House debates

Thursday, 30 May 2013

Questions without Notice

Work and Family

2:19 pm

Photo of Adam BandtAdam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Many people are under increasing pressure in finding it difficult to balance work and home responsibilities. Despite this, a short time ago Labor and the coalition voted to defeat my bill that would give people, and especially carers, an enforceable right to flexible working arrangements subject to it not unduly impacting on their employer. Does the government agree that people and carers who seek better work-life balance should have an enforceable right to request flexible working arrangements and a right to appeal if their boss unreasonably says no?

2:20 pm

Photo of Bill ShortenBill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation) Share this | | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Melbourne for his question. I do accept that he, unlike many of those opposite, is interested in getting work-life-family balance right. But what I can report to him, to the House and to people listening is that a key objective of the Fair Work Act, which Labor brought in, is to get work-life-family balance right. We heard a meaningful and heartfelt speech from the Leader of the Opposition about the impact of work-life-family balance upon the member for Batman's statements yesterday. It is important to say those things, but it is important to mean those things.

For the first time ever, because of a Labor government—and only a Labor government—employees have the right to request flexible working arrangements. We were the first government in Australia to ever do that, and we are proud of that. We extended it to parents of children who are under school age and to parents of children of school age with a disability. It was designed, when we introduced it, to promote genuine discussion between employees and employers. It is about getting right the process of discussion between employees and employers—balance in the workplace. What happens now is that the employee puts in the request in writing. It has to be detailed. The employer has 21 days to respond in writing to say yes or, if not, what are the reasonable business reasons why it is not happening.

We are choosing to expand the right to request—I know the member for Melbourne supports at least this—to carers, parents and school aged children, people with disabilities who are employees, victims of domestic violence and people helping victims of domestic violence, and to mature age workers. We are also providing guidance for employers on how it should work. We believe that those amendments are worthy of support next week in the House.

But in terms of the member for Melbourne's question, despite his question, the evidence of the experts shows that our current system is working. Eighty-one per cent of all requests have been accepted as is, another 8.4 per cent of the remaining requests were accepted with variation, and only 10 per cent of cases were rejected for reasonable business grounds. So I can assure the member for Melbourne that, under Labor, the Fair Work system is actually working. I can give some other evidence to support that. Labour productivity has been up for the last seven quarters, industrial action is down under Labor and 960,000 jobs have been created. We have had one-third of the average industrial action as opposed to those people opposite. But we know that there is a real threat to people's working conditions. We know that. Those opposite are desperately trying to hide it—the backflipping opposition, when they have a policy one day and not another the next. We know that were they ever to get the privilege of being the government of Australia they would bring back individual contracts and they would attack penalty rates. We know that they already have a big new tax on 3½ million low-paid workers. The mob opposite watched the Robin Hood film, except they barracked for the Sheriff of Nottingham. Shame on you!