Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I was saying last night, the work that the SDA have done has been about their members, and it's about ensuring that they get the compensation for the hours that they work. The Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025 adds a new section, 135A, to the Fair Work Act 2009 to establish a 'clear principle' that, when 'exercising its powers to make, vary or revoke modern awards', the Fair Work Commission must ensure that specified penalty or overtime rates are not reduced and that 'modern awards do not include terms that substitute employees' entitlements to receive penalty or overtime rates where those terms would have an effect of reducing the additional remuneration an employee would otherwise receive'.

The bill is designed to be simple, fair and workable, providing clarity without adding unnecessary complexity, and the changes introduced by this bill will not apply retrospectively. Employers will continue to be responsible for paying penalty rates in accordance with the relevant modern award. It does not introduce new obligations beyond this existing requirement. Enterprise bargaining will remain the key pathway for employers to directly negotiate with employees and their representatives to achieve flexibility and productivity gains, including in relation to penalty and overtime rates. Enterprise bargaining has strong safeguards in place, including oversight by the independent Fair Work Commission, to facilitate good faith in the bargaining process.

Without this principle, the commission would apply the modern awards objective, subsection 134(1), in determining whether to make the proposed variations. The modern awards objective is a balancing exercise which requires the commission to weigh up several factors, including but not limited to the 'need to provide additional remuneration for employees working overtime; unsocial, irregular or unpredictable hours; weekends or public holidays; or shiftwork'—subsection 134(1)(da).

The bill would provide stronger protection than the status quo in the following ways. The principle is applied over and above the commission's consideration of the modern award objectives, overriding any decision that would rule in favour of provisions that have the effect of reducing penalty rates and overtime rates. The test applies to the additional remuneration that any employee would otherwise receive, meaning that a provision cannot be in a modern award if there is evidence of a single employee that would be worse off. There is also currently no legal definition of exemption rate clauses in modern awards. Section 135A(1)(b) therefore applies a higher level principle to ensure the commission is focused on the desired policy outcomes, ensuring employees' rights to penalty and overtime rates are not diminished. Otherwise, the legislation would need to attempt to define the various types of clauses across all modern awards, which would narrow the principle and could have unintended consequences.

As part of this speech—because retail workers, as I said earlier in my speech, have been on the front lines when we have been through difficult times like COVID—I want to pay credit to a young man and to congratulate him. It's Lachlan Bovill, who has been named the best checkout operator in Tasmania and Victoria—no mean feat. Lachie is a great guy; he does his work with enthusiasm. Obviously, customers really appreciate the way he interacts and communicates with them. He knows, because he's been trained, that service is service is service. I want to give a big shout-out to Lachie. He works at the Legana Woolworths. As I said before, he's been acknowledged in the community by the local council just recently. He's hardworking. He has humility and the best customer service that anyone could pay for. Lachie will travel to Sydney in October, where he will be in the running for a national operator of the year award. I also note that, as part of the Young Citizen of the Year awards, he was acknowledged and named as the young citizen by the West Tamar Council. This is a young man who is a member of the SDA, so he knows that his back is always covered by the SDA, because they put their membership first.

We do know that those opposite do not have the same belief as we do. There's a stark contrast between this side of the chamber and that side of the chamber in terms of sticking up for workers and ensuring they get paid a fair day's wage for the work that they do. We want them to keep more of their pay. That's why we introduced the tax cuts, which those opposite did not support.

I think the record is very clear. Australian workers know that they have the support of the Labor government. We proved that in our first term of government, and we have continued that in the first 100 days of our second term. For retail workers who serve the community on the front lines at the expense of their own families and time spent with their children, penalty rates are a vital recognition of their sacrifice. Again, thank you and a big shout-out to the SDA for putting their members first and for recognising the sacrifice that they make—giving up time with their families and not being able to go with sporting events and other social activities. They stand with them, just as the Anthony Albanese Labour government stands with Australian workers.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join my colleague Senator Polley in giving a shout-out to Lachie as well and say it was an extraordinary feat to become the Tas/Vic best checkout operator. It was very good, and I wish him all the very best in the nationals in October in Sydney. Again, I congratulate Senator Polley for raising it here in the Senate. Good luck to Lachie!

The Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025, which is before us, delivers on a key election commitment from the Albanese Labor government to protect penalty rates and overtime entitlements for millions of workers who rely on modern awards. It's a simple principle, but one with profound consequences. If you're someone who works weekends, late nights, early mornings or public holidays, then you deserve to have your wages protected. You deserve to know that your pay won't go backwards. This bill is about fairness. It's about protecting workers who put in the hard yards at odd hours—retail workers, hospitality workers, aged-care and disability support staff, cleaners, admin workers and many, many more. These are the workers who rely on the award system to guarantee decent pay and conditions.

Under the Liberal-National government that safety net is always under threat. Right now there are active applications before the Fair Work Commission from employer groups in the retail, banking and clerical sectors seeking to trade away penalty rates and overtime. They want to roll these entitlements into so-called all-in pay rates, leaving workers worse off. This bill puts a stop to that. It will amend the Fair Work Act to insert a new section which requires the Fair Work Commission to ensure that penalty and overtime rates in modern awards are not reduced and that modern awards do not include terms that substitute or trade away those entitlements, where doing so would reduce the extra pay a worker would otherwise receive. This change is urgent. We want the bill passed quickly so it can apply to decisions currently before the commission. If passed, it will mean that those attempts to undermine penalty rates cannot succeed.

This isn't about blocking flexibility. Enterprise bargaining remains unchanged. Employers and workers can still negotiate workplace agreements that suit their needs, so long as they meet the better off overall test. Individual flexibility arrangements in awards will still be allowed. The commission's power to correct errors or resolve ambiguities remains untouched. But, when it comes to the safety net, when it comes to minimum terms and conditions and modern awards, this bill makes it clear that no worker should go backwards.

Penalty rates matter. Overtime matters. These entitlements exist for a reason. They recognise the personal cost of working unsociable hours—missing out on family dinners, weekends with kids, birthdays and community events. It's their compensation for work that is inconvenient, irregular and disruptive to family and social life. Take Jane, a retail worker in Glenorchy in my home state of Tasmania, who earns about $7½ thousand a year in penalty rates. That money goes towards rent, groceries and school fees. She spoke of the toll night shifts take—missing dinner with family and working an opposite schedule to her partner. Or take Daniel in Hobart, who's been in hospitality for 11 years. He told us that he earns around $85 a week in penalty rates—about $4,200 a year. Without that money, he'd have to work more and see his loved ones less. He skips movies and holidays, and, in his words, 'Penalty rates honestly make a huge difference.' For these people, this bill means real protection.

