Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Small Business Redundancy Exemption) Bill 2023 closes a loophole currently in that law that a small business doesn't have to pay redundancy to workers when that business has to downsize due to insolvency. The small business redundancy exemption has been part of the workplace relations laws under the Fair Work Act since 2009. The thinking was that small businesses could hire workers without worrying about possible future redundancy payments. To qualify for the exemption, small businesses had to have fewer than 15 staff.

The problem, or the loophole, comes when a larger business becomes a smaller one, usually because they are going out of business, and ends up with fewer than 15 employees. According to this particular loophole, these large businesses are now small businesses and they don't have to pay their remaining staff a redundancy. That means that these workers who are helping to wind up the businesses do not get the redundancy they would normally be entitled to. These workers are often the people that have had to stay on helping to wind up the business, long after their mates have gone. This is a loophole that needs to be closed.

Imagine you're a worker in a large business and you've been there for years. Then imagine you're told that you're to be one of the last workers but you will not be getting a redundancy payment because the large business is now technically a small business. Workers shouldn't lose their rights to a redundancy payment just because they stay on to help these large businesses close down and finish up. This bill fixes that because it provides an exemption to the exemption. Basically, it makes sure that big businesses can't get away with not paying redundancies to the last of their workers just because they are going out of business. It is a loophole that needs to be closed, and it needs to be closed now due to economic circumstances that are going on outside this parliament. According to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, we are dealing with a spike in corporate insolvency—in other words, large businesses are going out of business. Official data shows that in August this year 918 companies went into external administration for the first time or had a controller appointed. This was up 32 per cent on last year and up 12 per cent on the previous month.

We know the construction industry is falling on hard times. We have labour shortage issues and supply chain problems that are all working together to create a perfect storm and are creating a wave of insolvencies across the sector. Everyday Australians are dealing with a cost-of-living crisis, high interest rates and wages that aren't keeping up with inflation. They're tightening their belts, and that's hitting retail and larger businesses across the board. This amendment is just common sense, and it's an amendment that shouldn't have to wait until next July. It is not controversial and it is not complicated. It simply protects the redundancy entitlements of those workers who are the last ones out the door.

I want to talk about silicosis. The Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency was set up in 2013 to administer the national strategic plan. ASEA oversees national actions to improve asbestos awareness and the effective and safe management, removal and disposal of asbestos. The first recorded Australian case of asbestosis was in 1933 and the insistency of the disease is still rising, even though most of those diagnosed today were exposed to heavy doses of asbestos 50 years ago. It took nearly 100 years for this country to create a national agency to deal with asbestos. We can't wait a minute longer to deal with silica.

Silica is found in things like stone benchtops, concrete, bricks and mortar. When these materials are cut, crushed, drilled, polished, sawn or ground, they release tiny dust particles. Silica dust is 100 times smaller than a grain of sand—so tiny that you can't even see it. But if you are exposed to it you can get lung cancer, kidney disease or silicosis. It's estimated that nearly half a million young tradies are exposed to silica dust, with thousands already diagnosed with silicosis. Like asbestosis, there is no cure for silicosis. Safe Work Australia has cut the silica dust exposure limit from 0.1 milligrams per cubic metre over an eight-hour shift to 0.05 milligrams, but this limit won't come in for three years and it has to be signed off by state and territory governments.

Silica reform is complicated and unfortunately sits across multiple portfolios and jurisdictions. Including silica in the government agency ASEA will help to fix this problem. This bill gives workers a right to safe and healthy workplaces by including silica in the government agency that deals with asbestos. It is common sense. This also includes eliminating and minimising exposure to dangerous silica dust. It raises awareness and it improves research. It means for the first time we can gather national data. The bill also expands the agency's functions to include a focus on silica safety and coordination, awareness raising, reporting and providing advice to the government on silica safety and silica related diseases. It also promotes and helps current efforts to manage the risk of silica and silica related disease in the workplace.

Like I said, it's estimated that up to half a million tradies have been exposed to silica dust, and at least 100,000 of those could die of silicosis. We don't know the exact number of deaths from this deadly silica dust, because we haven't been tracking and recording national data, but a study from 2012 estimated that it has already contributed to over 10,000 deaths a year. Many of the workers who get silicosis are young people. They are our sons and our daughters. Something needs to be done, and we cannot wait any longer.

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, Senator Lambie, could I ask senators to please, if they're speaking, speak softly, including those on their phones. Thank you.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unlike exposure to asbestos, which may take many years to present, acute silicosis can occur within three years of exposure. Like asbestosis, there is no cure for silicosis other than a lung transplant. And, despite significant government reports in the 1990s of the growing number of Australians dying of asbestosis, it wasn't until the end of 2003 that a complete ban on all forms of asbestos was brought in. It was another 10 years until Australia got a national agency. With hundreds of thousands of Australians being exposed to silica dust every year, we need to act now. I commend this bill to the Senate.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to offer a brief contribution on these fair work legislation bills. In doing so, I want to acknowledge my crossbench colleague Senator Lambie and her team for their work and for sharing a commitment to work constructively on the legislation before us. These bills represent four simple measures that could make a big difference to our communities right now. They are straightforward, have broad support, and can literally change lives.

The first bill, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (First Responders) Bill 2023, would better support our fireys, ambos, police, and emergency services to access compensation for PTSD they've developed as part of their job. Our first responders come into monthly, weekly and sometimes daily contact with death, violence, and injury. They witness tragedies on a regular basis that many of us may only witness once or twice in our lives. This extends to the phone operators in our emergency services, who I think are underrecognised for the extremely important service they provide to our communities. In speaking with some operators, I've been told some truly awful stories about the calls they need to take on a daily basis, and this clearly takes a toll.

The prevention of mental health injury should always be the priority, but we know that that's not always possible, given the nature of the work our first responders do. So early intervention has to be the next most important goal, and I believe our services are getting much better at this. But it won't work for everyone, and that's because trauma is a complex thing and is very individual. For one person, exposure to one traumatic event may be enough to precipitate into post-traumatic stress disorder. For some, PTSD could develop after repeated exposure over a 20-year period. It's a complicated illness, but we know that our first responders shoulder a very high burden of PTSD.

For those who've had family members with PTSD, you'll know just what a toll it takes on the entire family. It is a huge thing for a family to go through to support a family member with PTSD. If you take paramedics, some studies show that the prevalence of PTSD is as high as 10 or 11 per cent. That's one in 10 paramedics.

