political donation of around $40,000 from a labour hire company in the lead-up to the 2007 election campaign and that invoices regarding the payments for services were not truthful. Mr Shorten, however, claimed to have no knowledge of false invoicing totalling more than $300,000, which had been sent to construction company Thiess John Holland—a very convenient form of collective amnesia. These so-called donations were undeclared, because they were a pay-off—a pay-off to agree to lowering the wages and conditions of his already poorly-paid union members. No wonder he wanted them kept secret. So let us be clear: the leader of a major union and now the self-styled leader of the so-called workers party took secret commissions from employers to sell his own union members down the river.

During the royal commission into trade union corruption, under cross-examination, counsel assisting and the commissioner, Mr Heydon QC, said that the honourable Leader of the Opposition was being 'evasive' and 'non- responsive'. Evasive and unresponsive—it is hardly surprising, is it? I mean, if he was honest, he would have to admit that he had betrayed his fellow union members, just like Craig Thomson, Michael Williamson and Kathy Jackson.

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

Senator Roberts, would you mind just sitting for a moment. I undertook to check the statement that the President made the other day, and I draw your attention to the use of the words 'pay-offs' and 'kickbacks', specifically in relation to that statement.. He said:

Any remark which carries an imputation of corruption or criminality made in respect of any senator or member is contrary to the standing orders and, if made, ought be withdrawn.

I did ask you to consider withdrawing the term 'kickback'. I did not pull you up on 'pay-off', because I was still waiting for the Clerk, but I would ask you to consider withdrawing those and just being careful that you do not make imputations. Thank you.

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

I withdraw those comments.

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

Thank you, Senator Rob. Please continue.

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

Mr Heydon QC said:

What I am concerned about more is your credibility as a witness; a witness—and perhaps your self interest as a witness as well.

The commissioner did not believe him, because he had serious doubts about the veracity.

On Mr Shorten's watch as AWU secretary, massive conflicts of interest and ripping off his own AWU members in crooked side deals with employers like Cleanevent were the order of the day—in fact, precisely the kind of moral corruption that the government's fair work amendment bill sought to outlaw. Now he has the gross hypocrisy to denounce the Fair Work Commission decision to reduce penalty rates. Such blatant hypocrisy is almost unbelievable. Can you imagine this man as Prime Minister? Even the small change you keep from the laundromat would not be safe left lying around. How on earth can Labor senators denounce the Fair Work Commission's decision with a straight face, knowing that their leader has done exactly the same thing on the sly? Have you no shame?

I ask you, my fellow senators: what does this say about Labor senators who support this man as their leader? Even the opposition leader's predecessor, former Prime Minister Paul Keating, has given a damning indictment of Labor's performance under the stewardship of Mr Shorten. In a recent biography, which can be found today in the remainder bins of all the best bookshops, Mr Keating was quoted as saying that the Labor Party under Mr Shorten had lost its way and that unions under leaders such as the former head of the AWU, Mr Shorten, lacked the focus on the national interest they once had. In a rare moment of clarity, Mr Keating observed that under the leadership of Mr Shorten Labor has 'a leadership deficit'. But I would go further. I would say the Leader of the Opposition has a credibility deficit. Where are you when we need you, Ben Chifley and John Curtin? Today you would be standing with us as One Nation senators.

There is a Sicilian saying: a fish rots from the head. This is exactly what we see with the current Labor Party. A political leader who, whilst a union official, took secret commissions to sell out his own fellow union members creates a culture in which nefarious and venal behaviour by unions becomes acceptable.

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

Senator Roberts, I again remind you of the statement I read from the President about imputations. I would again ask you consider withdrawing that.

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

I withdraw, Madam Deputy President. Suddenly the former party of workers has found itself in league with criminal thugs, and that has been verified in the Heydon commission. The CFMEU is a case in point. Last year around 100 CFMEU thugs were prosecuted or were facing prosecution for wreaking havoc on the nation's building sites, accused of more than 1,000 industrial breaches. The CFMEU and its officials have also been fined a total of around $7 million for industrial breaches which have been dealt with by the courts since 2002. Those brought before the courts have included the CFMEU's national secretary, Michael O'Connor, brother of Labor's shadow minister for employment and workplace relations, no less. They have also included construction division head David Noonan and New South Wales and Queensland secretaries Brian Parker and Michael Ravbar. 'Violence', 'extortion', 'blackmail' and 'intimidation' are words used repeatedly in the media and in the Heydon commission. Court case after court case has shown that this union is so corrupt that it makes the teamsters union under Jimmy Hoffa look like the Sisters of Mercy.

I am sure there are some decent and honest Labor senators here, and they privately are appalled by the conduct of CFMEU thugs and feel just as strongly as I do that this corruption must be brought to book. In fact, some have said so, but they are silenced by a Labor leadership that has its own history of union corruption and is beholden to corrupt union bosses even now.

