Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. What is the government doing to ensure the rights of Australian workers, particularly working mums, are protected?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Greenway for her question. She is someone who knows first-hand about the challenges of balancing work and family life. She is doing a great job of balancing work and family life and representing her constituency of Greenway in this parliament. The member for Greenway, like all Labor members, knows that the purpose of our political party, formed more than 100 years ago, has been to provide fairness and decency to working people and, particularly, fairness and decency in workplaces. That is why, across the life of the Labor Party, we have fought for fairness and decency at work. There has been no more important or ferocious fight than the fight we engaged in against Work Choices. We fought the Liberal Party's Work Choices because it was unfair to every Australian worker. We fought the Liberal Party's Work Choices because it particularly hit women and young workers. Most particularly, when we look at the statistics for women, women on Work Choices AWAs were earning $87 less a week than women on collective agreements. This had been a stinging attack against the rights of working women. There were celebrated cases like the six mums who worked at a mushroom farm and were sacked after they refused to sign-up to Australian Workplace Agreements with a 25 per cent pay cut, and I understand those interjecting supported all of that.

In contrast, we got rid of Work Choices because of that attack on Australian workers, particularly women. We understand that with the new Fair Work system it is important that we keep modernising because the needs of modern families change. The pressures to balance work and family life change over time. Having been the first government in this country to introduce a right to request flexible working conditions, we are intending to extend that right. We are intending to extend that right to workers who are returning from parental leave because, when you have just had a new child, having flexibility in your working conditions is one of the ways that will help you balance work and family life. We will also be extending that right to people who are caring for kids at school. We want to extend that right to people who are in all sorts of difficult circumstances including, particularly, women who may be dealing with domestic violence, are changing their family arrangements as a result and are in a particular time of strain for their family. This is an important change for Australian workers, and we will ensure that we deliver it as part of our Fair Work system, having got rid of Work Choices. (Time expired)