Page 3112 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 24 September 2014
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people expect to be a seven-day economy where the supermarket, the restaurant, the cafe and the hotel are open seven days a week for our convenience and for our leisure. It is fair that we have an open, frank and honest discussion about what the role of penalty rates is going to be into the future. I would be happy to have that discussion here in this place at any time.
Mr Smyth has just handed me an ABC news article from September 2012, when Martin Ferguson was making a push for penalty rate change in the tourism sector, saying that rates were prohibitive. It seems that they are not always keen to support all members of their side when they are talking sense and honesty in business policy.
To sum up, it is well and truly time that the amendments to the Fair Work Act are pushed through in the federal parliament. It is something that the business community has long desired. And I think that the business community shares Mr Ferguson’s sentiments that these changes do not go far enough. They do not seek to address all of the issues that are currently being experienced by employers in the industrial relations framework. I hope that into the future we see more and we can create more opportunity for employment, more opportunity for investment and more opportunity for this city to thrive as an employer.
MS PORTER (Ginninderra) (12.23): I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important topic, and thank my colleague Ms Berry for raising it.
As we have heard, the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2014 seeks to implement elements of the federal coalition’s policy that they claim will improve fair work laws in Australia. Specifically, the bill comes as a response to a number of recommendations from Towards more productive and equitable workplaces: an evaluation of the fair work legislation, the June 2012 report of the review by the fair work review panel.
This Labor government have never shied away from sensible reform, and will never do so. Our record as a government in this regard is self-evident. What we are against is reforms based on pet ideologies which those opposite and their federal colleagues are prepared to pursue no matter how much the changes hurt the people we as elected members should be protecting—the most vulnerable in our society.
I am sure we all have noticed that it is becoming a trend that the federal coalition government is purposely targeting this group of people. It is a bit hard to miss this. All in this place will recall that the federal coalition recently brought down a heavily flawed budget which unfairly targeted pensioners, individuals without a job, low income earners, youth, families and the sick. One would struggle to see how the proposed GP copayments, for instance, would be beneficial to those who could ill afford them; or how withdrawing the safety net from young unemployed men and women, cuts to pensions, cuts to Indigenous programs or cuts to the state and territory health budgets could be helpful to anybody. But that is exactly what this federal government has suggested, and has done in some cases.
As if this were not enough, we now know that some amendments in this Fair Work Amendment Bill are specifically aimed at limiting unions from representing workers, and from protecting workers’ interests, their safety and their wellbeing. Since their election into government last year, the federal coalition has been waging a targeted
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