Michaelia Cash Channels Groucho Marx

Groucho Marx famously once said "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well I have others.”

Minister Michaelia Cash is doing her best to channel him with her two totally different positions concerning penalty rates.

On the one hand she says penalty rates are not for the Government to decide, but a matter for the Fair Work Commission.

But then she says that the Government will not change penalty rates without taking a proposal to the voters at an election first.

So what really is the Government's position? That penalty rates are a matter for the Fair Work Commission or a matter for Government? And if they are a matter for the Fair Work Commission, why did the Government send them off to the Productivity Commission in the first place?

Workers are entitled to more security than this. They are entitled to know whether the government supports continued Sunday penalty rates or not. They know that claims that cutting the Sunday rate will create more jobs are nonsense. They know that if their penalty rate is cut they will have to work more hours to make up for the pay cut, so there is a negligible prospect of more work for people who don't already have work.