Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment I present the following advisory reports, incorporating dissenting reports, together with the minutes of proceedings and evidence received by the committee: Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013 and Fair Work Amendment (Tackling Job Insecurity) Bill 3012. I ask for the leave of the House to make a short statement in connection with each of the reports.

Leave granted.

On 21 March 2013 the House Selection Committee referred the Fair Work Amendment Bill for inquiry and report.

The reason for the referral was:

The bill makes changes to the Fair Work Act that will have an impact on each employee and employer in Australia. it is important that the parliament be fully aware of this bill and identify any unintended consequences.

The bill proposes to amend the Fair Work Act 2009 in six broad areas:

The bill incorporates a second tranche of amendments to the Fair Work Act, based on recommendations of the Fair Work Act Review Panel. The parliament passed the first tranche of amendments, as recommended by the panel, in 2012.

The amendments contained in this bill seek to alleviate some of the pressures on Australian families and to encourage people with family responsibilities to participate in the workforce. It also ensures that a pregnant employee can transfer to a safe job where one is available, irrespective of the length of their service.

The bill amends the modern awards objective to require that the Fair Work Commission take into account the need to provide additional remuneration for employees working outside normal working hours.

The bill also provides the commission with greater power to deal with disputes about the frequency of right-of-entry visits. It also provides greater clarity about the location of interviews and discussions in situations where employers and employee representatives cannot agree.

The committee was particularly pleased that recommendations made in its previous inquiry into workplace bullying are included in the bill. On the conclusion of that inquiry, the committee recommended to government that workers who are targeted by workplace bullying be provided with an individual right to recourse through an adjudicative process. This bill provides such a mechanism through the Fair Work Commission. A worker who has been the target of workplace bullying will be able to apply to the commission for an order to stop the bullying. This mechanism will represent a significant step forward in combatting a phenomenon which the Productivity Commission estimates costs the Australian economy up to $36 billion annually.

The committee recognises that there are opposing interests and views about the desirability of the measures proposed by the bill. However, in light of the extensive consultation that has taken place on the proposals put forth in this bill, the committee is of the opinion that it provides an appropriate balance in addressing the policy intent of the bill. Accordingly, the committee recommends that the House pass the bill.

I thank all those who provided evidence to the inquiry or attended the public hearing, my committee colleagues who participated on the inquiry and, of course, the hard-working secretariat. I commend this report to the House.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the second matter is that I present the Standing Committee on Education and Employment's advisory report on the Fair Work Amendment (Tackling Job Insecurity) Bill 2012. Those minutes of proceedings and evidence have already been tabled.

On 29 November 2012, the House Selection Committee referred the Fair Work Amendment (Tackling Job Insecurity) Bill for inquiry and report.

The reason for the referral was:

To determine whether the bill adequately addresses the nature and effects of insecure work in Australia.

The bill intends to amend the Fair Work Act 2009 to grant casual and rolling-contract employees, and their unions, the right to request a 'secure employment arrangement' from their employer at any time before or after they have commenced employment.

The inquiry received 20 submissions from unions, employer associations and a range of community organisations.

On 24 May 2013 the committee held a public hearing in Melbourne to explore concerns raised in submissions with stakeholders and officials from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.

The committee recognises the bill's focus on addressing insecure work, an issue which was raised repeatedly by unions. However, measures to address insecure work should not be legislated without comprehensive analysis of and consultation on the issue, with consideration given to the intended and unintended impacts such legislation would have on employers and employees alike.

The committee shares the concerns raised by stakeholders that the bill's unclear terminology and inconsistency with current Fair Work legislation, enterprise agreements, and modern awards could create confusion and potentially damage employers' and employees' confidence in Australia's industrial relations framework.

The bill, by proposing that the Fair Work Commission be able to impose secure employment orders, would alter the objectives of the workplace relations system as provided by the Fair Work Act 2009.

The committee does not support the bill and recommends that the House not pass the Fair Work Amendment (Tackling Job Insecurity) Bill 2012.

Again, I would like to thank all those who provided evidence to the inquiry and attended, or attended the public hearing, as well as my committee colleagues who participated and, once again, our very hard-working secretariat.

I commend the report to the House.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—The Fair Work Amendment Bill 2012 is a wide-ranging bill, with many clauses covering many different things within industry. It must be said that the members of the coalition are not able to support the majority's recommendation that the bill be passed. And I must express our disappointment that clauses recommending family-friendly measures are mixed up in this bill with a number of clauses entrenching union power and reach into the workplace even further than it is already: in particular the right-of-entry clauses, which cause us—and the industry, it must be said—deep consternation and difficulty.

