Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This government's decision to not defend and protect venerable Australians and take-home pay and to support a reduction in Sunday penalty rates is a travesty. It further illustrates how this government is out of touch and has the wrong priorities for Australia. Meanwhile, this week, they will proceed with giving a $50 billion tax cut to big business, including $7 billion just for the big banks. Penalty rates are fundamental to the Australian way of life. They protect our weekends and provide a way for low-paid workers to get a bit more in their wallets each week, making it easier, although not easy, to make ends meet. Everyone knows one of the biggest battles fought by the union movement was for the five-day week and the eight-hour day. This government talks about flexibilities, but it was unions that delivered it while protecting workers. This was the foundation and basis of penalty rates in Australia; this should never be forgotten. This is why the Labor Party exist—to ensure the legislated protection of Australian workers. It is our raison d'etre.

A key point often overlooked is that the concept and existence of penalty rates underpin the take-home pay of salaried workers. Many Australians earn an annualised salary, trading off overtime and penalty rates to provide greater flexibility to employers but also greater autonomy to employees. Both of these are good things. Indeed, worker autonomy is said to greatly increase worker mental health. However, the quid pro quo here is that these salaries compensate—they compensate for reasonable overtime; they compensate for weekend work—and, on a waged basis, a worker would receive penalty rates.

Many have complained that they work on weekends and do not receive penalty rates, and many of those complaints have been coming from the media. But they forget their salaries compensate for this. No-one claims that this is perfect, but if penalty rates are taken away their salaries will decline in real terms. The same thing goes for those employed in fast food and retail under EBAs. Those agreements include uplifts in base rates so that those working weekends are better off overall. Their produced penalty rates have been calculated against a higher base rate. Together with guaranteed minimum shifts and a raft of conditions agreed to by workers and employers, these staff are better off than under the award. But all of this will be undone by the Fair Work Commission's decision because you cannot negotiate a higher base rate when penalty rates under the award are lower.

Bill Clinton's campaign strategists famously hit the proverbial nail on the head when he said, 'It's the economy, stupid.' Well, stupid this government certainly must be when it comes to economic management. Month after month, the RBA and respected economists have commented on the need to increase consumption here in Australia to see wages, which are stagnant or falling in real terms, increase. Economic growth in this country is perilous as it stands and the government has no plan to fix it. Its one-point plan for jobs and growth will not actually create any growth and now it wants to cut wages for Australia's lowest earners. Everyone knows that those that earn the least spend the highest proportion of their income in the economy. This means, according to analysis in 2009, that for every $100 that an Australian worker loses in penalty rates, they spend $80 to $100 less in the economy. The very shops that are crying for penalty-rate reductions are the ones that will have less money spent in them as a result. Overall, this means a not insignificant amount of money is ripped out of the economy because the savings by business will not go back into the economy necessarily. Not only will they not translate into jobs, or at least anywhere near the same number of value of jobs, but any savings will end up in investments or off-shored profits. They do not help the Australian economy.

Let us look at the economic vandalism that the Turnbull government is supporting: less take-home pay for Australia's lowest-paid workers, less income tax to pay for essential government services, more people on welfare or part-Centrelink payments, less spending in the economy resulting is less GST revenue going back to the states, less payroll tax for the states and less superannuation build-up for low-income workers, meaning increased reliance on pensions in the future. Finally, we think of the worker on the street—the guy working in a cafe on the weekend to pay his rent or the woman working weekends in a small grocery store so she can make ends meet for her family or vice versa or anyone else of many combinations of those that rely on penalty rates. How heartless is this government? It tries to hide behind claims of an independent umpire, while, at the same time, it wants to retrospectively overturn a decision of the full Federal Court on native title law. Last year, it not only overturned a decision of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal; it abolished the whole tribunal as well. Get with the program, government members—stand up for low-paid workers and support Labor's bill to protect penalty rates.

See this speech in context