Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025. Penalty rates are a critical protection for workers in this country. Penalty rates ensure that workers are paid fairly for giving up precious time. In a cost-of-living crisis, we know that the price of essentials like housing, food and health care are outstripping wage growth. Penalty rates can be the difference between people being able to keep up with bills and put food on the table and not being able to afford to pay the rent. This is particularly true for workers concentrated in low-wage, low-security jobs, particularly women, young people and disabled people.

The Greens will be supporting this bill because it's incredibly important to stop the further erosion of pay and conditions for workers. What this bill doesn't do is address the big challenges of the modern workplace: casualisation, insecure work, gig economy exploitation and the need for greater flexibility on workers' terms. So my esteemed colleague Senator Barbara Pocock will be moving amendments to this bill. In particular, there is one amendment to add emphasis to some issues that were raised in the inquiry into this bill. That amendment will give Labor the opportunity to not just protect existing entitlements but enshrine new rights for workers.

We know that for millions of Australians, especially women, the ability to work from home provides the flexibility that they need to balance work with the other important things in their life, including the unpaid care responsibilities that women still disproportionately bear the load of. Many men are also looking for this flexibility, and it will help them be more involved in care responsibilities, which we all welcome, as well as reducing commute time and cost, and climate emissions, for workers everywhere.

In the same way that the Greens worked with Labor to establish the very successful and popular right to disconnect for workers, we want to work together to establish a reasonable right to work from home that will increase productivity and flexibility in workplaces. Most workers in Australia are covered by federal workplace law, so it makes sense to create this right at the national level. We need a sensible national approach. Work has changed. Millions of us can now effectively work from home. Recent polling by Resolve revealed that a majority of Australians support legislating a right to work from home, and we agree.

The Greens amendment would ensure that workers have a right to work from home for two days a week, providing that working from home is not at odds with the inherent nature of the worker's role. Under our policy, employers would be required to positively consider reasonable requests to work from home at least two days a week. The evidence shows that productivity does not fall; in many cases it actually improves. Flexible working, including working from home, is particularly beneficial for women, who, as I said earlier—and you've heard me say this for the last 15 years—continue to carry the bulk of unpaid care responsibilities at home. This amendment would ensure the right to work from home for workers of any gender. Work from home saves commute time, it saves costs, it gives people a better work-life balance and it makes it easier to manage and share those care responsibilities. This isn't just a win for women, workers and family; it would be a win for the economy as well.

It's time the government listened to workers and updated our workplace laws for this century. Labor's got an opportunity in this parliament to work with the Greens to deliver real benefits to workers and carers, who are still predominantly women, and they can start doing that by supporting this amendment and enshrining a right to work from home.