What wider opposition to last year's registered organisations commission bill revealed, however, is how the corrupt tentacles of this organisation have spread to non-Labor organisations which the CFMEU has bribed and co-opted to its cause. The CFMEU tentacles reach into parties in this chamber and individual members. However, the reach of the CFMEU's tentacles does not stop there. In 2010 alone, the CFMEU donated $1.2 million to extreme left-wing activist group GetUp!—

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

Madam Deputy President, on a point of order on relevance, we are supposed to be debating the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017. I have sat here for the last three minutes and listened to Senator Roberts go on. He has some jihad against the CFMEU. Take it up with the CFMEU, but this is not about the bill, so I am calling relevance.

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

Thank you, Senator Sterle. I just remind you that Senator Roberts did start off talking about the bill. It is a wide-ranging discussion, and I remind all senators that it does need to be relevant to the bill. I am sure that Senator Roberts is going to get back to the bill.

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

I certainly am, Madam Deputy President. Thank you. However, the reach of the CFMEU's tentacles does not stop there. In 2010 alone the CFMEU donated $1.2 million to extreme left-wing activist group GetUp!, one of whose founding board members was Mr Bill Shorten, and at least two so-called Independents in this parliament are receiving union funding.

We see, in fact, that the priority of CFMEU bosses is not their members' jobs, which they happily sacrifice, but the protection of nefarious CFMEU officials from scrutiny and prosecution for their crimes. I make the point that this party is sacrificing coalminers' jobs in the state of Queensland and sacrificing, as I will explain in a minute, small businesses and union members. We have seen even the new head of the ACTU, Sally McManus, publicly state that unions do not need to comply with the law. Sadly, this approach is very much a case study of the Leader of the Opposition's model of industrial governance.

So let's take a closer look at the opposition leader and what he did for his fellow union members whilst head of the AWU. In 2004, Mr Shorten signed an enterprise bargaining agreement—and this is where I am coming back to—with Cleanevent that allowed them to work staff around the clock for up to 12 hours at a time and up to 60 hours a week without award penalties or loadings. Any honest union leader would have known that this agreement was against the interests of their members and a sweeter deal for their employer—but not Mr Shorten. The opposition leader has previously boasted that he 'always improved workers' conditions', but just this one agreement shows that this claim is false. For the hapless low-paid workers at Clean Event, things just got worse under Mr Shorten. When this rip-off EBA expired, the Labor leader exploited John Howard's Work Choices laws to negotiate another deal with the company which ripped off another $2 million from his workers' pay packets.

Why on earth would a union leader do this? Why would he sell out the very workers he was supposed to be elected to defend? The answer is self-interest. Clean Event gave $40,000 to Mr Shorten's subsequent election campaign. The Heydon royal commission also uncovered other payments. Visy Packaging paid the AWU $190,000 in return for EBA deals that grossly underpaid its workers. And so it goes on and on.

Of course, these are not isolated cases. Mr Shorten was not the only union leader selling out his own members. Around 250,000 Australian workers are being underpaid with below-award rates negotiated by union bosses like Mr Shorten in return for crooked payments from employers. This costs mainly low-paid workers around $300 million a year. Quite a number of the union bosses who sold out their members with these rip-off EBAs have gone on to be elected to parliament, just like Mr Shorten—leading the workers from behind a brandy balloon. These rip-off EBAs failed the 'better off overall' test but have been approved because corrupt union officials and the big businesses who bribe them have colluded to fool the Fair Work Commission into approving them.

Let us consider the example of McDonald's workers. Instead of receiving the award rate of $29.16 per hour on a Sunday, their workers get just $21.08 per hour thanks to a union-sanctioned rip-off EBA. That is a 27 per cent pay cut for McDonald's workers courtesy of their own union bosses. KFC and Pizza Hut are much the same. On Sundays their workers get only $21.09 and $20.35 per hour respectively. They are all giant foreign-owned corporations, all getting sweetheart deals to rip off Aussie workers.

But the local family-run milk bar that tries to compete with them does not get to pay those rates. No, they still have to pay the $29.16 per hour, so how on earth can they compete with giant multinational chain stores? I wonder how much tax they are paying. As the leader of our party has raised many times, and as I have, they cannot compete. That is why the small businesses are going out of business. Family-owned corner stores are disappearing fast, thanks in great part to the opposition leader and his corrupt union mates.

Let us look at clothing stores. On Sundays David Jones pays $29.53 per hour, but family-owned boutiques and shoe shops have to pay $37.05 per hour. Then there are hotels. International hotels, like the Sheraton or the Hilton, get to pay their workers just $21.63 per hour on a Sunday, while family-owned bed and breakfasts have to pay $31.87. How can they compete—

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

Senator Roberts, I have once again sought the advice of the Clerk in relation to the President's statement. Linking members of this place or the other place with that use of 'corrupt union officials' is, again, an imputation, so I would ask you to withdraw that.

