Liberal Goldstein MP Tim Wilson says more consultation needed with small business on penalty rate ban
A new Bill, which was introduced by Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth on Thursday, will also override the Fair Work Commission (FWC) from substituting the entitlements if it reduces the overall take-home pay of even a single worker on a modern award.
However, Mr Wilson, the Coalition's small business and industrial relations spokesman, accused Labor of trying to 'ram' the legislation through parliament and signalled the opposition was likely to push the Bill to an inquiry.
While he confirmed he'd reviewed the legislation, Mr Wilson said Ms Rishworth was still unable to answer how the Bill would affect small businesses.
'There is a simple reality. There are no penalty rates on jobs that do not exist,' he said.
'The Coalition supports penalty rates. We support higher wages … but that isn't what we're getting from this government with their approach, where their focus is how they do their pay-offs as part of their legislative victory lap, rather than focusing on how to improve the economic conditions that list the standards of living and the wages of Australians.'
While Mr Wilson said the Coalition would 'obviously talk to parties from across the parliament', the opposition had yet to take a firm stance on the Bill.
Ms Rishworth urged the Coalition and Greens to support the legislation and said it was a 'key commitment' Labor took to the election.
'My message to the opposition is that they need to listen to the decision of the Australian people,' she said.
'The Australian people clearly back this government to get on with the job of getting wages moving and ensuring that Australians can earn more and keep more of what they earn.'
In response, Mr Wilson said it was proper and 'standard' process to get an 'assessment of the impact of legislation'.
'This is standard, so they can make the claims about what their mandate may be, it doesn't mean it gives them a right to override the standard processes of legislative passage,' he said.
As it stands, Labor will need either support of the Greens or the Coalition if it is to pass the legislation in the Senate.
While the Greens have confirmed the party has reviewed the legislation, it has yet to reach a position.
Greens workplace relations spokeswoman Barbara Pocock said the party was having a 'close look' at the Bill and would make a decision 'in the coming days'.
She also pushed for stronger workers' rights like a four-day work week without a reduction in pay.
Responding to whether the Greens would support pushing the legislation to an inquiry, she said the party would consider all options.
'This is a no-cost bill for small business, as I read it, but as I said earlier, I've just received the Bill,' she said.
'We're having a close look, and we will want to make sure that there are no unintended consequences and that we get the best possible Bill that we can for some of Australia's most vulnerable workers.'
The election promise was prompted by a FWC review prompted by the Australian Retailers Association to allow senior management to take a 25 per cent wage increase above minimum award entitlements in exchange for overtime, weekend and public holiday penalty rates and rest breaks.
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News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
‘May the best woman win': JK Rowling weighs in on Giggle v Tickle discrimination case
JK Rowling has thrown her support behind the founder of a women-only app currently appealing a Federal Court ruling that she had unlawfully discriminated against a transgender woman. Sall Grover was ordered to pay $10,000 in damages last August after she was found to have indirectly discriminated against transgender woman Roxanne Tickle when she removed her from her social media app, Giggles for Girls. AI software designed to filter out men from the women-only app had cleared Ms Tickle, but Ms Grover removed her from the app herself after seeing her profile in 2021. The landmark case resulted in Federal Court Justice Robert Bromwich ruling that Ms Tickle was excluded from the app for not looking 'sufficiently female', and therefore was indirectly discriminated against. Ms Grover filed an appeal against Justice Bromwich's judgement in October. The first hearing of her appeal was held on Monday. Ahead of the hearing, Rowling – who has been outspoken in her criticism of what she sees as an assault of women's rights coming from transgender activists – issued a message of public support to Ms Grover. 'Good luck, Sall,' the Harry Potter author wrote on X. 'May the best woman (haha) win x.' Rowling also shared a post of Ms Grover's on the social media platform – a screenshot of an article by The Australian about Monday's hearing. Ms Grover captioned the screenshot of the article – headlined 'Trans women 'should have legal protections available to pregnant women'': 'This is how insane gender ideology is.' Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Brisbane in October, Ms Grover insisted 'somebody's biological sex is immutable' and it was a 'natural human instinct for us to be able to tell this'. 