Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

I wish to speak briefly to these matters and—with the concurrence of the shadow minister for industry, infrastructure and industrial relations, the member for Perth—to address in my remarks those remarks I would have made about the subsequent legislation being returned from the Senate; namely the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Independent Contractors) Bill 2006, which is a related bill

On 1 December—that is, last Friday—the Senate passed the Independent Contractors Bill 2006 and the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Independent Contractors) Bill 2006 with amendments. Some of the amendments further the government’s policy of enabling genuine independent contractors to enter into arrangements of their own choosing, free from prescriptive workplace relations regulation. Other changes further improve the Workplace Relations Act 1996. The government accepts these changes.

I will briefly outline the nature of the more significant amendments. Senators of all persuasions supported amendments moved by the government to ensure our intention to preserve existing protections for outworkers in both state and Commonwealth laws. These amendments are consistent with the recommendations of the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Committee. Secondly, the Independent Contractors Bill 2006 maintains existing state protections for owner-drivers in New South Wales and Victoria.

There was an amendment by the Senate to omit subparagraph 7(2)(b)(iii) of the bill. Proposed subparagraph 7(2)(b)(iii) of the bill would have provided that any instrument made under a provision of the law referred to in subparagraph 7(2)(b)(i) or subparagraph 7(2)(b)(ii) would not be affected by the general exclusion of certain state and territory laws in subsection 7(1). The effect would have been that any instrument made under chapter 6 of the New South Wales Industrial Relations Act 1996 or the Victorian Owner Drivers and Forestry Contractors Act 2005 would not have been excluded by the bill. That is the intention of the bill.

However, paragraph 7(2)(b)(iii) is unnecessary because if a law is not excluded—that is, it continues to operate—then instruments made under that law are similarly not excluded, except where a law is excluded by regulations made under section 10 to the extent that the law authorises the making of an instrument. The omission of subparagraph 7(2)(b)(iii) by the Senate is therefore not intended to change the effect of the bill with respect to instruments made under a law listed in subparagraphs 7(2)(b)(i) and 7(2)(b)(ii). Rather, the amendment by the Senate removes subparagraph 7(2)(b)(iii) because it is a redundant provision. I emphasise that the amendment does not change the legal effect of the bill. There is no doubt that the New South Wales and Victorian owner-drivers laws and instruments made under those laws, such as contract determinations, are preserved.

Thirdly, in respect of changes to the Workplace Relations Act, most of the changes to the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Independent Contractors) Bill 2006 are largely technical amendments, but I will single out for specific comment those that were the subject of involved consideration by the Senate. The first was stand-downs. The Senate has amended the bill to include new provisions relating to stand-downs. Under these provisions, an employer may stand down employees without pay, but only in specific circumstances such as a strike, machinery breakdown or a work stoppage for which the employer is not responsible.

I am aware of criticisms that the new stand-down provisions will be open to abuse; however, these comments ignore the significant protections in the legislation. Firstly, there will be penalties of up to $33,000 and injunctions preventing an unauthorised stand-down which can be obtained by an employee or the Office of Workplace Services. Secondly, parties will be able to access the model dispute resolution process to resolve stand-down disputes. The stand-down provisions strike a fair balance. In their absence, an employer would be forced to choose between continuing to pay the employee despite a lack of work and dismissing the employee.

The second change is to redundancy. The Senate also made amendments to ensure that redundancy entitlements are protected. The government is very intent that employee redundancy entitlements not be undermined. As such, for the first time the government is introducing safeguards for employees and their redundancy entitlements. One example discussed by the Senate involves Tristar Steering and Suspension and its employees. The measures passed by the Senate will ensure that agreement based redundancy provisions continue to operate for a maximum period of 12 months after an agreement is unilaterally terminated by an employer. Preserved redundancy provisions will also be protected on transmission of business. The measure will apply to all federal agreements, including pre-reform agreements.

Finally, I wish to make some brief comments about the cashing out of personal and carer’s leave. There are also amendments that will enable employees to request to cash out an amount of paid personal or carer’s leave each year, provided that a minimum balance of at least 15 days leave remains available for full-time employees, and the pro rata for part-time employees, after cashing out. (Extension of time granted) The proposed amendments are intended to provide flexibility for employers and employees to manage personal and carer’s leave balances in ways that suit their particular circumstances while ensuring that a reasonable amount of leave is available to an employee in the event of illness or injury.