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

I withdraw that, Madam Deputy President.

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

Thank you.

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

How can they compete? Notice the pattern: big businesses, typically foreign-owned giant multinationals, get to pay up to a third lower wages than local Aussie family businesses thanks to the likes of Mr Shorten and his ilk. The tentacles of Labor's rip-off EBAs reach throughout the retail and hospitality sectors, ripping off the lowest-paid Aussie workers and wrecking Aussie small businesses while giving a leg up to the big end of town. In return, these mostly foreign-owned big businesses give millions in kickbacks, secret commissions, to the corrupt union bosses, which they then pass on in contributions to the Labor Party. That is the money trail, isn't it?

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

Senator Roberts, again that is another imputation, if you would withdraw please.

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

Madam Deputy President, it has been well recognised that these kickbacks have come to the unions, and the unions have donated to the Labor Party—

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

Senator Marshall?

Deputy President, I draw your attention to standing order 203 and ask whether you think that Senator Roberts is now persistently and wilfully refusing to conform with the standing orders or persistently and wilfully disregarding the authority of the chair. You have pulled him up and drawn his attention to the standing orders and rulings of the President, now on several occasions, and he completely ignores that and continues on. I think that you, as chair, should consider exercising standing order 203.

Senator Fawcett?

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just on the point of order, Madam Deputy President: Senator Roberts was pulled up correctly when he was making imputations about members in this place or the other place. Some of his comments have gone more broadly to organisations outside of the parliament—

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

I think that is a debating point you are now raising—

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, because the standing orders only prohibit imputation against members of the Senate or the other place, not outside organisations.

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

Senator Roberts, I have asked you a number of times to be careful of imputations. I did quote to you the statement made by the President earlier this week. Senator Marshall has raised standing order No. 203, which clearly does go to the issue of not taking note of what the chair is suggesting. It does leave the final matter to the President. I will ask the President to have a look at what has occurred today, but I would ask you once again. It is obvious that an imputation is clear when you link the word 'corrupt', or any of the other words, to senators or indeed to a particular party—it also extends. I would ask you not to use that language in the remainder of your speech, and I will ask the President to review. The President will come back to the chamber if he thinks it is necessary. Thank you.

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

So we see a clear pattern. We see widespread union criminality. We see irresponsible militancy. We see the deliberate destruction of industries like the Queensland coal mining industry, logging and traditional power generation. We see workers ripped off with crooked EBAs negotiated by union bosses who receive kickbacks. And then they have the temerity to come in here and sanctimoniously attack the Fair Work Commission for reducing penalty rates when they themselves have done exactly the same thing.

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

A point of order, Madam Deputy President: once again, Senator Roberts disregards your ruling. How many more times does he have to be told, for crying out loud? And all he does is stand there and go, 'I withdraw,' as though it is okay. You understand where I am coming from. How many more times is he going to disrespect your call.

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

The senator has made reference to facts concerning union corruption. What is interesting here is that we have a protection racket over there—

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

Senator McGrath—

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

You're protecting Sally McManus, the modern day communist—

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

Senator McGrath!

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

and now you're trying to stop debate in this chamber!

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

Senator McGrath, I would ask you when I call your name to please desist. I would ask you to respect the chair. Senator Sterle, I listened very carefully, as I have to the whole debate in here today. I do not believe there was an imputation made on that occasion.

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

In fact, since the last appeal I have been very careful and I have not mentioned any particular names. The hypocrisy—

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

Madam Deputy President, with the greatest respect to the chair and yourself, he said, 'They come in here.' Who is they? He is talking about us, so he did impugn.

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

Thank you, Senator Sterle. The President is going to be reviewing this. I will take particular note of that, but, as I said, I have been listening carefully. I did not think there was an imputation on that occasion. Please continue, Senator Roberts.

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

Let me be clear: and they come in here and sanctimoniously attack the Fair Work Commission for reducing penalty rates when they themselves have done exactly the same thing, but only for their foreign-owned-business cronies. The hypocrisy beggars belief. Labor pretends to defend penalty rates, while actually being funded by kickbacks for secretly abolishing them. Pauline Hanson's One Nation party is not going to let them get away with it. We are not going to sit here while hypocritical Labor senators stand up and pretend to be protecting penalty rates.

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

Again on a point of order: he is now reflecting on senators and making imputations. I think the problem comes back to standing order 187, which says, 'A senator shall not read a speech.' Senator Roberts seems to be unable to adjust his written and prepared speech to accommodate your rulings and continues just to plough through. I think that is the problem. Maybe if you were to apply standing order 187 that would resolve the problem.

There are two issues there. First, I do believe that you made an imputation, so I would ask you to withdraw 'hypocritical Labor senators'. Second, it is accepted practice in here that people can use copious notes, but there is a standing order which says you are not to read notes. Senator Roberts, for your remaining three minutes and 28 seconds, I would ask you not to make any further imputations and to withdraw the imputation you made.

