Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. It was lucky he didn't buy a house that way! My question is to the Prime Minister. On Sunday, 700,000 workers will get a pay cut. Does the Prime Minister support the cut to penalty rates?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Sunday, there will be thousands of workers in the hospitality sector and the fast-food sector who will not get penalty rates at all, because unions have traded them away. Oh, yes, the big unions that pay their bills—just as the workers at Clean Event had their penalty rates traded away, the STA and others are trading away the penalty rates of their workers.

The reality is this: Labor is utterly hypocritical on the matter of penalty rates. For years and years—for over a century—Labor has said that it stands for the independent umpire, for the conciliation and arbitration, for fair work and for laws that were passed when the Leader of the Opposition was responsible for them. And then, after hearings in which all the submissions were heard, they didn't like the outcome and so they wanted to disown it. But, when it came to the crunch, when there was an employer that was prepared to pay some money to the union—oh, yes. The Deputy Leader shakes her head. She's so sad to hear the truth.

The fact is big unions have been taking money from big business to trade away workers' penalty rates, and the only thing the Labor Party hates about that is getting caught.