For our first responders, PTSD is an occupational disease, so our compensation system must stand ready to support them and to fund the services that will put them on the possible pathway to recovery. Unfortunately from the moment I was elected I've heard from first responders that our compensation system is not working in this way. It's not recognising them and supporting them in the way that it should. What I've heard is that first responders are being left to fight with insurers, such as Comcare, for access to compensation that would fund their treatments for PTSD. This happens because it's difficult to prove that PTSD develops as part as someone's job. It's difficult to point to one moment in a person's career and say, 'That was the moment where I developed PTSD.' It's difficult for a person to trawl through their memory at all the loss they may have seen throughout their career and tally the moments that have contributed to them developing PTSD. The very task of listing the dates of those traumatic events would be daunting, if not impossible. It would be harder still while you're struggling with PTSD, knowing the toll that it's taking on your loved ones as well, working each day to keep your mental health in check.

When you start out in one of the services you need to have a physical and mental health clearance, so it seems rather obvious that if a first responder has PTSD then it has developed as part of their job. This bill flips the equation. When this bill passes, insurers will need to presume that PTSD was caused by a first responder's job. If an insurer disagrees then it's on them to prove that it wasn't. This was a key recommendation of the 2019 Senate inquiry, The people behind 000: mental health of our first responders. I want to acknowledge Senator Anne Urquhart, the senator for Tasmania, for her role in establishing the committee and for driving forward those recommendations over the last few years. Clearly there's a lot of support for first responders from Tasmanian senators.

I will take the opportunity to remind the Senate that there were 12 other recommendations in the report that we should not forget. They include reforming how insurers order independent medical examinations. I've heard too many stories of first responders having to front up to three, five, or in one case nine, different independent medical examinations. These examinations are by their nature confronting, and they can feel combative. By necessity, they also require people to speak about and recount their traumas, which can retraumatise people in the grips of PTSD. They are necessary—you can't eliminate them from the system—but clearly insurers need to be careful in ordering them.

Finally, on this provision, I want to give a shout-out to the Heart2Heart crew, who recently completed an almost-3,000-kilometre journey across Australia to raise awareness of first responder mental health and to push for the recommendations of the 2019 Senate inquiry report The people behind 000 to be implemented in full. Today is the first step towards doing that. It's the least that we can do for their service to our communities and to our country, for being there for us in our greatest, most terrible hours of need.

I'll finish off on this bill by saying thank you to our police, our ambos, our firefighters, our emergency services and the operators sitting behind triple 0.

Thank you for putting your health and wellbeing on the line for our communities, and thank you for having our backs. I hope this measure goes some way to looking after you as well.

I'll try and keep my remarks on the remaining three bills very brief. The small business redundancy exemption provision is a longstanding feature of our workplace relations system. Senator Lambie, in her contribution, highlighted the loophole and the statistics here. This is a very welcome change. I would also highlight the need for the parliament to deal with security of payments. That's an area where politicians are failing our tradies and are failing subcontractors who do work and then don't get paid for that work. It's something we have to take more seriously.

The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Protections Against Discrimination) Bill 2023 corrects an oversight on the part of all of us when we were establishing the family and domestic violence leave entitlement last year. While it is illegal for an employer to discriminate against someone for taking family and domestic violence leave, it's not technically illegal for an employer to discriminate against someone on the basis that they're experiencing domestic violence. This bill fixes that by making a subjection to family and domestic violence a protected attribute under the Fair Work Act. In practice, women's legal services have told me it will be a nuanced but very important protection that will ensure people are protected from discrimination before they're ready to access their family and domestic violence leave entitlement. Sadly, we know that, despite the new national plan, family and domestic violence is on the rise.

Finally, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency) Bill 2023 will add silicosis to the remit of the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency. If this bill passes, the ASEA will develop and maintain a national silicosis plan and help to coordinate efforts across all levels of government. Silicosis, predominantly from working with engineered stone, is killing workers. It is killing Australians. We know the dangers, and yet still governments—state, territory and federal—have failed to ban it. We need more courage from policymakers to step up on the issue of engineered stone. It is not acceptable to have the evidence and to have recommendations to ban it, and not to have the political courage to follow through with that in order to protect workers in Australia.

These are four bills that, from my read of this chamber, have multipartisan support. I thank the government for drafting the legislation. I thank Minister Burke for including the PTSD provisions. It was a surprise to everyone who'd been pushing for these provisions for years—including the Australian Federal Police Association and others—that they were part of this omnibus bill. I know that they want to see it passed in full this year. The omnibus bill is a beast of a bill, and the Senate is rightly taking its time to work through the 20 sections in total. Here are four. There'll be another 16 to work through in detail, and I understand there will be a number of amendments, including a number of government amendments. They are welcome, but there is clearly still more work to do.

I'll continue to do my bit and uphold my commitment to the people of the ACT, when it comes to the larger omnibus bill, to take each element on its merits and work on it in good faith. But that should not stop us from passing elements of this bill which have broad support and which—as Senator Cash pointed out—have an earlier start date than many of the elements in the much larger omnibus bill.

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

I just want to make a short contribution on this debate. I've already outlined in the procedural motion the reasons why the government did not support the procedural motion to extend debate on this matter and, effectively, to gazump the Senate inquiry that's still underway on this very legislation. But what I want to focus on in these brief remarks are the reasons why the government does not support splitting the bills in the way that's being proposed.

I support much of what Senator Pocock just said, and Senator Lambie before him, as to why the matters contained in the bills they're now moving are important. That shouldn't be a surprise, because they have come from government legislation. These are things that no government, including the former coalition government, ever thought were important enough to bring legislation to this chamber about—things like protecting workers from silicosis, which is an absolute scourge in the construction sector. And there are things like better protecting first responders, including the issues surrounding post-traumatic stress disorder. They are very important issues for us to legislate on, to protect those workers and to give them greater protection than they have at the moment.

That's why we have introduced legislation to deal with these matters. But these are not the only matters that are important when it comes to worker protection contained in the broader bills which the government has introduced and which are currently before the Senate inquiry. While it's important to deal with silicosis, it's important to deal with first-responder health concerns and it's important to deal with all of the other matters that are included in these bills now being moved by senators Lambie and Pocock, I think, and the government thinks, that it's also important to stop workers from being deliberately underpaid; it's important that employers who deliberately steal wages from their employees face criminal consequences. That is in the broader piece of legislation that the government has introduced, but is not included in the bills now put before us by senators Lambie and Pocock.

It's also important that we protect workers from what's known as 'industrial manslaughter', where workers die because of the deliberate recklessness or negligence of their employers. It's pretty important to protect workers from being killed because of their own employer's negligence. But that hasn't been picked up in the bills that senators Lambie and Pocock are introducing here; it's contained in the broader legislation that the government has put forward. It hasn't been deemed important; I would have thought that protecting workers from being killed at work because of the negligence of their employers is pretty important, just as dealing with the other important matters that are included in these bills before us today are.

I would have thought that protecting casual workers from the safety concerns that arise from the casual nature of their employment—gig workers, delivery drivers, truckies, coalminers and all of those people who, at the moment, are wrongly classified, and paid and treated as casual workers without any protection. I would have thought that their rights to be safe at work and to make complaints about safety concerns without fearing retribution from their employer are important. I would have thought those were pretty important as well, but they haven't been included in Senator Lambie and Senator Pocock's bills. For whatever reason, they don't seem to consider those matters as important as the ones that are being dealt with here.

