Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise today to support the motion moved by the member for Bendigo regarding penalty rates. Penalty rates are extremely important to the people and families in my electorate of Calwell. These are low-income workers who sacrifice family time and work unsociable hours because they rely on penalty rates to pay for their everyday living expenses, in most cases including their mortgages or their rent. There are 4.5 million Australians, most in lower paid jobs, who rely on penalty rates to pay their bills and to make ends meet. Therefore, I am pleased to stand alongside my colleague the member for Bendigo, who is a very strong campaigner on this issue.

Penalty rates are a safety net for Australian workers in an environment that is becoming more precarious, casualised and underemployed. Penalty rates are essential in combatting the emergence of a class of working poor, and proposing to remove them is an assault on Australian workers. Removing penalty rates will disproportionality affect hospitality and retail workers, who are amongst the lowest paid workers in Australia and the largest employers of women in the labour force. Removing that safety net for women to engage in the workforce risks also removing their autonomy and capacity for self-determination. Many of those women live in my electorate.

Incentivising irregular hours of work, and compensation for working during usual family and recreation time, is not a new phenomenon. Penalty rates were hard fought for by early industrial Australians. They now form an important tenet of our social democracy and are the cornerstone of fairness, social inclusion and living standards in this country, whilst preventing discrimination and exploitation.

Last week was a very big week for my electorate, with the closing of the Ford motor car factory. I look back at the 57-year history of Ford in Broadmeadows and the multiple generations of workers who have lived in the federal seat of Calwell. These were people who worked very long hours, risked their health and spent time away from their families to better their quality of life, and this sacrifice was rewarded with penalty rates. It was their penalty rates that they saved and used to buy a house and to educate their children. Penalty rates are a key feature of nation building in this country.

The difference that penalty rates make to the average worker's ability to make ends meet cannot be underestimated or undervalued. We are living in a time where wage growth is slow compared to the increased costs of housing and health care, for example. The ABS wage price index shows that wage growth is the slowest it has been in the last 20 years. We are seeing everyday Australians dip into their savings or put less aside in order to cope with the increase in the cost of living.

Penalty rates enable security and upward momentum through sharing in the nation's prosperity, by allowing low-income earners to be properly compensated for sacrificing their family life and their social life. They add to low-income workers' take home pay each week, adding to their and their family's quality of life as well as the competitiveness of the national economy.

The removal of penalty rates will impact on those most vulnerable in the labour market: low-income earners—people who live in my electorate. Many of my constituents in Calwell come from new and emerging communities, who want to make a go of their life in Australia. Employment and fair pay is key to making a go of it. I want to quote one of my constituents, who I have spoken to, who feels very strongly about this issue. Humphrey Caspersz is from Craigieburn in Melbourne's north. He is a field service technician for electronic appliances. Humphrey wants me to read this out to the chamber:

To me, after hours, overtime and minimum hours for weekend work are the most important and crucial payments I receive. It helps with my mortgage and helps provide the food I put on the table to feed my growing family as I have a wife and three children, with another on the way. I have been both on a salary and wage and found the salary meant that I was working long hours with no bonuses and hardly got to see my family, with no extra benefit but to the company I worked for. Now I am back on a wage with all the penalties, giving me the option to work weekends and after hours with the incentive of more pay and allowing me to have some extra money that I can spend on my family and also helping make ends meet—for example, paying our ever increasing energy bills. I believe these penalties are a great reward for the sacrifice of giving up my time that could be better spent with my family.

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