Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for the Environment and Water) (11:34): The Fair Work Act already lays down rules, if you like, for the Fair Work Commission to take into account when making decisions. This is simply another requirement for the Fair Work Commission to consider when making decisions, just as the entire Fair Work Act includes other matters that the Fair Work Commission needs to take into account.

As I say, it's very common for governments on both sides of the chamber to make changes to what the Fair Work Commission can and can't consider. As I've said, one of the reasons that we've acted here is that there are current cases before the Fair Work Commission where we see employer groups trying to cut penalty rates in a way that we don't think is fair. I mentioned the retail award matter that's before the Fair Work Commission at the moment.

In that case, we have parties seeking to vary awards—in any case that hasn't yet been decided by the Fair Work Commission; they'll need to take into account the laws as they exist, which will presumably include this law once it has passed. We are concerned about what some of the employer groups are trying to do in the retail award matter. In the submission that the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association produced to the commission in this award variation case, they provided evidence of members of their union—shop assistants—who would be more than $1,000 worse off each year and model rosters that would be more than $5,000 worse off each year under the proposed exemption rate being put forward by the employer.

Now, I think all senators in this chamber would recognise that shop assistants don't tend to be highly paid individuals, and for them to risk losing more than $5,000 every year because of what the employer groups are seeking to do to penalty rates—we don't think that's acceptable.