This cashing out would be subject to a number of conditions under the proposed amendments. Firstly, a workplace agreement would need to include a specific provision that entitles the employee to elect to cash out an amount of personal or carer’s leave. Secondly, an employee must be paid an amount in lieu at a rate that is no less than the employee’s hourly basic periodic rate of pay. Thirdly, an employee would need to make a separate written request to cash out personal or carer’s leave. Fourthly, the employer would need to agree before any cashing out occurs. Finally, an employer would be prohibited from requiring or pressuring an employee to cash out personal or carer’s leave. This is a flexibility that has been permitted in the past, if agreed. Its continuation was requested by business, the union movement and employees alike. The proposed amendments will not affect personal or carer’s leave that accrued before the standard applied to an employee. The regulations to the Workplace Relations Act already deal with the cashing out of pre Work Choices personal or carer’s leave.

In commending the amendments and the legislation more generally to the House, can I remark that these changes to the independent contractors legislation and the putting in place for the first time in Australia at both the federal or state level specific provisions to protect the status of independent contractors—of whom there are, depending on various estimates, between one and two million operating in Australia today—were specific commitments which the Liberal and National parties made at the 2004 election and ones which we urge upon the House.

Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are dealing with two messages from the Senate: the Independent Contractors Bill 2006 and the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Independent Contractors) Bill 2006. I indicate to the House that the opposition will cause divisions on both those messages. I understand that it suits the convenience of the House for both divisions to be completed by 6.30 pm. Like the minister, we think that the two messages are related and it is sensible to deal with the debate as, in a sense, a cognate debate.

So far as the Independent Contractors Bill is concerned, this measure was opposed by Labor in the House and in the Senate. The message itself is opposed, save for the area which the minister indicated was unanimously agreed to by all senators in the course of the Senate committee report and the unanimously agreed amendments by the Senate on further protections for outworkers. The other amendments in the independent contractors area which relate to unfair contracts, owner-drivers, the exclusion of state laws and an unfair contracts review are opposed by Labor. They are contained in the Independent Contractors Bill message schedule of amendments. In the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Independent Contractors) Bill 2006 message those provisions which cover similar territory, such as independent contractors remedies and those provisions which relate to building contractors, are also opposed.

If that were the full extent of the measures contained in the schedule of amendments to the workplace relations legislation it would be three pages long, but the government has tacked on 36 pages worth of amendments which are effectively amendments to the Work Choices legislation. Just as Labor opposed in this House and in the Senate the government’s extreme and unfair legislation, equally these amendments are opposed. Like the minister, I will not cover the array of amendments—some of them technical—which are made, but I will make a number of points.

Firstly, so far as the technical measures are concerned, the government, here, is repairing the damage that it did to the legislation and to the administration of the law in this area when it rushed through its original legislation. When you rush through legislation, driven by politics and ideology rather than by good public policy, you make mistakes. The government is seeking here to remedy and rectify those mistakes. The danger, of course, is that, given that it is also rushing through these measures, we run the risk that further mistakes will be made. That is the first point.

Secondly, I will deal with a number of provisions: firstly, redundancy, then standing down and then some of the amendments to the minimum conditions—in particular the leave arrangements. Firstly, I fear that the redundancy provisions will not operate in practice effectively, based as they are on the government’s transmission of business provisions in the act itself, which are being shown on a regular basis not to work in practice. My great fear is that the redundancy provisions will not work in practice either. Secondly, so far as the standing down provisions are concerned, we have already seen in law agreements in respect of standing down. These provisions take them further and effectively put more control in the hands of the employers rather than standing down provisions being jointly agreed between employers and employees.

So far as the minimum conditions are concerned, particularly those matters which relate to sick leave, my concern is that if we are not careful we will render sick leave a cash commodity rather than a good public policy measure which is there for the medium- and long-term protection of employees when they suffer from a debilitating illness. So that covers the main provisions. There is an array of other measures which I may comment on subsequently. Suffice to say that we oppose the measures and will reflect that by respective divisions.

Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Despite the multitudes of Australians that gathered only last week to protest against this government’s extreme industrial relations laws and its relentless push to expand these laws and integrate them into every aspect of their working life, this government wants to persist in winding back conditions. There is no doubt that there is a place in the economy for independent contractors. That is something I made pretty clear when I made a contribution in this place when the Independent Contractors Bill 2006 was first before us. I acknowledge there is certainly a growth in independent contractors. It is a fact of life and something that needs to be taken into account. But in taking it into account we must ensure that the terms and conditions are fair and appropriate in respect of contracting needs.

