Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025, as introduced by the minister, because millions of workers will benefit from that bill. Penalty rates are not an optional extra; they are essential to the household budgets of millions of Australians. People across this country rely on penalty rates, and that is why the minister and this government seek to protect them.

It shows the priorities of this government, a Labor government, that wants to deliver for working Australians. As the Prime Minister said, when announcing that this would be one of the first pieces of legislation introduced into the 48th Parliament:

Our number one focus is continuing to deliver cost of living relief to Australians. Protecting penalty rates for millions of workers is an important part of that – making sure Australians can earn more and keep more of what they earn.

This is about people who are currently earning money, who are relying on that, and who have been compensated for their hard work, often at unsociable hours, for many years. It is about giving them certainty for their household budgets, making sure that these penalty rates that have been relied upon for many in my electorate and across this country are there for the future.

It's not that long ago, and it's in my memory and the memory of pretty much everyone in this place, that we had a Liberal Party determined not only to cut penalty rates but also to sack 41,000 public servants, because the Liberal Party and the National Party are always finding new cheeky, sneaky ways of attacking working Australians. We remember when WorkChoices fell over, and they said that they'll never go back to it. They then sat in government for nine long years, where they put low wages as 'a deliberate design feature' of their economic plan. In the lead-up to the most recent election, we saw the Liberal Party send one of their senior frontbenchers to the launch of the HR Nicholls Society's paper The employment act: a modern blueprint for the future of work. What is that modern blueprint that the Liberal Party was so enthusiastic to send senior frontbenchers to cheer on? It was a paper that called for the abolishment of all awards. It called for award pay rates to be abolished and to for one lower minimum adult pay rate to be set. It called for the abolishment of the Fair Work Commission and of the Fair Work Ombudsman. And who was there as this paper was launched but senior members of the then Liberal opposition, cheering on as that was released.

Thankfully, the Australian people knew what was at stake when they made their decision on 3 May, and they knew which side of this House backs working Australians. They know that 2.6 million Australians will benefit from this bill when it passes this House. It builds upon a very proud record of achievement in our first term. It was this government who, in the lead-up, in 2022, backed a $1-an-hour pay rise for minimum and award wage earners. At the time, that was roundly criticised by those opposite, but, as we saw and as the history books will show, it was good for working people, particularly at a time when we had high inflation driven by global events.

Over the last term we've brought in legislation to reinvigorate our bargaining system, meaning that employers and workers can reach agreements in their workplace, resulting in higher wages, better conditions and better productivity. That's what the enterprise bargaining process is all about. We introduced and passed legislation that put gender equality and job security as new principles of the Fair Work Act. We banned pay secrecy clauses, which we know were disproportionately affecting women and holding wages back. We criminalised wage theft, making sure that some of the practices we'd seen were well and truly outlawed under the laws of this land.

We stopped the underpayment of workers through labour hire loopholes. Some in this place still advocate for those loopholes to be reopened. We closed them, and proudly so. As I was doorknocking during the election, I bumped into someone who had benefited from the closure of those loopholes around their work in the aviation industry. They said, 'Thank you,' not just for them but for their colleagues. They hadn't felt comfortable being in a workplace where people had unfair pay differences when they were doing the same work. They now have a workplace where everyone is paid the same amount for doing the same work, as it should be.

We also gave workers the right to clock off—the right to disconnect—meaning that work doesn't follow you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Again, our government, is very proud of having introduced that and very proud of recognising that while there is a time for work and there are reasonable expectations that the employer can have about contacting their employees, that doesn't mean that every hour of the day you need to be bombarded by phone calls, text messages and everything else.

So, for millions of Australians, at about five o'clock tomorrow they will be able to clock off, disconnect from their workplace and enjoy their weekends, but, if they are working over the weekend, then they will have access to the compensation that is appropriate—that is, penalty rates for weekend and overtime work.

That's what this bill does. It delivers on our government's key election commitment to protect penalty rates. The bill ensures that if you rely on the modern award safety net, if you work weekends, public holidays, early mornings or late nights, then you will have your wages protected. You deserve laws that ensure your pay will not go backwards. Penalty rates matter, and overtime rates matter. They are an essential part of the modern award safety net, which supports some of the lowest-paid workers in our country and some of the hardest workers in our country.

Relative to all employees, we know something about those who rely on the award. What we know about those who rely on the award is that they are more likely to be women. They are more likely to work part time. They're more likely to be under the age of 35, and they're more likely to be employed on a casual basis. For many modern award reliant employees, penalty and overtime rates are not optional extras. They are a critical part of their take-home pay. They do rely on this money. If I think about my electorate of Perth, where you've got huge employment in retail and hospitality, servicing some of the busiest workers in our country in some of the most culturally important parts of our city, I think of those workers, and I think I wouldn't be able to look them in the eye if we were to be, in this place, allowing their take-home pay to be drastically cut, especially when they're working in the CBD or Northbridge, late nights, on a Saturday night or on a Sunday, servicing people while others are enjoying their leisure time. That's why it's important that this bill does pass.

I'll go to the specifics of how this bill will operate. What the bill does is add new section 135A to the act to establish a very 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 rates where those terms would have the effect of reducing the additional remuneration that any employee would otherwise receive. In simple terms, for those of us who don't follow industrial relations legislation as closely, it's about fairness. It's about fairness for people who work those unsocial hours. It's about fairness for people who have relied on these penalty rates for years and years and are now seeing some seek to remove that certainty that they've otherwise had. It's also about having incentive for people to do those unsocial hours. It's about making sure that we can have the labour that we need for the services Australian people rely upon in our economy.

Fairness is a fundamental Australian value. We do believe that people should be paid appropriately for the work they do, and we do believe in compensating people for those unsocial hours. Sadly, we have seen a sustained effort from certain employers to roll penalty and overtime rates into a single rate of pay, leaving some employees worse off. We know that the Fair Work Commission is currently considering proposals from employers in the retail, clerical and banking sectors to cut penalty rates of lower-paid workers who rely on modern awards. This bill ensures that, where we have applications like these, no worker sees their pay packet reduced. It protects the integrity of the modern award system and ensures that workers are properly compensated for their work. It also seeks to protect Australia's low-paid workers from future wage cuts. It's about respecting the millions of Australians who work those public holidays, weekends, late nights and early mornings to keep Australia going. It's about making sure the safety net does what it needs to do—protect those most in need.

In my final comments, I want to put this in the context of what we've been able to achieve over the last three years. We are a government that has proudly backed pay rises for those on the minimum wage. We've proudly backed those pay rises. We saw on 1 July of this year a 3.5 per cent pay rise, welcome news for some three million Australians who rely on that national minimum wage decision. But I want to put that in context of what it means over the last three years. Since Labor came to government, we've seen the national minimum wage increase by $4.62 per hour. That's $4.62 more going into the pockets of people every hour they work. Over a year, that's $9,122.

That's the cumulative impact of what we've been able to achieve over our first three years in office, and that's a 22.7 per cent increase in wages for those on minimum wages.

It makes a real difference. It's real cost-of-living assistance. This is a government that is proud to back working Australians, proud to back pay rises for working Australians and proud to be standing here in this place today to legislate protection for their penalty rates.

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