Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to support the motion of the member for Wannon regarding a recent Federal Court decision concerning the minimum retail award and the hours that can be worked. It is not often in the 43rd parliament—outside the sporting field—that I can necessarily agree with the member for Wannon, but I do on this private member's motion. This, in effect, has been operational since October last year, when the retail award was amended to allow secondary school students a minimum of 1½ hours of work after school, so it is hard to disagree with him. In fact, this side of the House welcomes the positive comments that he has made. I think there were some positive comments in the speech of the member for Wannon; I had to sift through the politics, but there were some positive comments.

This is about the tension between an award that helps everybody and the people who are not helped and do not benefit from an award. I know that in your previous calling, Deputy Speaker D'Ath, you would have seen these occasions. Certainly I did when I was in unions. Industrial relations is becoming a much simpler lot of laws. It is not great work if you are an industrial advocate in either a union or an employer organisation, but the reality is that, under the Rudd and Gillard governments, we have simplified—sorry, I should say the Howard government as well; they did take some steps towards doing it, though not, I would suggest, necessarily for the best interests of workers. But they did take some steps towards simplifying from the days when you had a million different awards and three different lines in the state of Queensland. You had to find out who was covered and what they were covered by, and tracking it down was quite complicated. So it is good to see a simplification.

In May this year, when the Federal Court released a decision which upheld the Fair Work Australia decision to reduce the minimum engagement period for secondary school students working after-school shifts under the general retail award 2010, it was an outbreak of common sense. The effect of both the Fair Work Australia and Federal Courts decisions is that secondary students working under the retail award will continue to be able to work a minimum of 1½ hours after school between 3 pm and 6:30 pm. That is in circumstances where the employee and a parent or guardian have agreed and where employment for a longer period is not possible, either because of the operational requirements of the business, for example, closing time, or the unavailability of the employee, because they have to go home and do their homework and the like. This is a great initiative to slowly integrate school-aged children into the workforce and to give them some individual responsibility while learning the values of hard work and earning a dollar. As a parent of a seven-year-old and a three-year-old, I can say that they certainly know the value of the dollar, so long as it is my dollar. I look forward to their being able to understand how hard it is to make money in the workplace.

It was encouraging to see the member for Wannon recognising here today that the Fair Work system provides benefits for young Australians in providing a strong and stable safety net, such as modern awards, that allow for them to work after school but that it is also a system that does not allow them to be exploited—it does not allow their terms and conditions of employment to be undermined through a take it or leave it attitude, which is inherent in AWAs, or for them to be sacked unfairly with no remedy at all. However, one thing remains unclear: where exactly the Leader of the Opposition will take us when it comes to workplace relations. We know that policies have been developed but we are yet to see them. I would hope that these secret workplace relations policies will be released and that he will guarantee that they will not undermine the award safety net, especially when it comes to young Australians and women, who are the people who suffer most readily when you tinker with the industrial relations system.

The member for Wakefield touched on the big, insidious problem in our workforce: casualisation. That is fine if times are booming and things are good, when people can take the extra money that comes with casualisation, but it can also be a problem when the situation changes. It is particularly a problem for women—you see that in the cleaning industry and some of the other service industries, where they are at the whim of a boss. As we heard from the member for McPherson earlier, most bosses do the right thing and understand that by looking after workers everyone will make a dollar. But some bosses do let power go to their heads. I would hate to go down the road of the Walmart type of job in the United States, where nearly 15 per cent of the people who are employed are living in poverty. (Time expired)

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