I know that members on that side of the House perpetuate the myth that everyone can negotiate on their own behalf, everyone is entitled to be their own boss and everyone can take it upon themselves to negotiate their terms and conditions of employment. I would like to put a question to those on the other side of the House who have sons or daughters around the age of 18 or 19 who are entering the workforce, who are applying for jobs and who are being asked whether or not they have an Australian Business Number. I happen to have a couple of sons who are tradesmen, so I have been through a bit of this. I ask members to look at the Sydney Morning Herald on the weekend and look at the advertisements for an occupation such as painter. A painter is a person who performs quite a valuable task, but a manual task. Find a position in the Sydney Morning Herald for a painter that does not require an ABN. There simply are not any. People that apply for painting positions, particularly in the construction industry and other industries at the moment, will be put on as independent contractors. So before they get a job, that 18- or 19-year-old kid who wants to get a job needs to go and get an ABN. That is the way the system is working, and that is what this government is trying to perpetuate.

If members opposite really think that what they are putting forward at the moment is going to help avoid the pitfalls of independent contracting, they should take a second look at the legislation they are bringing before us. The amendments that have been made in the Senate are minor. They do not make this legislation any better at all. The only way this legislation could be made better would be to rip it up and start again and have due regard for the plight of genuine independent contractors.

Having said that, an important thing about this legislation is that it has made an exemption for owner-drivers in New South Wales and Victoria. That is a good thing. In my original contribution to the debate, I acknowledged that and I went to the point of how that occurred. That only occurred because of the uproar from the Transport Workers Union. They did a sterling job for their members, for owner-drivers, in the states of New South Wales and Victoria.

I note that, at the moment, the governments in Western Australia and in the ACT are contemplating similar provisions for owner-drivers in those jurisdictions. As a consequence, I would be looking for a guarantee from this government to ensure that owner-drivers in Western Australia or the ACT, should that legislation be passed, have the same exemptions that are provided to the owner-drivers of New South Wales and Victoria. That would be fair. That would have complete regard to the position of owner-drivers. These people are doing it pretty tough at the moment and they need all the assistance they can get. The protections that are afforded to owner-drivers in New South Wales and Victoria should be extended to those in the other states to ensure that they similarly can benefit from the exemption flowing from this legislation.

Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will begin by saying how outraged I am that we are once again seeing an abuse of the parliamentary process by this government. What we are seeing here today is, once again, Australian workers having their rights attacked by this government, which is taking an arrogant and sneaky approach. When the government first brought out its Work Choices legislation, I was amongst all my colleagues on this side of the House who said: ‘Where were these proposals in the lead-up to the election? Where were these proposals when the Australian people were casting their vote?’ Of course, they were nowhere. In the sneaky approach which we have learned to grow accustomed to from the Howard government, they were nowhere. The government was silent on these issues until it thought it could sneak the changes through after the election.

What we see here today is that, as a result of the lack of due process when the government passed the Work Choices legislation, there has been a need for so many amendments that the government has now tacked them onto the Independent Contractors Bill 2006. The government does not want to draw attention to the flaws in Work Choices, so it has tacked amendments onto the attacks on independent contractors in this legislation.

I say to the government: if you actually want to fix this legislation, it is no good just tinkering around the edges. If you want to fix this legislation, I will tell you exactly what you should do, and that is what we are proposing to do: tear this legislation up and replace it with legislation which restores unfair dismissal laws, which protects the components of Australian employees’ take-home pay and which restores a role for the independent umpire.

I would like to particularly focus on an area of recent debate within my own electorate. It will be no surprise to members of this parliament, as I have raised this issue before and I will continue to raise it, but I think there are some really important lessons that we learnt out of the recent ordeal at Radio Rentals in my electorate, at Prospect. It was during this recent conflict that the spotlight was really shone upon the problems involved in protecting employees’ redundancy pay. I note that schedule 3 of these amendments regards the protection of redundancy entitlements in certain circumstances.

I am actually glad that the government are finally acknowledging that there is a major problem here, because that is the problem that we saw recently in Prospect. I will remind members opposite of what happened at Radio Rentals in Prospect. The collective agreement of the Prospect Radio Rentals service technicians was terminated earlier this year. Following this termination, three long-serving technicians, who also happened to be union activists, with 30, 26 and 17 years of service with the company respectively, were made redundant. As a result of this, one of the technicians lost $86,000 in redundancy pay. There was outrage within my community. Within the community of Adelaide there was much media attention focused on this matter.

