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

If I could take the chamber to the explanatory memorandum, particularly to page 108 and paragraph 672. What I am trying to achieve is a bit more clarity around what the Fair Work Bill sets out to do—and continue with, which might be a better expression. Paragraph 672 states:

It is intended that the following terms would be within the scope of permitted matters for the purpose of paragraph 172(1)(a) …

And the second dot point states:

terms relating to conditions or requirements about employing casual employees or engaging labour hire or contractors if those terms sufficiently relate to employees’ job security—e.g. a term which provided that contractors must not be engaged on terms and conditions that would undercut the enterprise agreement …

That is why I make the point that it is about protections that have existed for over 100 years in relation to protecting employees’ terms and conditions. This is not a new provision.

To disabuse the chamber of views that may have crept in from elsewhere, paragraph 673 states:

The following terms would not be intended to be within the scope of permitted matters for the purpose of paragraph 172(1)(a):

• terms that would contain a general prohibition on the employer engaging labour hire employees or contractors—

as I indicated in my earlier contribution. If you look at both of these matters together then you have protections for enterprise-level employees who have reached a collective agreement, so their terms will not be undermined by unscrupulous employers—but, in addition, to ensure there is balance, there is also a term to ensure there is a general prohibition on an employer engaging labour hire employees or contractors where there was a general prohibition, so it cannot be within the scope of permitted matters for the purposes of paragraph 172(1)(a).

What I am outlining is that the difficulty the opposition have is that in their raft of amendments they have put together a mishmash of different issues by trying to remove, and follow someone else’s drafting about removing, independent contractors. That has, by and large, two main problems. Firstly, it might lessen the protection that independent contractors already have. Secondly, it might remove provisions that independent contractors have enjoyed under industrial relations legislation for a very long time. And perhaps the third issue, which is always one of those I am loathe to rely on, is the unintended consequences of removing some of these matters in relation to where they end up and what that then means. The Forward with Fairness policy, the Fair Work Bill, has struck the right balance. It has been negotiated and has gone through a range of consultations to ensure that we did get the right balance. What we are now having is a re-litigation of one submission to a Senate inquiry which provided some draft. I urge the chamber not to follow that folly.