'And if you are then being told that you cannot acknowledge that really basic instinct, you have lost the ability to recognise one of our most basic skills,' she said. 'If you just look to the person sitting next to you right now, you can tell if they are male or female. Now imagine if you can't do that anymore because you've got to ask, 'Do you have a gender identity?'. And if you don't acknowledge that and give meaning to that then you're breaking the law. It simply doesn't work.' Ms Grover added 'we are told constantly that trans rights are human rights, but human rights cannot be rights that take away other people's rights'. 'That's not how it works. And it's not only that they're taking away our rights, we're actually being coerced into giving up our rights,' she claimed. It's not the first time Rowling has weighed in on an Australian court case related to women's and transgender rights. In December, she congratulated Moira Deeming's defamation win against John Pesutto, following a ruling from Federal Court Justice David O'Callaghan that Mr Pesutto had defamed Ms Deeming as a Nazi sympathiser after she attended a rally critical of transgender beliefs. 'The 'right side of history' is racking up a hell of a lot of losses recently, isn't it?' Rowling wrote on X at the time. 'Congratulations Moira Deeming.' She similarly celebrated Britain's Supreme Court's decision in April that a woman is defined by her sex at birth, in a major blow for transgender people in the UK. The case came about because the Scottish Government had argued trans women with a valid gender recognition certificate (GRC) could be afforded the same rights as all women under the Equality Act. A GRC can be issued by the UK government to people who are living as a different gender to their biological sex so long as they have been doing so for at least two years, have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and medical reports from two doctors. Campaign group For Women Scotland fought the Scottish Government's decision in the Scottish courts and lost, eventually bringing the case to Britain's Supreme Court. That court said Edinburgh's 'interpretation is not correct'. While someone might possess a certificate saying they live as a female and they assert that gender, that 'does not come within the definition of a 'woman' under the Equality Act 2010', the ruling said. The Equality Act, the judges said 'makes clear that the concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man'. It means a trans woman with a GRC cannot claim she is being discriminated against if she is barred from female only spaces like, for instance, domestic violence shelters and toilets. However, Lord Hodge said trans people were a 'vulnerable and often harassed minority', who 'struggle against discrimination and prejudice as they seek to live their lives with dignity'. The Supreme Court also stressed that 'trans people are protected from discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment'. Ms Rowling, who lives in Scotland and is an ardent campaigner against trans rights, lauded the outcome. 'It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the Supreme Court and, in winning, they've protected the rights of women and girls across the UK,' she wrote on X.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Why Do We Protest?
JUSTICE STALMAN, PROTESTER: My first involvement in activism, I think I was about 16, and it was around the Adani coal mine in Queensland. Honestly, I was really scared and also disappointed, realising that the people in power, the, the adults, weren't always necessarily going to do what's right and what's right for young people as well. CALE MATTHEWS, REPORTER: Justice has been involved in protests for almost a decade. JUSTICE STALMAN: In the beginning it was a lot of like campaigning. The first group that I was involved with was AYCC, Australian Youth Climate Coalition, and we had a lot of focus on, like, consulting with governments and, and doing campaigns that way. It was just young people trying to be heard and have meaningful conversations. But yeah, it didn't feel like that really led to a lot of change. PROTESTING: People, power! Power, people! Last year she travelled to NSW to join Activism Group Rising Tide, who were attempting to block coal ships from entering the Newcastle port. POLICEMAN: To ensure your safety, you must comply with this direction. Here, she was arrested. JUSTICE STALMAN: It feels like often protesting, I guess the legal ways, the polite ways, is still not seen and or often ignored, and we see little change come from that, but when we move into things that are more disruptive that demand your attention, you can't look away anymore and change does happen. PROTESTER: Show me what democracy looks like! You've probably seen protests pop up in the news a lot lately. NEWS REPORTER: The march on the Harbour Bridge garnered attention all over the world, even in Gaza. I mean, almost 100,000 people marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge is pretty hard to miss. Data suggests the annual number of protests across the globe tripled from 2006 