Whilst I am pleasantly surprised that the government are finally admitting there is a problem—that is certainly not the line that the Minister Assisting the Minister for Workplace Relations, Minister Hockey, put on Radio 5AA when he denied that there was a problem and denied any responsibility for what was going on with these technicians—the solution that the government have put forward is inadequate.

The government argues that schedule 3 will give protection for employees in circumstances where there may be a risk that they will lose their redundancy entitlements once their agreement passes its nominal expiry date and the employer moves to terminate it. But the problem is that the entitlement is overridden where the employer and employee make a new workplace agreement. The problem also is that the obligation is on the employer to inform employees that they are still entitled to the old redundancy clause. Further, employers can offer a ‘take it or leave it’ AWA with no redundancy provisions which, on the amendments, will override the redundancy entitlement.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I think you will see, just in this one schedule, the flaws that come about when you rush through legislation, when you do not follow due process and when you try and sneak attacks on Australian workers past the public and past this parliament. I spoke against the independent contractors legislation when it was before the House originally and my opposition remains. (Time expired)

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to take the brief opportunity available during the consideration of the Senate amendments that are before us to again place on the record, as I did in the debate on the Independent Contractors Bill 2006, my opposition to the measure. Indeed, I would have expressed my opposition to the Work Choices legislation if I had been given the chance to speak on it in the House.

My concern with what confronts us today is that, once again, we have 39 pages of amendments—this is all about making it simpler, I understand—to, in particular, the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Independent Contractors) Bill 2006. There are also some amendments before us that are not to do with independent contractors but which have been hitched onto the back of this little wagon so that they can go through in this process.

As is the case in the electorates of my colleagues who have already spoken, in Wollongong on Thursday of last week about 7,000 people gathered in opposition to the Work Choices legislation. The feedback that I got and the messages that were left for me from people who participated in that gathering indicate that people have severe concerns about the future of their families and, in particular, the children who are entering the workforce.

My son, who is now 22, had an ABN before he had the right to vote. Why was that? Because he was considered to be an independent contractor. What amazing skill or expertise was he offering to the workplace? He was delivering pizzas. The fact that this sort of contracting work has been expanded to include what should be employment is simply an effort to pass on to the employee the responsibilities that should belong, quite rightly, to the employer. I refer in particular to providing your own insurance, uniforms and so forth. Needless to say, I always leave an extra $2 tip whenever the pizza boys turn up at my house because I am so conscious that, because of the nature of their employment, most of them have to do a minimum of 20 deliveries in an evening before they even start to take home pay from the job.

This is a fundamentally flawed approach to employment and it is an even more problematic approach when you are applying it to young people who should enter a workforce that is supportive in providing them with the experience and skills that will enable them to become effective in the workplace. So I again place on record not only my opposition to a number of the amendments to the Independent Contractors Bill—although we do agree with those dealing with outworkers—but also my opposition to the Work Choices amendments.

I take the opportunity to acknowledge the far more technical address on the Independent Contractors Bill by the member for Werriwa. He is quite an expert in this field and I will not go over the points that he has already made. I also acknowledge the contribution by my colleague the member for Adelaide on the particular issues to do with redundancy. Indeed, she has a very real example of that in her electorate, which we are all watching very carefully.

As she rightly pointed out, the problem with these amendments, and what is of particular concern to me, is that they rely on the employer advising the employee. They also rely on the incoming employer body or company that has bought the organisation advising them that the redundancy entitlement exists. Why is that important? Because subsequent to the change they can be offered an AWA that gets rid of their redundancy entitlement. I think there is something fundamentally unfair in this regard. Given that it is the role of government to ensure that people have a fair chance in the workplace and in the community in general, there is something fundamentally unfair about saying that you can lose something without even being informed of the fact that you had it in the first place. If new employees going through a change of company ownership are to be told, ‘You’ve got to face up to an AWA; these will be the new employment conditions,’ with all the stress that that involves, and then to not even know that they had that redundancy entitlement, I think that is flawed, and I think it will leave people in a very unhappy situation.

