House of Representatives

More documents

Recommendations

Info

10 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Monday, 3 June 2013 price out so it is not just paid by the worker. They have been examined, inquired into, tested by economists, argued about, negotiated, measured by statisticians, arbitrated by tribunals and so on for longer than taxation has existed in this country. Opposition to these rates is as perennial as the argument to support them. I have a very pragmatic view. I believe that penalty rates are a genuine reflection of what Australian society expects as compensation for people who have to work at times when others are not expected to. We know that historically the opposition has not been a strong supporter of penalty rates. We have seen what they did with Work Choices, we have well and truly seen the ripping away of overtime and penalty rates and we have heard statements from the opposition since that time that they would go down that path again. I acknowledge that they are backing away a little in their rhetoric at the moment, but one can always expect them to revert to type. If they did that—if they were in government again and did that—they would remove between nine and 11 per cent of the weekly take-home wages of people working in the accommodation and food sectors in my electorate. Similarly, they would reduce about seven per cent of the weekly take-home pay for people working in the retail sector. Of those people working in hospitality, 72 per cent are low-paid workers who work on weekends and on shifts, and in the food and accommodation industries it is 56 per cent—all heavily reliant on penalty rates for their family budgets. And I would have to say that there is not a lot of fat in those family budgets. I read the economic data—the ABS figures and so on—and I have seen the analysis of costs and the share of wages and profits in those industries, and there is simply not a case to remove penalty rates. Employment has grown in these sectors, and the highest growth has been in small business. For six years, the net price of labour in those industries has risen by a mere 0.8 per cent, whereas income and expenditure on other items for small business in these sectors has risen from anything between eight and 25 per cent. Gross wages, including penalty rates, have not been a problem, but the loss of those penalty rates would be a major problem. I have doorknocked tens of thousands of houses in my electorate—over 70,000 in total—but redistribution has moved about 40,000 of them into a neighbouring electorate. At least 30,000 of those houses are in my electorate, so I have a very good idea about the everyday lives of those people. I wonder at the thinking of those who would even consider the wiping out of penalty rates. How do they think the typical hospitality and retail and food service worker are going to get by if they lose up to 11 per cent of their weekly wage? If their children are at school from Monday to CHAMBER Friday, where is their weekend child care when they are working weekend shifts and how much does it cost? Where is their weekend or late-night public transport? When and where do they get quality time with their family and friends? What are irregular hours of shiftwork doing to their health and control of their lives? These are real-life questions about the type of life the typical worker would have to face if penalty rates were lost and these are questions that we, as parliamentarians, must be mindful of. It does not need much spelling out: the removal of penalty rates would be a tragedy for many of the families and workers in my electorate, and I commend the resolution to the House. Mr McCORMACK (Riverina) (10:46): The member for Parramatta just spoke about there being not a lot of room in family budgets and I am sure, having doorknocked 70,000 homes in her electorate, she has been told that time and again. The reason there is not a lot of room in family budgets in this day and age is that day-to-day costs of living have been forced up and up and up, because of the policies brought down by this federal Labor government. We heard in last year's budget speech by the Treasurer in the very first paragraph 'the four years of surpluses I announced tonight' and he went on. We all know that that is now no longer the case—more like four years of deficits. In this year's budget speech, the Treasurer referred in his second sentence 'to support jobs and growth in an uncertain world' as he talked about the need to consolidate the economy. Under his vision he thinks that jobs and growth are necessary, and he would get no disagreement from this side of politics. If we are lucky enough to form government, we will go about it. We will be far removed from the way he has gone about it in his years as Treasurer— because he has done nothing but produce debt and deficit. In the last two budgets the introductory remarks by the Treasurer belonged more in the fiction than the nonfiction section. The Fair Work Commission is the industrial umpire with responsibility to make and vary modern awards— something which will continue under a coalition government. It is vital that the Fair Work Commission look objectively at these matters and reach a balance between the needs of workers, their employers and, most importantly, the national interest. Governments of all colours and creeds have conventionally made submissions in significant cases before that umpire, and it is something that will continue, as it has in the past, irrespective of the result of the 14 September election. If anything, under Labor, the government's intervention has been called out as being too one-sided, leading to the High Court criticising the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations as meddling in
Monday, 3 June 2013 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 11 an education union case as being 'not that of an intervener, but that of a partisan'. The interaction between labour costs and job growth is something that the Fair Work Commission is required to consider under Labor's laws but, even the member for Batman, in his former capacity as the Minister for Tourism, publicly observed that penalty rates were a major obstacle for the industry in these difficult times, when he said: I hope the bench of Fair Work Australia has given proper regard to the input of the tourism industry in this context because I understand that is the key issue to industry at this point in time. This is about fairness and sustainability and, as the Treasurer noted, talking about supporting jobs and growth, you cannot have a job if the employer shuts the shop because the cost for that particular business owner are too high. Onerous workplace conditions impose great burdens on businesses, particularly in regional