Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

And what I am saying is entirely consistent with a dissent motion. I was perfectly entitled to put the entire list of 46 conditions. In this House at question time the Prime Minister said that several award conditions were excluded. He avoided every question the Leader of the Opposition and I had put to him. I am perfectly entitled to make the point that, when the Prime Minister said ‘several’, he was being disingenuous. Here are the 46 conditions—some of them are replicated, so I will not read them out: performance payment, higher duty allowance, skill utilisation loading, relieving allowance, field staff duty allowance, on call allowance, first aid allowance, interpreter allowance, district allowance, meal allowance, car allowance, intersuburban travel allowance, telephone allowance (on call), telephone allowance (use of home telephone), travelling expenses, removal expenses, temporary accommodation expenses, transfer expenses, assistance for employees transferred long distances, travel allowance, domestic travel, travel between work and home, premises renovation allowance, basis of payment, payment for working overtime, breaks, shift allowances, meal breaks, meal allowances, overtime, weekends and public holidays, transport arrangements, annual leave loading, public holidays, allowances, dry cleaning, tea breaks and minimum breaks. And there are a few more conditions that make up the 46 conditions at page 1 of the schedule ‘Protected award conditions excluded’—I made the point that I was not proposing to read them all out—which can be found in the Commonwealth Bank AWA that was offered to employees of the Commonwealth Bank on 9 October 2006. The Prime Minister would have you believe that that is ‘several’.

The Prime Minister is also disingenuous and misleading in pretending that somehow this is just like the Commonwealth Bank 1997 AWA. What he will not tell the House is that the Commonwealth Bank 1997 AWA was, of course, protected by the so-called no disadvantage test—which goes right to the heart of the question that the Leader of the Opposition first asked him. The Leader of the Opposition asked, ‘Isn’t it the case that, under the government’s industrial relations legislation, award conditions like penalty rates, shift and overtime loadings, allowances, annual leave loading, public holidays, rest breaks and incentive based payments and bonuses can’t be guaranteed and can be removed without any compensation?’ The Prime Minister refused to answer the question. The Leader of the Opposition sought a ruling on a point of relevance. You ignored him, Mr Speaker, and you did not hold the Prime Minister to account; you allowed him to avoid answering the question. That is made worse by the fact that, when the government spent $55 million advertising its legislation, these conditions were all referred to as protected award conditions. We saw the big stamp ‘Protected by law’ on the adverts. Nothing could have been more disingenuous.

Then, Mr Speaker, I made the point to the Prime Minister that in May at Senate estimates the Office of the Employment Advocate indicated that 16 per cent of AWAs removed all protected award conditions in full, 27 per cent removed public holiday loadings, 29 per cent removed rest breaks, 52 per cent removed shiftwork loadings, 63 per cent removed penalty rates, 64 per cent removed leave loadings and 100 per cent removed at least one of the above. Again he failed or refused to answer the question and you did not hold him to account, and—

See this speech in context