FEDERAL Member for New England, Barnaby Joyce said a new Pay and Conditions Tool (PACT) mobile-friendly tool to combine pay, shift and leave calculators with an intuitive interface for mobile devices designed for Small Business has been launched by Employment Minister Eric Abetz and the Fair Work Ombudsman.

Mr Joyce said this delivered on another election commitment to the Small Business sector in the New England Electorate.

The release of PACT comes on top of other highly successful measures launched by the Coalition Government including:

A dedicated Small Business Helpline at the Fair Work Ombudsman;
A guide to help small businesses to hire new employees; and
A commitment that advice from the Fair Work Ombudsman can be relied on by small businesses.

Users who go to calculate.fairwork.gov.au can work out wages per hour, per shift or for an entire pay period.

Mr Joyce said the Coalition Government committed in its Policy, released five months before the last election, to make available a mobile pay calculator for workers and their employers to get advice on wages and conditions in an easy and simple way.

“Most employers want to do the right thing but have difficulty finding simple and reliable advice on what to pay their employees and similarly workers want an easy way to ensure they are getting their correct entitlements. The PACT will deliver this,” Mr Joyce said.

Since going live for testing in May, PACT has already proven very popular with more than 584,000 users who have registered almost one million sessions. This is after a 40 per cent increase over the last year in visits to the various pay tools with more than 2.2 million visits.

“I am confident that as a result of the launch of PACT, there will be greater compliance with workplace relations laws and I encourage all workers to use the tool to check their entitlements and for employers to use these helpful and effective resources so they can spend less time on paperwork and more time doing productive work,” Mr Joyce said.