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

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for the Environment and Water) (11:44): It's entirely a matter for an individual employer, its workers and the relevant union to come to an agreement around the pay and conditions that are provided in that workplace. Of course, they've got to operate within the parameters of the law. I'm not going to express judgement about whether a particular agreement is a good one or not.

It's obviously the role of the Fair Work Commission to oversee that process. I'm remembering now that that's one of the other distinctions between making this change to effect awards and to effect agreements. Agreement making is supervised by the Fair Work Commission to ensure that the parties don't end up worse off, essentially.

If someone is paid on an award, there's no supervising process, as that employee starts work and gets paid under those conditions; that is all done when the award terms are set. That's why we're saying that, when it comes to setting the terms of the award, penalty rates shouldn't be cut.