Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Only two—you nearly got me; there were only two. I thought they were good enough for three, they were that misleading. The independence of the Fair Work Commission was raised in both contributions. Let's have a look at the independence of it. The last three appointees have been described by employers as 'bringing it back to balance'. There have been quite a number of appointees to the Fair Work Commission since 2016-17, and really all of those appointees have moved it away from the old-fashioned principle of balance—one representative from the employer side and one from the union side. Increasingly now, we see the appointments all being swung towards the employer side of representation, with people from the Farmers' Federation, ACCI and the like. There's a place for those people in that august organisation, but there should be some balance. Workers should be able to go to the Fair Work Commission, present their case and expect to be heard in a fair and just manner.

Senator Fawcett made the comment, 'We've created lots of jobs.' What unions do—and it may surprise him—is create better jobs out of those fundamental jobs. They create better jobs. They set a span of hours within which you can work your eight hours, and, if you've worked eight hours and you do another two, you get time and a half. Then, if you do any more time after 10 hours, you get double time. Surprise, surprise—after 10 hours work you get a little kick along to encourage you to keep putting your shoulder to the wheel in that job. By necessity, a lot of the jobs in the economy are not all that invigorating. They're hard-work jobs and there needs to be a penalty rate to get people to work beyond the ordinary hours. Heaven forbid, if people have to work on a Saturday or Saturday night, that they might get time and a half! They might even get into double time if they're lucky. On one day of the week, Sunday, they get double time.

I do know people who own and operate restaurants. One said to me, 'Alex, it's too expensive to bring in the kitchen hand on a Sunday.' I said, 'So what do you do?' He said, 'We don't open.' I said, 'Well, you've made a business decision. That's your business decision, but I can go into Darling Harbour on a Sunday night and there will be 10,000 people waiting to get a feed. So you made that decision in one part of the country; in other parts of the country they don't necessarily make that decision.'

Penalty rates are not the root of all evil. Penalty rates are the way that decent, hardworking Australian workers—whether they are members of a union or not—students, backpackers and the like go about sustaining themselves. They don't go around banking bloody $300 or $400 a week. The penalty rates are what pay the electricity, the rent and the going out, if they're fortunate enough to be able to do that. They sustain their necessities of life. If penalty rates are not there, it means that people will get less take-home pay. There will be less to share in families who are not doing very well. Cutting penalty rates is a ferocious attack on the lowest earners in the community, the people who are not at the top. As Keating always said, we've always got to be on the side of the angels—on the side of those who need a leg-up—not on the side of people in positions of privilege, where most of those on the other side come from, including Senator McGrath, who is grinning away. My bet is he's never worked a day in his life. He never, ever had to work for penalty rates or meal money, or worked past nine o'clock on a Saturday night or got up at five o'clock in the morning to earn some penalties.

Senator McGrath interjecting—