Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

We are dealing with two messages from the Senate: the Independent Contractors Bill 2006 and the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Independent Contractors) Bill 2006. I indicate to the House that the opposition will cause divisions on both those messages. I understand that it suits the convenience of the House for both divisions to be completed by 6.30 pm. Like the minister, we think that the two messages are related and it is sensible to deal with the debate as, in a sense, a cognate debate.

So far as the Independent Contractors Bill is concerned, this measure was opposed by Labor in the House and in the Senate. The message itself is opposed, save for the area which the minister indicated was unanimously agreed to by all senators in the course of the Senate committee report and the unanimously agreed amendments by the Senate on further protections for outworkers. The other amendments in the independent contractors area which relate to unfair contracts, owner-drivers, the exclusion of state laws and an unfair contracts review are opposed by Labor. They are contained in the Independent Contractors Bill message schedule of amendments. In the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Independent Contractors) Bill 2006 message those provisions which cover similar territory, such as independent contractors remedies and those provisions which relate to building contractors, are also opposed.

If that were the full extent of the measures contained in the schedule of amendments to the workplace relations legislation it would be three pages long, but the government has tacked on 36 pages worth of amendments which are effectively amendments to the Work Choices legislation. Just as Labor opposed in this House and in the Senate the government’s extreme and unfair legislation, equally these amendments are opposed. Like the minister, I will not cover the array of amendments—some of them technical—which are made, but I will make a number of points.

Firstly, so far as the technical measures are concerned, the government, here, is repairing the damage that it did to the legislation and to the administration of the law in this area when it rushed through its original legislation. When you rush through legislation, driven by politics and ideology rather than by good public policy, you make mistakes. The government is seeking here to remedy and rectify those mistakes. The danger, of course, is that, given that it is also rushing through these measures, we run the risk that further mistakes will be made. That is the first point.

Secondly, I will deal with a number of provisions: firstly, redundancy, then standing down and then some of the amendments to the minimum conditions—in particular the leave arrangements. Firstly, I fear that the redundancy provisions will not operate in practice effectively, based as they are on the government’s transmission of business provisions in the act itself, which are being shown on a regular basis not to work in practice. My great fear is that the redundancy provisions will not work in practice either. Secondly, so far as the standing down provisions are concerned, we have already seen in law agreements in respect of standing down. These provisions take them further and effectively put more control in the hands of the employers rather than standing down provisions being jointly agreed between employers and employees.

So far as the minimum conditions are concerned, particularly those matters which relate to sick leave, my concern is that if we are not careful we will render sick leave a cash commodity rather than a good public policy measure which is there for the medium- and long-term protection of employees when they suffer from a debilitating illness. So that covers the main provisions. There is an array of other measures which I may comment on subsequently. Suffice to say that we oppose the measures and will reflect that by respective divisions.

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