Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

Not for me, Senator Scarr. I think you're nitpicking a little bit here. We believe that what we are doing here is consistent with the sentiments expressed by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

I can remember, when I first started working as a lawyer for the Shop Assistants Union in 1976, getting into a situation where, if you had a dispute before the industrial relations tribunal, then it was always accepted in those circumstances that each side met their own costs.

Now, you refer to the situation of small businesses. That's not an unfamiliar position for many of the people who will be taking these applications on the employee side. They often don't have access to the legal representation that you describe as coming from 'the big end of town'. I think this is a fair and just application of the costs issue in these sorts of situations.

In my view, having come to this issue relatively recently—like in the last 20 minutes—this is an absolutely fair application of rules that would generally apply in industrial relations situations. Now, I don't know whether South Australia was ahead of its time back then in the way—