Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bonner for her question. It was a pleasure to spend so much time with the member for Bonner in the lead-up to the 3 May election, where I saw how connected she was with her local community there in the suburbs of Brisbane. Many of those constituents will, of course, be people who depend upon penalty rates for their standard of living and their quality of life, which is why today the minister introduced legislation to enshrine penalty rates into law, protecting weekend and overtime pay for around 2.6 million Australians, because we want Australians to earn more and to keep more of what they earn. If you're giving up your weekend, our government will make sure that you get paid the penalty rates that you deserve. It's one of the big contrasts in this chamber: we on this side supporting higher wages and lower taxes, and those on that side arguing for lower wages and higher income taxes.

This comes on top of the cuts to income taxes, where we changed stage 3 to make sure that low-income earners actually got a tax cut. It comes on top of the not one, not two but three increases in the minimum wage and award wages—a 3.5 per cent increase for award wages on 1 July. Real wages have now grown for 18 months in a row. At the same time, more than 1.1 million jobs have been created. The gender pay gap is the lowest on record, and we have delivered substantial pay increases for workers in feminised industries such as aged care and child care.

As to the coalition, of course, we don't know what their position will be when it comes to penalty rates. We know that they tried to ban working from home, we know they wanted to sack 40,000 public servants and we know that they opposed the right to disconnect and same job, same pay. They said our IR reforms would take us back to the Dark Ages. What those reforms have done is lead to an increase in wages, which is a real benefit for working people, including the fine workers who elected the member for Bonner to take her place here in this chamber.

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