Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Minister for Education and Minister for Social Inclusion. I refer the minister to her guarantee that ‘no worker, from the bill we have passed today into Australian law, will be worse off’. Does the minister stand by that guarantee, and will the minister also guarantee that no Australian employer will face higher labour costs under the government’s new award system?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I very much thank the shadow minister for his question. It gives me the opportunity to explain—and the shadow minister, I think, is aware of this—that in the process of killing Work Choices, something that the Rudd Labor government was elected to do and has very proudly set about doing, we have passed three pieces of legislation through this parliament. The first of them stopped the making of Australian workplace agreements and authorised award modernisation. The second set up our Fair Work system. The third dealt with transitional and consequential matters.

I think the shadow minister points to an interview that I gave on Sky in March 2008. Of course, when I gave that interview I was very proudly proclaiming that workers in this country would be better off as a result of the determination of the Rudd government to kill Work Choices and to get rid of award-stripping AWAs, and that is precisely what we have done. Then, with the award modernisation process, we have taken a belts and braces approach to ensuring that employees are not in any way disadvantaged by this process. We set ‘no disadvantage for employees’ as an objective of award modernisation, and the Prime Minister was interviewed about these matters on radio last week.

But in our third piece of legislation we also put in place as ‘the braces’ a system of take-home pay guarantees. This is a mechanism to make absolutely sure that no employee in Australia would have his or her take-home pay cut as a result of the making of a modern award. I would draw the House’s attention to a very important statement made about this matter and some unbelievably wise words dealing with the question of take-home pay guarantees:

This is reasonable and it gives effect to one of the minister’s promises—an undertaking that no employees will be disadvantaged under her changes.

Who said those unbelievably wise words, those very erudite words? It was none other than the shadow minister for workplace relations. I rely on and adopt his form of words. He is absolutely right: we have taken a belt and braces approach to looking after Australian employees. I thank him for the fact that he was so frank about it in this parliament on Hansard. He was very helpful indeed.