Page 1528 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2006
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In each of these cases, there is a family who frets about how to pay the bills; there are children trying hard to understand the frustration and despair of their parents; there are children themselves having to deal with the abuse this legislation allows for. Sixteen-year-old Amber Oswald had her pay cut from $14 an hour to just $8.57 after management at the juice bar she worked at decided to renegotiate staff agreements. With the help of her union, the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, Amber took her case to the Industrial Relations Commission. Irrespective of the outcome, which in Amber’s case was a win, the question must be raised: is the system fair? Is it about work choice when 16-year-olds must fight to be paid their legal entitlements? I think not.
This Assembly would be doing an injustice to the working families in the ACT to ignore these immediate impacts of WorkChoices for 12 months simply because Jacqui Burke thinks she has something better to do with her time. We are elected to represent and serve the people of Canberra. We must hold their best interests—men and women, workers and their families—at the core of all our decisions. We must hold the interests of those men and women who seek to run law-abiding and morally honourable businesses. These are the men and women who wish to compete on entrepreneurial ability, not on a race to the bottom in wages and conditions of employees. It is for this reason that we must continue the work of this committee, for workers, employers and families alike.
This committee must examine the chain that forms beyond a change to workplace conditions. When a worker is placed on an AWA that reduces annual leave by two weeks, what impact does this have on the worker’s family? Does this create greater demand for childcare? Does this place greater pressure on extended families to reduce caring costs? For an employer we need to know whether the cost of buying out two weeks annual leave equates to an increase in total productivity, or we will see a decrease in average productivity as a result of all work and no play.
I raise this hypothetical point to highlight the impact a seemingly innocent exchange—two weeks in exchange for increased pay, possibly on a voluntary basis—will have on those individuals directly and indirectly involved. I have not even included the economic impact on tourism businesses that rely on holidays for income. The chain, the ripple effect if you prefer, already exists. It would be neglectful for this Assembly not to allow the committee to continue its inquiry as to how each link, each ripple, impacts individuals and the community as a whole.
It interests me that an opposition member on this committee looks to cease our inquiry. I assume she has the backing of her party, which interests me even further. We in this Assembly have had to tolerate the anti-worker addresses of Messrs Mulcahy and Seselja, Mrs Burke and Mrs Dunne. We have had to sit through the WorkChoices love song as sung by the ACT Liberal opposition. And now? We have the opportunity to examine just how good WorkChoices is—note the sarcasm—for workers and employers alike, and the opposition seek to dissolve the inquiry. Now? So little faith in the object of your affections, as this action clearly demonstrates, makes me smell a rat.
Mrs Burke raised the term “ratbaggery” earlier on. Let me just try to describe the rat for our members. It is an old rat, a rat that will not go away. It is a rat called Endoxos. I want to share with the new members of this Assembly the tale of the old rat Endoxos. Endoxos
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