Page 1211 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2016
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more difficult to work than others and that the pay associated with those hours should increase.
We believe in creating incentives and opportunities for people to put in the extra miles at work. This benefits both small business in terms of productivity and workers by providing extra income and experience. It is because of this that in this territory and indeed in this country the Australian Labor Party is the party of “a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay”.
It is disappointing to see that the conservative side of politics, the Liberal Party—and I assume that includes all those opposite—would deny workers fair compensation for time worked during inconvenient and antisocial hours. Is this because they do not appreciate the need for a work-life balance or is it because they do not understand that working hours outside regular business times have a greater impact on the family and social lives of workers? Or is it that they are beholden to their mates in big business, multinationals and their lobbyists?
We are seeing increasing calls from employer groups and parts of the federal government to cut back penalty rates in what they describe as an effort to increase the profitability of companies and the nation’s level of productivity. We on this side have no problem with profit or with increased productivity, but we believe the motive is greed and a disregard for fairness.
I have spent my entire working life in business, as a sole trader, running businesses for others or as a partner in large law firms. I have always understood that treating employees fairly is smart business and I understand that there are necessary costs that workers incur in working outside normal hours. These costs should rightly be covered by the employer.
As someone with a small business background, I am not interested in adding an additional burden to hardworking people in business who are merely having a go, purely for the sake of it. Protections offered by legislation are aimed generally at bad business practices and not at the vast majority of Canberra business owners who are doing the right thing. We as legislators should always make decisions that benefit both workers and businesses. This is not an area where those two groups necessarily have divergent interests.
In the most livable city in the world, with a strong cafe culture, a large retail sector and a high student population, changing penalty rates would have a devastating impact on both the local economy and employee welfare. We in the Assembly need to continually fight for the rights of workers in Canberra to make sure that we get the balance right in industrial relations for the benefit of both businesses and workers.
The effects of a cut to penalty rates would be widely and deeply felt throughout Canberra. In homes and around the kitchen tables of wage earning employees, there would be a sharp decline in disposable income and a genuine concern for those families about how to make household budgets work and how to make up for that loss of income.
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