Around 2.6 million workers rely on the modern awards safety net. These workers are more likely to be women, more likely to be young and more likely to work part-time or casually. They are also more likely to be under financial stress and more likely to rely on every dollar in their pay cheque just to get by. Protecting penalty rates is a critical cost-of-living measure. It's part of the Albanese Labor government's broader approach to help Australians earn more and keep more of what they earn, and it builds on the workplace reforms we've already delivered.

Since coming to office, the Labor government has delivered real wage increases for award-reliant workers; put gender equality at the heart of the workplace relations system; revived enterprise bargaining, supporting cooperative workplaces; introduced the right to disconnect and improve protections against exploitation; and backed increases to the minimum wage every year. Our workplace laws are delivering results. Millions of workers are benefiting from stronger wages and better conditions. This bill continues that work by closing a loophole that puts low-paid workers at risk.

Some have asked why we've included overtime in this bill when the election commitment focused on penalty rates. Well, the answer is simple. The two go hand in hand. The government has made it clear that both penalty and overtime rates are essential features of modern awards. They are both designed to fairly compensate workers for time spent away from familyand community. This bill doesn't invent a new principle. It gives legal force to something Australians already understand—that workers deserve to be fairly paid for working outside standard hours.

Importantly, the protections in this bill apply to all modern awards across all sectors. They're designed to future proof the system, not just fix the immediate problem. Instead of listing every kind of exemption clause or rolled up rate, this bill sets a clear rule. If a clause cuts the extra pay a worker should get for overtime or penalties, it's not allowed. The commission has to check how it affects each worker, not just the average. If even one worker loses out, the clause can't be included. That's a fair and tough test. For somebody on $25 an hour, losing a 25 per cent penalty isn't a small pay cut; it's a big pay cut.

Some employer groups have criticised this bill. They say it limits flexibility. They say it complicates things. They say it complicates hiring. This bill protects the safety net. It doesn't stop employers negotiating enterprise agreements, it doesn't prevent higher paid base salaries through bargaining, and it certainly doesn't ban discussions around rosters, hours or workplace efficiency. It just ensures that low-paid workers don't have their pay quietly cut from technical award variations. The government has consulted with stakeholders to get this balance right.

This bill is fair, practical and legally sound, and it enjoys strong community support. Australians overwhelmingly believe that, if you work irregular hours, you should be properly paid for it. This legislation reflects that value. It says to workers, 'Your time matters, your family life matters, your pay matters.'

I commend the bill to the Senate.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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.

Jana Stewart (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025. This bill is about protecting the people who work when the rest of us don't: the people who serve us for a Sunday lunch to put food in our bellies, the people who restock our shelves at midnight so we can put food on the table, and the people who care for our elderly loved ones on Christmas morning.

These are the Australians doing the early starts, the late finishes and the weekends, so it's hard to believe that their pay is under threat. But this bill puts a stop to that. It locks in protections for more than 2.6 million award-reliant workers. It ensures that penalty rates and overtime rates, which have been hard-earned through sacrifice, cannot be bargained away—not by clever legal manoeuvring, not by corporate proposals dressed up as a pay rise; not now and not ever. Let's be real: when you take away penalty rates, you are directly affecting the ability to pay rent and to buy groceries, and stripping workers of peace of mind. This bill is also about cost-of-living relief. It is about standing up for workers who keep our essential services going long after business hours end and long before most of us wake up.

We've seen attempts to chip away at penalty rates before, and we know who gets hurt. It's not the boardroom executives and it's not the top end of town. The casual worker stacking pallets at the supermarket is who gets hurt. It's the part-time aged-care worker who fills in night shifts. It's the hospo worker who closes at 2 am. These are hardworking people—hardworking people like my mum, who works as a cleaner in a hospital. She, like other Australians, relies on those extra dollars, weekend loadings, overtime and penalty rates just to get by. These extra dollars allow for dinner on the table and ensure individuals don't live pay cheque to pay cheque.

I want to be really clear: the case for this bill is so simple, and the benefits are clear for everybody to see. It's a lifeline for millions of Australian workers. We're talking about hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year in lost income if penalty rates are cut. That's rent, school uniforms and petrol to get to work. For my mum in regional Victoria, that's a trip to Melbourne to visit the grandkids. This is not just extra pocket money; it's the difference between security and struggle.

In Victoria's regional centres, like the Mallee and Nicholls, penalty rates aren't just a bonus; they're survival. These communities have some of the highest rates of award reliance in the country. In sectors like retail, hospitality, aged care and agriculture, workers rely on penalty rates to make ends meet. When Sunday and public holiday rates were cut in 2017, Victoria's rural and regional workers lost between $67 million and $127 million per year. That's income stripped from thousands of households in my home country town of Swan Hill, in Shepparton, in Mildura and in Echuca. It didn't just hurt workers; it hurt small businesses too. With less money to spend locally, local economies took the hit.

This bill is about ensuring history doesn't repeat itself. That's why Labor is acting. It's because, once again, big business has come knocking and they're asking us to rewrite the rules. We've seen the retail employer lobby push for changes that will allow store managers to opt-out of penalty rates in exchange for a 35 per cent pay rise. That might sound generous, but let's just unpack that a bit. That proposal backed by Coles, Woolworths and other large businesses, would scrap overtime and weekend rates for those workers. If that gets through, who's next? We all know how this story goes. First it's the managers, then it's the team leaders and then it's the shop floor. That's why we're closing that door now.

This bill ensures that modern awards can't be varied in a way that reduce or replace penalty or overtime rates. Any attempt to disguise a cut in penalty rates, no matter how it's worded, must be declined if it leaves Australian workers worse off. That is pretty simple. If you work outside regular hours, you should be paid more, not less. We've intervened because the Fair Work Commission was considering proposals that could have permanently altered the penalty rate safety net, and we knew what was at stake.

The Albanese Labor government made a rare submission to fair work urging them to reject those proposals, because we believe in the award safety net and we believe that it needs protecting. This legislation now ensures that the commission must not approve any modern award change that would leave a single worker worse off—not one. That is how seriously we take penalty rates, because penalty and overtime rates are more than a line item in a pay packet. It is about recognition that these workers give up time with family and friends to serve the rest of us, that they sacrifice and that they deserve to be compensated fairly.

