House debates Questions without Notice

Workplace Relations

Thursday, 10 December 2020 House of Representatives

Anne Aly

Anne Aly Cowan, Australian Labor Party

2:36 pm

My question is to the Minister for Industrial Relations. Under the government's legislation, a cleaner working part-time could lose $6,600 a year from their take-home pay. Why is the Prime Minister punishing frontline workers with a cut to their take-home pay?

Christian Porter

Christian Porter Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General

2:37 pm

The question is once again untrue; it's incorrect, it wouldn't happen, it doesn't happen and it wouldn't happen in the future. I think, member for Cowan, that you and I would agree that that scenario would never be considered to be in the public interest, which is the existing test—and it would be the preserved test—which is the reason it doesn't happen now and it's the reason it would never happen in the future. The question is, once again, desperately wrong and from a desperate leader.