Similarly, I would have thought that it's pretty important to even the playing field for the hundreds of thousands of workers in this country who are employed as labour hire—those who are brought into a workplace and paid at lower rates and conditions than the permanent workers they work alongside—and to make sure that just because they're called 'labour hire' doesn't mean they can be ripped off by employers who have entered into an enterprise agreement with the rest of their workforce. I reckon that's pretty important, but that isn't being dealt with in this legislation that's before us today either.

We do not understand why Senators Lambie and David Pocock, with the support of the opposition, are cherrypicking aspects of the government's broader legislation and saying: 'These things are important but those other things—you know what?—they're not that important. They can wait till next year.' Let's not forget that the government's original proposal was to have this legislation in its entirety dealt with this year. Senator Lambie, Senator Pocock and the opposition say the matters that are before us today are important—and they are. They're things like protecting workers from silicosis and protecting first responders and assisting them with PTSD. Those things are important, and they could have been dealt with under the government's original proposal. All those matters and all the other ones I've gone through, which have been kicked off into next year, could have been dealt with this year.

We agree with Senators Lambie and Pocock that the things that are before us today are important. That is why this government, a Labor government, introduced legislation to deal with them. We've now got these crocodile tears from the opposition, who are saying: 'It's really important that we protect workers from silicosis. It's really important that we protect first responders.' They had 10 years to do something about those things, and on not one day of those 10 years did they think they were important, so give me a break with the crocodile tears. It's a Labor government that is trying to fix the very matters that are before us today—protecting workers from silicosis and death from it, looking after first responders, and all of the other things that are included in these bills today—but what we're also trying to do is to protect workers from being killed at work because of their employer's recklessness and negligence, something that apparently isn't a priority for anyone else in the chamber. That can wait till next year, apparently.

Dozens of workers in Australia are killed every year at work because of the negligence of their employers. I don't know about other senators, but every year, when I'm not here, I go to the International Workers Memorial Day gathering and meet the families of workers who have died at work, very often because of the negligence and recklessness of their employers. I think those employers should be held to account. But we're not going to get around to that till next year because the people who have introduced these bills say it's not a priority.

We should be valuing a worker's life and their entitlement to be protected from their employer's negligence just as much as we should be valuing those workers who are exposed to silicosis poisoning and those first responders who need better care from our community. We should be stopping employers deliberately stealing the wages of their employees. It's not about accidental underpayments; it's about employers who know they are stealing wages from their employees. We should be fixing that this year, not saying: 'It's not a priority. We'll leave that till next year.' That is what the effect of the bills before us today would be. They are cherrypicking some things as being important but, in leaving out deliberate wage theft and the reckless killing of workers and in leaving open loopholes for labour hire workers to be exploited, we are saying that workers' rights don't matter. The government doesn't agree with that. That's exactly why we think the entire package of government legislation should be dealt with this year, rather than the Senate cherrypicking a few bits and saying of the rest of it, 'We'll get around to that one day.'

You know what, Madam Acting Deputy President? Workers were waiting for 10 years under a coalition government for those matters to be dealt with, and they never had them dealt with. They finally elected a government who are serious about getting wages moving again and about getting workers decent protection in the workplace, and they have an entitlement to have those rights respected. What we're doing today, with some senators cherrypicking parts of that legislation, is saying that those rights don't matter. I'd ask the senators who've introduced this legislation to think carefully about that.

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of these four private senators' bills, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Small Business Redundancy Exemption) Bill 2023, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Protections Against Discrimination) Bill 2023, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency) Bill 2023 and the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (First Responders) Bill 2023. I believe the contribution made by Senator Watt on behalf of the government was a fundamentally flawed contribution for these reasons. In the first instance, the arguments put forward by Senator Watt are undermined by the various start dates in the government's bill. Even if the bill were passed this year, it wouldn't change the fact that the proposed effective date for the casual conversion to commence is 1 July 2024.

The proposed effective date for the new definition of 'casual employee' is 1 July 2024. In relation to regulated labour hire, the bill states that a regulated labour hire arrangement order cannot come into effect before 1 November 2024. In relation to the unfair contractual terms, again the proposed effective date is 1 July 2024. In relation to criminalising wage theft and an increase in penalties for underpayments, again the proposed effective date, if not set, is 1 January 2025. In relation to the work health and safety aspects that the minister has referred to, the date is 1 July 2024. As I said, though, in relation to the proposed amendment to right of entry—the new process for allowing worker representatives to obtain permission to enter a workplace without the current requirement for 24 hours notice—what he again conveniently forgot to remind the chamber is that that commences on 1 January 2024. Maybe that's why the minister wanted this legislation rushed through the parliament.

I also take issue with the comments made by Senator Watt in relation to the motivations of the crossbench. The crossbench have been very, very clear as to why they are bringing forward these bills. The omnibus bill is considered one of the most complex and confusing bills to ever hit this parliament. I see in the papers that, allegedly, the minister himself is negotiating with employer groups to already—allegedly—make changes to the casual provisions. We see another article today that says that, allegedly, they're going to make some changes in relation to the gig economy aspects of this bill. I would have thought that that would indicate that the minister himself has already worked out that the legislation is complex and it is confusing, but, worse than that, it is flawed. But, in relation to the four elements that these four bills deal with, there is overwhelming consensus—in particular from the employer groups—that these four parts of the government's omnibus bill don't require further explanation. They certainly don't require further exploration. They can be passed through the Senate. Then it will be for the government to determine whether or not it wants to play politics or, when it gets to the other place, facilitate the timely passage of these four bills before the end of the year.

There are some of us in this chamber who actually want to be constructive when it comes to the passage of the non-controversial parts of what is, as I said, a very, very complex and confusing omnibus bill. Minister Burke has been asked to provide comment as to why the government has stated it won't split the bills, and the best the minister can consistently come up with is, 'We want to ensure that workers get paid correctly.' But, again, the minister's argument—and excuse—is undermined by the start dates in the government's own legislation. Maybe the minister is ignorant as to the start dates. Maybe the department hasn't told him what the start dates are. But given that the commencement dates are not until, in any event, after the Senate committee reports on 1 February next year, his entire argument for not being able to split the bill just falls away.

As I said, though, what is unfortunate in the minister 's arguments is that he needs to be upfront with the Australian people as to the one part of the bill that does commence on 1 January 2024, and that is in relation to the right of entry provisions.

As we know, that is something that unions have long been asking for. Why have that start on 1 July 2024 when you can tick off quite conveniently another one of those agenda items on the lists of the various unions and deliver it to them on 1 January 2024? Quite frankly, Minister Burke's excuses were nothing more and nothing less than a cynical exercise by the minister to give the Albanese government a cover for trying to rush his wider controversial legislation through the parliament.

