QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Ms RISHWORTH (Kingston—Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) (14:56): I'd like to thank the member for Whitlam for that question but also for her relentless commitment to back Aussie workers. The Albanese Labor government has made significant improvements to our workplace laws to deliver a better deal for working Australians. Just last month marked our one-year anniversary since this Labor government passed legislation to protect penalty and overtime rates for workers on minimum and award wages.

This, of course, was a top priority for our government, because penalty and overtime rates are core entitlements for more than 2.6 million Australians who work public holidays, weekends, late nights and early mornings, because our government believes that penalty and overtime rates are important and make up a critical part of workers' pay packets. Of course, it also, importantly, recognises that, if someone is giving up family time to work on the weekend or unsociable hours, they deserve to be compensated for keeping the country running.

Protecting penalty and overtime rates is just one of the many measures that this government has introduced to deliver real change for working Australians. But I'm asked what could put this at risk. Well, the biggest risk to workers' pay packets in this country are the Liberals, the Nationals and those in One Nation, particularly if they were ever to form government.

When it comes to our laws to protect penalty rates, the coalition used every excuse to stand in the way of these laws. We even had the shadow treasurer who said about these laws that they would do nothing for workers. Well, he should turn up and explain his position to the retail workers, the hospitality workers and all those other workers that depend on penalty rates.

Of course, this was not the first time the coalition had failed to back in penalty and overtime rates for workers in this country. When the coalition were last in government, they failed to take action to protect Sunday penalty rates when they had the opportunity to come into the parliament and do this. Of course they were in very, very good company with One Nation.

When Senator Hanson was directly asked if she supported scrapping Sunday penalty rates, she replied, 'Yes, I do.' The Liberal and National parties and One Nation have never backed pay rises for workers, including together failing to back the minimum wage increases that this government advocated for. If those three parties were ever to find their way onto the government backbenches, we know workers would lose their penalty rates and earn thousands of dollars less every year because of their policies.

It is only this Labor government that will stand up for Australian workers. (Time expired)