Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Senator Cash. Because we are a government that wants to make our workplace laws as simple as possible for employers, employees and unions, we have, helpfully, set out the answer to your question in the revised explanatory memorandum. It's on page 188, helpfully, under item 636A, being the item that you referred to. We've made it very easy for people to cross-reference against the item of legislation. I'm happy to read that into the Hansard:

For the purposes of new paragraph 250(3)(b),—

which I understand is the one that you're talking about—

an employer is likely to have a history of effectively bargaining in relation to one or more enterprise agreements if one or more of those resulting enterprise agreements provided for terms and conditions that were more than a marginal improvement on those contained in the relevant award (i.e. they must do more than simply pass the BOOT). The requirement would operate so that only enterprise agreements that provide genuine benefits to both the employer/s and their relevant employees would be relevant to the FWC's decision to exercise its discretion not to make a single interest employer authorisation that would specify the employer and its relevant employees. This discretion would not need to be relied upon where the parties have agreed (in writing) to bargain for a single-enterprise agreement as these parties would be excluded under clause 249(1D)(b).