I think it actually is a great shame that the Labor Party would use the issue—and both Senator Lambie and Senator Pocock have addressed this—of post-traumatic stress syndrome in our First Nations responders as a reason to try to ram through the whole bill this year or, for that matter, using changes to silica related diseases or, for that matter, using discrimination against people suffering from family or domestic violence as an excuse for trying to rush through the bill this year. Alternatively, they talk about wanting to ensure that workers get paid. Well, guess what. What do they think the small business redundancy change is going to do? If it passes, that's going to make sure that, for a big business that through, say, insolvency becomes a small business, the small business exemption in relation to the payment of redundancy that is currently available to small businesses actually does not apply. For the employees of that particular business, which is now smaller business under the relevant threshold, guess what. They don't miss out on their redundancy payment. But, again, the Labor Party stand here today full of excuses.

Had Senator Pocock and Senator Lambie perhaps redrafted these four provisions—had they made changes to them—there may have been an argument in which the government could say: 'We need to consider them further. You've made some changes to what we had proposed. We need to consider them further.' But, you see, Senator Lambie and Senator Pocock haven't done that. The bills that are presented to this parliament are in the identical format to what is currently in the government's legislation. The only difference is employers across the nation, within reason, agree that these four elements can be passed this year and don't require any further explanation or exploration throughout the committee process. On that basis, along with the coalition, along with the crossbench, we are prepared to be constructive in relation to the government's omnibus bill and pass today those elements of the bill that do deliver for Australian workers, that do deliver for those suffering from or who have been victims of family and domestic violence, that do deliver for those who were employed by a larger business but through no fault of their own are now employed by a smaller business and may not therefore be able to get a redundancy payment, that will deliver for those in relation to the asbestos authority, now taking on the remit for silica related diseases.

Senator Pocock went through this in great detail. Those first responders who work each and every day on behalf of the Australian people see terrible things. They, quite frankly, see things that no other person should ever have to see, and on our behalf they discharge their duty each and every day. The Labor Party are prepared to pay politics in relation to the change to post-traumatic stress syndrome and the presumption that their job and what they saw actually did cause the post-traumatic stress syndrome? Wow. That's the 2023 Labor government under the current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese.

Let's also have a look at what the employers say about these four changes. The Australian Retailers Association support the splitting of the bill. They have some massive issues in relation to, for example, the casual elements of this bill, because they actually employ a lot of casuals.

But in relation to these four parts, they say, 'No, we don't have any issues with these four parts. We agree; let's all be constructive and pass these elements through the Australian Senate, and should Mr Albanese, as Prime Minister of this country, decide to show a bit of leadership, decide to show that he is not playing politics with this bill, pass them through the lower house next week.'

The Business Council of Australia has urged the Senate to split the government's massive omnibus workplace relations bill and support the four private senators' bill. They said:

The Government's radical workplace relations changes are a threat to jobs, they're bad for business and bad for workers and they shouldn't be rushed through the Senate,"

They then said they 'strongly support … splitting these bills and the coalition's efforts in calling for more time to properly scrutinise the 800-page omnibus bill'. Have a look at what the Master Builders Association of Australia states. They also say that they support the crossbenchers moves to split the IR bill. Denita Wawn, the CEO, said the government's 'attempt to hold additional protections for workers hostage to an ideological anti-business bill is wrong'.

Senators Pocock and Lambie have put forward splitting of the bill. They say this is a sensible approach to ensure the non-controversial and broadly supported elements of the bill are passed without delay and they urge the government to support these bills.

Let's look at COSBOA, because small businesses have gone into meltdown over the government's proposed changes to the way they have to employ people. COSBOA are also being constructive. They represent small businesses in this country. Let's look at what their position is. While opposing most of the changes, COSBOA says 'less contentious elements of the Bill should be carved away from the Closing the Loopholes package'. It said:

Those measures include provisions to close a loophole in the small business redundancy scheme, establish workplace protections for family and domestic violence survivors, expand workers’ compensation for employees experiencing PTSD, and reshape Australia’s asbestos safety regime to also cover silicosis and other silica-related diseases.

We also have the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. They said splitting the bill is a sensible proposal that will allow the Labor Party to proceed quickly with the non-contentious elements of the legislation. They say business is supportive of the implementation of work health and safety measures relating to PTSD for first responders, domestic violence and silicosis. They, like so many others, believe that the more complex parts, the more confusing parts, of the bill do demand greater scrutiny. The government, through the media, is currently announcing changes to these more controversial parts on the run—I mean, we haven't even seen the drafting of these changes—which shows the step taken in the Senate today is the right step forward if you want to be constructive in the omnibus legislation.

As I've said, the coalition are prepared to be constructive. We are prepared to support the passage of the non-controversial parts of this legislation. Senator Watt could not provide one credible reason. He said a lot. Some of it even sounded good, but when you scratch the surface and you look at the facts that do not sustain Senator Watt's arguments, guess what? They fall away completely. Quite frankly, this is a test for the government. Will they actually support the crossbench and the coalition in being constructive in relation to their own legislation? Only time will tell.

Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The provisions in the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Small Business Redundancy Exemption) Bill 2023 and related bills before us are important. They are changes that will make real benefits of significance to many Australian workers. We Greens support the changes that are before us. We support and thank the government for the work that embedded these changes in the closing loopholes bill. I agree with many of the comments that have been made here this morning by Senator Lambie and Senator David Pocock.

The bills make important steps forward in relation to workers compensation and rehabilitation. They strengthen workers' health and safety. They ensure workers in smaller businesses have access to redundancy payments; they improve provisions there. Most importantly, alongside all of those measures, they strengthen workplace protections for people experiencing family and domestic violence. All of these are matters that this parliament should be passing legislation on. They have all been there for many years, in front of us, demanding action, and they are matters that the Greens are keen to see the parliament step up to. We want to see vigorous action around them.

I will just mention the first responders, and Senator Pocock spoke at length about them. These moves will simplify the access of workers to compensation when they're suffering from PTSD. That is such an important measure for the AFP, firefighters, ambos and emergency services communications operators. The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency) Bill 2023 will broaden that agency's functions to include coordinating action on silica safety and silica related diseases. That's so important to so many families supporting people affected by those diseases. That will include developing and promoting a silica national strategic plan. Those are all good steps in the right direction. In terms of protections against discrimination, we Greens are very supportive of improving protections against discrimination for employees who have been or continue to be subjected to family and domestic violence. Specifically, these measures will prohibit an employer from taking adverse action against a worker or a potential worker on the basis that they've experienced family and domestic violence. Finally, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Small Business Redundancy Exemption) Bill 2023 addresses an important implication arising from the small business redundancy exemption. It will give support to those employees who are often right at the end of the chain of a series of redundancies and find themselves, under existing provisions, missing out on the support that they need when a business becomes insolvent.

