Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I'll take the interjection. First, you've got to catch them. It's the Fair Work Ombudsman that did that. You underfunded them, and we increased the funding of them. So that's how you catch them. You have strong laws, which we're introducing this week, and you have a strong regulator, which we have ensured has occurred. Those sorts of situations shouldn't occur. They are regulated and policed very heavily by this government. This government has increased the penalties and will further increase the penalties, including creating the criminal penalty of wage theft, and including and introducing a whole new type of civil penalty that links the charge or fine to the amount of the underpayment, which we believe is the way in which you can ensure that the signals are right so that that sort of stuff which should never happen does not happen.

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