Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I absolutely disagree with Senator Farrell. The government's reforms will provide the strongest ever casual conversion rights to employees who want to become permanent and spread those rights to all those employees who don't have conversion rights now—for example, those in the coal industry. For whatever reason, those opposite don't want this. They apparently think that casuals workers should stick with the rights they were given by those opposite over a decade ago. They see casuals who want permanent work as 'collateral damage'. Our reforms will introduce stronger penalties for wage underpayment and wage theft to ensure employees' entitlements are secure, as well as a more efficient path to recover underpayments where they do occur. Again, those opposite don't want that. In fact, so committed are they to do nothing about wage theft that the opposition's industrial relations spokesman thought it'd be a good idea to do a press conference outside a 7-Eleven. (Time expired)