Mr KELVIN THOMSON (8:26 PM) —The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business (Mr Cadman) in his summing up of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Superannuation) Bill 1997 claimed that it represented award simplification rather than award stripping. Just what does he think is going on here? What this bill does is remove from the Industrial Relations Commission the power to consider and deal with any matters relating to superannuation. This is not simplification; this is stripping. The commission will not have the power to resolve superannuation issues or superannuation disputes. Many workers will be worse off as a result of this process—for example, the 26,000 employees in the textiles, clothing and footwear area and in the hospitality area who do not earn $450 a month will not get anything under the superannuation guarantee. They will lose the superannuation they get pursuant to their award. Many of these workers are part-time and casual workers, and many of them are women. Under the relevant industrial award they receive entitlements at the rate of three per cent of their wage. They are getting superannuation from their award, even though they get no superannuation under the superannuation guarantee. That is a modest accumulation of superannuation but, taken over the long term and allowed to compound, it will translate into a healthy account balance. My question to the parliamentary secretary is: will those part-time and casual workers who currently receive superannuation under their industrial award—because it has a lower minimum wage threshold than the superannuation guarantee level—be better off or worse off?

Workers who receive monthly or quarterly payments pursuant to the award will be deprived of those payments. Instead, they will depend on the annual payment of the superannuation guarantee. This is likely to affect them adversely in two different ways: the first is that the Institute of Actuaries has calculated that, over the course of a working life, workers who are receiving monthly rather than yearly contributions would be better off by about $16,000, almost twice the annual age pension. It all adds up. The second is that, when companies become insolvent, employees miss out on their legitimate entitlements—for example, superannuation entitlements. This has arisen very recently, in circumstances such as Cobar and Woodlawn. Employees should not miss out on superannuation entitlements. If the payments are being made on a monthly or a quarterly basis that will be a better arrangement than is provided for by the superannuation guarantee. It will represent a better protection for workers and it is a protection which workers should not be deprived of. On that basis, we do not support the legislation nor the amendments. The question the parliamentary secretary needs to answer is whether workers who receive monthly or quarterly payments are going to be worse off or better off.

Mr Cadman —What did you do for them? You forgot about them.

Mr KELVIN THOMSON —Under the awards, they received entitlements. If you take away the awards, those entitlements are no longer going to be there. That is simply not good enough.

Furthermore, this is a matter which is not going to benefit employers. For example, some employers who pay the employees' superannuation contributions via payroll deductions because the award allows it will be better off and some will be worse off. Employers who can no longer use payroll deductions to pay their employees' superannuation contributions will have to resort to other payment methods which will involve substantial transaction costs—this again from the government that promised to reduce red tape for small business. There are employers who currently have the level of superannuation contributions defined in the award as a percentage of ordinary time earnings or some other measure. They could be worse off if that is removed. Some superannuation funds use a definition of ordinary time earnings for determining the level of superannuation contributions. (Time expired)