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

If I can say it in simple terms, it is a device that brings those laws into the general protections—it is as simple as that. It does not, in terms of what I think the opposition are saying, draw them into the framework of industrial relations that exists. They are not regulated by the Fair Work Bill—and I think the advisers are nodding—except with outworkers, of course. But it does, as I have indicated, provide those protections for independent contractors. Cavilling with that in the way that is now being proposed would lessen the protections in some part, would have unintended consequences in others and may in fact by a process of cherry picking cause some of those, as I have indicated, terms that would provide assistance to employees at an enterprise level to be removed. Those protections could be gone and an employer could undercut with the use of independent contractors those existing collective arrangements that parties have bargained for at the workplace.