We need all of those changes. We need them as soon as possible. But we need a whole lot of other things as well. There are massive changes underway in our labour market that must take us beyond dealing with these very important emergency measures. In some households, these will make a difference at a time when households are under very particular stress—when workers' health and safety is at risk. But we also need to raise our eyes from those matters and consider the larger question of how our workplaces have changed and how our legislation around workplaces is limping along behind.

We need urgent change in our industrial relations on other matters as well. We've seen a massive shift in our workforce in terms of its gender composition, its care responsibilities and the security of employment. We are now a labour market which is a standout in international comparison in terms of the proportion of workers who have no security in their jobs. They don't know if they'll have a job tomorrow. A quarter of Australian workers are now employed on casual terms. Many of them are actually in permanent work. They need protection from the insecurity that affects them, their families and their ability to hold the household budget together. That's a quarter of our workforce. A third of our workforce is precarious in more general terms. They're on short-term contracts. They're driving on a gig platform. They're very insecure. This is not how the Australian labour market should operate, and we need urgent action. It is urgent that we see action to protect casual employees, give them stronger pathways to permanency and prevent the ongoing exploitation of casual work.

Work is now a place where we see widening inequality. We see people at the bottom of the labour market not only insecure but very poorly paid or in a black economy where they're not paid the wages they should be. Wage theft is endemic in our labour market. It especially affects young people, and it's particularly important for migrant workers. This is a pressing question. People are having their wages stolen in very significant numbers across a range of occupations, and there's a lot of evidence about it. It imposes big costs on workers and our economy. And it's not just wages; it's also superannuation. In fact, if you look at the numbers and the proportion of money that's lost to workers in forgone and stolen superannuation, they're several times larger—in the billions—than wage theft more narrowly defined.

The work done by this Senate and the committee I chaired on work and care and the need to update our industrial relations legislation is also pressing. We need to improve workplace relations systems that support workers who are holding responsibility for the care of someone else while they're at work, whether it's for care of someone with a disability, for child care or for aged care. We've got systems of industrial relations in our country that don't give people security around their rosters. It's incredibly important for families and working parents to know what hours they're working tomorrow and next week. Too many Australian workers don't have any security around their rosters. That's also a pressing question. So there are many issues that arise out of our work and care report that should be considered as matters of urgency in our industrial relations reform.

Our workplace relations laws are inadequate. The opposition has had years to attempt to fix some of these problems, and it has failed to do so. Personally, I have appeared with many other workplace relations academics over decades, bringing forward evidence about insecurity of employment and the high cost it imposes on young people, and we've failed to see action on that front and other fronts. It is vitally important that we look at the changing nature of the workforce and update our industrial relations law fulsomely to deal with a wide range of issues that affect workers in Australia. We need a fair and equitable industrial relations system that upholds the rights of all working people and goes to the question of a secure job, receiving the pay rate that you properly should be and being free from discrimination of all forms. Working people have the right to just and favourable conditions of work and, of course, appropriate protection when their small business becomes insolvent, as well as protection for their health and safety in relation to the chemicals and materials they use at work. Security of employment and wage theft are matters which also matter a great deal. Our workplace laws should also be supporting people in terms of their workplace balance, in the ability they have to put together care for kids and turn up for work. Our provisions at present are inadequate.

I want to particularly mention the fact that many, many workers on labour hire contracts work alongside others and are not paid a fair or equivalent rate of pay. We've heard this in inquiries before the Senate previously, for example, from mining workers, who are working in what are called casual or contract jobs. They know what their shifts will be for a whole year ahead of them, but they're termed 'casual' or 'contract', and, in some cases, they're receiving up to $50,000 a year less than the permanent workers they work alongside. That's a failure in our labour hire regulation and our protection of casuals and contract workers. There needs to be fairness in pay across a workplace, regardless of the form of your employment. They deserve parity, and we need an industrial relations law that properly protects that fairness.

We need more than that. Many of us now can carry our office and our workplace in our back pocket in the form of our phone. The boundaries around work, the nature of the workplace and the places and times that you do work are now, for many of us, dictated by the phone we carry in our pocket. So we need a new right that recognises changing technologies and changing practices of work and allows workers, once they've done their hours of work, to turn off. We need a right to disconnect. It is vital. Many countries around the world are recognising this. They're recognising that unlimited, unbounded hours of work which give the boss the chance to send you an email and require a response in the middle of the night or on a Sunday afternoon are bad for you, bad for your health and bad for your family's health. They put pressure on you and your household and are undermining community life for too many Australian workers and their families. We need a right to disconnect. It is vitally important that we start to build back control over working time and regulate and contain it to your contracted hours of work. Unpaid overtime is endemic in too many Australian workplaces. It leads to wage theft and is a great injustice for too many workers.

Australian workers now work, on average, six weeks of unpaid overtime every year. A lot of it is because they don't have the right to turn off their office, to turn off their phone, and to work their legal hours. That amounts to over $92 billion in unpaid wages across the economy every year. We've seen very strong evidence of the cost of that in the recent reports of employment conditions in very large consultancies.

Elizabeth Broderick did an analysis of EY recently—a very big workforce, thousands of workers—where conditions at work were incredibly difficult for too many young people, too many people at the bottom of a very large workplace who were unable to control their hours of work and felt extreme consequences for their personal health and for their households. They worked long and unsafe hours. They felt exposed to bullying because the business model pressures them to work long hours and the culture of chasing money at the top of their business creates appalling working conditions for them. They need protection from untrammelled working demands from their bosses, and they need a right to disconnect.

We know the research evidence tells us that, if you work long hours, if you're bullied, if you are under unfair pressure at work, you are going to be affected in your sleep, you'll certainly suffer stress consequences, you're highly likely to experience burnout and your relationships will be degraded. This is an important reason to contain and actually regulate working hours and introduce a right to disconnect. Almost 20 countries, including France, Spain, Italy and Ireland, have already taken a step in this direction, and it is urgent that this parliament consider ways in which we adapt our workplace regulation to deal with that kind of change in our community. I have mentioned super theft. That is also an important thing where we need to provide greater support for workers so that, when their employer knowingly steals their super, they have the opportunity to bring their employer to account and for thar behaviour to be criminalised. It's a very, very important additional steps.

While I support the four measures that are in these bills and the Greens strongly support the need to protect things like access to support if you are suffering from domestic violence or from silica related illness and a range of other matters, there is so much more that is needed in our industrial relations system, and we believe we need to make moves on a much broader front. We need to be protecting our gig workers. We have seen evidence in committees before this parliament that these workers are losing their lives because of unfair conditions, very poor pay and an unregulated gig sector. We know that we need to protect workers who are in labour hire conditions to provide some fairness and parity in their working conditions. We need to criminalise both wage and superannuation theft, and we must address the insecurity of workers in so many Australian workplaces. It is affecting our productivity, it is affecting fairness for individual workers, and this makes putting together any kind of life outside of work incredibly difficult.

