Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw. The Prime Minister thinks so little of his legislation that he is unprepared to face me or, for that matter, anyone else in this place in debate. This motion goes to the heart of family life. It goes to the heart of what makes family life sustainable economically, spiritually and morally—the capacity for ordinary family members to enjoy each other’s company free of the burdens of work and other distractions on at least some occasions in the course of the year. This motion establishes clearly the right of people to enjoy Christmas holidays, Easter holidays, Australia Day and Anzac Day—the various public holidays of significance that have been designated by state and federal governments over the years. I challenge every member opposite to support this motion. They will be given the opportunity to do so. I want them to show to their constituents how seriously they regard their access to those holidays.

There are two ways in which the government legislation attacked the capacity of Australians to enjoy those holidays, some of which are of immense spiritual and moral significance to individual members of Australian society as well as to the decency of family life. The first was to create, in the general terms of their legislation, a condition which said that a worker needed a reason for a public holiday. He had to have a reason to take Christmas off, a reason to take Easter off and a reason to take off Anzac Day. Most Australians assume they have it as a right.

The second way the Prime Minister attacked this position was to remove from the legislation the certainty that, if you did work on those holidays, you would be able to access penalty rates to do so. There are two reasons for that. The first reason is that penalty rates exist for working on those holidays as a deterrent to employers to engage people needlessly over those periods. It puts a question mark in the mind of the employer. The second reason of course is that, for some period of family life, most people in society need the capacity to earn those penalty rates in order to be able to pay their mortgages and afford the other aspects of family life.

The position of this government attacks family life at its very core. The Prime Minister talks about barbecue stoppers, and there is no doubt his industrial legislation is that. But this is more than a barbecue stopper; this is an axe taken to the kitchen table of family life. That is what this is. We will continually oblige Liberal and National Party members to declare themselves in this place on those issues right up until the next election. So they might as well do it now.

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