to 2022 and through the 2020s, that trend has continued. DAVID MEJIA-CANALES, HUMAN RIGHTS LAW CENTRE: Protest has been a really, really important feature of how we've achieved really good things like marriage equality and First Nations land rights, and I know there's still a lot of work to do there, even just the right to vote, the right to vote for women. The right to vote for Aboriginal people. All of these things were not gifts that were given by politicians or parliaments. These were things that were demanded and protested for for a long period of time. David is a senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre. He says protests have a long history, but now they're a lot more visible. DAVID MEJIA-CANALES: Before we had smartphones and the Internet, you had to kind of run into a protest to know that it was happening, whereas now there's a lot of really high profile protests for things like protecting the environment, for ending war, and these things have actually got to a level that people are talking about them just in everyday speech, in schools, in workplaces. David says with increased visibility also comes increased scrutiny. In the last say 20 years, maybe 22 years, we've seen about 30 anti-protest laws being introduced around the country. So they make say for example, blocking a road, a crime and not only do they make blocking a road a crime, and blocking a road is a pretty normal feature of protest, but they attach a really, really high penalty for something like that. In NSW, blocking a road without police permission could get you a jail sentence of two years or a fine of over $20,000. Queensland, NSW, Victoria, Tassie and SA have all made changes to protest laws in the last few years. Increasing their penalties for disruptive protests. PETER MALINAUSKAS, SA PREMIER: Protest is welcome, but it's got to be done in such a way that is conscious of other people's rights within our community. DOMINIC PERROTTET, FORMER NSW PREMIER: We want people to be able to protest, but you should do it in a way that doesn't inconvenience people right across NSW. David says these changes have given more power to police at protests and right now, Australia is the world leader in arrests at climate and environment protests by a long way. DAVID MEJIA-CANALES: The police have a really important job to do, you know, keeping people safe and keeping paths cleared so that people can walk through them. But what we're seeing now is that police are actually taking more of a role in actually deciding whether to allow a protest to happen or not, and that actually gets into a really tricky situation where you're bringing people who might be in a bit of a heated moment into contact with police, and recently we've seen in NSW and Victoria and other places where there's been actual violence towards protesters and to police, and we don't want that. That's not the point of protest, but because the laws are so restrictive, it's actually pushing people to either do things that they might not otherwise do or do things that are a little bit riskier or actually bringing police into contact with people in a way that's probably not desired for police or protesters. South Australian grassroots ecosystem, or SAGE, is a community gathering that happens at the end of every month and it brings together a lot of community and activist groups across the state. Some young people here say changes to the law have made them more apprehensive. VOX: I'm so often hearing people say "I'm really concerned about my job prospects. I don't want to get involved with climate protests. I don't want to risk anything." VOX: People are getting more worried about whether they're actually allowed to protest, whether they're going to is a safe event and stuff because people are worried about these laws. People don't want to get caught up in the law by just expressing their views on the climate. Dr Lucy Bird is a researcher at Flinders University who has been looking into whether a feeling called 'political despair' is causing people to stop protesting. DR. LUCY BIRD: So it's this emotion based on how you're feeling about sort of the status quo and how things are happening socially and politically. So it could be climate change, people, a lot of young people in particular, are feeling despair about the fact that what we're seeing is really unjust, like we should be seeing changes, but we're not. She says about 60% of climate protesters feel political despair, a feeling that nothing is changing. But she also says it's not turning them away. DR. LUCY BIRD: Well, that's what we originally thought it would. We assumed that it would mean that people do step away because you just can't handle it and it's not nice to feel despair. But what we actually found is that even though people were feeling despair, they were continuing to act. People are pretty complex. We feel multiple emotions at once and often people feeling anger and despair at the same time you know. You can have really conflicting ideas about 'nothing's changing. Nothing's working,' but also having this belief that it can change. Emma Thomas is a professor of social psychology in the same