We're an international delinquent on that front, and it is a pressing question that this parliament should consider as a matter of urgency. There are so many urgent problems sitting before us., not least trying to improve the conditions of casual workers in terms of their access to sick and annual leave. We have workers in this country who work regularly every week for a year and have no access to paid sick leave or annual leave. That's an important provision that we Greens would also like to see addressed. In conclusion, we need to see all kinds of changes that actually respond to the nature of the workplace as it is now, and that includes a range of measures. These measures are included in these four bills, but many other measures are urgent needs for Australian workers if we want a just workplace, if we want fairness for workers and if we want safe work for our Australian workforce.

Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Small Business Redundancy Exemption) Bill 2023, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Protection Against Discrimination) Bill 2023, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Asbestos Exemption and Eradication Agency) Bill 2023 and the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (First Responders) Bill 2023. As Senator Lambie and Senator Pocock have noted, these bills split out four parts of the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023. In fact, the Senate's Education and Employment Legislation Committee has a public hearing scheduled for tomorrow right here in this building. It is highly unusual that there would be an attempt to pass parts of a bill through the Senate before a Senate committee has even finished reviewing it.

The justification given for the need to split out these four parts of the bill now is that other reforms require more time. Let's examine that argument. We have an exceptionally comprehensive inquiry. Tomorrow we will have the sixth public hearing. We have travelled to Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, Launceston and Rockhampton and finally we'll hold a hearing in Canberra tomorrow. We have heard from workers, unions, employers and employer groups, academics and advocates from around the country. In fact, by any metric this has been the most comprehensive inquiry into any piece of industrial relations legislation since the first Fair Work Bill in 2008. We've had more hearings, heard more hours of testimony from more witnesses and received more submissions than any IR inquiry since the Fair Work Bill.

Even before this inquiry was launched, the reforms in the bill had been extensively discussed in the public domain and in private consultations for years. In February 2021, 2½ years ago, then opposition leader Anthony Albanese announced Labor's Secure Australian Jobs plan, which included 'rights for gig economy workers through the Fair Work Commission', 'casual work properly defined in law' and 'a crackdown on cowboy labour hire firms to guarantee same job, same pay'. These were all publicly announced 2½ years ago. There were consultation papers on these reforms released on 7 April, months and months ago. I struggle to remember any reforms which have been subject to such extensive and lengthy consultation and public scrutiny as these.

So here's the truth of the matter: the big business groups who oppose the bill today opposed the reforms the day they were announced in February 2021. The Australian Industry Group put out a media release that very day, saying:

Taking away the flexibility that labour hire businesses and their clients need would reduce jobs and investment and threaten the jobs of hundreds of thousands of labour hire workers.

The release made similar ridiculous statements about the casual and gig reforms. If the Ai Group, the Business Council, the Minerals Council and the Master Builders all opposed these reforms the moment they were announced, then I can guarantee you that they will oppose them tomorrow, they'll oppose them in February and they'll oppose them until their dying breath. It doesn't matter how many months this inquiry takes, how many hearings we have or how many workers and academics say they are wrong: they aren't going to change their minds. All these big business groups want is more time to run misleading and, frankly, ridiculous advertising campaigns.

The Minerals Council have admitted that they have spent tens of millions of dollars campaigning against this bill and plan to spend $24 million. Just this week, we saw media coverage in the Australian, supposedly of Restaurant and Catering Australia complaining about the impact on casuals in cafes. But, if you actually read it, it says:

Restaurant and Catering Australia … has joined forces with the … Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) to reject the AHA-government deal.

It goes on to say:

Legal advice released by the MCA, prepared by Corrs Chambers Westgarth …

How many suburban cafes and restaurants do the Minerals Council represent? The answer is none. BHP and the Minerals Council are bankrolling and astroturfing this campaign. This is the same Minerals Council that spent years running big propaganda campaigns claiming that climate change didn't exist and opposing super profits taxes.

I know that Senator Pocock is a consistent critic of the tactics of the big mining lobby when it comes to climate and energy policy. I know that both Senator Pocock and Senator Lambie are consistent advocates for greater transparency and less corporate influence in this building. I know that both senators have also raised concerns about the influence of Qantas on federal governments, and I support them on all these initiatives, but we need to recognise that what is happening with this bill is the exact same thing. Splitting this bill is an early Christmas present for the Minerals Council, Qantas and others like them. By passing this bill in full, we'll be standing up to those big corporate interests on behalf of working families across the country.

I'm not being dismissive about what has been raised about the comprehensiveness of the bill, but what creates complexity in our workplace laws is when some employers spend millions upon millions on lawyers and consultants to find loopholes. That is true for our tax laws, it's true for our environmental laws and it's true for our workplace laws. Our tax laws are complex because we have giant consulting firms like PwC who exist to find and exploit tax loopholes. Qantas splitting its workforce across 38 companies is complex.

The way some employers engage casuals and engage in sham contracting for years at a time is complex.

The least complex thing we do is just tear away everyone's workplace rights and let them fend for themselves. There are many in the Liberals and Nationals who actually support that approach. We are already tired of that 19th century view. We had slavery. That wasn't complex. We had the Hungry Mile on our wharves and workplaces. That wasn't complex. In a utopian world, we could get rid of our workplace laws, employers would just do the right thing and people would make enough to feed their families and have a dignified standard of living. But, unfortunately, that's not the world that we live in. In the real world, bad employers find and exploit loopholes to rip off people and compete unfairly with good employers, of which there are many.

We have heard from many victims of these loopholes in the inquiry. Last week in Rockhampton, we heard from a mineworker, Brodie Allen, who works for BHP's internal labour hire company Operation Services. Brodie said:

I work for BHP Operation Services. I've been coalmining and in the industry for seven years. I've been labour hire the entire time, so I go in and do the same job as everybody else, but I'm paid $40,000 less a year to do the exact same thing.

Who's going to tell Brodie that he has to wait to get fair treatment at work so that they can let BHP and the Minerals Council spend $24 million on an ad campaign?

In Launceston, we heard from Peta Chesshire, an aged-care worker in northern Tasmania. Peta said:

I've been an aged-care worker for 24 years … The bulk of our casual staff are working two to three jobs … We need to take away the casual role. We need more permanent staff. We're such a low-paying industry we can't entice anyone anymore into aged care. If you take away the permanency … there's nothing to make people work in … aged-care … There's nothing there, and it's not safe for us. It's not safe for our residents. We need more security.

Who's going to tell Peta and her colleagues they have to wait for a permanent job because the Minerals Council need more time to campaign against the bill?

We've heard from Sarah de Wilt, a Qantas flight attendant who did not even know she wasn't directly employed by Qantas until four months after she started flying. Sarah said:

It's … disheartening … confusing, a little bit demoralising, knowing that you're there on the cart doing the same thing … You are cleaning up the vomit on the floor alongside somebody else. You were doing 19-hour duty and … keeping each other awake the same as everyone else, wearing the exact same uniform … and then just to accidentally find out.