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

I withdraw, Madam Deputy President, that I called them hypocrites. However, their behaviour has involved hypocrisy.

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

Senator Roberts, please—

A point of order: the standard of a senator making an unconditional withdrawal by repeating the accusation and the words that are offensive is not the standard we expect in the Senate. Senator Roberts ought to know better. He did not arrive simply yesterday. If he is going to flout your rulings, your directions, and then really disregard all the appropriate standards of this chamber I think you ought to reconsider your powers under standing order 203.

Thank you, Senator Marshall. Senator Roberts, it is not within the culture of this place and it is not within the standing order to part-withdraw and then make a further comment. I asked you to withdraw the imputation. I have asked you also in the remainder of the three minutes and 22 seconds you have left not to make further imputations. I would ask you simply to categorically withdraw the imputation.

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

Madam Deputy President, may I ask you a question?

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

Certainly.

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

It is not appropriate, I understand from what you are saying, to call a member a hypocrite. But if the behaviour exhibited is hypocritical can I describe the behaviour as hypocritical?

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

I think you are just making a fine point there. This is a place where we try and engage in respectful debate. From time to time it gets heated—that is accepted. There is a bit of to-and-fro—that is accepted as well. But to continue to use imputations two or three days after the President has made it very clear that that is not appropriate is clearly out of order. Please continue. I would ask you to withdraw categorically.

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

I withdraw the description of the Labor senators as hypocrites. We are—

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

Madam Deputy President, even though you have advised the senator not to withdraw by repeating the allegation, he has simply done so again. He is persistently and wilfully disregarding your instructions.

Thank you, Senator Marshall. He did withdraw.

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

I agree. He did withdraw the remarks, and I do believe he has the right to—

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

Is this a point of order, Senator Hanson?

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

Yes, it is a point of order. I disagree with the other comment. He did withdraw.

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

That is a debating point. I would ask you to resume your seat.

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

Pauline Hanson's One Nation party is not just going to sit here and watch while other senators pretend to be protecting penalty rates with their amendment to the Fair Work Act, when we know that the majority of workers will not be affected even if the bill passes, because their penalty rates have already been stolen by Labor in return for—

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

A point of order once again, Madam Deputy President, on standing order 187: the senator is reading his speech.

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

As I explained, it is accepted practice in here that people use copious notes. I have asked Senator Roberts to be mindful of that.

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

We know that the majority of workers will not be affected, even if the bill passes, because their penalty rates have already been stolen by the Labor Party in return for secret commissions from big business. One Nation is committed both to supporting Aussie workers and to helping small businesses compete. To this end, I foreshadow that we will be moving an amendment to Labor's bill, to extend the protection against the loss of penalty rates to existing EBAs. Under One Nation's amendment, 250,000 low-paid workers will immediately obtain a pay increase of up to 30 per cent for weekend and public holiday work, and small business will immediately get a level playing field on which to compete with giant foreign-owned multinationals.

What is it going to be, Senators Wong and Cameron? How will you and your fellow Labor senators vote on that one? Are you finally going to do the right thing for all those unionised workers on your rip-off EBAs that give them the same pay as they would get from small businesses, or are you going to show yourselves to be the world-class contradictors that you appear to be and actually vote against giving low-paid workers the pay rise they deserve? I will be moving that amendment at the appropriate stage. Finally, after all the deception, the ducking and weaving and the contradictory cant, Labor is cornered and has to make a choice. We are looking forward to seeing which way Labor jumps.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was in the chamber last week when Senator Seselja recounted his youth working for Woolworths. Madam Deputy President, you may recall that two days ago I referred to his claim that—I will read the words again. I hate repeating this, but it probably needs to be repeated in order to explain his contribution. He said:

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.

Madam Deputy President, you may recall that I thought that that was wrong, mistaken. I went away to have a look at whether or not Senator Seselja's comments were correct. What we discovered when we did that examination was that Senator Seselja did mislead the Senate. He was not sold out by that great trade union, the SDA. In fact, the opposite had occurred. In fact, his terms and conditions were better than the relevant award. If Senator Seselja was a part-timer back then, he was something like 5.4 per cent better off under an agreement negotiated by the SDA. If he was a casual employee, depending on what sort of assumptions you make, he was anywhere between five and 11.8 per cent better off. As far as I can see, Senator Seselja has not come back into the chamber to correct the misleading of the Senate. I am disappointed about that because I have now got to raise the issue again. I think that when mistakes are made they should be corrected.

It has been a long time since Senator Seselja worked in the retail industry. Almost 20 years has gone past. I would like to give a little potted history of what has happened to wages and conditions, particularly in the retail industry, over that period of time, and what Senator Seselja's party has done over the last 20 years—or fractionally longer than 20 years. After World War II, there was a social compact between business and the unions, that they accepted the Australian industrial relations system. That broke down in the late eighties, with the election of the Greiner government in New South Wales. For the first time, that social compact was broken, and Liberal governments started the long, slow process to what finally ended up as Work Choices. They started reducing and removing the ability of unions and workers to work in the industrial relations system and started winding back all the hard-won conditions that unions had achieved for their members over the history of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act.