lab as Doctor Bird. She says changes to how people can and can't protest can have a couple of outcomes. I think that the legislative changes have had a dampening effect on protests and I think that they've had a dampening effect on collective actions primarily in the context of climate protest. We did a really quite complex computational simulation actually of what happens when you repeatedly repressed protest over long periods of time and what then happens. What happens at a population level and we show that you know you can create really apathetic populations when you repress protest too much, which is very bad for democracy because our democracies are healthy and vibrant. Where we have a political, a politically engaged populous. But you can also radicalise a lot of people. So you can have these two extremes which are very undesirable I think for healthy democracies of a group of people who are disengaged, and a group of people who are radicalised and prepared to use violence because the authorities have signalled that they're not prepared to listen to conventional forms of protest. JUSTICE STALMAN: I feel more apprehensive in some ways of course, I need to think about my future, but at the same time, I think the cost of inaction is so much higher than any fine that you could be given, and ultimately, I don't think that people can be bullied or intimidated out of standing up for what's right. Justice says she still often feels like her voice isn't being heard, but that's not gonna stop her protesting in the future. JUSTICE STALMAN: Protest works. That's why we do it. Protest is why I can vote as a woman. Protest is why we have, you know, working rights. Ultimately, I know that all the rights that I have now I have because people have protested in the past, which is also why I protest because I want people in the future to have rights that I don't have yet now.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
NSW Labor government unsuccesful in condemnation of independent MP Mark Latham
Mark Latham has escaped parliamentary condemnation after the former federal Labor leader was accused of sharing secret government information. The NSW Labor Party put forward a condemnation motion against Mr Latham after accusing him of "disclosing authorised information" under parliamentary privilege about a fellow MP. But the motion was adjourned after being blocked by the opposition until October 13. The condemnation was defeated 22 to 16 after a fiery debate. It is alleged Mr Latham referenced confidential information from a psychologist's report prepared for the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) in proceedings brought by independent MP Alex Greenwich, a claim Mr Latham denied. On Tuesday night, he told the chamber that the remarks were based on publicly available information, including several affidavits signed by Mr Greenwich. "This is not a state secret," he said of the information. He said when he viewed the information, it was only under a non-publication order, not formally under parliamentary privilege. During the debate, Mr Latham went on to further criticise Mr Greenwich and journalists present at the NCAT hearing. He said if he had the chance, he would share the information again. Penny Sharpe, leader of the government in the upper house, moved the motion to condemn the independent MP. Ms Sharpe said that revealing deeply personal medical records about a fellow member meant the house should take a stand over Mr Latham's use of parliamentary privilege. "If you don't draw this line, I don't know what line you are going to draw," Ms Sharpe said, calling on her parliamentary colleagues to support the condemnation. However, Mr Latham again insisted he had not broken standing orders in parliament. Despite the failure of the condemnation motion, Mr Latham was later successfully referred to the Privileges Committee over the alleged sharing of information in a privileged report by the NSW Police Force in a separate incident. On the prospects of a parliamentary committee investigation into his actions on that matter, which relates to former police commissioner Karen Webb, Mr Latham said: "Bring it on." "I'm happy for these things to go to privilege … I wouldn't mind if this matter went to the High Court," Mr Latham said. Last month, it was revealed Mr Latham's former partner, Nathalie Matthews, had sought an apprehended violence order against him in a NSW court, with media reports that she accused him of a "sustained pattern" of abuse and pressuring her into "degrading" sex acts. The independent MP has vowed to defend himself in court, and labelled Ms Matthews's claims as "comically false and ridiculous". Police are not investigating the matter. In the wake of the application being made public, it also emerged that Mr Latham had sent disparaging photos and comments about some female MPs to Ms Matthews, which he said was part of an "in-joke" taken out of context. He has apologised to the MPs at the centre of the photos, describing them as "ill-advised". Mr Latham released a lengthy public statement last month, addressing allegations of inappropriate behaviour in state parliament.
