Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last year we warned the government that if they changed the Clean Start guidelines it would lead to a reduction in wages for cleaners, those cleaners who clean our offices and offices of the Public Service generally. The Prime Minister stood at the dispatch box in response to a question from the opposition and said that would not happen. He said that no cleaner would lose any rates of pay as a result of the abolition of the Clean Start guidelines that made sure that workers were actually going to be treated fairly.

Unfortunately, that has come to pass, contradicting the Prime Minister's commitment to cleaners, including the cleaners who clean the Prime Minister's office and other offices in this place. Indeed, the new contract of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade will see cuts of $6,000 a year to cleaners as a result of the abolition of the Clean Start guidelines. This is a reprehensible act by the government and it is fundamentally at odds with the commitment that the Prime Minister made in this place not that long ago. It is now really important for the Prime Minister to honour his word and rectify this situation so that the hardworking cleaners who clean the offices of the Prime Minister and other ministers in this government are treated properly. The best way to do that is to rectify that and give the money back to those cleaners so that they are not treated so shabbily. It is unfortunate that the Prime Minister has failed to commit to and be honest with the cleaners who look after his office and other offices of the Public Service.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It being 8 pm, the debate is interrupted.

House adjourned at 20:00