Over the past year there have been two tranches of industrial and workplace relations reforms passed by Parliament.

Yesterday, further details have been provided about a third bill, which will be introduced to Parliament on Monday, 4 September 2023.

The Minister of Employment and Workplace Relations, Tony Burke MP, addressed the National Press Club of Australia today on this upcoming third tranche of legislation. The Minister announced that the “Closing Loopholes Bill” would be introduced with the intention to close “the loopholes that undercut wages and conditions”.

Ahead of the Minister’s address, the Department of Workplace Relations and Employment conducted a consultation process on eleven key areas for reform which are likely to be included in the third tranche:

  1. Amendments to the casual employee definition. This would empower the Courts to have regard to post contractual conduct when assessing whether an employee is a casual as well as new casual to permanent conversion processes.
  2. Closing the labour hire loophole which includes changes to give effect to ‘same job, same pay’ obligations.
  3. Criminalising wage theft. Importantly, this could include some level of criminalisation for underpayments that were not dishonest, but were reckless or negligent. This is a matter that BNSW and ABI have campaigned heavily against.
  4. Introducing laws for employee-like work and allowing the Fair Work Commission to set minimum standards for employee-like workers
  5. Give workers the right to challenge unfair contractual terms
  6. Allow the Fair Work Commission to set minimum standards to ensure the road transport industry is safe, sustainable and viable
  7. Provide stronger protections against discrimination, adverse action and harassment
  8. A single national framework for labour hire regulation, which could be implemented in place of existing state and territory schemes
  9. Address the impact of the small business redundancy exemption in winding up scenarios to support equitable outcomes for claimants under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee
  10. Reforms to enterprise bargaining provisions to close loopholes:
    • a.     The Fair Work Commission issuing model terms for enterprise agreements
    • b.     Preserve arrangements for employers already using single interest agreements
  11. Repeal demerger from registered organisations amalgamation provisions.

 

ABLA represented Business NSW and Australian Business Industrial to provide feedback during the consultation process by providing submissions to the Department. Through its relationship with the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, ABLA was in a position to further contribute to the development of the reforms.

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