It started with Greiner. Then Premier Kennett in Victoria was elected. He went quite a bit further than Mr Greiner. He basically abolished the awards system in Victoria, so workers went from one day having a set of terms and conditions under awards to having basically a voluntary employment agreement. Again, all of those hard-won terms and conditions that workers had been able to achieve through their unions were suddenly thrown out the door in one fell swoop of legislation. Kennett went even further when John Howard was elected in 1996. He actually abolished the entire Victorian industrial relations system and handed it all over to Mr Howard, and we saw similar Greiner and Kennett events occur in other states. In my home state of South Australia, Dean Brown was elected, and he moved down a very similar path.

Unions in the retail industry were predominantly state based, and the reason why Senator Seselja is so mistaken is that he does not understand that little, basic principle. But, when the state governments started making these changes, the unions made a strategic decision to shift out of the old state systems into the federal system. It might be argued, 10 years later, that they had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. But you had to look after and protect your members, and Keating had won that election in 1993, so unions made that change into the federal system.

The tragedy was that John Howard then won the next election, and we discovered that Mr Reith was Minister for Industrial Relations. He started to carry out the Greiner, Kennett and Brown type of industrial relations structure. He did not get as far as he wanted to go; let us be clear about that. Labor and the minor parties in the Senate were able to stop him from going as far as he wanted to go. But, again, he started that whole process of reducing workers' terms and conditions.

Then we come to 2004, and suddenly all John Howard's dreams have come true. Not only does he control—

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

Senator Farrell, I remind you to refer to people in the other place and former leaders by their correct titles, thank you.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes—former Prime Minister John Howard. He gets a majority in the Senate, and he is able to implement his perfect dream in terms of industrial relations. Madam Deputy President, you may recall the name of this particular product. It was called an AWA, an Australian workplace agreement. These AWAs removed all of the fundamental terms and conditions that workers had won over the entire history of the industrial relations system in Australia. For the purposes of the debate, I recount the sorts of things that were taken away under these Australian workplace agreements. Seventy per cent of workers lost shift loadings, 68 per cent lost annual leave loadings, 65 per cent lost penalty rates, 49 per cent lost overtime loadings and 45 per cent no longer had public holidays. That was the result of Work Choices for Australian workers.

I make this comparison between Work Choices and the decision of the full bench of the Fair Work Commission on the most recent penalty rate cut. Work Choices was a slow-moving product. There was no immediate change, not overnight. Of course, the Australian population woke up to Work Choices, and Prime Minister Howard was defeated in the 2007 election as a result. In fact, former Prime Minister Howard lost his own seat in that election. The Australian community understood the unfairness of Work Choices. But there is quite a bit of difference between what happened under Work Choices and what is happening now, following the decision by the Fair Work Commission. This is a cold and heartless decision, and 700,000 Australians will lose up to $77 a week as a result. As I said, Work Choices was a slow-moving change. This will not be slow. It is not contained. Whenever this decision is finalised, that is what is going to happen: there will be a dramatic effect on the income of people amongst the lowest paid in our country.

So, over that whole time, we can see a clear pattern in the way in which those opposite have dealt with industrial relations. Bit by bit, every time they got an opportunity, they sought to take away the terms and conditions of workers in this country. Unions, great unions like the SDA, have had to deal with those sets of changes for all that time. What did they do in those 20 years, since the time Senator Seselja was five or 10 per cent better off under his agreement? They kept working away to ensure that those workers continued to get those hard-won benefits.

I am not sure which particular Woolworths store Senator Seselja worked in, but the agreement would have covered it, and, if he were working for a Woolworths store today, his weekly rate of pay—I am not talking about the casual or the part-time rate—would be about $100 higher than the equivalent award. Not only that but there are guaranteed wage rises, nine per cent wage increases, locked in over three years; and higher junior rates of pay. Workers in the retail industry, for almost its entire history, did not get adult rates until they were 21 years of age. Under the Woolworths agreement they get the adult rate at 20 years of age. In terms of benefits, there is public holiday work, all voluntary; there are much better rostering provisions than apply under the award, and they take into account family responsibilities; greater compassionate leave, significantly higher than under the award; longer breaks of 15 minutes per four hours rather than the 10 minutes under the award; extra days of personal leave; better overtime provisions—I could go on.

The point of all that is that, over that 20-year period, those unions have sat down and negotiated with some pretty hard companies. That is one thing I agree with Senator Roberts about: you are dealing with pretty hard companies here when you are dealing with some of these national and international companies. But the unions have managed, over that time, to maintain the wages and conditions of employees.

