Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations. Would the Attorney outline to the House how the Morrison government is working to assist businesses and their employees to have the confidence to return to work in a COVID-safe Australia?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bowman for his question and for his interest in this area. As the Treasurer noted today, there are now 835,000 businesses, which employ more than 5.5 million workers, formally enrolled in the JobKeeper program. The JobKeeper program includes key changes inserted temporarily into the Fair Work Act to allow greater flexibility in directions on hours, the duties of employees and the location of work. I think it's testament to the cooperation and common sense that's occurring in workplaces right across Australia, and also to the simplicity of the design principles, some of which have been raised today—the flat rate of the fee, using existing delivery and assessment mechanisms through the ATO, the centralisation of the changes to the Fair Work Act—that, when you consider the scale, the spread and the number of people who now fall inside of those changes to the Fair Work Act, and of the JobKeeper program, there have been only 265 complaints made to the Fair Work Commission regarding those changes. When you consider how small that number is in comparison to the scale of the changes and the number of people who are brought within this system, that is actually quite a remarkable early achievement.

The next thing that we have to work on as we reanimate parts of the economy is getting everyone back to work safely. That's whether or not you're part of the JobKeeper program, whether or not you've been part of the changes to hospitality, restaurants or clerks awards that the government has supported the process for.

What I'd like to do is draw the attention of the House and the Australian public to the Safe Work Australia website, safeworkaustralia.gov.au. There are conventional obligations, under occupational health and safety laws, for businesses to put appropriate measures in place to ensure a safe working environment. In the COVID-19 recovery phase, those conventional requirements to ensure a safe working environment are going to be in the context of the very unconventional facts of life that we now experience: social distancing, advanced hygiene, appropriate advanced cleaning practices and a range of other responses. What has been the response? The national cabinet has adopted the national COVID-19 safe workplace principles. The workplace health and safety part of the Safe Work Australia website has been totally rebuilt. What it now consists of is a central hub of guidance, tools and information kits across 23 industry sectors, starting with aged care and ending with warehousing and logistics. There are 22 workplace health and safety topics related to COVID-19. There are now 1,300 individual webpages which can provide specific detailed information for businesses planning their way out of this crisis. I note that the thirst for this sort of information is clear. It's being responded to. There've been 1.7 million page views of that rebuilt website this month. We implore working Australians to get out and look at the webpage, and we'll get back to work.