Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are coming to the end of the 44th Parliament, and we have just had budget night and listened very closely to what the Treasurer had to say. But there was one thing that the Treasurer did not talk about, and which this government is keen not to talk about, which alarmed me a great deal. I will touch on that in a second, in terms of what was not said and what should be said by this government.

In the short period of time that I have, I want to talk briefly about my great electorate and why what the government did not say affects those people so profoundly. At the 2011 census, 15 per cent of all women in the workforce in my area were employed in retail. This is instructive, and it would have changed, clearly, given the massive growth in my electorate Twelve per cent of employed women were employed in manufacturing. Twenty-five per cent of men in the workplace in my electorate were employed in manufacturing. I think that is the highest rate of employment in manufacturing in the country. In Holt, 15 per cent of men in the workforce are employed in construction. In my electorate of Holt, nine per cent of men are employed in retail. Based on the 2011 census, 52.5 per cent of people also have a mortgage. It is about 27,000 or 28,000 homes. It is the third highest rate in the country. I think Lalor is up there as well in terms of numbers of people. The electorate is also 11th highest in terms of the number of people with dependent children.

We have an area where people have come to make a life. We have many households with more than two, three or four cars. But there is not a lot of extra money in people's pockets. They come out here to build a life. Cranbourne East is in my electorate and it is the fastest growing area in the country. They need every extra penny that they have. They are working mums who take their kids to school and working men who are in various workplaces such as retail, construction and trade. To ensure that they can fund their lifestyle they need to have a secure income and they need to know that, if they work on weekends, they will actually be appropriately compensated.

What was not mentioned last night was that the government said, 'We won't strike you out on penalty rates or overtime. We're not going to remove that.' We know that is the government's intention. I would like, with all the words and all of the reception that the budget has received, for the government to say clearly to the people in my constituency, 'We're not going to take your overtime away. We're not going to interfere with your penalty rates. We're actually going to give you the protections that you deserve and the protections that you need. We're not going to rip money away from you if we get re-elected.'