If I understand Senator Roberts correctly, his complaint is that, when you look at some of these agreements and you look specifically at the rate of pay that people get for Sunday, it is lower than under other awards. That is true. He says there is something untoward about that. There is nothing untoward about that. That is the way enterprise bargaining has worked in this country for 25 years. Workers, through their unions, sit down with companies and negotiate about their terms and conditions.

I have just been through the Woolworths agreement to show just how much better off you would be under a Woolworths agreement than if you were under an award. What the employers in this industry who are not subject to enterprise bargaining agreements want to do is cherrypick these agreements. They say: 'There's something we like in this agreement, and we're going to take it out. We just want that bit.' For years the SDA heard this complaint from the small retailers that Senator Roberts was talking about, and we said, 'Okay, if you want the same arrangements as a Coles or a Woolworths'—I could go through a similar explanation with Coles—'if you want these terms and conditions, you pick up the totality of the agreement.' So the union in South Australia—the SDA, that great union that I have referred to—sat down with Business SA, representing all of the small employers that Senator Roberts was talking about, and they reached an agreement that gave them a lower penalty rate on Sunday in exchange for all of the improved benefits that you would get if you worked for Coles or Woolworths or one of these other employers. They said, 'This agreement is now open to any small business that wants to come and sign up.'

That was two years ago. How many small businesses took it up? A hundred in that two-year period? Ten? You might think 10. One? No, zero. Not one small business took up the offer to move to a Coles- or a Woolworths-type agreement. Why not? We asked the question: why not? It was because they were going to pay more than if they stayed under the award. So these people have stayed under the award and complained about the penalty rates on Sundays, saying they are missing out.

What does the full bench do? To my great disappointment, the full bench sides with these small employers and decides overnight to reduce the terms and conditions of penalty rates on Sunday for these workers, some of the lowest-paid workers in this country. The employers get what they want. They do not have to negotiate now about higher wages, better leave provisions, better bereavement leave provisions, better rostering provisions and better public holiday provisions. They do not have to do that. You might ask yourself: what is an employer who has done an agreement like the Coles agreement or the Woolworths agreement going to say? I will tell you what they are going to say: 'We don't need enterprise agreements anymore. We can just fall back to the award. We've got everything we want, and we can reduce the wages of our staff.'

You might have listened to Senator Xenophon—perhaps you did not—on the radio in Adelaide last week. What was his solution to this? His solution to this—and he may have changed his position—was to say, 'Well, let's keep all of the people who are under the award on their current terms and conditions, but any new employee goes to the lower rate.' Let me tell you—I have had a considerable period of experience in the retail industry—what that means. Most of these workers who work Sundays, let us be honest about it—except if they are in a Coles agreement or a Woolworths agreement—are casual employees. They will simply be replaced. They will not be called up. So not only will they lose their penalty rate; they will lose their job, if that is the solution that the commission finally comes up with. They will not be called anymore, because their rate is 50 per cent higher than somebody who would only get time and half. They will not be called in to work. So not only is it a cut in your penalty rate; you actually lose your job. So that is not a solution to the problem.

How do we deal with this problem that we are now faced with? There is only one way to deal with it, and that is to restore the penalty rates as they were. That is what our leader, Bill Shorten, has proposed to do. That is the right answer, and I am getting the impression now from reading the paper that all of the other parties are starting to come back to that position. If you do not do that, then there is no point to enterprise bargaining in this country in the retail and hospitality industries—there is no point whatsoever. No company is going to have a negotiation about an enterprise agreement if they get what they want through a reduction in the award. It totally wipes out 25 years of industrial relations history.

It is true that we are overturning a decision of Fair Work, but Labor has done that before, Deputy President. Can I remind you of this. It was done during Prime Minister Paul Keating's time. The unions had argued for a 12 per cent superannuation payment to workers in this country. To everybody's surprise, the full bench of the commission said: 'No. We're not going to award this. We're not going to support any arrangement to introduce improved superannuation.' The ACTU and the unions went to the government and said, 'We want you to fix this.' And, instantaneously, Prime Minister Paul Keating said, 'Yes, I will.' The decision was overturned, and we now have in this country the best superannuation scheme in the world as a result of that decision to overturn a Fair Work decision.

We need to do the same now. We need to reverse this decision. We need to overturn the decision. We need to restore enterprise bargaining to this country, and we need to get back the penalty rates that these workers have now lost.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill 2017 prevents the Fair Work Commission decision from coming into effect. I want to be very clear about why the Greens are supporting this bill and why we have led this debate. If I can in the time that I have got, I also want to blow away some of the myths that have been thrown around the chamber rather carelessly this morning. It does not reduce the independence of the umpire. All it does is prevent the commission from reducing people's living standards. It prevents people from being forced to go backwards, it provides a floor underneath penalty rates and it secures them as a safety net for the people who need them the most.

