Page 3147 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 24 September 2014
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Mr Smyth also says in his amendment:
… the Coalition’s proposed changes were announced approximately four months prior to the Federal election, and do not go further …
We should trust them on that? We should trust that the federal Liberal government are not going to make any further changes? We can, of course, believe that that is never going to happen, given the record number of broken promises that we have seen from the federal Liberal government to date.
It is remarkable to hear the members opposite speak as if they are the defenders of business—and some unions, sometimes, when it is politically convenient. The reality is that the only people they are protecting are the federal Liberal party and the employers who choose to do the wrong thing.
Oversight of working arrangements is important. You only need to speak to any parent who is sending their teenage son or daughter off for their first after-school shift to know how vulnerable workers can be. I wonder how many of those parents Mr Smyth has spoken to. You only need to talk to a worker from a non-English-speaking background to know how little a signature on a genuine needs statement can mean—like some of the cleaners who clean this Assembly, who go into your office, Mr Wall, and empty your bins. You only need to talk to any number of the thousands of Canberrans who work in low paid industries like security, aged care and cleaning, where the contract-based service can change hands several times a year, to know how little choice they have when a company is outsourced or restructured.
Our economy is full of workers who have little capacity to bargain and whose financial position leaves them open to exploitation. We know what impact flexible working arrangements will have on them. When the last federal government increased flexibility in the workplace, hundreds of thousands of workers were moved onto AWA individual contracts. On average, 70 per cent of those workers lost shift loadings, 68 per cent lost annual leave loadings, 65 per cent lost penalty rates, 49 per cent lost overtime loadings and 25 per cent no longer had public holidays. We absolutely need oversight of any system to ensure that this does not happen again.
We need to protect workers in these industries, and we need to protect businesses who stick to the letter of the law. All I can suggest to businesses who are struggling or people who are wanting to set up their own business is that they please get the correct advice on how they do that—that they make sure they know what their obligations are as an employer; they know what their obligations are as a business owner; they make sure they pay their insurance for their employees; they make sure they pay their employees as per the award; and, if they want to be an employer of choice in this town, they make sure they treat their employees fairly so that workers will come and work for them because they are a good and decent employer and they do the right thing by their employees and by the community.
I commend the motion to the Assembly.
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