Let me remind the chamber what happened last time penalty rates were cut. In 2017, under the coalition government, the commission slashed Sunday and public holiday rates for hundreds of thousands of retail and hospitality workers. Wages went backwards. Lives got harder. And what did we hear from the Liberals? This is the point where you can insert the crickets, because we heard nothing. Even worse than nothing, some people even cheered it on. They said it would create jobs. Unsurprisingly, they were wrong. The evidence is clear. Cutting penalty rates did not create jobs, but it did foster hardship, and now we have the same forces circling again.

It's new packaging, but it's the same old low-blow attack on workers' pay. So we're making the law crystal clear. We're inserting a new section into the Fair Work Act that says: 'Penalty rates and overtime rates in awards can't be reduced'—that's clear—'They can't be substituted with something else that leaves workers worse off.' That's clear. If a proposal does that, it fails. The commission is not required to review all awards, but, if the reward is up for variation, then the new rule applies. It will apply to cases already on foot like the retail and banking awards matters currently before the Fair Work Commission. It means that this bill is urgent and it's necessary.

While some in this chamber are still thinking about what side to take, we've already chosen ours. We're on the side of workers. The coalition, on the other hand, hasn't made up its mind. Their shadow minister has raised concerns about small businesses but has refused to back the bill. Let me say this to those opposite—listen closely—if you support fair pay, vote for this bill. If you care about cost-of-living relief, vote for this bill. If you won't vote for it, then be honest about what that means. It means turning your back on the people who clean our hospitals, who stock your grocery shelves and pour your coffee. Don't claim to stand for working families if you won't stand up for penalty rates.

This legislation delivers exactly what workers need—clear and enforceable safeguards. It still allows for individual flexibility arrangements, as long as, at the end of the day, the worker is better off. It keeps enterprise bargaining in place. It preserves the commission's role in fixing award errors or ambiguities. What it stops is the erosion of wages through tricky variations and legal loopholes. Once penalty rates are gone, they don't come back easily. By the time workers notice, it's too late. We've seen what's happened in the past, so we are acting for the future. This is about respecting the dignity of work; about saying that people who work weekends, nights and holidays deserve more, not less; and about standing with people who serve us while we rest. To the workers who keep this country running at all hours: we see the hours that you give up. We understand the sacrifices that you make, and now we are standing with you.

Let's pass this bill. Let's protect penalty and overtime rates. Let's do the right thing by the people who do right by this country every single day. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the heart of the Albanese Labor government is a simple and unwavering belief—that if you put in a fair day's work you deserve a fair day's pay. That's the promise of this Labor government. It's a value that we hold close. Penalty rates are not a privilege or a bonus. They are recognition of the sacrifice made by workers who give up their weekends, give up their nights and give up their time with family in order to serve our communities and in order to keep the wheels of the economy running.

The pay and conditions of award reliant workers are directly set by the Fair Work Commission. In other words, these workers—and there are a huge number; one in five of all 15 million taxpayers are these workers, 2.6 million Australians—feel the direct impact of the decisions made by the Fair Work Commission. The modern awards, together with the National Employment Standards and the national minimum wages provide a critical safety net for workers. They set a floor, not a ceiling, for fair, relevant and enforceable minimum terms and conditions of employment. We spend our time basically at home and at work. The Fair Work Commission sets these minimum standards up. They are a floor—the minimum required to protect workers.

These standards encompass your working conditions, flexible work, casual employment, maximum hours, leave entitlements and so on. Penalty rates put food on the table. They help a young student pay rent. They help cleaners and transport workers function and maintain a quality of life. These are the people who keep Australia ticking over at times when most of us are with our loved ones.

I just want to recall an anecdote. I've never forgotten this. During the 2022 campaign, I called into a town in Tasmania and I spoke to a single mother about her penalty rates. I asked her what they meant to her. She was a hospitality worker. She was so dependent on these rates that she said to me, 'Michelle, I actually can't speak to you about this; I've got to go into another room.' Why did she have to go into another room? Because she didn't want to have this conversation in front of her children. That's how important penalty rates were to her. I've never forgotten that story. It's with that single mother in mind that I speak.

Not only are these people award-reliant workers; they are also some of the most vulnerable. Sixty per cent of them are women. The average age of these workers is 34, and about 40 per cent are under the age of 25—in other words, they are overwhelmingly young people. Seventy per cent work part time. Notably, nearly 60 per cent of all low-paid workers are award reliant, meaning they are on this minimum award. To cut these rates is not just an attack on pay packets; it's an attack on fairness itself. What kind of country do we want going to the future? We have to ask ourselves this. We want a fair country. We do not have want to have a working underclass, a working poor, as happens in other countries.

This bill will ensure that penalty and overtime rates are protected and remain an during part of the modern awards safety net. The protection is crucial for workers who rely on these rates for financial security. The bill ensures that specified penalty and overtime rates in modern awards cannot be reduced, and the bill addresses loopholes that allowed employers to roll up penalty and overtime rates into a single pay rate, undermining workers' actual compensation.

We do also know what happened when the coalition were in government. In 2017, they actually cut penalty rates to a whole swathe of workers—workers in retail, hospitality, pharmacies and fast food. The Labor Party stood with those workers and opposed that change, and so did other members of the parliament. Unfortunately, we didn't win the 2019 election, so it was difficult to change course. But with the help of the unions and the voices of those workers, we are now back and we are determined to protect the working rights and the pay of these ordinary Australians who do the work at times when the rest of us are with our families.

Let's be clear, protecting penalty rates is not just a matter of justice; it is a matter of economic good sense. Every dollar earned in penalty rates is a dollar spent in local communities. It circulates through small businesses, it supports regional communities and it strengthens the very fabric of our nation. This is what Labor stands for—dignity at work, fair reward for effort, and a recognition that our economy must serve the people, not the other way around. Protecting penalty rates is about protecting the Australian way of life, a way of life built on fairness, opportunity and respect for those who keep our nation running, often at the hardest hours. As a Labor government, we will always stand shoulder to shoulder with working Australians. We will protect their penalty rates because we understand what it means, and we don't want to go back to the bad old days where arbitrary judgements were made and penalty rates were cut, putting these vulnerable Australians at risk.

The Albanese government has done a power of work to secure the wages of working Australians. This bill today feeds into and complements the other work we have done in respect of banning wage secrecy, banning labour hire and backing in consecutive increases to the minimum wage, which has seen real wages rise for seven consecutive quarters, despite us also navigating this country through a nasty inflationary and cost-of-living crisis. We are here for working Australians. We are here to protect our most vulnerable workers and our most essential workers from future erosion of their pay. I commend this bill to the Senate.

Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025. Our government has a proud history of delivering fairer pay and better conditions for Australian workers, and this bill continues that work. It delivers on our election commitment to protect the penalty rates and overtime of some 2.6 million modern award workers in Australia, many of whom rely on their penalty rates and their overtime to make ends meet.

For too many years award workers across Australia have lived anxiously, concerned about the future of their penalty rates and overtime. They are anxious because they depend on penalty rates and overtime. Without them, their families simply could not make ends meet. Our government has their back. We are ensuring that, for modern award workers, these rates cannot be reduced or substituted by another term that will reduce their take-home pay.

Currently penalty and overtime rates and modern awards can be rolled up into a single rate of pay, leaving some employees worse off, and the rates themselves can be reduced, as we saw in 2017. And of course we know there are moves underfoot now to trade away penalty rates. This anxiety is not unfounded. There is an active submission before the Fair Work Commission in the retail, clerical and banking sectors to trade away the penalty rates of lower paid workers from awards. We are not dealing in hypotheticals here. Workers have had reason to feel anxious, and they're anxious because their penalty rates and their overtime matter.

These entitlements are essential for workers in sectors like retail and hospitality, where too often work happens outside the standard nine-to-five working hours. These are hardworking Australians who keep our country running on weekends, in the evenings, on public holidays, and late nights and through shift work, and they deserve a system that fairly compensates them for these unsociable hours that not only impact them as individuals but impact their families. These hours can impact their health and wellbeing, all to keep our economy running. For those hours spent away from the people these workers love, they should be compensated.

We know that nearly 60 per cent of minimum and award-reliant workers are women and more than 57 per cent are under the age of 35, so this is also a matter of gender equity and intergenerational equity. That is why our government is taking action, and that is why I am supportive of this bill.

In substance, this bill delivers on our government's key election commitments to protect the penalty rates of 2.6 million modern award-reliant workers. It does so by amending the Fair Work Act 2009 to legislate protections to ensure that penalty and overtime rates and modern awards cannot be reduced or substituted by another term that would reduce an employee's take-home pay.

The bill adds a new section, 135A, to the act to establish a clear principle that, when exercising its powers to make, vary or revoke modern awards, the Fair Work Commission must ensure that the specified penalty or overtime rates are not reduced and modern awards do not include terms that substitute employees' entitlements to receive penalty or overtime rates where those terms would have the effect of reducing the additional remuneration any employee would otherwise receive.

The bill ensures award-reliant workers' wages cannot go backwards and that they are fairly compensated for working overtime, unsocial, irregular or unpredictable hours, weekends or public holidays, early mornings and into the night. The bill is designed to be simple, fair and workable.

Employers will continue to be responsible for paying penalty rates in accordance with the relevant modern award. It does not introduce new obligations beyond this requirement. Enterprise bargaining will remain the key pathway for employers to directly negotiate with employees and their representatives to achieve flexibility and productivity gains, including in relation to penalty and overtime rates. The bill is fair. It protects penalty rates and overtime for those workers who rely on them so deeply.

The committee that I am proud to chair, the Education and Employment Legislation Committee, conducted an inquiry into this bill, holding a hearing in Melbourne and receiving numerous submissions. We heard from witnesses from around the country about the impacts of the bill. The evidence we received was powerful and moving. We heard from workers across our economy who rely on their penalty rates and overtime to make ends meet. We heard from workers like Ruth and Emily, who both work in the retail sector. Emily told our committee that penalty rates were essential to making ends meet. Ruth, who has worked at Coles for 30 years, expressed that those who work in retail, if they want a job, have to either do late nights or weekends. Ruth added:

I do Sundays at the moment. It already impacts time with my grandkids, but I can make it up because penalty rates mean I can afford to spoil them a little bit. Without penalty rates, I'd still have to give up my Sundays with them, and there would be no reward.

We also heard from Vince, a security officer, who shared his reliance on penalty rates after his son received a diagnosis. He explained:

The fact that I had days off throughout the week made it possible for me to get him the help he needed with early intervention. … Without the penalty rates, there was no way we could've afforded to keep things moving.

Noah, who works as a school cleaner, explained to our committee:

Lots of these jobs take place at irregular or unusual hours, when people are heading home for dinner or going to sleep. All these family milestones are missed, as well.

The testimony that our committee heard, as well as the real-life experience of so many others, reminds us that behind every paycheque for a penalty rate or overtime is a person—someone making a deep contribution to our community; someone working unsociable hours; someone working late into the night; someone working on weekends; someone often juggling parenting, study, other responsibilities and commitments to their own family; someone who does this to keep our economy running. They deserve compensation for their effort.

These workers rely on penalty rates and overtime to make ends meet, and we rely on these workers to keep our economy moving. The workers who rely on their penalty rates aren't working these shifts because it's a joy to do so; they are working these shifts because they rely on the compensation it brings and what it means for them, their family, their take-home pay, their ability to manage the cost of living and their capacity to provide for their family and the people that they love. Penalty rates and overtime make a real difference for these workers. They are not a luxury. Penalty rates are a lifeline, compensation for unsociable hours and a recognition of this sacrifice, and for many workers they are essential to making ends meet.

These are the Australians whom this bill is for—some 2.6 million modern award wage workers across Australia, working in our supermarkets, working in our call centres, working in banks, in insurance, in cafes and in warehouses—the workers we were so reliant on during the COVID-19 pandemic and who continue to keep our economy moving today. If we didn't have them, our economy just simply wouldn't function as it does. When someone loses their penalty rates, it's not an abstract loss. It is food off the table. It's the difference in covering your electricity bill or falling behind on your mortgage. These workers rely on penalty rates, and they should not be forced to go backwards.

As a government, we have made lifting wages central to our economic plan, and it's why we are ensuring the take-home pay of these workers is protected. We believe in, as the Prime Minister has said so many times, no-one held back, no-one left behind. This legislation draws a clear line in the sand. If an agreement leaves workers worse off, it's not allowed.

Let's remember again who this legislation is about. It's the single mum working weekend shifts at the local supermarket so she can fund the extracurricular activities of her child. It's the university student working night shift so they can pay their tuition, pay their rent and buy their textbooks. It's the bank employee who is working public holidays to save enough for that single family holiday they want to take with their children each year. It's the retail worker who needs their Sunday penalty rates so they can fund their childcare fees through the rest of the week. These aren't just statistics and they're not just stories; they are real people in our economy, keeping our economy moving day in and day out, who rely on their penalty rates and their overtime to make ends meet. They deserve for this place to stand up for them.

