Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I'm not saying—and I don't think I ever have said—that there's no change involved from this legislation. As you say, the point of introducing this legislation is to make a change. The point is that there's no change for small businesses, in the sense that they will continue paying their workers what the award requires them to pay, or, if they do have an EBA, pay them the EBA rates. What changes is what the commission can do and the wage rates that can be paid. What changes, as a result of this legislation, is that the commission cannot remove penalty rates in the way that it is currently able to. When the commission hands down its decisions about pay rates under an award, that's what employers pay, whether they be small or big businesses.

I've been searching around for a bit of material on this. One of the prompts for this legislation was that, right now, in the Fair Work Commission, we've got peak bodies representing large and small retail businesses and peak bodies representing banks and the clerical industry who are seeking to cut the penalty rates in the awards that govern their workers, through offering rolled up salaries that go nowhere near what people would earn if they were getting penalty rates. What changes is that employer groups would not be able to cut penalty rates, or seek to cut penalty rates, in the way that they are currently able to do. Nothing changes for a small business in the sense that today and tomorrow they have to pay the legal rates of pay to their workers. It's just that, in the meantime, penalty rates can't be cut. As long as small businesses follow the law and pay the award, they've got nothing to fear.