Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian public must be getting a little immune to broken promises—promises such as no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no cuts to pensions and no cuts to the ABC and the SBS. But what about the big promise they made down in Adelaide? They were going to build 12 submarines in Adelaide. And what about that promise they made before the last election about no changes to the vehicle industry? The alarm bells should have rung when Tony Abbott addressed the listeners of 2UE and he said these words to them: 'workers' pay and conditions are safe with us.' This is the man who comes from Work Choices itself—he was one of its architects. He refers to it often in his book Battlelines.

Let us look at the record of what the government has been able to achieve over the last two years. What have they done about Australian jobs, about protecting Australian workers? For the first time in 20 years we now have 800,000 people unemployed. That is a disgrace. As the shadow minister said in his contribution earlier, we have 6.3 per cent unemployment—we did not have that figure at the height of the global financial crisis. We did not have a figure with a six in front of it—and that was the greatest financial crisis we had faced since the Great Depression. Youth unemployment is hovering around 13 per cent, but in my electorate youth unemployment is hovering around 20 per cent. This is an area that we do need to focus on. We do need to give opportunities to young people and we do need to invest in skills and vocational education to give them the start they need in life. The fact is that at the moment, nationally, 300,000 young people are unemployed. That is after two years of the Tony Abbott government. By the way, after that two years there are now 114,000 more people in unemployment.

The government's failure to create jobs is one thing, but look at how they treat workers. The minister for industrial relations came out the other day and said he thought it was all okay and appropriate for 100 stevedores to be sacked by text, at night. He thought that was okay, they were probably always getting text messages, so they could just be texted and told they were gone. That is something that you would think would be very disrupting for employees. We have seen before people who have been on docks with balaclavas and dogs, but here is a minister coming out and saying that that is okay—you can treat people like that; just text them that they are sacked. We should not be surprised because, after all, this is the party of Work Choices; and this is the party that for the first time in Australian history made it legal to pay people below award rates of pay. They attacked people who are on minimum rates. People were earning the bare minimum provided by awards, and they made it legal for the first time in history to pay people below award rates. So we should not be surprised that they commissioned a Productivity Commission report, with their investigations and recommendations coming down about penalty rates.

How can you stand by and see a recommendation and talk it up on the basis that there should be a two-tier system of penalty rates? If you are in the retail and hospitality industry, you are going to be treated as second-class citizens. By the way, they are not giving a guarantee that they will not go further at some point to look at police, emergency services, ambos and others—but at the moment they are saying Sunday is no different from any other day. We had the Assistant Treasurer walk in here yesterday and explain that there was no great significance about Sundays any longer. He said there was probably less religious observation occurring these days on a Sunday, so therefore why should Sundays attract double time—they should attract the same penalty rates as Saturdays. That is what they want it to mean for people who have been protected by penalty rates, normally vulnerable people; people whose exploitation has been prevented. If that is the cavalier attitude they take to workers, no wonder people cannot trust what they say—the people know that they cannot trust their promises. Labor will not join them in a race to the bottom on wages and conditions.

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