Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Humphries for his question. As I have indicated previously, the government was in receipt of advice about the provisions of the Fair Work Act that would be available to it in the Qantas dispute. Clearly, the decision of Qantas to lock out its employees and ground the airline was one that was not anticipated as being a likely course of action at that time. It had not been flagged. It had not been raised by the government, and we continued to believe that Qantas was focused on negotiated settlements, as it had said publicly and privately.

We had advice, and we confirmed advice, in relation to how we might best respond. We had a conference of ministers, and the decision was taken for me to make the application on behalf of the government under section 424 to seek to have the matter heard before Fair Work Australia and have orders made to cease all industrial action. That was the recommendation to the government and it was one we took. We accepted that advice. We took the action as urgently as we could. Fair Work Australia, to their credit, responded and began hearing the matter at nine o'clock that evening. That advice, and the actions we took, worked. We did get the orders from Fair Work Australia to settle the dispute and to order that all industrial actions cease, so we acted on that advice.

Section 431 is a section in the act similar to sections that have been in earlier pieces of industrial relations legislation. That power has never been used by a government, despite a number of very serious disputes. It is seen as a reserve power, one that would be used as a measure of last resort. Our advice was to use section 424 to make an application, and we did so. (Time expired)