I have had in my office—indeed, it would have occurred in the offices of members of the government—someone turn up and say, ‘I’ve been done out of $85,000; the amendments didn’t fix it and I’m still done out of $85,000.’ That will provide no joy at all. The government has again attempted to rush in a few amendments, but fundamentally the principles behind the legislation are flawed and unsustainable, and the whole thing should be thrown out. (Time expired)

Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Having given my colleagues the opportunity to make some remarks, I now deal with some of the so-called Work Choices amendments in a bit more detail. In my earlier remarks, I referred to my concerns and reservations about the redundancy provisions and the stand-down provisions. I think it is worth putting on the record the so-called frequency of payment provisions. The current fortnightly default frequency of payment provisions are to be replaced by a monthly default provision which can operate to the disadvantage of employees trying to balance their budgets. The provision in respect of the 38-hour week provides, on my reading, no remedy for the employee. The shift worker provisions give the minister the capacity to make regulations to extend those provisions. I think those provisions which deal with a number of amendments which the government had not previously announced or flagged are of concern. The provisions which amend the seven-day waiver rule I think put employees in a position where there is no requirement under the act for them to be provided with details of an AWA or the information sheet. The provisions where a wrong agreement is lodged are, by my reading, convoluted and run the risk of again falling into the drafting provisions and difficulties that we have seen previously. The public holiday substitution provisions extend, on my reading, the provisions where an employer can request work on a public holiday. The pre-reform agreements and standard provisions disturb the current arrangements where pre-reform agreements do not need to comply with the so-called fair pay and conditions standards. In a sense, the effective retrospective nature of those may well cause difficulty.

Having put those on the record, there are some general points which I think can be made to put these provisions in their context. Firstly, there is the general drafting and rushed nature of these provisions. It is a minor 36-page version of the original statute, which the government rushed through, driven by ideology and politics. Secondly, when you look at these measures in the context of the government’s now 1,800-odd pages of legislation and regulations, these matters do nothing to address the fundamental nature and framework of the government’s so-called Work Choices legislation, which is fundamental to Labor’s opposition of it. There is nothing in these measures which provides or improves remedies for unfair dismissal. There is nothing in these measures which provides for any decent or stronger power so far as an independent umpire is concerned. There is nothing in these provisions which expands in any meaningful way the government’s five minimum standards. There is nothing in these provisions which would seek to reinsert the previous no-disadvantage test. There is nothing in these provisions which prevents employees from being pushed onto unfair AWAs. In their context, these measures do nothing to address the great and grave injustices that are at the heart of the government’s measures.

When it comes to the independent contractor arrangements, whilst Labor supports in this place as it did in the Senate those provisions in respect of outworkers, again the changes to the Independent Contractors Bill do nothing to address the fundamental unfairness of that measure, nothing to prevent people from being pushed into sham independent contractor arrangements—where people who are in reality employees have to provide for tax and superannuation arrangements and are effectively pushed out on their own—and nothing to address the fundamental nature of dependent contractors. For those reasons and for the reasons outlined by my colleagues, I underline Labor’s opposition to the measures contained in the two messages from the Senate.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to add my concerns to those that have already been made by the member for Perth, the shadow minister, and the members for Cunningham, Adelaide and Werriwa. There is no doubt that if the government were seeking to mitigate the adverse effects of Work Choices legislation upon Australian workers then they would do a whole lot more, as the member for Perth clearly enunciated previously, in order to restore balance in the legislation with respect to Work Choices. Indeed, if there were a concern that employees are being exploited by being placed under sham arrangements under the proposed Independent Contractors Bill then a lot more would be being done to protect those employees.

I had the good fortune to be involved in the parliamentary inquiry into independent contracting and labour hire, and that was a very interesting inquiry. Indeed, the evidence was very disturbing because, whilst we may have different views about how we deal with the growth of independent contracting, and whilst Labor certainly believes there is a place for genuine independent contractors in our workplaces and in our economy, there were too many examples brought to our attention, both formally and informally, of people being pushed from being an employee to a supposed independent contracting arrangement so that they would then have to look after their own superannuation entitlements, their own workers compensation and other expenses that are normally the obligation of an employer. Effectively, people are being converted from being an employee on Friday to a supposed independent contractor on Monday. In fact, people younger than the age of 18 are being forced to take up ABNs and are being pushed into a supposed independent relationship between a principal contractor and an independent contractor. These amendments put forward for the government by the minister do not in any way protect the interests of those employees who would be subject to the legislation upon enactment. Therefore, in general terms, there are real concerns.

I know this has been mentioned by some other speakers, but I would like to add my strong reservations about the amendment that is supposed to protect redundancy entitlements in certain circumstances. Item 10 on page 4 purports to protect redundancy entitlements in a Work Choices or pre-reform agreement for 12 months in two circumstances: where the agreement is terminated by the employer in accordance with the act and where there is a transmission of business. We have heard arguments that this will protect employees in circumstances where they may well be at risk of losing their jobs once the agreement passes the nominal expiry date of that particular agreement. But it is true to say, and it has already been said to some extent by other members on this side of the chamber, that the entitlement is overridden where the employer and employee make new workplace agreements. Therefore, because there is no particular requirement to have redundancy as a provision of any agreement under Work Choices, this particular protection is flexible. I mean flexible in the way the government likes to use the word ‘flexible’, and that is that it can be dealt out of any employment arrangement and therefore whatever tinkering there is to the legislation it will not necessarily protect the interests of employees that are concerned that their employment may well be threatened.