Since coming to office, the Albanese Labor government has been utterly focused on delivering real outcomes for working people, backing in workers every step of the way. We've had an active focus on wage growth because we know it is critical with the cost-of-living difficulties that so many workers are facing at the moment. Growth in real wages helps workers with the cost of living. It helps them get ahead. Under our government, wages are up, inflation is down, unemployment is lower and interest rates are falling. The latest unemployment figures show a record number of Australians in work, with over 14.6 million Australians in work in July. The figures released show Australia's unemployment rate remains historically low, falling to 4.2 per cent. We haven't been afraid to legislate when we know that will make an impact on workers' wages. We've funded a wage increase for early childhood educators and aged-care workers—these workers who do critical, life-changing, nation-building work every single day of the week. For too long we have chosen to underpay and undervalue them. Our government has changed that path.

We have legislated to close loopholes in our industrial relations system which were not just leaving workers behind but making workers in our country critically and fundamentally unsafe, which was seeing workers in this country die on our roads because they weren't safe. We've legislated new powers to introduce minimum standards across the gig economy to protect these workers and treat them like employees—these workers who have been fundamentally let down in a system which, before our legislation came into effect, saw companies treat our industrial system with absolute contempt, stomp over every regulation or law that a state or territory government tried to put in place to regulate them and treat workers contemptuously. We legislated to close that loophole and others. We legislated a right to disconnect because we know work is creeping ever deeper into our home and family lives. For those workers who aren't compensated for it, they need that protection under the law. Every step of the way, we back workers. We are not afraid to legislate when necessary, and I'm deeply proud of our record in this space, especially when it comes to closing the loopholes—and I note we celebrate the anniversary of that this week.

This bill stands to protect workers, some 2.6 million modern award wage workers, in our country who rely on their penalty rates and their overtime to make ends meet and these rates of pay to provide for their families. For them, this is compensation for the difficult and unsociable hours they work and the work they do which keeps our economy running. They could not survive without their penalty rates and their overtime, and we could not survive without them. These workers are essential, and we are standing up for them.

I want every single award worker who relies on their penalty rates and overtime to let go of the anxiety they are feeling, and to know and feel confident that they will be properly compensated for their work and that they can rely on their penalty rates and overtime into the future. This is about recognising the value of every single worker and every single shift they take. We are protecting penalty rates and overtime for the award workers in our country who rely on them so deeply.

I am very proud of this bill. I know the impact it will have on these workers across our economy. To them: we are grateful for the work you do and we see the unsociable hours you work and the sacrifices you make. That's why we, as a Labor government, are standing up for you to protect your penalty rates and your overtime. That is what you can expect of a Labor government in the future.

Varun Ghosh (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025 protects penalty rates and overtime rates for 2.6 million Australians who rely on modern awards to set their pay and conditions. Importantly, the bill protects many Australian workers who rely on these overtime and penalty rates for their financial survival. We're talking about low-paid workers here, and compensation for those who work those hours on evenings, weekends and public holidays, away from their families, their friends, their interests and their lives. This bill protects those workers and enshrines penalty rates and overtime rates, which have been in place in Australia since the early 20th century. This has been a part of the Australian industrial relations framework for more than 100 years, and all this bill seeks to do is protect those workers into the future.

But it's not surprising that those who regularly oppose working Australians being paid fairly oppose these safeguards too. The arguments of those who are opposed to this bill are always cloaked in language around the need for flexibility, simplicity or certainty and are always accompanied by hollow professions of support for penalty rates. But the real impact of the abolition of these wage rates is that low-paid Australians will be left worse off.

This bill inserts section 135A into the Fair Work Act, and it requires the Fair Work Commission, when exercising its jurisdiction to make, vary or revoke modern awards, to ensure that penalty and overtime rates that employees are entitled to receive are not reduced and that modern awards do not substitute entitlements to penalty rates or overtime rates where that substitution would have the effect of reducing the additional remuneration that any employee would otherwise receive.

The philosophy that underpins this protection and much of the industrial legislation of this government is simple—labour in this country is not and should never be treated like a commodity, and the lives and time of Australian workers should not be treated as interchangeable units within a labour market to be bartered down to the lowest price. Put simply, the government is committed to helping those who are struggling to make their way to protect and support Australian families and to support fairness, equity and equality of opportunity in our workplaces.

Modern awards are about minimum safety nets in the industrial relations system. They set the baseline, and what should be alarming to everyone in this place and around the country is that the number of workers who rely on these awards has been growing. The proportion of workers who rely on awards to set the base rate of pay rose from 16.1 per cent in 2012 to 23.2 per cent in 2023. That's the context we're working in. More Australians rely on the minimum safety net in industrial relations. These awards protect low-paid workers. More than one-third of modern-award-reliant employees would be considered low paid, and, for some particular awards, that number is even bigger. For instance, on some estimates, two-thirds of modern-award-reliant employees on the Pharmacy Industry Award 2020 would be considered low paid. Across all modern awards, what does that mean in dollars and cents? It means, on average, someone who relies on a modern award receives around $864 a week or around $45,000 a year.

We've heard that these workers are disproportionately female, and that's somewhere around 60 per cent. For the General Retail Industry Award 2020, nearly two out of three workers are women. They rely on awards far more. We know that award workers are younger; it's the younger part of the workforce. But it's also important to note that many are on more precarious or vulnerable forms of work. Returning to the General Retail Industry Award 2020 for a moment, two in three people employed under that award are employed on a casual basis, and almost four in five work part-time hours. So that's our starting point when we're trying to introduce provisions that ensure penalty and overtime rates cannot be removed from awards. We're dealing with the people who are already on the downside of advantage, who already have factors in their industrial position that make them vulnerable.

One of the interesting arguments in that context is what we hear from those opposite when they come in and talk about flexibility. What we know from the history of the Liberal Party in Australia is that 'flexibility' is a code for cutting wages and conditions of lower paid workers. Taking penalty rates and overtime rates protections out of awards puts holes in the safety net. It's the flexibility to fall further for those who are already financially disadvantaged in our society, and it gives employers greater power over their employees. The objective is always the same. It's always to lower wages. The reason you know that is that, with enterprise bargaining provisions and individual employment contracts, you can pay employees more if you want to. This is about taking things out of the safety net that leave ordinary Australians worse off.

What is the value of penalty and overtime rates to Australian workers? For those who work overtime hours, around one in eight or 12.5 per cent of their hours are overtime hours. The significance of this proposition becomes clearer when you delve into the accounts of workers who rely on these protections and additional pay rates. Somewhere between one-third and one-half of those who receive weekend or evening penalty rates rely on the extra money those rates provide to meet basic household expenses. If they disappear, they go without essentials. Evidence collected by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association from around the country bears out that reality. Receiving weeknight and Sunday penalty rates has become an economic necessity for many retail workers, essential to the financial survival of their families. It is with pride that we propose this bill to protect those families and to make sure that they keep their heads above water.