Ms de Wilt and her labour hire colleagues earn as little as $50,000 per year while their directly employed colleagues on the same flight doing the same job start at around $90,000. It's not fair and it's not safe. How long do they have to wait for fairness?

The premise of these bills is that these four provisions are not contentious and the rest of the bill is contentious. It's an arbitrary distinction. The Senate inquiry into the bill has not reported yet. There may be amendments required for these four parts of the bill as a result of the committee process. How can we pre-empt possible amendments by passing these provisions now?

It's not correct to say that the rest of the bill is controversial. Take the wage theft criminalisation provisions, which have been supported by a clear majority of organisations at the committee. It's so non-contentious that those opposite almost legislated it 2½ years ago. Even the Liberals and Nationals supported criminalising wage theft—heaven forbid! Take industrial manslaughter provisions, which have wide support across the community, or the road transport provisions, which are supported by the Australian Road Transport Industrial Organisation, the National Road Transport Association, the National Road Freighters Association, the Australian Trucking Association and, of course, the largest small-business organisation in Australia, the Transport Workers Union, not to mention many major road transport employers and other employer organisations.

How can you possibly write these reforms off as too contentious to pass when every major industry stakeholder supports them?

Take the gig reforms. This morning we saw Uber, Menulog and Doordash announce their support for these reforms. Through the committee process we heard other gig companies, including Hireup, Sidekicker and Humdrum, support these reforms. To say that those reforms are contentious is, again, not giving the complete picture of the broad support they have.

As you go through each part of the bill, you'll see there is significant support for much of it. Where there is opposition, often it's from organisations who are opposed to anything that gives working people more rights and protections and lifts wages across the community, like the Minerals Council and those on their funding teat, or the other organisations who have been misled by the scare tactics of the Mineral Council campaign. The committee heard from witnesses, put onto the program at the request of the opposition, who were nominally opposed to the bill but clearly didn't actually understand it. Lynas Rare Earths CEO Amanda Lacaze is an example. She has been in the media complaining about the labour hire reforms. At the hearing, when it was put to her that they don't even have an enterprise agreement and so wouldn't be covered, she said:

I do accept that today, potentially, there is no effect on the business.

We had similar evidence from two labour hire companies that the opposition hand-picked to appear at the same hearing, and we've seen the Australian Hotels Association come out in support of the casual reforms. We've got entire parts of the full bill which are broadly supported and not being split out. Where there are so-called contentious parts of the bill, the employer groups can't even agree on whether they impact them or not.

How can we stand in this place and, on such flawed reasoning, leave behind hundreds of thousands of people like Brodie, Peta and Sarah? Most importantly of all, the working people these four parts of this bill are designed to protect don't even want the bill split. Earlier I quoted evidence from Scott Weber, from the Police Federation of Australia, and Simone Haigh, a paramedic from Tasmania. Both pointed out the importance of the parts of this bill being put together. The people on the front lines—our cops and ambos—are telling us we need the bill passed as a whole. This is a massive bank of evidence that tells us that insecure work is a safety risk. It's our police officers and paramedics who, quite literally, are left to pick up the pieces.

Emeritus Professor Michael Quinlan from the University of New South Wales told the Senate:

… the major 'negative health and safety outcomes' associated with insecure work arrangements, compared with full-time permanent jobs, are:

(1) Higher incidence/frequency of injuries, including fatalities

(2) Poorer physical and mental health …

(3) Poor knowledge of and access to regulatory employment rights and less willingness to raise OHS concerns.

Labour hire mine workers are at greater risk in our mines. Truck drivers and gig workers are dead and injured on our roads unless we pass the full bill. First responders are left to pick up the pieces. These bills fail to deal with the complex ways in which fat-cat employers make our workplaces more dangerous and more deadly and unfairly compete with good employers. That's why the Minerals Council— (Time expired)

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support these bills, and I commend Senators Lambie and David Pocock for bringing these very important matters before the Senate. As has been discussed already this morning in this debate, these bills cover elements of the overarching omnibus bill that the government has brought forward. These are the most urgent matters that relate to the bill. The argument of the government has been that every part of the closing loopholes bill is urgent and needs to be dealt with. That's their contention. If that were the case then the urgent elements they're talking about would commence with royal assent to the bill, but we know that the bill has commencement dates that are some way off into the future. The bills we're discussing here—the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Small Business Redundancy Exemption) Bill 2023, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Protections Against Discrimination) Bill 2023, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency) Bill 2023 and the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (First Responders) Bill 2023—can all commence right away.

These are elements that can support right away the people that these bills affect.

I want to acknowledge Senators Lambie and Pocock for their work that they've done in bringing this forward but also for their participation in the inquiry that we're holding. As Senator Sheldon said, it's a comprehensive inquiry. It certainly is. I've been to every single one of the hearings that we've held. I think Senator Sheldon and I are the only two that have been to every one, but I know that Senators Lambie and Pocock have really stepped up and done their fair share in making sure that they're getting themselves across the bills and asking some very insightful questions of witnesses throughout that inquiry.

The thing that we really have heard consistently in every hearing that we've held—there have been five hearings so far—is that these elements that are in the broader omnibus bill are supported. They're not controversial. There is support from everyone. There's really no reason why they should be delayed because of the examination that is required for the more controversial elements of the closing loopholes bill. So this really does need to be supported.

Maybe it's cynical—I've only been here four and a bit years—but I am disappointed that the government have put these in their broader industrial relations reform bill, because they really should have been dealt with separately in the first place anyway. We shouldn't have had to go through what we went through this morning in suspending standing orders to allow the debate ion this to occur. The government should have just brought them through discretely to enable their passage quite efficiently. But I think it's pretty obvious to anyone that's following this that they were put into the broader industrial relations reform bill so that it would just put greater pressure, particularly upon the crossbench and, indeed, the entire Senate to try to get it through because they're urgent and they need to happen, as a way to carry through the more contentious elements of the broader bill and certainly the elements of the bill that really shouldn't be there at all—for example, the union delegates rights. Those elements were to commence on 1 January, I understand. It's a demonstration that that's really what this is actually about, that this is just about repaying the debt that the Labor Party have got to the unions, back to those that put them here in the first place, and so that's really what this is about.

Senator Sheldon spoke and he conceded that the broader bill is complex. We certainly are in agreement there, and I think everyone acknowledges that it is comprehensive as well, as he also said That's right. He acknowledged the comprehensive nature of it and the complexity, which has justified the need to have a really solid and comprehensive examination of the bill. I at this point want to thank all members of that committee for the way that we've been able to go through that inquiry while we're coming at it from very different angles. The way that that committee is able to operate, going through some very complex issues—contentious issues in many cases. We don't speak over the top of each other. We're civil with each other. We get through the questions and we allow each other to do that. I commend Senator Sheldon for the way that he chairs that committee. So he's right to talk about the fact that it has been a good inquiry, that there has been and continues to be good examination of the issues.

