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

The reason I'm confident that Senator Cash and her colleagues will make those claims today, as I said, is that they've done that every time we've passed any changes to workplace laws. Every other time, Senator Cash's claims have been proven to be false, and they will again be proven to be false.

The specific amendment that we're dealing with here is the right to disconnect. The government does support this amendment to introduce a right for workers to disconnect from work outside of work hours. In practice, this will encourage employers and employees to have conversations about contact out of hours and set expectations that suit the workplace. The amendments introduce a right to disconnect to ensure employees are not required to monitor, read or respond to employer or work related contact out of hours unless refusing to do so is unreasonable. That last proviso—'unless refusing to do so is unreasonable'—is an important proviso that's been added to that. A list of factors will help determine whether an employee's refusal is unreasonable, including the nature of the employee's role and level of responsibility and whether the employee is compensated to remain available to perform work outside of normal working hours.

To provide further clarity to workers and business, the Fair Work Commission will be tasked with drafting right-to-disconnect terms for modern awards, reflecting the unique circumstances of particular industries, and issuing general guidelines for all workplaces. The Fair Work Commission will be able to deal with disputes promptly, including by issuing stop orders. This includes a power to dismiss frivolous and vexatious claims on its own motion or at an employer's request. The Fair Work Commission will be required to deal with applications as quickly as reasonably possible. The right to disconnect will apply six months after royal assent, and small businesses will have an additional 12 months to make arrangements with their employees and in their workplaces.

The other point I'll just make is that this new right to disconnect is an important reform to workplace laws to catch us up with the modern age. These days we have emails, mobile phone calls and all sorts of things that didn't use to happen in decades gone past, but it is important that our IR laws remain contemporary and deal with contemporary solutions.

The fact is that there are many enterprise bargaining agreements that have been entered into between employers, unions and employees that already make provision for a right to disconnect. And you know what? Those companies are still operating. The world hasn't fallen apart. We haven't gone back to the Dark Ages. We haven't seen supermarket shelves become empty because of this right that exists in enterprise bargaining agreements already. So again, Senator Cash, if the wild claims that you keep on making—that the world will end, that we'll go back to the Dark Ages, that supermarket shelves will be empty and that the Australian economy will collapse—are true, why haven't they happened already, when we've already seen a number of enterprise bargaining agreements entered into by employers, unions and employees that already give this right?

Unfortunately, every time you come in here or go to the media and make a wild claim about what will happen as a result of IR law changes and it doesn't happen, your credibility is shredded. That is why, increasingly, people don't believe the coalition when it comes to matters involving workplace laws or anything else. As I said, since we passed our IR law changes that Senator Cash and the coalition warned would bring the end of the world, we've seen wages go up in Australia, we've seen job creation go up in Australia, we've seen unemployment go down in Australia, we've seen less industrial conflict, and we've seen inflation begin to go down to a level lower than what we saw when this government was first elected. Every single claim that you have ever made about the effect of our workplace law changes has been disproven by the facts. At some point, it might be wise for the coalition to have a think about whether the exaggerations they make when they're debating workplace laws are even worth making, because every time it happens they don't happen, and your credibility gets shredded.