Retail workers who work unsociable hours—late nights, weekends and public holidays—almost universally lament the inability to spend time with family, children and friends or play sport or pursue hobbies or play a full part in the communities that make Australia a great nation. They should be compensated in addition for making that sacrifice. What we also know, thanks to research from Judith Brown and Lyn Craig published in the Journal of Industrial Relations, is that workers who give up that time don't get it back at other times. Workers who work on weekends don't get to catch up with their friends or with their hobbies or with the parts of their lives that matter to them during subsequent weeks. That's gone forever. So it's important that they're properly compensated for that sacrifice.

What are the broader and systemic risks of leaving penalty rates and overtime rates without protection, without the legislative protection proposed in this bill? Across our history, employers and industry groups have spent considerable time trying to water down and remove altogether penalty rates, overtime rates and other minimum conditions afforded to workers under the award system. The best example of that, relevant to this debate, was in 2017, when the Fair Work Commission agreed with the employer group submissions in the hospitality and retail sectors in an argument that weekend penalty rates were too high and were a handbrake on the economy. The result was that they supported reducing penalty rates in order for businesses to stay open longer and to create more jobs. The reality is that that didn't flow through. Businesses didn't stay open longer. There weren't more jobs created. But what did occur was that the take-home pay of working Australians in these industries, who relied on that additional wage, was reduced. The McKell Institute simulated the impact of penalty rate cuts in the retail and hospitality sector at around this time and found that reducing or removing those rates would result in a drop in disposable income across the country. There are a number of flow-on effects in terms of the consumption power of our lowest paid workers.

They also found that the effect would be more acute in regional and rural areas, where a larger proportion of workers were employed in the retail sector. So there are other sections of our community that are disproportionately affected. In 2019, after the reduction in penalty rates had been in effect for nearly two years, researchers at the University of Wollongong and Macquarie University surveyed more than 1,800 employees and 200 owner-managers in retail and hospitality. What they found was that, using a variety of statistical analyses, they were unable to establish any evidence of a relative increase in the prevalence of Sunday, public holiday or weekly employment for modern award employees or employers or a decrease in the number of hours that owner-managers worked on Sundays and public holidays, something else that the Fair Work Commission also relied on. That was even confirmed by the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia Chief Executive Officer Peter Strong in 2019, who said, 'There just haven't been extra jobs on Sundays,' and that there were 'no extra hours'. And he didn't know anyone who'd given workers extra hours. So the economic rationale for some of these concepts just doesn't bear out in the evidence, and it just doesn't bear out in our experience. But what is always clear is that it's the price paid by lower paid workers as a reduction in their take-home pay.

Dr Jim Stanford made a prescient warning as well in relation to the ongoing attempts of employer groups to reduce weekend penalty rates. It was this:

Moreover, as lower penalty rates spread through other sectors, it is my judgment that the negative impact on incomes will be experienced not only by those employed directly under the terms of a Modern Award, but will also be experienced by those working under enterprise agreements or individual contracts.

Let's be under no illusions. This is a beachhead that's trying to be set up to take away penalty rates and overtime rates from large swathes of the Australian population, and it has been done for the same reason that these efforts are always being done. It is to cut wages. When you think about whose wages would be cut—whose take-home pay is reduced because of all this—it's the people on the downside of advantage. In that sense it's unconscionable, and this bill puts in place a safeguard to prevent it.

So what is this bill unlikely to do, in spite of the concerns raised by those who say that they oppose it? This law will not worsen complexity in the Fair Work Act. The Fair Work Act is a complex piece of legislation, and its longer term reform to simplify it is another question for another day. But this piece of legislation is simple. It'll be simple for the Fair Work Commission to apply. In one sense it actually reduces the number of criteria they need to consider when facing an application to vary or approve a modern award. We know, as I've said, that this legislation will not cause a problem for employment. It won't reduce the number of people employed.

So what is it? It's a bill that is an important safeguard for millions of award-reliant Australian workers—some of the lowest paid in our country. Penalty and overtime rates are a result of the longstanding principle that workers deserve fair compensation for the sacrifices they make in working these emotionally and physically demanding hours—compensations that those who are working evenings, on weekends and on public holidays particularly deserve. This bill does not block employer-employee flexibility outright. If you're in the enterprise system—if you're in a system where you're getting a higher wage—you can still negotiate your arrangements and achieve the necessary flexibility. What this does is put in place, in black-and-white legislation, that the safety net—the minimum conditions Australian workers can receive—must preserve and protect overtime rates and penalty rates.

The failure to stop the erosion of this fundamental entitlement and these minimal conditions for our lowest paid workers will likely see more employer groups pursue similar arrangements. It'll extrapolate. But one thing I can tell you to near certainty—to the extent that predictions can be certain—is that the result will be that lower paid workers will be paid even less. That's always what sits underneath these attempts to strip away protections. Workers on the downside of advantage do not bargain with their employers from a position of equality. And it's that inequality that people who strip away basic conditions seek to exploit. It's why we need to pass this bill.

Josh Dolega (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a great pleasure to be able to stand today to speak about penalty and overtime rates. I'd also like to echo some of the words of my colleagues on this side. When I do think about why I joined the Australian Labor Party, it comes back to one thing: standing up for everyday Australians, the people who keep our country running, quietly, reliably and often without recognition.

The bill is about people. It's about workers, many of whom I meet every day in supermarkets, retail venues, hospitals or aged-care homes. I meet call centre workers. It's about people who wake up before sunrise, who work on weekends and on public holidays and who deserve to be paid fairly and compensated for the sacrifices that they make. That's why the Australian Labor Party, the party for workers, is introducing the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025.

This bill delivers on the Albanese Labor government's promise to protect penalty rates, and it's a promise that Australians overwhelmingly supported. The idea is simple: if you work unsociable hours—weekends, public holidays, early mornings, late nights—you often rely on a modern award safety net. Then your pay should be protected—no loopholes, just fair wages for hard work. This matters deeply to workers in Tasmania and across the country. In May 2023, the top five award reliant Tasmanian employees worked in accommodation and food services, administrative and support services, healthcare and social assistance, public administration and safety, and retail trade. Workers in these industries will benefit from this bill.

