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

I want to start tonight by acknowledging that the minister and his team have worked very hard to try and ensure that anyone who wished to be engaged in this process for review around the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023 was given time. That is true. It's a fair thing to say, and I want to acknowledge that and thank you for that. With that said, it's been incredibly difficult for me as a member of the crossbench to have received these amendments at 12.30 or one o'clock—whenever they came in—and now, just five hours later, to feel that I am across their implications. I have a number of questions that I'm hoping the minister can answer to help me understand.

I can see that there are clear efforts here to meet some of the feedback that you've received, particularly from large business groups, and I thank you for doing that. There is no doubt that we need to do everything we can to continue to encourage businesses to employ Australians, and we need to ensure that Australians who wish to work are able to work under the conditions that they seek to have.

In the explanatory memorandum, point 6 talks about the Fair Work Commission being able to join additional employers to an application for a regulated labour hire arrangement order where it is satisfied that more than one employer is supplying or will supply employees through a regulated host. Can the minister help me understand whether this means that the Fair Work Commission will actually have the powers to reach beyond a case to bring other companies into a case that it may be looking at? Similarly, I would also like to understand, when you talk about the provisions—this is point 15 of the explanatory memorandum. 'The deactivation from a digital labour platform would not be unfair'—am I right in understanding that to mean that the government is trying to provide advice to businesses on when they can deactivate someone rather than leaving that decision up to the businesses themselves based on their own business operating principles?

Finally, I am interested in the provisions under explanatory note No. 21, which talks about the appointment to the board of directors for the coal and mining industry. Am I correct in reading that to mean that, in fact, that means there will be another seat now on that board and that that seat will be held for the mining and energy division particularly as opposed to previously there being one seat that was meant to cover construction, forestry, maritime, mining and energy unions? There will now be two seats for those unions?

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