Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

I note the minister’s indication in discussion of the previous amendments that the government will not support this aspect of Senator Fielding’s amendments. I want to be clear with the chamber about what that means. Yet again, the Howard government is indicating that it is not prepared to protect redundancy entitlements, which have existed within the Australian industrial relations scheme for many years. This is the government again saying that it is not prepared to place redundancy pay into the category of protected award conditions. So that means they are not protected—even though ‘protection’ under the Work Choices legislation is one of those Orwellian terms which certainly in the past has had very little meaning and will only have some meaning after the introduction of the fairness test.

The fact that the government will oppose this amendment means that redundancy pay will not be considered as part of the fairness test. What that means in practical terms is that an employee who has negotiated a reasonable redundancy entitlement over a period of employment—or who simply has the minimum redundancy entitlement as per the standard AIRC test case—can have that removed by a ‘take it or leave it’ AWA or by a new agreement. Under the government’s new so-called fairness test, they will not receive any fair compensation for those redundancy entitlements being traded away. So we are, yet again, very clear on the Howard government’s attitude to redundancy entitlements. I do agree with Senator Fielding that, for many working families, this is often a significant source of security. It is something that people and families rely on. It has been in place for many years, in recognition of the financial dislocation that being made redundant causes an employee and their family.