David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

This bill is called the Fair Work Amendment Bill, but it should be called the 'fix up the extraordinary incompetence of the Albanese government bill' because this is the bill where the government twice accidentally voted for criminal penalties for people who breach provisions of its right-to-disconnect stop rules. On two occasions, without actually realising that is what they were doing, the government went into the Senate and said that people who breach those rules should be guilty of a criminal offence. This is the most basic issue of competence, and it is a damning indictment on this government.

It's not that surprising, because they outsourced this piece of legislation to the Greens. This was the Greens idea, of course, and the government enthusiastically went along with it. They even helped the Greens draft the bill. So they helped the Greens draft the bill; they worked with the Greens on the bill but then they claimed they didn't understand they were actually criminalising the activity.

Government officials in Senate estimates have confirmed that the government and the department were aware of this amendment. I'll read directly from what those officials said:

The department was aware of the amendment. It had provided advice to government on the drafting of the amendment and assisted with the drafting of the amendment …

So the government's fully aware of the amendment on this so-called right-to-disconnect issue and nobody realised. The minister for workplace relations didn't realise. The Leader of the Government in the Senate didn't realise. Nobody in the government leadership team realised that they were about to walk into the Senate and vote to criminalise people who may breach this new provision. It is absolutely extraordinary!

It's no surprise that there has been so much condemnation of this. The CEO of Wesfarmers Group, Rob Scott, who employs 120,000 people, said:

But what has now happened is we've created additional red tape and complexity in what is already a very complex workplace relations system.

That can't be good for anyone. He goes on:

We're reducing flexibility, we're making it harder for harder for businesses to comply. And that can ... not only bad for businesses, but bad for wages over the long term.

On top of all that, the government accidentally criminalised any breach of this provision. The government wants to add complexity. It wants to add red tape. It wants to make it effectively harder for people to comply.

But do you know what it wants to do most of all? What the government wants to do most of all is curry favour with the Greens. The government needs the Greens to get legislation through the Senate. So when the Greens come up with something like this, including this extraordinary provision to criminalise breaches, the government goes along with it.

It's a terrible indictment on the incompetence of the government. We will not be opposing this amendment because it seeks to cure this extraordinary incompetence, but what an extraordinary reflection this is on the chaotic incompetence of the Albanese government.

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