Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Christmas) Bill 2016 is to protect young workers from the Christmas grinches. Christmas Day is a special day of the year. To many people in this country Christmas Day is special, not because of its Christian origins but because Christmas means time shared with family and loved ones.

This year I am looking forward to spending my Christmas Day with my family, and a first Christmas Day with my new baby, as well as the rest of the family. I am in the fortunate position that I have not had to work on Christmas Day for several years, but there are many Australian who are not in this position and whose job will require them to work this Christmas Day, 25 December. These are people who keep our city and community up and running. They work at the hotels that we stay in; they serve us at the cafes, bars and restaurants we have our Christmas lunch in; they help us grab that last-minute Christmas gift at our local retail shops; and they are the nurses who keep our hospitals open and care for people who are spending Christmas Day in hospital ill or recovering. These people will be required by their employers to spend their Christmas Day away from their family and loved ones and will instead work hard to help make Christmas Day special for the rest of us. This is why we have public holiday penalty rates. They are a compensation for the sacrifice of sharing special time with family and loved ones. It is a good thing that in Australia if you have to work unsociable hours you are compensated for it. It is a principle of our industrial relations system. Special conditions for public holidays are set out in national employment law and they form part of our National Employment Standards.

This year Christmas Day, 25 December, falls on a Sunday. When a public holiday falls on a weekend state and territory governments can choose to declare that the official public holiday falls instead on a regular business day. Across the country almost every state and territory have recognised that Christmas Day is a special day and declared that Sunday, 25 December will be a public holiday. They have also declared that Tuesday, 27 December will be an additional public holiday, because Monday, 26 December is the Boxing Day public holiday. Every state and territory around the country has declared that because Christmas falls on a Sunday this year the public holiday will fall on another day, but if you work on the Sunday that is a public holiday as well—in every state and territory, except Victoria.

In Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews and his Labor government have, like every other state and territory, declared Tuesday, 27 December a public holiday but, unlike the rest of the country, the Victorian Labor government has not declared Christmas Day itself as a public holiday. What this means is that the people in my home state of Victoria who work on Christmas Day this year will be unfairly denied their public holiday penalty rates, thanks to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Labor. In every other state and territory in Australia people working on Christmas Day will be paid public holiday penalty rates, but thanks to Daniel Andrews and his Labor government Victorians won't be. Daniel Andrews's Christmas gift to Victorians is a pay cut for people who have to work on Christmas Day. He has turned out to be the ultimate Christmas grinch. There has not been a worse gift from a government since the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, and the former Treasurer tried to cut people's paid parental leave on Mother's Day. Earlier this year Labor Premier Daniel Andrews declared Easter Sunday a public holiday, so he has form for recognising that specific days are special days and should be made public holidays, even if they fall on the weekend. So why hasn't the Victorian Labor govern declared Christmas Day as a public holiday? It could be because they have been feeling the pressure from certain sections of the business community who oppose more public holidays. Especially since the declaration of the day before the grand final as a public holiday there has been strong opposition to that. So in response to that opposition, Daniel Andrews is taking away Christmas Day. When Labor promised people an extra public holiday on grand final eve they did not tell people that it would be at the cost of Christmas Day. It seems that Victorians working on Christmas Day are set to lose out because the Victorian Labor government does not have the spine to stand up for young workers.

But Christmas Day does not have to be ruined. The Greens are working to fix Labor's failure. We were hoping that the Victorian Labor government would recognise that they were wrong and quickly move to relegate this planned Christmas pay cut as a ghost of Christmas past, but they haven't. They have issued a mea culpa, but have let the Christmas nightmare live on. Right now, Victorians who will be working on Christmas Day are still not set to receive public holiday penalty rates. Ensuring people are paid their public holiday penalty rates on Christmas Day does not require a Christmas miracle. It requires people to be willing to stand up and say, 'We believe that Christmas Day is a special day, and if you are required to work on Christmas Day instead of sharing precious time with your loved ones you deserve to be properly compensated'.

Today I am introducing the Greens' protecting Christmas bill. With this bill the Greens will protect people's public holiday penalty rates from current and future state government grinches by amending the National Employment Standards set out in the Fair Work Act to ensure that people who work on Christmas Day and New Year's Day receive their public holiday penalty rates, regardless of whether a state or territory has declared these dates public holidays. The bill amends the National Employment Standards within the Fair Work Act to ensure that people who are entitled to receive public holiday penalty rates who work on Christmas Day, 25 December, and New Year's Day, 1 January, will be paid public holiday penalty rates for working on those days, regardless of whether the state or territory in which they reside declares these states as public holidays.

Clause 3 of the bill inserts additional subsections at the end of division 10 of part 2-2 of the act. It extends the conditions applying to public holidays set out in the division to 25 December, Christmas Day, and to 1 January, New Year's Day, even if another date is substituted for Christmas Day or New Year's Day as a public holiday. It requires employers to pay employees their full rate of pay for a public holiday, should the employee perform work at their employment on 25 December and 1st January, even if another day is substituted for Christmas Day or New Year's Day as a public holiday. This is a simple bill protecting a simple idea. If you have to work while everyone else is spending time with their family and their loved ones, you deserve to be compensated for the special time lost.

The member for Maribyrnong, the opposition leader, has taken a swipe at his Victorian counterpart by saying:

I believe Christmas Day should be a public holiday. Full stop.

So I am hopeful that in this place the Labor opposition will support our bill to protect Christmas. I invite the crossbench and the government to support this bill. Most Australians would find it astonishing to know that if you work on Christmas Day you do not have to get paid as if it was a public holiday and, if they knew that it was the case, they would want this parliament to fix it.

Sadly, the Labor opposition and the government do not have a strong history of protecting people's penalty rates, but many people in this country depend on penalty rates to make ends meet, especially young Australians. So far it is the Greens that have been the only party fighting to protect people's weekend and penalty rates by enshrining existing penalty rates in law. Labor has talked tough on penalty rates, but they have refused to get behind the Green's move to protect penalty rates in law. Instead, they seem happy to let people's penalty rates be cut by the Fair Work Commission, should it decide to do so. What that means is that, when it comes to protecting people's penalty rates, the Labor opposition's position is essentially the same as the government's. The same government previously introduced Work Choices. The same government brings us here in this final sitting fortnight to attack unions and people's rights at work. Labor has adopted the government's position and has said, 'If the Fair Work Commission changes people's penalty rates we will not step in and intervene'. Well, that is the wrong position. There are many, many people in the community who are unhappy with that.

Even if Labor does not want it to come to that, the opposition should come to us and support this simple bill. This simple bill will mean that if you work on Christmas Day and New Year's Day, regardless of what your state or territory government does, you get paid public holiday penalty rates. If we do not pass this bill before parliament rises, thousands and thousands of workers in Victoria will be forced to work on Christmas Day and not get paid properly. That is a situation that the Greens find intolerable. That is why the Greens are moving legislation to protect Christmas Day and New Year's Day. I urge the government and Labor to get behind us and support this bill.

Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the honourable member for Melbourne's bill and reserve my right to speak.

Debate adjourned.