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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-05-01 Daily Xml
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International Workers' Day

Mr SZAKACS (Cheltenham) (15:17): I rise to mark and recognise today, 1 May, as a day of great importance for working people across our state and throughout the globe. Mr Speaker, happy May Day, and special thanks to staff here in parliament. To those who help us as elected leaders discharge our duty, your work is invaluable and your service to the community of South Australia is greatly appreciated.

This International Workers' Day, we recognise the gains of working men and women, their sacrifice, their toil and their collective solidarity in achieving the type of working conditions that we and many others take for granted today, from the eight-hour day, sick leave, overtime pay and superannuation to more contemporary achievements like paid maternity leave and family and domestic violence leave, fought for and won by working people, and let's not forget one of the greatest achievements of the broad labour movement: Medicare.

These things were not gifted to working people: they were fought for by working people, their trade unions and the labour movement .Today, in recognising the achievements of working people I also reflect on the challenges ahead, the work to be done for this pursuit of decency, dignity and fairness for working people, and the stark differences that currently present. We must ensure that working people are front and centre as partners and simply not passengers in a rapidly changing working and economic landscape.

They should be able to count on fair and decent work or a job that is safe and secure, and not be forced into sham contracts or the purgatory of unending casual work. They should be able to count on fair pay rises, especially at a time when the share of profit is skewed so sharply towards big business. They should be able to count on their employer simply abiding by the law and not promulgating business practices and models that steal the wages from working men and women.

Working people deserve better. They deserve a fair go. The stark reality is that we can have a CEO in this country earning 436 times the wage of a worker cleaning the desks and cleaning the toilets in the same building. We are in the midst of a wages crisis. What is the Coalition government doing about this country's wages crisis? What is the government doing about the fact that 80 per cent of workers have not had a real wage rise in the last 12 months, or the fact that the minimum wage, once considered to be a living wage in this country, is now so desperately inadequate that it barely accounts for any quality of living at all?

What kind of political leadership do we have when Dan Tehan, a senior member of the federal Coalition government cabinet, thinks it is communism to lower the costs of child care for working families? If the stakes were not so high, it would be laughable. So consumed by their own sense of justice for high-income earners and big business, the Morrison Coalition government will now disregard the care and education of our young in this desperate pursuit.

What about cuts to penalty rates? What about the promised rivers of jobs and better pay—if working people would just suck it up, cop cuts to their pay and fair compensation for weekends and public holidays? Just four days ago, the head of the Council of Small Business of Australia said, and I quote: 'There’s no extra jobs on a Sunday. There’s been no extra hours. It’s been just a waste of time.'

The radical agenda of cuts, pursued with great zeal by many members of the federal Coalition government, not least of whom is the member for Boothby, Nicolle Flint, who in between carrying the flame and spear for the failed prime ministerial bid by Peter Dutton, voted to slash penalty rates on eight separate occasions. She called these penalty rates 'outrageous wage increases'. It was the greatest of con jobs, tried on by an individual who has never stood up for working families—not once.

As we acknowledge this day of achievement by working people, we recognise the great crossroads at which we find ourselves. The struggle does not stop while progress is still to be made. On 18 May, change the rules for working people: vote for Nadia Clancy in Boothby and kick out the Morrison government, a government that has so desperately abandoned working families.

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