Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The federal electorate of North Sydney is the third-largest business centre in Australia, with some 30,000 small- to medium-sized businesses calling the community home. These businesses, the people who have built them, those who work in them and those who buy from them are the backbone of our community. As such, those living in my electorate are very aware that the current economic climate is creating unprecedented challenges for them. It is imperative that any legislative change that directly impacts these businesses be reviewed through a process that involves deep listening. As North Sydney's federal member, it has been my privilege to do just that when reviewing the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023. The opinions I express today represent the input of hundreds of North Sydney residents, who have provided invaluable commentary to help me and my team come to a position on this legislation, and I'm honoured to be able to now advocate for them in this place.

From the outset, let me say there is good in this legislation that my community welcomes. However, they ultimately fear that the devil is in the detail and that this good is a smokescreen to enable less favourable employment practices to be progressed. When you overlay the fact that our current Fair Work Act has over 800 sections, covers 121 modern awards and has more than 100,000 separate wage rates and allowances for employers and employees to navigate, it is little wonder that, when a bill like this one is introduced in an omnibus form, many in the wider community feel both unease and concern. The community of North Sydney supports wage growth and improved worker standards, but it also recognises this can only be achieved if the businesses themselves are operating successfully and efficiently.

With that said, my community welcomes the establishment of a new protected attribute in the Fair Work Act to improve workplace protections against discrimination for employees who have been or continue to be subjected to family and domestic violence. So far this year a woman has been killed every five days by an intimate partner, while many thousands more have continued to struggle to navigate a system that needs to be turned on its head. These changes proposed in the legislation are a welcome step in the right direction.

My community also welcomes greater support for first responders, including police, firefighters and paramedics, suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, just as they support expanding the role for the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency to cover silica and silicosis. They also support the small-business redundancy exemptions in insolvencies and support introducing a new criminal offence for intentional wage theft. However, to this second reform, they insist that it be focused on capturing those that are truly pursuing this course of action with intention, not just those who are falling foul of our incredibly complicated award and work system.

Broadly, my community also favours the Fair Work Commission having the power to set fair minimum standards for employee-like workers, including those in the gig economy and road transport industry workers. However, many also express concern that these growing responsibilities for the Fair Work Commission must be matched with increased funding and resourcing and that any change in this area should ultimately still enable employees to work in the terms that they wish to work within, not to which a union would wish they could work to.

There are, however, six key areas that are cause for concern in my community. The first is a fear of the pace and scale of change and the potential for unintended consequences. Coming off the back of other recent significant industrial reform moved by this government, there is a general fear, particularly among small to medium-sized businesses, that there could be several unintended consequences that come with this legislation. In truth, this is the second tranche of an extraordinary amount of change in a relatively short period of time. I just wish this change was matched with the same efforts in climate action. Even large businesses with human resource teams are putting forward that they expect to struggle to get their heads around it.

Perhaps most concerning, however, is the message the scale of reform is sending to the business community. It's a message which is hard to miss and seems pretty clear: this government is expressing a relatively low opinion of those in business. Any successful business knows it is only as strong as those that work with it or for it. So to pursue such broad reform based on an argument that it is required is deeply concerning and insulting to many. The simplest solution for many employers in the face of this commentary will be to just not get involved, meaning they won't risk employing someone on a casual or contract basis. I believe that for many employees this would be to their disadvantage.

The second area of concern is that my community believes there is a specific role for labour hire workers in business, and this legislation complicates it. Several business operators have raised concerns with me around the labour hire or same job, same pay measures, and I confess: when I first saw this legislation, I was also concerned. Previously my partner and I managed and owned a recruitment agency, and when I read this legislation I was immediately struck by the challenges it will create for a business that frequently either deploys or employs temps. Would their pay be based on what was negotiated with the employing company, like the one we owned, or would it require the employing company to pay the temp on the same terms as the company to which they were being deployed? If it was the second option, how would a business that may have upwards of 150 temps across 20 to 30 businesses at any point in time manage their payroll effectively? Frequently, in any business environment, being able to scale up and down—

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