Ali France (Dickson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Did you know that some of Australia's biggest employers are trying to reduce penalty rates for retail workers, clerical workers and even banking workers? Big retailers like Coles, Woolworths, Kmart and Costco are currently pushing to scrap penalty rates in the Fair Work Commission. We know, if successful, this would leave hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers worse off. That is why we introduced new laws to protect penalty rates and stop take-home pay packets from being lowered. We know young people, students, families and, in particular, low-paid women need those penalty rates to pay the bills and get ahead.

We promised to protect penalty rates during the election campaign, and now we are delivering. Yesterday, we saw the member for Goldstein try to delay our laws, to delay penalty rate protections. I emphasise the word 'try' because he referred the bill to a committee that doesn't exist. But we know what those opposite think about penalty rates. In 2017, they were supportive of the Fair Work Commission's decision to reduce penalty rates for more than 700,000 workers in retail, hospitality, fast food and pharmacy awards. They argued then that the cuts were 'helpful', that cuts to penalty rates would create more jobs and that penalty rates were 'killing jobs'. Sound familiar? They're saying the same thing today. We just heard the same scare campaign from the member for Cook. He obviously does not support this bill.

The thing is, researchers looked into the impact of penalty rate reductions, analysed employment data of more than 1,800 employees and 200 owner-managers in the retail and hospitality industry. Surprise, surprise, they found no evidence of jobs being created by cutting penalty rates. All it did was reduce the take-home pay of low-income workers and the flow-on effect was less money spent in the wider economy. That means less money spent at local small businesses.

Casual retail workers in my electorate of Dixon earn about $26 an hour for weekday work and about $40 an hour for Sunday work. This can make a huge difference. A retail worker would be $353 worse off over the Easter break. A pharmacy worker would be $1,018 worse off over the Easter break. A cook at a cafe, a chef, would be $562 worse off over the Easter break. These entitlements are essential for workers in sectors like retail, admin and hospitality, where they are often working outside the normal nine-to-five hours. It's the workers at Coles, including at my local Arana Hills, who help us all with our groceries. It's the chef who cooks me up a big Aussie breakfast on the weekend at our local cafe. It's the admin worker who is working overtime in health. They keep the country running on weekends, public holidays, late nights and through shiftwork.

Award reliant employees are more likely to be women, work part-time, be under the age of 35 and be employed on a casual basis. These workers deserve to be paid fairly for missing out on time with their families and loved ones. These are the workers who can least afford to have their pay cut, but we know those on the other side struggle to understand modern-day workers.

Like many members on this side of the House, during the recent election I knocked on so many doors in my community of Dixon. I knocked on so many doors of houses that had people working from home. Many of the people I talked to, that I had a chat with, would often say when I came to the door, 'I have to be quick because I'm working from home.' These dedicated professionals were shocked to hear that those opposite wanted to strip them of their ability to work from home and force them back into the office. We all know what happened next. The coalition, those opposite, performed a spectacular mid-campaign backflip, realising that would mean a huge change, particularly for female workers.

This is just another example of how they don't understand the plight of working people. We know they want to strip workers of their entitlements. The Albanese Labor government is committed to delivering and protecting fair pay and decent conditions for Australian workers.

It is part of our core business, and so it should be.

Electorates like mine are made up of good working-class people. They work hard to provide for their families, pay the bills, pay off their mortgage or save for a house. Many work early mornings, late nights, weekends or public holidays to do so. We took to the election a commitment to protect the penalty rates of modern award reliant workers, and that's exactly what we're doing.

This builds on the Albanese Labor government's strong record of protecting and improving workers' rights and conditions. This government has advocated to the Fair Work Commission for minimum and award wage rises every single year since we were elected in 2022. We banned pay secrecy clauses and criminalised intentional wage theft. We stopped the underpayment of workers through the use of the labour hire loopholes. We ended the forced permanent casual loophole, providing a proper pathway to conversion for casuals who want it, and we gave workers a right to clock off through the right to disconnect.

This bill adds new section 135A to the act to establish a clear principle that—when exercising its powers to make, vary or revoke modern awards—the Fair Work Commission must ensure that the specified penalty or overtime rates are not reduced and that modern awards do not include terms that substitute employees' entitlements to receive penalty or overtime rate where those terms would have the effect of reducing the additional remuneration any employee would have otherwise received.

The bill will commence the day after it receives royal assent, reflecting the government's election commitment to move quickly to protect penalty and overtime rates for Australia's lowest paid workers. It will ensure award reliant workers continue to be fairly compensated for working overtime; unsocial, irregular or unpredictable hours; weekends; public holidays; or shifts. The bill preserves the commission's existing powers under section 144 to insert flexible terms into awards that allow employers and employees to enter into individual flexibility arrangements, including to vary penalty and overtime rates as long as the existing legislated safeguard of ensuring they are better off compared to the standard terms is met. The words 'ensuring they are better off' are so important. The bill also preserves the commission's existing powers under section 160 of the act to vary a modern award to remove an ambiguity or uncertainty or to correct an error.

The safeguards in the enterprise bargaining framework remain unchanged. Parties will still be able to bargain at the enterprise level to reduce existing penalty rates and overtime rates, so long as the commission is satisfied the enterprise agreement meets the better off overall test, ensuring that the take-home pay of these low-paid workers is not reduced. That's incredibly important. I say to the people of Dickson who are working this weekend: you've earned every single cent of your penalty rates. Thanks to this bill, we will help protect that right.

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