Australia. Small towns have beautified their streetscapes, thanks to considerable investment by local councils, and they encourage weekend visitors, but, the way we are going, it is getting harder and harder to get a cup of coffee or a meal on a Saturday or Sunday or indeed a weekday night because of onerous workplace wages and conditions forcing the owners to work seven days and seven nights a week rather than employing people as they would have done in the past. If they go down that path, they are going to be working many, many hours. Their families miss out—because a lot of them have children—but, if they employ people and have to pay the higher and higher penalty rates, they simply cannot make a profit. Therefore what is the point of working for so many hours and paying the higher electricity bills due to the carbon tax and higher fuel costs—depending what business they own—due to the carbon tax, with all the other burdens that are being forced on them and prices which are going up and up under this Labor government? This is about jobs and growth, and certainly nothing this government has done has ever helped those two important aspects of the economy: jobs and growth. We need to be very mindful of this particular resolution because what we need is fairness and equity and businesses to stay open. (Time expired) Mr LAURIE FERGUSON (Werriwa) (10:51): Whilst the actual resolution deals with penalty rates, the previous speaker had recourse to significant bombast and rhetoric about the state of the overall economy. Therefore it is necessary to put on the public record a few realities. In fact, unemployment in this country, for instance, at 5.6 per cent, is strongly at variance with the Europe-wide average of 12 per cent and the United States rate of 7.6. He talked about inflation in this country and the pressures that is CHAMBER creating. He did not seem too concerned when the rate of inflation under the Howard government was 6.75 per cent, in contrast to the 2.75 per cent today. He did not say that the economy is 13 times larger than it was overall when this government came to power. He did not refer to the reality that the overall tax impost in this country is 22.2 per cent of GDP, as opposed to 24 per cent under Howard. Those are a few realities out there. But the main axiom he came against was the question of the carbon tax, trying to somehow imply that the thing that really does affect people in this country, energy cost increases, is something overwhelmingly to do with the carbon tax. The fact of political life, the truth, is that the reason that energy prices are moving significantly in this country is that state governments, Labor and Liberal, disregarded the need to build infrastructure for decades, pretending to the Australian people that cheap energy could occur forever. Unfortunately, it has come home to roost. Infrastructure has to be renewed, it has to be replaced, and it is costing people a significant amount of money these days. But the resolution before us today deals with the question of penalty rates. When I go to the Liverpool Titans football games or go to the South-West Sydney Tigers Aussie rules or the Campbelltown City rugby league games, I see a reality of this society: people working on weekends to keep society going, to keep the community having the option for people to play sports. When I go to the Country Women's Association, I see organisations that are struggling. In regard to RSL service organisations, Rotary and Lions around this country, we all know the truth that they are struggling because people have no confidence that each week they will be available, that they will be able to be there, that they will not be on call 24 hours a day for work and that they will not be required to work every weekend. That is a reality. Penalty rates are about compensating people for the loss of family life, the fact that they cannot be with their children going to sport on Saturdays and Sundays, that they cannot be sure that they can do those sidelines, that they cannot be referees and umpires and people on the grounds, that they cannot help the ethnic school on the weekend at the local public school, that they cannot be involved in community radio because of the impact of the workforce changes in this country. That is what penalty rates are about. They are about compensating people for the loss of family life, for the loss of networks with their friends, their community, their society, their suburb. And for those opposite, quite frankly, despite the attempt to be a small target before the next election, to pretend that nothing is going to change, the reality is as we have seen in Queensland. They came to power against an unpopular government that people wanted to
Page 1 and 2: COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA House of
Page 3 and 4: FORTY-THIRD PARLIAMENT FIRST SESSIO
Page 5 and 6: Members of the House of Representat
Page 7 and 8: Members of the House of Representat
Page 9 and 10: Title Minister Parliamentary Secret
Page 11 and 12: Title Shadow Minister Shadow Parlia
Page 13 and 14: CONTENTS MONDAY, 3 JUNE 2013 Chambe
Page 15: CONTENTS—continued DisabilityCare
Page 18 and 19: 2 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Monday,
Page 76 and 77:
60 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Monday,
Page 78 and 79:
Page 80 and 81:
Page 82 and 83:
Page 84 and 85:
Page 86 and 87:
Page 88 and 89:
Page 90 and 91:
Page 92 and 93:
Page 94 and 95:
Page 96 and 97:
Page 98 and 99:
Page 100 and 101:
Page 102 and 103:
Page 104 and 105:
Page 106 and 107:
Page 108 and 109:
Page 110 and 111:
Page 112 and 113:
Page 114 and 115:
Page 116 and 117:
100 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Monday
Page 118 and 119:
Page 120 and 121:
Page 122 and 123:
Page 124 and 125:
Page 126 and 127:
Page 128 and 129:
Page 130 and 131:
Page 132 and 133:
Page 134 and 135:
Page 136 and 137:
Page 138 and 139:
Page 140 and 141:
Page 142 and 143:
Page 144 and 145:
Page 146 and 147:
Page 148 and 149:
Page 150 and 151:
Page 152 and 153:
Page 154 and 155:
Page 156 and 157:
Page 158 and 159:
Page 160 and 161:
Page 162 and 163:
Page 164 and 165:
Page 166 and 167:
Page 168 and 169:
Page 170 and 171:
Page 172 and 173:
Page 174 and 175:
Page 176 and 177:
Page 178 and 179:
Page 180 and 181:
Page 182 and 183:
Page 184 and 185:
Page 186 and 187:
Page 188 and 189:
Page 190 and 191:
Page 192 and 193:
Page 194 and 195:
Page 196 and 197:
Page 198 and 199:
Page 200 and 201:
Page 202 and 203:
Page 204 and 205:
Page 206 and 207:
Page 208 and 209:
Page 210 and 211:
Page 212 and 213:
Page 214 and 215:
Page 216 and 217:
Page 218 and 219:
Page 220 and 221:
Page 222 and 223:
Page 224 and 225:
Page 226 and 227:
Page 228:
show all

House of Representatives

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?