I understand there are more than 100 bills before the parliament at the moment and I do not concur with the chair's view that the committee did have sufficient time or ability to fully study the implications of this bill. There were 41 submissions and we had one half-day hearing in Melbourne, with three roundtables. Considering that was the sum total of the ability to contribute, and considering the raft of clauses in this bill will impact on every workplace in Australia, the coalition members do not believe this was sufficient. We believe there was a poor case made for change; in fact, it is quite clear this legislation flies in the face of earlier commitments made by the Prime Minister, who actually said in 2007: 'We will make sure that the current right of entry laws stay.'

I noted the chair's comments on the areas considering the anti-bullying measures. I was a part of that inquiry as well. It was a deeply moving inquiry; it was quite confronting. There were 23 recommendations made from that inquiry and, largely, the coalition members' views coincided with those of the government members in the final report. There was one recommendation, though, which we did not support and that was recommendation 23, which called for this individual right of recourse, unspecified. We did not support that because we felt that there was a too much room for exploitation for other purposes by other parties. That premise is fully explored within the report. It is unfortunate, I think, that the government has chosen to pick up on just that one recommendation when in fact there were 22 others in the report and I would have liked to have seen some moves right across the spectrum. It is done in isolation and tucked in amongst the clauses in the bill which call for greater power for unions in the workplace. I think it is unfortunate these clauses have been presented in one bill to the parliament.

There was widespread concern across industry that this raft of legislation was going to cause great difficulty for industry and at a time when we are losing jobs. Every day we open the paper and find out another business has closed its doors. We think it is inappropriate these bills should be passed at this time and we recommend that they not be.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise to make a brief statement regarding the report on the Fair Work Amendment (Tackling Job Insecurity) Bill, which was a bill I introduced. I thank the Education and Employment Committee for conducting public hearings into the bill and for its consideration of the bill. The motivation for the introduction of the bill was borne out by the evidence given to the committee during the hearings. We have a growing problem in this country when one in four people do not have any paid leave. That is having an increasing impact on people and their livelihoods and on those who are close to them. During the hearing it was confirmed that Australia is one of the worst offenders in this respect and that we are second only to Spain in the OECD in the number of people we have on temporary work—and Spain, of course, has a huge rural workforce.

The committee heard that this problem is particularly acute in the education sector. The bill, as the committee notes, provided exemptions for small business. The committee also noted that on many occasions casual and contract employment is completely legitimate, and it did not seek to regulate that. But what the committee heard was that in some industries, tertiary education and schools in particular, where there are no peaks and troughs of employment, where you always know you are going to need teachers and lecturers, nonetheless there was an extraordinarily high preponderance of casual employment. In the tertiary education sector, for example, where there is significant federal government regulation and significant federal government funding, the committee heard that, with about 200,000 employees in the sector, only 70,000 were on some kind of permanent arrangement—and by 'permanent' we do not necessarily mean tenure for life; we mean just that you have got an ongoing part-time or full-time role.

Of those 200,000 the committee heard that 45,000 are on fixed-term contracts and 70,000 are on some form of casual hourly-paid employment. The committee heard that this has enormous personal implication for people. The committee heard from one individual, Sharni Chan, who has been working as a researcher for 10 years as a casual. So since 2003 she has had no paid sick leave. This is someone who is a highly-qualified early-career academic. She says:

Being a casual is not something that gives me flexibility to balance work and family, rather I have had to make my whole life flexible in order to meet the demands of casual work, which can mean intermittent demand for your work.

She went on to say that it was having implications on her personal life. She said that her partner has been in casual work for the past eight years:

We've recently decided that despite the insecurity we would get married, but we cannot imagine how we could possibly have children or raise a family when we do not have work for a period of time. I am in my 30s so this is something that has been core in my decision to try to work my way out of the sector.

This bill was an attempt to strike the balance between the legitimate needs of employers—especially small businesses—to have casual and non-secure employment when it is needed, and the need to address the fact that we are affecting people's lives now. They do not know whether they are going to have a job from month to month or from year to year, especially when they are working in sectors where they are teaching our kids or lecturing our students. We have a problem.

This bill was an opportunity to address that problem. As is revealed in the dissenting report, it has widespread support from community organisations, welfare organisations and unions. I am very disappointed that in this parliament, when we could have had the opportunity to tackle this growing scourge, we have seen no legislative action and now have Labor and the coalition saying, 'Don't pass the bill!' It is very likely that this parliament will rise without having taking one single step to tackle the scourge of job insecurity.