After this bill clears the Senate, the only really significant change that will occur is that some of Australia's most vulnerable workers will not be forced to go backward. The remarkable defence that we have heard of the Fair Work Commission's untimely and extremely unfortunate decision from some of those in the Liberal Party and One Nation—I will just concentrate my thoughts on the Liberals for the time being—have been just extraordinary and expose the psychology of the people who are defending the Fair Work Commission's decision.

Many people—particularly young people and particularly women—across this country rely on penalty rates to survive, to make ends meet. That means paying rent from week to week, putting food on the table or servicing a mortgage, and right now the rules of the Fair Work Commission allow the commission to reduce people's living standards and take them backwards. We think that that is beyond unfortunate, but it is something that this parliament can do something about today.

The politics of the debate are exquisite, and we have seen a caricature of Auspoll 2017 play out around this bill this morning. We have got the one per cent floating around on yachts in Sydney Harbour, tapping out submissions to the Fair Work Commission on why the people who will be serving their coffee and their cocktails when they make landfall should be paid less. That is the perversion here: Tories earning hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a year saying that Australia's lowest paid workers are making too much money. They run the same arguments by the same blue bloods around the minimum wage, which is another matter that is obviously front of mind today. So that is your Liberal-National Party: the people on the most precarious forms of employment in the country, earning some of the lowest wages in the country, are making too much money, and that is why this decision should be upheld.

One Nation—goodness only knows. They have had three positions on penalty rates in three days. I have no idea what head or tail to make of Senator Roberts's speech from earlier that circulated amendments which he barely even glanced over. He spent no part of his contribution talking about penalty rates. He went on one of his fevered rants about the evils of the trade union movement. So they are utterly incoherent on this issue. If they end up supporting the bill, that will be great—it is another four votes—but we simply do not trust Pauline Hanson's party to look after the interests of the lowest paid Australians, and the shambles over the last couple of days has been an ample demonstration of why.

The Australian Greens took a commitment to the 2016 election to put a floor under penalty rates. I have got to say it was a bit surprising and disappointing that, at the time, we were mocked for it. I will go into a little bit of detail in a second. Within 24 hours of the Fair Work Commission decision being announced, Mr Adam Bandt, the member for Melbourne, who has led this debate all along, released our bill and wrote to the Labor Party, requesting support. Two days later Labor introduced their own bill. All right, whatever. What happened, though, when in the run-up to the 2016 election we warned that this was going to happen and the member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, introduced the bill? Mr Shorten said, 'Oh, you don't need to do that, because, yes, there is a theoretical prospect that the commission may cut penalty rates, but what if alien life makes contact with earth?' Well, earth to Bill: the aliens have made contact, we have heard from a number of them this morning and, yes, a bill such as this is absolutely necessary and warranted.

The reason that we are doing this is that the Australian workforce is increasingly casualised. Many of these people are falling into an underclass. We have heard of the working poor: people working but in poverty, a precarious existence getting by from week to week. These are the people whose lives are on the table and under discussion this morning. There are not that many of them actually present in this debate, quite frankly. Every person who has spoken on this bill this morning is earning something in the realm of $200,000 a year, and I suspect that the people who are speaking in support of the Fair Work Commission's decision have never worked a day in their lives where penalty rates were actually determining whether they could make the rent or whether they would have to sacrifice something else.

It is a quarter of the Australian workforce. It is not an accident. It is a global dynamic to drive wages down and profits up. It is not an unfamiliar dynamic. The ACTU secretary, Sally McManus, who made a blazing speech to the National Press Club this week, pointed out yesterday that wage theft is a business model for too many employers—not all of them, obviously, but many. That is why we need these laws.

Casual workers are defined as those without paid leave entitlements that people in here, many of whom have probably spent their entire lives as a beneficiary, take for granted. This is temporary, part-time and self-employed workers accounting for around a third of all employment in OECD countries, and who are these people? Nearly 70 per cent of them are women. Sixty-nine per cent of all part-time employees in Australia are women, according to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, and that is probably because for many women with kids casual work is the only option. Women are the majority of accommodation, food service and retail workers. That is who is in here. Not a lot of women have spoken up from the Tory benches this morning, you will notice. Interesting; it has been all blokes—mostly IPA muppets, but we will leave that till later. These people are largely voiceless and unrecognised in these debates.

Because of these inequalities that are already baked into the way that our economy, tax system and politics are structured, cuts to penalty rates are particularly cruel. We should not even be having this debate. This could have been handled in a cross-party way, but instead we have brought it to the Senate today.

As the new ACTU secretary pointed out yesterday, wage theft is a business model for too many employers—many but not all. There are plenty of good examples of businesses who have no interest in exploiting their employees or driving wages and conditions down. Senator Rhiannon and I looked one up in the run-up to this debate, the Eltham Valley Pantry in Byron Bay, who facebooked the fact that they had no intention of cutting their employees' penalty rates, even though the Fair Work Commission decision would make them legally entitled to do so. They have explained their reasoning for why they are doing that, and it is driving business to them. This is not an attack on employers who want to do the right thing by their employees. We need a safety net. We need a floor, not for the good employers but for those who see their employees as components, as business units, as costs to be cut no matter what. That is why we are legislating this morning.

