Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I would not necessarily say it was something to celebrate that the opposition agrees with the government on these amendments. That will come as no surprise to the government because we have already indicated to the government that we think these amendments are, in fact, a step backwards from what we thought were quite good provisions in the bill in the first place. We will not be supporting these amendments. They are amendments in response to employer concerns and, as I said, they take a step back from what was in the bill in the first place. We do not believe they are good amendments. They enable the employer to essentially choose the union it wishes to make the agreement with, subject to FWA being satisfied the union will cover the majority of the employees and that it is in the public interest. The government puts two protections in place: FWA must be satisfied that the relevant employee organisation that will be covered by the agreement will represent the interests of the majority of the employees and there is a public interest test. We do not support that amendment; we believe it impinges on the rights of association by locking out other relevant unions. We think the government got it right in the first place and we are disappointed that it has caved in to hysteria from big business. The government has put that ahead of the rights of employees. As I said, we were very happy to support the government’s original proposed clauses in the bill. We should not support these particular amendments.

Question agreed to.