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

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for the Environment and Water) (12:12): This bill still allows an enormous amount of flexibility when it comes to workplace arrangements. What it stops is people having their penalty rates cut without adequate compensation for that. Parties can still seek exemption rates in an award, which would take into account the loss of penalty rates, but they need to be properly compensated for that.

It's about not cutting penalty rates and leaving people worse off.