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

Just let me deal with some of the positions you have put, first, and perhaps we can dissuade Senator Fielding from doing such. It is, as I have said, an object of this bill; it is not a specific clause. So with regard to this trip into worrying about regional and rural as against Brisbane and Sydney or as against Brisbane, Sydney and Cunnamulla, for argument’s sake, there is nothing in this Fair Work Bill that provides that you cannot make a geographic agreement for a particular area. What this object does is simply to provide an emphasis on enterprise-level collective bargaining underpinned by simple good faith bargaining obligations. This is an objects provision. It does not say that you can only have enterprise-level industrial relations across your enterprise and they have to have the same provision for every part of the enterprise, across the Commonwealth government or the department. There is obviously an award which underpins it, plus agreements, and then there are individual arrangements within those, and then there are different shift provisions that might apply across different parts of a particular enterprise. All of that will continue to go on, depending on the particular geographic location, the nature of the enterprise and the nature of the business within the enterprise that is being undertaken.

Can I indicate more broadly—because I can see we are getting stuck on a particular object itself—that the first position I would put would be to say it is unnecessary; it is encapsulated within the current provision. But if it is thought that it is a matter you would like the minister to have a further look at, then the position I would put would be to persist with the present position, because I think it is the most sensible; and should it be amended then, given the nature of the amendment, I suspect it will come back as a message and that will give the minister an opportunity to consider that particular provision again. Of course, all of that would mean we might want to negotiate a bit further with Senator Fielding about some of these matters too, if he feels wedded to them.