Page 3109 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 24 September 2014
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In conclusion, I would like to say that, as minister for industrial relations, I wholly support and commend this motion to the Assembly for the light it sheds on the consequences this federal bill will have on bargaining arrangements, individual flexibility agreements and the confidence of our employees into the future.
MR WALL (Brindabella) (12.13): I might begin by addressing some of the notes and clauses that Ms Berry put in her original motion. It is interesting to note that there is a contradiction within the motion itself. There are two sequels on the continued support of “the payment of penalty rates and loadings for employees who work unsociable hours”; yet in (1)(e) she is noting an objection, saying:
… for workers covered by the National Employment Standard through their awards, agreements and contracts, the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2014 reduces their right to payment of leave loadings at time of termination …
So she wants employers to pay penalty rates when someone works unsociable hours. I think most people in this place would accept that some form of penalty rate for unsociable hours worked is a reasonable policy and a reasonable industrial relations platform. But she then says that when an employee is terminated they should also be paid penalty rates. It is a case of saying, “What are the purposes of the penalty rates in this instance?” Are they for working unsociable hours, are they an entitlement or are they a pure add-on to the base hourly rate? The legislation that the federal coalition is proposing seeks to clarify these areas of what an entitlement is and when it should be paid as an over and above for inconveniencing an employee or when it becomes a base entitlement.
Mr Smyth’s amendment highlights a lot of the factual truths about the origins of the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2014. It was, as Mr Smyth’s amendment states, brought forward by the coalition as a policy in the lead-up to last year’s election. It is a bill that many in the Labor Party have often supported. It seems that an advocate in supporting such policies is a former minister, Martin Ferguson, who, in a speech in the House of Representatives, called on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to go further than his planned changes in industrial relations, saying that the proposed legislation was only a step in the right direction, and really a quite modest one. It seems that Mr Ferguson understands the demands and the stresses that are in place on business in our community—not just locally in the ACT, but nationally. He understands the challenges that they face when it comes to employing staff, the risk that they take on, and the reluctance that many businesses have when they are faced with the sheer prohibitive costs of doing so.
Dr Bourke, in his speech, referred to the current coalition’s policy as throwing business to the wall. I do not know that trying to reduce red tape, trying to reduce the administrative burden, trying to reduce taxation and trying to make it easier to employ someone are throwing them to the wall. I think it is fair to say that refusing the opportunity for businesses to employ staff is forcing those that make the investment and seek to operate a business to work themselves to the bone, often to a point where their health and their welfare suffer at the expense of trying to keep a business afloat, simply because it is too prohibitive to employ staff.
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