Page 1218 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2016
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successful business as well as the financial rewards that can come too from a well-run and progressive business.
I also have a personal appreciation of the compliance issues and their importance: tax, regulation, insurance, worker health and safety. I also know the personal responsibility that comes with generating income to pay staff, paying them fairly and looking after their welfare. However, the removal of penalty rates is not the way to support local small business. Put simply, penalty rates are in place to compensate staff for the impost that irregular hours and working non-standard hours places on life, family and personal balance. Penalty rates are a representation of a social contract between employees and businesses.
The income workers receive through penalty rate arrangements is not a windfall gain; it is not the icing on the salary cake. For many workers, particularly in hospitality and retail sectors, penalty rates can be what make ends meet. Removing Sunday penalty rates would have a direct impact on some of our hardest working, community-based employees and their standard of living, requiring them to find some other means to meet their financial obligations.
I know some of our local small business owners are supportive of the Productivity Commission’s call to cut Sunday penalty rates, but consideration needs to be given to the broader economic impact that would result from doing this. We also need to think a little more creatively about what it means to run a successful small business in this new millennium. Quite simply, wages and salaries get recycled into our business community. They are invariably spent in our local small businesses. What goes around comes around.
Madam Deputy Speaker, running a successful business is not a race to the bottom price. Business success is about innovation and providing best value and an experience to customers. In society today, value is no longer a price-based measure. Businesses that innovate, that put the customer first and that create unique value and loyalty are succeeding. They pay well, they pay fairly and they create working environments where skilled and talented people want to work.
This government recognises that we have a major role to support our small businesses and to provide solutions and opportunities for them to be more innovative and to increase productivity and profits. We do this through the ACT government’s business development strategy, “Confident and business ready: building on our strengths”, a strategy that provides a proactive approach to supporting small businesses to achieve success.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.47): I thank Mr Hinder for bringing this motion here today dealing with the very important issue of penalty rates and the Fair Work Commission’s statutory four-year review of awards. Penalty rates have been around for 100 years and compensate people for working unsociable hours that most other Australians have free. Penalty rates recognise and compensate people for the impact working at unsocial hours has on their lives and the lives of their families and the impacts that working unsocial hours has on their personal health and on their sleep patterns.
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