Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Werriwa for that question. It has been nine weeks and four days since our legislation to protect penalty rates came into effect. This government took this action because, if you work on weekends and public holidays, you deserve penalty and overtime rates. If you are one of the almost 6,000 award-reliant workers working in Victoria today, our legislation has protected your penalty rates. The Albanese Labor government backs low-paid workers.

I'm asked how this compares to other approaches. When our legislation was before the parliament, the coalition used every excuse to stand in the way of action to protect penalty rates. The shadow minister for employment did not miss an opportunity to criticise our protections of penalty rates. He claimed it does nothing for workers. Of course, this is not a new position for the shadow minister. In 2017 he voted against protecting Sunday penalty rates in the parliament.

But it seems that, in the past few days, the shadow minister has had a change of heart. I noticed over the weekend that the shadow minister has a newfound love of public holidays. In fact, the shadow minister has declared on social media that, under a Wilson government, there will be a new public holiday on Melbourne Cup Day—primarily, it seems, to get him out of coming to parliament! I'm not sure if this is official Liberal Party policy, but I note it has been enthusiastically backed by Senator Hume. But I hope a policy of this nature will include protections for all workers—not just politicians, like he seems to advocate for. A word of caution, though, for workers right across Australia: workers probably shouldn't put this public holiday in their diary just yet, because, according to a recent poll, even the Independent member for Wentworth is a more preferred Liberal leader than the member for Goldstein! But you never know; he might just be a little slow to get out of the gate, and we may see a Wilson government sometime in the future.

But, of course, in all seriousness, it is incredibly disappointing that we see the coalition completely talking about themselves and which days they're going to have off. Is it going to be the member for Farrer, the member for Canning, the member for Hume or even the member for Goldstein that will lead this party? It's only our Labor government that will back Aussie workers.

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