But this bill is part of a bigger picture. In our first term, the Albanese Labor government made landmark reforms to workplace relations. We've worked hard to get wages moving again. We've closed loopholes that undermine fairness, improved access to secure jobs and put gender equity at the heart of workplace laws. Labor governments have always stood up for workers. We believe in fair pay, decent conditions and safer and respectful workplaces. And we know that when workers are supported, when we lift them up, everyone benefits.

Since coming to government in 2022, we've reinvigorated enterprise bargaining, we've made gender equality and job security core principles of the Fair Work Act, we've banned secrecy clauses, we've criminalised wage theft, we've closed the labour hire loopholes, we've introduced minimum standards for road transport workers, and we've ended the permanent casual loophole. We've given casuals a proper pathway to permanent work, and, importantly, we've introduced the right to disconnect. These reforms are delivering real wage increases and better conditions.

Now this government is building on that momentum, because protecting penalty and overtime rates in modern awards isn't just good policy; it's the right thing to do, and it takes a Labor government to do it. Penalty and overtime rates are more than just numbers on a pay slip. For many of Australia's lowest paid workers, they're their lifeline. But, under the current rules, they can be rolled into a single rate that leaves people worse off. That's not fair and that's not what Labor stands for.

This bill strengthens that safety net. It ensures that workers aren't disadvantaged by technicalities or loopholes, and it does so without adding unnecessary complexity. Employees and employers can still negotiate flexibility, but not at the expense of fairness. This bill doesn't go after or unfairly treat many of the great small businesses that do the right thing and that value and reward their workers. It just protects the status quo.

Modern awards are vital to protecting workers who don't benefit from an enterprise agreement. They cover pay, hours, rosters, breaks, penalty rates and overtime. They're especially important for the workers, who are more likely to be women, who are under 35, part-time or casual. These are often the most vulnerable workers, and they deserve protection.

During recent hearings for this bill we heard stories from cleaners, retail workers and representatives from trade unions. The workers who bravely gave evidence during the hearings spoke of how penalty rates meant the difference of buying apples. It meant the difference of being able to provide for appropriate care for their children or to be able to even spoil their grandchildren. I might say, many of us in here would often take those sorts of things for granted. These workers aren't asking for much. They're asking for us to protect the Australian way of life—their penalty and overtime rates.

We do respect the Fair Work Commission's role as the independent umpire, and that doesn't change. What we want is for enterprise agreements to deliver better wages, better conditions and more productive workplaces. We want to have penalty rates and overtime rates protected in modern awards. We're starting to see really great results. More workers than ever are now covered by enterprise agreements, and those agreements are delivering real wage increases.

At the heart of this bill is a simple principle for fairness. Behind every clause in an agreement or in a modern award is a parent working night shifts to cover the school fees, a student juggling two jobs to pay their rent or a nurse pulling a double shift on Christmas Day to ensure sick Australians receive the care they need. To every Australian who's working unsociable hours: we see you, we value you and we're fighting for you.

Our plan and this bill are in stark contrast to the approach of those opposite—the party of Work Choices—who, at every chance, have attacked workers' rights and pay. For crying out loud, when they were last in government, wage suppression was a deliberate feature of their economic strategy. I note that some of those opposite have said that they support penalty rates, and maybe, individually, some do, but actions speak louder than words. All they have done so far is go after working people. I encourage all senators to support workers by passing this bill.

Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Straight off the bat, I support the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025 and will be voting in favour of it, but, to be honest, I wish that we in the Senate knew more about it. The government has decided not to share with us a regulatory impact statement. Normally, a regulatory impact statement would tell us the impact the government is predicting that a change to the rules will have. Those effects would include how many jobs will be impacted, how many businesses will be affected or the extent to which the changes will make the regulations more or less complex. You'd think that all these effects would be important. After all, your intentions don't guarantee your outcome. If a doctor gives you a prescription that makes things worse, you don't give them a pass mark for giving it a red-hot crack. You change doctors, because, when you're playing with live ammunition, what matters isn't your intentions but your impact.

What's the impact of this bill? I would love to be able to tell you, but the truth is that I don't know. Nobody here knows. The government hasn't shared with us a regulatory impact statement that would tell us the impact of this bill, or at least its best guess. There are only two reasons why Labor would decide not to share a regulatory impact statement: one, they don't have one, and, two, they have one and they don't want anyone to see it. If they don't have one, why not? Why wouldn't they make one? Do they think one is unnecessary?

Let me tell you; there are millions of workers who wouldn't mind a bit of a clue. Retail workers, who have an active application and who have bargained with their union and with their employers to negotiate an increased base hourly rate in exchange for lower overtime and penalty rates, will find themselves back at the negotiating table. Even if workers and employers support it, Labor doesn't support it.

There are millions of businesses who would like to know what this means for them, or there are millions who—let's be honest—are too busy actually doing their jobs to be paying attention to a Tuesday afternoon Senate debate. They might not be giving this bill much thought right now. They might not even know it exists. But, when it comes into effect, they'll be expected to comply with it. What's the impact of compliance going to be? How many more minutes a day, hours a week and days a year are they going to have to spend on this?

Maybe Labor do have a regulatory impact statement and they just don't want anyone to see what it says. Then you'd be forgiven for wondering why that might be, right? What could it say that would have Labor spooked? If the statement's so dire that making it public would be detrimental to the government, then you have to wonder what's so scary about the system-wide changes they are making. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the call for a regulatory impact statement would be a bit of a spoiler tactic—some cheap political move to try and get a bill delayed, derailed and left to wither and die on the vine. But that's not what I think. I'm arguing for one not because it's a condition for my support but because it should be non-negotiable when making changes to a hugely complex system like industrial relations.

This bill has a statement of compatibility with human rights, like every other bill we consider in this place does. That's a rule set by the Legislation Act 2003. Every bill and every regulation needs a bit of paper at the start to state how it complies with our human rights obligations, because the rights of all are foundational, just like oversight. It staggers me that we don't have an equivalent rule here for regulatory impact statements. You'd think that changes impacting the ability of millions of families to pay the bills would merit the time of saying: 'Hey, let's take a minute to model how many people this is going to affect. Let's model who's better off, who's worse off and by how much.' I'm not saying this is a change that I'm proposing as part of this bill, by the way, but I think it's something that we, as the Senate, should support if we're serious about the way we talk about ourselves.

We consider the Senate to be a deliberative body. We're designed to take our time and to slow things down, check the details and spot the flaws. It's hard to marry up that obligation with some hand-wavy dismissal of the need for a basic transparency measure like a publicly disclosed regulatory impact statement. That's particularly the case if there's already one being produced, which often occurs. It would cost us nothing and it would be a valuable decision-making input. It would certainly be of more value than a statement of compatibility with human rights, which always has the same conclusion: the bill is compatible, it's great, no issues here. While I'm sympathetic to the calls from the coalition over the carve-out or exemption for small businesses, I think it's trying to apply a fix to a problem that is more fundamental.

