Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

but maybe not all. We delivered on our promise to the Australian people at the last election to replace Work Choices with the Labor policy Australians endorsed, Forward with Fairness. Labor’s policy provides for fair enterprise bargaining, because senators on this side realise that to have fairness in the workplace you also have to have fairness in the industrial relations system.

We are condemning individual statutory agreements to the scrap heap of history, along with Work Choices. We are going to introduce good faith bargaining—something that is a distant song for the Howard era—less regulation regarding the content of agreement making, the creation of a single stream of agreement making and a streamlined process for the approval of agreements. Of course, that will reduce the compliance burden for business. Labor will create a new independent umpire, Fair Work Australia, to facilitate bargaining for the low paid, because we on this side of the chamber are here to look after the low paid, unlike those opposite during the Howard era who punished the low paid.

Under Work Choices, employers and employees had to navigate seven agencies. Fair Work Australia will bring those agencies together in a one-stop shop to provide the public with practical information and assistance on workplace issues and to ensure compliance within workplace laws. Forward with Fairness will provide for working Australians to take unfair dismissal action should that be necessary. The new system will remove the— (Time expired)