Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

These are good amendments, and the government's pleased to support them. I want to thank the member for Melbourne for his engagement and the engagement by his party. There have been a number of meetings with, in particular, the member for Melbourne and with Senator Pocock. I'm very grateful for that, and these amendments all improve the bill.

Some would argue that wage theft is already covered under tax law with respect to superannuation, but the challenge there is that it's only when it's not being paid, you get an order 'you need to pay it' and you breach that order; there it's a criminal offence. However, with this amendment, when a prosecution is happening for wage theft, it will allow for it to deal with superannuation theft at the exact same time. We know that, if there's an underpayment that's likely to happen first, it's very likely that in fact it is superannuation. So we're very pleased to support that part of the amendment.

Similarly, the change with respect to casual employment makes sure that a 'specified season' has the meaning that it should have, and I'm grateful for that being brought forward.

On the final amendment, about the consideration of a prior enterprise agreement with respect to a subsequent workplace determination, I want to reinforce to the House that what this effectively does is bring back a concept that was there before we introduced the arbitration principles. It used to be that the old agreement would just remain in place.

This allows that, as a result of the secure jobs, better pay laws, we don't end up in a worse situation than that.

I am aware of reports of certain employer consultants—one of whom, who has had a long history with the other side of politics—who have been providing advice to businesses on how they might be able to game the laws we put in last year to actually find ways of workers going backwards during the course of arbitration. We introduced the legislation and supported the legislation last year, secure jobs, better pay, because we wanted to get wages moving, not because we wanted to find an opportunity for certain employers—and this is certainly not most employers—to game the system and find ways to get conditions to go backwards. These amendments fix that, and we're happy to support them.

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