The problem owes to the uncertainty that comes from not being given basic answers to basic questions like who wins, who loses, who's affected and who's not. That uncertainty matters, especially when you make changes to a really complex system like industrial relations. The opposition's solution is a carve-out for small businesses and a free pass to ignore all of the above, which doesn't address the uncertainty or the complexity. If anything, it amplifies it. We are in a world of multi-employer bargaining, where large and small employers are in the same agreement. Small businesses are covered by all sorts of regulations that impact big businesses too, and every time we add a carve-out—even a well-meaning one, where we try to make life easier for small businesses—we make small businesses more reliant on expert advice.

Small businesses who employ maybe two or three people are going to jump onto Google first to try and understand what their obligations are to stay on the right side of their workers and on the right side of the law. And when they come across advice that's written for the big end of business, do you think they're going to also get the advice that's suitable for them? Do you think every bit of generic advice is going to have additional paragraphs for businesses of different sizes—a what's in, what's out, Swiss cheese style of regulation advice? Of course not. A carve-out like that would make things more complex, not less. It would make the process of trying to figure out the new rules more difficult to follow rather than less difficult. If you're an accountant, you're probably quite happy with complexity, because that's your stock-in-trade. For small businesses trying to wrap their heads around a system that's not built for them, it's a different story altogether.

In an ideal world, we wouldn't have this job system that's built on these really complicated rules and laws and that puts all these different obligations on businesses. In an ideal world, a small business hiring its first employee would be a moment of celebration rather than a prolonged headache. This bill doesn't get us there. So why am I supporting it? Basically I want workers to get as much in their pockets as possible. I want businesses to be able to make a decent profit, to invest into expanding, hiring more and making products cheaper, better and smarter. I think those goals need to be treated like they're partners, not opponents, of each other. This bill will help with workers to some extent; it won't help much with businesses.

I'm supporting this bill because, on balance, I think the number of businesses that will be impacted by this is pretty tiny, at least in the short term. That means the number of employees impacted will also be pretty limited. It'll be a small improvement, but an improvement is an improvement, and that's nothing to sniff at. That's the best information I can find on this. It would be nice to have more concrete data—you know, the kind of data that might be included in a regulatory impact statement.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak in support of the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025. This bill is something very simple yet absolutely fundamental. It's about fairness in the workplace and ensuring that Australians who work the hours that most of us would rather not—the late nights, weekends and public holidays—are properly recognised and compensated for the sacrifices that they make.

Penalty and overtime rates have long been a feature of our workplace relations system, and they're not a bonus or handout. They are an acknowledgement that working outside of regular hours absolutely comes at a cost. It comes at a cost of time with your family and your friends, and it comes at a cost of rest and recovery. It comes at a cost, sometimes, of your wellbeing. When a nurse is on a shift at 2 am, when a retail worker is stacking shelves late on a Sunday night and when a transport worker is driving through the night to keep goods moving across our country, those workers deserve more than just the base rate of pay. They deserve recognition for the extra burden those hours place on their lives.

In my home state of Western Australia, shiftwork is prevalent across various industries, most notably manufacturing, mining, construction, health care, accommodation, food services and also public administration. Other sectors also include significant shiftwork, including retail, transport, social and community services and security. This equates to approximately 277,000 WA workers that rely on penalty rates. This bill protects those entitlements and ensures that the penalty and overtime rates in modern awards cannot be cut back, watered down or quietly rolled into arrangements that leave workers worse off. In short it guarantees that the safety net remains in fact a safety net.

Some in this chamber will argue that employers need flexibility and that rolling penalty rates into broader pay arrangements is a matter of convenience and efficiency, but let's be clear: this bill does not outlaw flexibility. It does not prevent employers and employees from reaching agreements that suit their needs. What it does is place guardrails around those arrangements. It makes sure that flexibility does not become exploitation and that a so-called 'rolled up' rate is not just a way of short-changing workers.

At a time when Australians are under enormous cost-of-living pressure, these protections are not just symbolic; they are essential. Every dollar matters to Australian families right now. The workers that rely most on penalty and overtime rates are often in low-paid jobs, insecure jobs and award-reliant jobs. They are retail workers, hospitality staff, aged-care workers, cleaners, transport operators and countless others. For them, losing penalty rates is not just a minor adjustment. It can mean not being able to cover their rent. It means cutting back on their groceries. It can mean making impossible choices between essentials.

This parliament has a responsibility to stand up for those workers, and this bill does just that. It locks in protections for around 2.6 million Australians whose pay and conditions are set by modern awards. It sends a clear message: we value your work and we will not allow it to be undermined. This government was elected with a commitment to restore fairness to the workplace relations system, to lift real wages and improve conditions and to strengthen the safety net, and this bill is a practical expression of that commitment. It is about saying, 'Never again will penalty rates and overtime be eroded through the back door of so-called flexibility.'

It is not only about fairness for individual workers; it is also about strengthening our economy. When workers are paid fairly, they spend fairly. That supports spending in small businesses in our communities. It supports local economies in suburbs and towns right across Australia. Protecting penalty rates is not just good for workers; it's good for our economic resilience.

It is good for families. I know from my own experience, from listening to constituents in WA, that work often comes at the cost of family time. Parents miss out on those milestones because they're on shift. Children spend weekends without mum or dad at home. The least we can do is make sure that those hours are properly compensated, and this bill respects that reality.

There will be many who say this bill goes too far, that it ties the hands of business, but I would say this: the evidence is clear that businesses can and do thrive while paying fair penalty and overtime rates. Thousands of employers across the country already operate under some of these conditions. Many do so proudly, recognising that treating our workforce with respect is not just a legal obligation but also a smart way to build loyalty, reduce turnover and improve productivity. Fair pay and good business are not mutually exclusive; they in fact go hand in hand.

I want to thank the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Minister Rishworth, for bringing this bill forward, and I want to acknowledge the tireless work of unions and workers' advocates, who have long fought to ensure that penalty rates are not eroded. Their advocacy has been instrumental in getting us to this point. I also want to acknowledge the voices of workers themselves—some of the people who rely on penalty rates to pay their bills. The government has heard from people who spoke about the toll of unsocial hours and the difference that proper compensation makes.

Debate interrupted.

Dave Sharma (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will now proceed to two-minute statements.