The speed with which the Attorney-General chopped through the hours motion a short time ago meant that Senator Rhiannon could not bring this motion forward, but I just want to bring the Senate's attention to it. There was an amendment that Senator Rhiannon had tabled on the motion around our hours of meeting. We are probably going to sit until late into the night, and that is reasonably well understood by everybody in here. But here is the fascinating thing. There are a number of trade union campaigners who, in the wake of the Fair Work Commission decision, visited the premises of those who had argued the most fiercely that Sunday penalty rates should be cut, and guess what they discovered? They visited the hoteliers association, the master grocers, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry—this is mostly in Victoria—Clubs Australia, the Pharmacy Guild, the Australian Industry Group and a whole pile of tory electorate offices on a Sunday, and guess what they found? Their offices were all closed so that those people could spend time with their families and maybe go to a coffee shop, grab a cup of coffee and be served by somebody earning Sunday penalty rates. What Senator Rhiannon's motion did, somewhat cheekily but to the point, was move that we would adjourn without debate at 10.30 pm tonight if the bills listed are not done and the business of this place is yet to be conducted, and that we would reconvene on Sunday, 2 April 2017.

Some employers and people have argued that Sunday penalty rates should be cut, as Senator Paterson did, not that long ago. There is nothing special about Sundays anymore, yet all their electorate offices were closed on a Sunday when these campaigners visited. That is the scale of the seething hypocrisy that we are dealing with. It would be so interesting to take a straw poll, and it is a shame we cannot put it to a vote, as to how many on this side of the chamber would be interested in coming back here and working on a Sunday. I don't think there would be many takers, quite frankly. That is why we pay people a premium to work on Sundays or late into the night. That is what penalty rates are for.

I was waiting with interest—and I had to sit through Senator Roberts's contribution, which is rarely memorable but always a little bit strange—for some amendments that One Nation had circulated for us to consider. I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery: they appear to be basically cut and pasted from Mr Bandt's Fair Work Amendment (Pay Protection) Bill 2017, which is before the Senate. So thank you for taking the time to cut and paste out of our bill. Therefore, I do not have anything seriously critical to say about it. The bill seeks to protect workers, and I will just fill you in on the nature of Senator Roberts's amendments, because he was too busy slagging off the CFMEU to do so. I will tell you what the One Nation amendments seek to do. They seek to protect workers in the fast food and retail industry. That is great. The Greens have been campaigning to look after the fast food and retail industry workers for a while, and we welcome One Nation's sudden interest in these issues.

Obviously, we will not be supporting the amendments, because blasting amendments through on the same day is really not how business is done in here. These are actually quite complex matters and people's lives and livelihoods are in the balance. We will be referring our bill on these issues, that One Nation have at the last minute cut and pasted from, to a Senate inquiry, and Senator Roberts is very welcome to show up, if he likes, to hear the evidence for and against these amendments. We will be proceeding with them in the way business is normally done in here. Obviously, One Nation senators are welcome to show up at that, but we will not be supporting the amendments in this place today or the rather odd way in which they have been welded on to a tremendously important bill.

As I said at the outset, the politics of the way this debate has been conducted and the contributions of the tories and indeed everybody else in this chamber has provided a rather miserable caricature of the state of the debate around the economy, the purpose of the economy and the way that we support and look after everyone in this country. We should look after them no matter how much they are earning or which private school they may not have been able to get into or their situation of employment.

I find it incredibly galling, revealing and illuminating that the same people who are arguing that Australia's lowest-paid workers deserve a pay cut and that it should not be the business of this parliament to put a floor under those pay and conditions are the same people who argue for the maintenance of capital gains tax so that they can continue amassing property portfolios. They are the same people who argue that negative gearing should stay in place so that they can just tuck away and capitalise their income in multiple property portfolios. They are the same people who argue that superannuation should basically be yet another tax shelter. They are the same people who are demanding tax cuts and actually got them last year for people in the highest tax brackets. They are the same people who later on tonight are going to be arguing for a $50 billion tax cut to corporations. It is a vicious, deliberate double standard in play, and the funny thing is that they only ever call it class warfare when we fight back. Call it what you will, but today we are fighting back, and when this bill is committed to a vote it is very likely to pass. Get used to it.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It being 12:45, debate is interrupted. Pursuant to the order agreed to earlier, the questions on all remaining stages of the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take-Home Pay) Bill 2017 will be put without debate.

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

I seek leave to move an amendment that I foreshadowed in my speech in the second reading debate to restore penalty rates for all workers, including those whose rates were stripped by union deals.

Leave not granted.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the bill be now read a second time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.