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

Perhaps I can respond in a narrow way. They are not interchangeable terms. A workplace could be a defined place, whereas an enterprise could be a Commonwealth department that deals with a range of different workplaces right across the board. So to use ‘workplace’ would be narrowing the term, in my view. Using the term ‘enterprise’ would allow a single business or employer or a group of related businesses operating as a single business or a discrete undertaking of a project to have bargaining at that level. ‘Workplace-level bargaining’, without labouring the point, is a narrower phrase. Therefore, it could be construed to refer to a smaller area or a geographically defined area. A workplace is a physical location—perhaps that is one way of putting it—whereas an enterprise is a business or its activities, such as a Commonwealth department or a company with, for argument’s sake, five separate workplaces.