Mr BRIAN MITCHELL (Lyons) (19:49): Those on this side of the House remember well this government, in the last term, raising its hands in a sort of collective Pontius Pilate 'nothing to see here' response when penalty rates were cut by the Fair Work Commission: 'We can't do anything about it. It's the Fair Work Commission, the independent umpire. Don't talk to us.' You can imagine my distress, as a Tasmanian member of parliament, to see that this government is going into bat against workers. An independent umpire, the Federal Court, has made a decision. The employer has decided to go to the High Court and appeal the Federal Court's decision, and this government is joining that action against the employees. I am of course talking of the Cadbury plant in my state, where last month workers won a very significant victory. At Cadbury, workers are employed on three-day-per-week 12-hour shifts. Twelve hours is a long time. It's now 10 to eight in the evening. If this was a 12-hour day, we would've started at 10 to eight this morning. Imagine doing that three days a week and that's your entire working life. And then of course you've also got night shifts sometimes. These are long days. For years Cadbury, the company, has been putting people on these 12-hour shifts under the EBA—the union is involved—but only paying the workers on sick leave and carers leave for 7.6 hours. So it's a 12-hour day, but if you're sick you only get paid for 7.6 hours. It's in the employer's interests to have these 12-hour days—good. That's a negotiated position with the workers. But they're only paying the workers sick leave of 7.6 hours. Two employees of Cadbury, Brendan and Natasha, took the company to the Federal Court last year and won. The Federal Court agreed: 'Yes, you work a 12-hour day, therefore you should get 12 hours sick leave.' The company said: 'This is no good. We don't want this. We're going to appeal.' Fair enough; that it's right as an employer. But the government—this government which has told workers throughout the country that it won't get involved, it won't stop penalty rates going ahead, because of the independent umpire—is more than willing to go against the independent umpire, in this case the Federal Court, and join this action against these workers. I will quote the AMWU secretary, John Short, who goes into bat for these workers at Cadbury, when the decision was first made by the Federal Court: Shift workers around Australia can breathe a sigh of relief today thanks to AMWU members Natasha and Brendan who stood up against Mondelez— That's the multinational that now owns Cadbury— and won this case … This was an appalling attempt by a very profitable multinational company to rob its workers of the leave that they are entitled to … If you need to take a sick day, you should be paid for your normal hours of work, it's as simple as that … Mr Short was quite right. If you're working a 12-hour day and you're sick, you should be paid 12 hours of sick leave. It's just simple. Yet the company said, 'No, we want to reduce it to keep that at 7.6 hours,' and this government said, 'We'll join in on that; we'll go into bat for the company and seek to reduce that pay.' This government cries that it's bound by the independent umpire when it comes to penalty rates—which, funnily enough, cut workers' wages—but when there's an independent umpire's decision in favour of workers, in favour of paying higher wages, this government is more than happy to step in, go against the decision of the independent umpire and join an action against a decision that's in the interests of employees, which if successful will end up with workers having less pay in their pockets. It is absolutely outrageous. Mondelez is a multinational company with revenue of $25 billion. We're not talking about a mum-and-pop corner store here. It is a very big company with very deep pockets. This government says everyone should accept the Fair Work Commission's decision when it comes to penalty rates, but here the government is wanting to play judge and jury and get involved. If the Prime Minister is serious about respecting the independence of an independent arbiter, he really should be telling the Attorney-General to back away from this and let the company fight its own fight.