Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also thank the member for Wakefield for bringing this important motion to us. I thank the member for Hughes for at least being able to qualify for us that not only are those sitting opposite the party that wanted to Americanise our education system; they also want to Americanise our industrial relations system. They want people working in hospitality to survive on tips. When we look at that we need to make sure we put this in context. This is the party that introduced Work Choices in 2007. Remember what that did? Work Choices for the very first time in our history made it legal to employ people below an award. They are the people who now say, 'We're feeling sorry for people because they can't open because they think the costs are too high.' No-one is considering the issue about workers here. My dad was a police officer. All my life I have known him to be a shiftworker. My brother was a paramedic with the Ambulance Service of New South Wales—a shiftworker. My son Jonathan is a builder. He has been a shiftworker all his life. My other son Nicholas, an electrician, is a shiftworker.

Mr Deputy Speaker Kelly, do you realise that, according to the last census, there are 1.5 million Australians who are shiftworkers? They depend on their penalty rates. As a matter of fact, 30 per cent of their earnings come from penalty rates. If you listened to all these people opposite you would think that, yes, we could cut those workers' wages by 30 per cent. You would think we could manipulate shiftwork payments and create more jobs because they are going to pay people less. That is a fallacy. All of those the opposite are talking about are some people being able to go out and make more profits. Simply cutting penalty rates does not give you extra customers. Simply cutting penalty rates does not suddenly increase your trade. I will tell you what it does do. As soon as you cut penalty rates, you cut people's take-home pay. That is what this is all about. This is not an issue of how we are going to stimulate the economy by cutting wages.

We sitting here in parliament do not get penalty rates, but I think that those of us who have the honour of representing our communities do pretty well. We are well remunerated for what we do. I am not sure those opposite are going to say, 'Let's peg our rates.' Let us put this in context. When we talk about this, we are talking about cutting the rates of pay for people who are, in many instances, some of the lowest paid people in the country—people in retail and hospitality. They are the equivalent of those people who, in America, rely on tips. This is just another exercise of trying to cut rates of pay.

The McKell Institute discovered that cutting penalty rates for rural workers would cost workers about $900 million to $1.5 billion per annum. The cost to local communities was that people's disposable income—what they could spend in their local communities—would reduce by about $500 million. This would really impact on rural communities.

This is not a magical job-creating situation where, all of a sudden, we are going to create 60,000 jobs. What we might do is create more employment, but it will be at a lower rate of pay. To earn the rate of money they currently enjoy, people would have to work extra shifts. This is about reducing the take-home pay of people and saying that, somehow, it is going to stimulate industry. That is a complete fallacy. The majority of Australians support penalty rates. We know that; that is a fact. In 2007, the majority of Australians said that tampering with the industrial relations system to allow people to be paid lower than award rates of pay was a no-go zone.

These are things that do not just affect people who vote Labor. We are talking about retail and hospitality workers—low-paid workers, on the whole. Maybe they do vote for us, but I am sure you have a lot of such people in your communities who vote conservative. Maybe they vote for the Liberals sometimes—poorly advised, of course—or maybe for the Nationals. If you look in your communities, you will find a considerable number of people who are completely reliant on their penalty rates. Simply to go and cut their penalty rates will not do anything to stimulate our economy.

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