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

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for the Environment and Water) (11:51): We as a government think that people shouldn't have their penalty rates cut. That's why we're making this change and why we're content to see it go forward. You've asked a number of questions about why we are permitting existing terms and awards to be varied.

You characterise that as retrospective, because these awards were determined in the past and we're allowing them to be changed. If we stopped awards that might have been decided five or 10 years ago from ever being changed, then people's pay rates and conditions wouldn't change. You don't have awards set in stone forever.

They change when parties bring applications to the commission to change those terms. What we're saying here is that, if parties sought to cut penalty rates from those awards, they wouldn't be able to do so.