Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Abetz, the Minister representing the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Isn’t it the case that there is a backlog of more than 100,000 workplace agreements waiting to be approved by the government’s Workplace Authority? Given that the Workplace Authority cannot tell Australian employers or employees whether agreements are fair or unfair, doesn’t this mean that 100,000 workers could be on agreements that are unfair? Given the Workplace Authority is likely to take more than 10 months to clear the current backlog before they even start on the additional 30,000 workplace agreements being lodged each month, how many Australians are set to lose out because the Howard government cannot administer its own workplace laws?