The Fair Work Commission recommendation on penalty rates simply reflects the changed world we live in. It's been too long coming. Sunday rates in largely the hospitality industry will hopefully align much more with Saturday penalty rates in a few years' time. Nonetheless, the date of implementation is curiously close to the next election. Unless it's all resolved before then, expect Bill Shorten to run a penalty rates scare campaign in an attempt to install himself as PM. He wants to be "Mr Harbourside Mansion" but he wants to be in the one that you and I pay for.
No one can deny that if you are used to getting a higher wage on Sunday and it's trimmed back to around Saturday penalty rates it's a tough position. From my experience of finding a quarter of the government savings from my half of my portfolio in the first Howard budget I can assure you that nobody likes to get less or pay more.
Change is always a tough sell. When John Dawkins introduced HECS, students who hadn't paid in the past had to cough up a contribution. They didn't like it. That funded an enormous expansion in access to higher education. The greater good won the day.
We all understand that to lose some salary you used to get is tough. That however is the impact of a change, not the principle behind the change. We all work and relax in a very different pattern from when we were kids. In those days most people worked 9 to 5, five days a week, relaxed on the weekend and going out for a meal was a special occasion. Now people eat out all the time and working times have changed.
We might describe ourselves as a Christian country, we live by ecumenical Christian values, in keeping with the values of so many of the worlds religions, but our churches are emptier than they have ever been. Sunday is no longer a day of rest in that sense. More businesses opening on Sundays and some opening for longer hours or employing more people is a good thing.
Bill Shorten has had quite a bit to say about penalty rates lately. He's been out there telling us that he will protect the workers. (He means the ones with the Sunday jobs, not the ones who want a job on Sunday and can get it if only the local cafe would open.) There's been no shame apparent as he peddles this line.
Bill doesn't say much about all the big businesses that have union-approved deals to pay their workers far less than the penalty rates small businesses are stuck with. Nor does he say much about the payments from those companies to the unions. It shows he's playing us for fools. Voters don't warm to that. Perhaps he thinks no one knows about them. I think we ought to have a good look at them all. Then we can judge if he and the unions and big business in bed together really are the workers' friend.
We would all benefit from understanding why Shorten thinks it's OK for a young person working with Hungry Jacks, for example, to get paid so much less than a kid working at a small family-run business across the road. Or to put it another way, why the small business has to pay about 40 per cent or 50 per cent more in wages on Sundays. Shorten also seems to want us to believe that we can move ahead as a nation without anybody losing anything. He's living in cuckoo land and thinks we will be sucked in by that rubbish.
It's a tough world out there. Together, we have to deal with it. There are difficult decisions that have to be made. We need our leaders to face the harsh realities of the world and guide us through. We elect them and pay them to do the hard yards.
Whatever your politics, if you're a realist you will "enjoy" Theodore Roosevelt's speech, which can be found on the net, searching his surname and The Strenuous Life. A more eloquent exposition of the truth that life is tough might be hard to find. He refers to all the arguments against the civil war. The loss of life, of fathers, brothers and lovers. The enormous financial cost. All that horror had to be faced. Without it the slaves would not have been freed. Good things are worth fighting for. Not much of any value comes easily and there is always a cost.
Shorten is just hovering around the lowbrow end of politics. It's an easy game. You just pick up everyone who loses something by a decision, make them the victim and persecute the decision-maker as a mean-spirited bastard. The alleged victim is just being used to bash your opponent. The question of the national interest or the greater good just doesn't enter into play.
Once we've shone a light on the union deals with big business we will be able to see if Shorten says one thing to one group and another to someone else. Australians don't warm to someone who appears two faced. There's something not ridgy-didge about them. We'll be able to see if payments to unions appear to have an impact on what he says about who should be paid what. Please, do yourself a favour and read the Roosevelt speech. See if Shorten fits into that mould. Or not.
Amanda Vanstone is a Fairfax Media columnist and was a minister in the Howard government.
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