Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Minister for Workforce Participation) Share this | Hansard source

No, I am sorry. The member for Lalor was suggesting that we were not trying to get new employees information. I have just explained that she is being very selective, but we are not surprised by that. Proposed section 154D would also allow a workplace inspector or an affected employee to apply to the Federal Court to impose a penalty on an employer for failing to provide a copy of the fact sheet to the employee. We think that is reasonable because information is power. If you do not know what your rights are then it is possible for you to be exploited or indeed heavied by a union which is hell-bent on making sure that you are bullied into a circumstance that should not otherwise be.

Requiring employers to provide employees with a workplace relations fact sheet prepared by the Workplace Authority will not be a heavy burden for business, large or small, to bear. The Workplace Authority will gazette the workplace relations fact sheet. The fact sheet will set out information about the minimum employment standards, protected award conditions and so on that I have described. I therefore want to say that I think that all of the amendments in the Workplace Relations Amendment (A Stronger Safety Net) Bill 2007 are extremely important for the future prosperity of this country because we have to have a workplace which is flexible and which allows businesses to respond to the environment or the context within which they operate.

We have to have a situation where, if a mother with young children wants part-time work, if a semi-retired person wants job sharing or if someone wants to work from home if the industry is suitable for that, that flexibility is possible in our workplace. That is why, with the flexibility already introduced by our industrial relations reforms, we are seeing more jobs created every week than we have ever seen created in this economy before. We are seeing unemployment rates down to a 33-year low—down to about 4.2 per cent. We are seeing Labor’s peaks of long-term unemployed drop down by 75 per cent. This is an extraordinary outcome for this economy, which, of course, we have managed so effectively. We are also making sure that we can sustain the prosperity of our economy through industrial relations reforms which allow future generations to benefit from employment and the wealth of this nation. I wholeheartedly commend this amendment to the House.

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