Page 3108 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 24 September 2014
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Let us look at how others have commented on this proposed legislation. I note Mr Smyth quoted earlier from the Australian Financial Review. Let us see what Charles Power said just last month:
This clearly injects the kind of individual flexibility in awards which employers in small businesses, particularly in retail and hospitality sectors, have been seeking. However, it would also amount to a significant departure in the approach taken today by courts and tribunals.
As Commissioner Smith noted in 2010 when assessing an arrangement of this kind in an enterprise agreement posed by BUPA Care Services, an approach which seeks to “rely upon the subjective belief of the employee rather than the objective testing of the award against the agreement … undermines the standards fixed in awards and the basis for determining the no disadvantage test.” The concept of the employer offering the gift of employment, provided it is at a rate discounted the safety net, “has far reaching implications for the operation of the safety net of wages and conditions”.
That reads in my mind as a “race to the bottom”. Be assured that this is the business case of the Canberra Liberals—the removal of workplace rights and conditions to make it easier for their mates in business to make a bigger profit.
In specific reference to section (2) of Ms Berry’s motion, it has always been apparent to me that a fair and just society cannot be achieved through the impoverishment of a large section of the community. This is something that the Liberal Party never seems to understand. I have had countless people in the past try to explain to me that if businesses have to pay people too much, they will make less money and the economy will suffer. That is not the case.
It is important to remember that the customers of one business are the employees of another. If the general population is earning less money through a reduction in penalty rates and income in general, fewer people have money to buy clothes from shops, fill their cars with petrol at service stations or buy that little extra for their children. It is then that we see a reduction in retail trade. The flow-on effect to small business is that fewer people are employed. So the cycle continues; the economy slows. That is why strengthening workers’ rights and conditions is so important. These rights and conditions are key to maintaining economic prosperity.
I wholly agree with the motion calling on the government to continue to support small business in the ACT through the business development strategy. Diversification and innovation in the ACT are vital to maintain a strong economy, and government support for this is vital. It is wonderful to see the renewable energy sector having such great success with the opening of the Royalla solar farm several weeks ago. It takes government support through legislation and policies such as the feed-in tariff legislation or changes to the territory plan to facilitate innovative and new industries and business types. Moving towards these new industries creates new training and job opportunities, and improves not only our economic outlook but also other factors such as our carbon footprint as a jurisdiction.
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