Federal election 2025: Albanese and Dutton return to industrial relations show in fight over penalty rates

A fresh argument has broken out on industrial relations over the holiday weekend, with Peter Dutton labelling a Labor move to legislate protections for penalty rates a stunt and a “red herring”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his cabinet colleague Jason Clare harked back to their university days working hospitality jobs to recognise how much help the extra pay for working night shifts or weekends could be.

The Fair Work Commission is considering an application from the Australian Retailers Association, backed by the Australian Industry Group, to amend the relevant award so that supervisors, including those at the big supermarkets, could voluntarily agree to swap penalty rates for a higher salary.

There are more than 1.3 million retail workers across the country, including 350,000 on the award the employer groups are seeking to change.

Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt made a submission in his ministerial capacity to the Fair Work Commission on the matter in February, which argued that penalty and overtime rates were an “essential feature of minimum terms and conditions” in awards.

On Saturday, he described the threat to people’s pay as very real.

“Weekends and public holidays are special. That’s when we gather for birthday parties, it’s when we have weddings, it’s when we have football grand finals,” he said.

“And the workers who give up those weekends and public holidays deserve recognition for that with extra pay in the form of penalty rates.”

Labor now intends to legislate guidance for the commission that penalty rates rightly belong in award agreements.

Business groups joined forces to warn that doing so would set a dangerous precedent of governments interfering in independent processes.

Mr Albanese said the only precedent was that of Labor defending the rights of working people.

“That’s something we’ve been doing since 1891, so if there’s a precedent there, we’ve been doing it since 1891,” he said.

He recalled working night shifts at Pancakes on the Rocks in Sydney “for the penalty rates, that’s one of the things that got me through university”.

Mr Clare said the same went for his days working at Sizzler to help him get through university.

“It paid for the public transport, it paid for the food, it paid for my life,” he said.

Mr Dutton said the move was “yet another stunt” from Labor, given the independent Fair Work Commission set the conditions.

“We don’t propose any departure from the current arrangements,” he said.

“We support the policy that the Gillard-Rudd government supported, that the Albanese government supported, that the Morrison and Turnbull and Abbott governments supported.

“Let’s have a mature debate instead of these red herrings.”

But Mr Albanese blasted the Coalition as “the party of Work Choices” that had “never missed an opportunity to undermine the wages and conditions of working people”.

This talk of the importance of weekends and family time took place at the Sydney Royal Easter Show on Saturday, where both leaders visited after a pause in campaigning on Good Friday.

The show has become a staple of the campaign trail with the shift of elections to the first half of the year.

Mr Dutton arrived well before the gates opened to the public, but ended up staying on as the showgrounds at Sydney Olympic Park filled up, picking up some meat pies and a Bertie Beetle showbag along the way.

“I love the Afro, I’m jealous,” he told an alpaca, patting its bouffant ‘do.

Yet another poll released on Saturday showed the Coalition dropping further behind Labor.

Liberal insiders now think the party will pick up at best 10 seats, putting it well short of a majority.

But Mr Dutton dismissed concerns, saying there was a “big disparity” between the published polls and “what we’re seeing” in internal Liberal Party tracking.

“I also think there are a lot of Australians, frankly, who just haven’t switched their mind yet to the choices and what they’re doing on election day,” he said, declining to make any predictions.

He had no such qualms about asking 18-year-old cattle handler Clancy Lambkin how he thought his cows would go in the competition.

“We’re hoping for blue ribbons, but predictions? We’ll go with blue ribbons for now,” Mr Lambkin replied.

Mr Albanese got down with the kids in a goat pen where the baby animals jumped all over him and his partner Jodie Haydon.

“I hope it’s as chill for the last couple of weeks as this little one,” he said, cuddling a sleepy baby goat before saying they still had “a mountain to climb” to polling day.

He continues to insist no one in Labor is getting ahead of themselves.

“Everyone knows what happened in 2019 where the bookies paid out a few days before the election, and that was pretty unwise,” he said, echoing the concerns of ALP members still burned by that year’s shock loss.