Indeed, once a Work Choices agreement is terminated by the employer, or upon transmission, the obligation is on the employer to inform employees or the new owner of the business (Extension of time granted) that employees are still entitled to the old redundancy clause—I will finish on this point—rather than the Office of the Employment Advocate or the commission. We do not think it is fair to say that in all circumstances employees are in a position to do that. In fact, we would contend that in the majority of circumstances they are not in a position to bargain equally with their employer. That is why there are protections in place. If you remove particular entitlements or leave the entitlements to the discretion of negotiations between employers and employees, we think many employees will miss out as a result of the Work Choices legislation. No amendment that has been proposed will rectify that particular matter.

There is a host of other issues. I had the good fortune to listen to most of the shadow minister’s comments and also those of the members for Werriwa, Cunningham and Adelaide. It really is important that the government take note of those concerns. If they would really like to have the law match the rhetoric of the government, they will attend to the deficiencies in this legislation, review them properly and make further amendments that would at least go some way to mitigating the disastrous effects the Work Choices legislation and the Independent Contractors Bill 2006 will have on many thousands of Australian workers.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the members for Perth, Adelaide, Werriwa, Cunningham and Gorton for their contributions to this debate on the Independent Contractors Bill 2006. I will briefly respond to a number of the matters raised. Firstly, the matter of stand-downs was raised by a number of the members opposite. At common law, employers do not have the right to stand down an employee even where work is unavailable due to factors outside the employer’s control. Hence, any stand-down right must come from a workplace agreement, employment contract, industrial instrument or legislation. The problem is that in the absence of a stand-down right an employer will usually have to choose between continuing to pay an employee despite lack of work or dismissing the employee, and that is why many agreements provide stand-down provisions. This provision in the bill is designed to provide a default situation which reflects what is generally provided in many agreements within the industrial relations system.

Secondly, the member for Werriwa raised a query about owner-drivers. I say to him and the House that the situation in relation to owner-drivers in New South Wales is not one which the government would have created had it been starting from scratch. The difficulty is that assertions and counter-assertions have been made by the various parties. The member for Werriwa mentioned the TWU and the Road Transport Association. The reality is that, having spent much time over the last year looking at these assertions, it is difficult to get to the bottom of what are the empirical facts. For that reason the government has said that it would leave in place what is in New South Wales and some provisions in Victoria and next year have an inquiry to try to get to the bottom of which assertions are actually correct, to test the various positions that are put by the parties and to provide some empirical evidence upon which a further decision might be able to be made.

Thirdly, the member for Adelaide mentioned the Radio Rentals situation in Adelaide, which can best be characterised as an old-fashioned industrial dispute. It arose because there were some 17 employees—electrical technicians—of Radio Rentals who did not accept their own union’s recommendation for a collective agreement and wanted something separate from what was being proposed. Redundancy has always been a matter of an agreement and it remains so under this legislation, except for this further protection. Because of the way in which an agreement can now be terminated by a notice period from the employer, there is a risk that some employees could find themselves, if an employer wanted to act inappropriately, without their redundancy entitlements; hence the 12-month protection of that redundancy entitlement.

The member for Cunningham mentioned the advising of employees about redundancy entitlements. That is an obligation on the employer under the legislation and it can be enforced by the employee or, indeed, by the Office of Workplace Services, which could prosecute for a failure on the part of the employer to give that particular notice to the employee.

The final point—and I will not go into the argument because I know that for the convenience of the House we are looking at dealing with legislation here today fairly quickly—is that there are protections against sham arrangements. The member for Gorton mentioned that somebody could be an employee on Friday and a contractor on Monday. There are protections built into this legislation in relation to that situation.

The changes to the Work Choices legislation, which are covered by this bill and the amendments in the next bill, are as a result of the monitoring of the legislation over the last six to eight months. We have monitored and we have listened to various parties. Some of these proposals have been put by unions and employees, not just by employers. We will continue to monitor the legislation, but I believe that these amendments deal with the major matters that have been raised in relation to the working of the legislation over the last six to eight months and I commend them to the House.

Question put:

That the amendments be agreed to.