Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I'll get to the issue of the inquiry in a minute, because my favourite quote was 'sloppy drafting', but, wait, we'll get to that. Hold that thought for me; work with me here.

Penalty rates are the way that people hold their lives together and make sure that they have a pathway of coping with the cost of living. It is no surprise that the example that he hung on to saying, 'Here was an industry that was willing to have a higher base rate in return for getting rid of penalty rates,' was an industry where overwhelming the bulk of the shifts are in penalty rate periods. Do you really think that proposal was designed for employers to have to pay more? There has never been a time when a transfer of income from profit margins to workers' wages has been supported by those opposite.

I guess at one level I'm happy that they still don't get it, but the reality is the cost of living is about the difference between the money that comes into your bank account and the costs that go out. For three and a bit years now, every time there's something about lowering prices those opposite have opposed it; every time there's something about increasing wages they've opposed it. If you want people to be paid less and for their medicines and expenses to all cost more, that is the worst outcome for the cost of living. That is exactly what those opposite took to the last election, and it's exactly what the shadow minister is pointing to now.

On the full 15 minutes of the shadow minister's speech, I'd remind him that speaking times as listed in the standing orders are a limit, not a target, and, when you run out of things to say, you don't have to keep going. It's okay to stop when you've run out of material. The line that was my favourite—and he kept coming back to it—was 'sloppy drafting', and so I thought, if he's alleging sloppy drafting, maybe we ought to have a look at the motion he's just moved. Let me tell people what the motion is in front of the House right now. It says:

That the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025 be referred to the Standing Committee on Education and Employment for consideration and an advisory report …

So you then go to the Notice Paper and you go to the list of committees. If you look at the Notice Paperthere are copies just there if you need them—on page 14 you get the list of House committees. He's referring the bill to a committee that doesn't exist. So I'm sort of tempted—we could just vote for this, and it would go nowhere. It would go absolutely nowhere. It would be like referring the bill to the shadow cabinet. It goes absolutely nowhere.

I think it would be fun to have a vote on it because I'd like to see how many of his colleagues would be forced to wander into this chamber to fiercely demand that this bill be referred to a committee of the House of Representatives that does not exist. I'll let you know now that we're going to vote no. If you want to call the division, you have the second voice. If he leaves, then you're on your own, and it won't happen. But I'd encourage you—no matter how impossible this motion is, no matter how completely wrong the drafting is and no matter how many times you've got upset and passionate about sloppy drafting. The call is yours now. Does the opposition stand loyally, strongly with their shadow minister and force the whole of the coalition to vote right now that a bill on penalty rates be referred to a committee that does not exist? I commend the consideration of this resolution to the House.

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