Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the amendments being put forward by the member for Gorton to the Fair Work Amendment (Repeal of 4 Yearly Reviews and Other Measures) Bill 2017. It is a broad church we have in the Liberal Party. The vast majority of the party, including me, is made up of small business owners. I had a payroll of in excess of 105 people. I was subjected to penalty rates. In their place, they work. The bill before the House speaks to trying to find a balance in relation to penalty rates on weekends. I believe the government has. We have looked at the double-time rate for Sunday and reduced that to the same penalty rate as for Saturday—time and a half. To come to this place and say that there are going to be 40 per cent cuts just does not stack up mathematically.

We went to the last election saying that we supported jobs and growth. In order to create those jobs, we need to give business the opportunity to be able to hire people on a weekend. We need to enthuse and encourage those businesses that make a commercial decision not to open on the weekends because they just cannot afford it. It is not across all aspects. You would have seen today marching and protests in the street by the CFMEU, stating that they were protecting the right to penalty rates. This is the hospitality sector. This is the straight economics of a mum-and-dad coffee shop not being able to afford to open on a Sunday to trade because the cost of employing staff is subeconomic and they cannot turn a dollar.

The amendment put forward by the honourable member for Gorton speaks in relation to the succession of copied state awards. Proposed section 135A, Protecting take-home pay, says:

The object of this section is to ensure that no employee's, or prospective employee's, take-home pay is reduced as a result of a variation of a modern award.

There are some thoughts around that space. The argument that is put forward by the other side is that, if someone who does not work during the week has their penalties traded away, and the only way that they can pick that up is by working on the weekends, should they be entitled to that double rate of pay and are they actually worse off?

I approach this from a different angle, from the angle of creating greater employment opportunities through the business sector, through the hospitality sector—the coffee shops. Those who work for McDonald's or one of the other multinational fast food chains would be working on much less than the award, because those rates have been already negotiated wholeheartedly through award bargaining processes.

The amendments also speak in relation to the FWC not reducing take-home pay and a modern award not being varied in a way that would or would be likely to reduce the take-home pay of an employee covered by that award. The member for Gorton has made some honourable contributions in this debate, but it is important to get these other remaining points out with the time that is remaining to me. On determinations and reducing take-home pay, the bill says:

A determination of the FWC made on or after 22 February 2017 that would, or would be likely to, have the effect of reducing the take-home pay of any employee covered by a modern award is of no effect.

On the definition of take-home pay, it says:

The take-home pay of an employee covered by a modern award is the pay the employee actually receives, or would receive if increases in the modern award minimum wage were included in the employee’s pay:

As a government we will seek to oppose the amendments put forward by the honourable member for Gorton. We will oppose the amendments for the reason that we have only just seen them and there is a bill before the House and we support that bill.

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