But I've got to say that throughout the inquiry not once have I heard anyone raise any issue with these particular bills that Senators Lambie and Pocock are bringing forward, which undermines the argument that has been made by the government that we really shouldn't be doing it in this way and that we should just essentially pass the closing the loopholes bill substantively and quickly. Senator Sheldon also said that it's unusual that we would be dealing with these bills now while there's still an inquiry going on into the closing the loopholes bill. But, as I said, no evidence has come forward that would suggest in any way that there needs to be a pause or there needs to be further examination of the parts of the closing the loopholes bill that these bills address. No-one has brought any evidence on that and no-one has come and asked questions that would even question the validity of these bills and whether or not they are going to meet the needs they address.

Senator Sheldon said there may have to be amendments to the parts of the closing the loopholes bill that these bills address. Again, we haven't seen any evidence that would suggest that is the case. In any case, even if there were, those amendments could still be considered at a later time. We amend bills in this place all the time, so it's not right to use that as the reason for why we shouldn't be doing what we're doing here today.

As I said, the vast majority of witnesses that appeared before or made a submission to the inquiry—there have been 167 submissions to the overall inquiry—have indicated their support for carving out the less contentious provisions of the bill. That's exactly what we're doing here today, because these bills relate to silica related diseases and to discrimination against people suffering family or domestic violence or using redundancy payments for the same purpose.

During the Sydney public hearing, Senator David Pocock, who gave a contribution earlier today, asked the Australian Federal Police Association when they knew that the presumptive legislation—something the association have been advocating for some time—would be included in the omnibus bill. The association's response was that they didn't know that it was going to be part of the omnibus bill. So they were consulted on this very important issue for them and they were given assurances—from what we got from their evidence—that this was an important issue that the government wanted to deal with, but at no time were they ever told that this was going to be caught up in, I believe, the cynical way that these bills have been caught up in the overall omnibus bill. This is despite the government saying they've had extensive consultation with these stakeholders. The association were not told at any time that this was going to be caught up in the omnibus bill.

This is why it's important that the presumptive legislation be passed as quickly as possible. There is no legitimate reason why it's caught up. These non-contentious provisions need to pass so that measures, like those covered in the presumptive legislation, can commence as soon as possible. Those measures would commence on 1 January—in just a month and a half's time.

The same applies to the other non-controversial provisions of the bill. Regarding silica safety and silica related diseases, the Master Builders said only a couple of days ago:

Amendments to the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency Act 2013 alter the functions of ASEA to include coordinating action on silica safety and silica-related diseases.

We support ASEA being handed this additional role. Master Builders considers that ASEA has made a significant and positive difference in discharging its existing remit to improve the level of asbestos-related awareness, coordination and safety outcomes.

They were urging the government to pass these bills and to support these bills. So there is wide support for the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency) Bill 2023. It's disappointing that it was included as part of the overall omnibus bill, because it is a necessary examination of those issues raised by the Master Builders, and its inclusion in the omnibus bill is potentially delaying the commencement of the provisions in the legislation before the Senate today.

But, through the work of Senators Lambie and David Pocock in bringing these matters before the Senate, we have the chance to vote on these aspects of the government's bill immediately, today. In doing so—if these bills are supported—we'll be able to see these non-contentious but very important provisions support the individuals and families who need them.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed, they are non-contentious but important, yet we find ourselves in this somewhat politicised environment debating whose reforms get to be brought forward at this point and whose get left behind.

Hon. Senators:

Honourable senators interjecting—

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Pratt, please resume your seat. We've just sat through a contribution by Senator O'Sullivan during which there were no interjections. The same courtesy, in abiding by the standing orders, which say that interjections are disorderly, is to be given to Senator Pratt. As I said earlier today, if senators wish to make a contribution they should put themselves on the speaking list.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam President. I respect the chamber and the way it engages in these issues. We on this side know that, when it comes to reforms as part of our closing loopholes legislation, there are inevitably a great many issues on which we and those on the opposition side will disagree. Quite naturally, that puts the crossbench in the spotlight as to where these reforms are headed. So it's perhaps not surprising that we should be a little concerned that the crossbench have just plucked up the baseline of issues upon which this chamber can agree, when, in our view, there are other issues just as important to the future health, prosperity, workplace security and safety of Australian workers.

In looking at the provisions of these bills, I can say that yes, on the one hand they're simple and straightforward. On the other hand, are they a panacea for workers who are made redundant and miss out on their workplace entitlements? Will they fix the loophole whereby a business can downsize into a small business and then, when it's found to be insolvent, escape paying its entitlements? No, they're not really a panacea for these issues, and I'll explain why.

The simple fact is that these days most of these entitlements are paid out by government under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee. In these situations there is a problem for people who are made redundant when, over time, an entity goes from being a big business to being a small business and downsizes along the way. It's actually quite uncommon for that big business to have paid out on everyone's redundancies along the way and to have missed the boat on just the few people who remain. That's because, frankly, these days there's a mode of economic operation whereby a big business, when it's about to go insolvent and is working through those issues, does its best to offload its redundancy liabilities onto the government as early as it can, because that's how it can maintain the equity in its insolvent business as it moves into those stages.

I've got plenty of examples where that has proven to be the case. Take, for example, the case of Ovato's printing division. In situations like this, you see big business exploiting the Fair Entitlements Guarantee. You can also see big business abusing the Fair Entitlements Guarantee. You also see businesses applying to the Fair Work Commission to have the amount of redundancy pay already reduced in order to keep their business as a going concern.

The point I want to make to the crossbench is: yes, there is a little loophole here that needs to be fixed for when a big business becomes a small business, in that those people in those small businesses will no longer have the same entitlements under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee that they would otherwise have had. It's not the big business not paying them out; it's the government under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee paying them out. These are all things that flow down through this legislation that actually need to be looked at holistically in the context of our IR reforms. That is because our businesses negotiate agreements with their workers, especially a big business that might turn into a small business later on. They find plenty of other loopholes to get around these things, believe you me! We will close this one loophole, but big businesses get away with doing things like cancelling an award They cancel the award so that the redundancy entitlements disappear overnight, so that the 13 years of redundancy entitlement you might have accrued in a workplace like Ovato mean nothing. It's not because they've gone from being a big business to a small business; it simply means nothing because big business has found a loophole inside our employment laws to do workers out of their entitlements.

We've debated these issues over and over again. Do you remember when we amended the Corporations Act? We amended the Corporations Act to say, 'Big business can't restructure itself and trade away someone's redundancy entitlements.' We amended the Corporations Act to ensure that that be the case. Those provisions of the Corporations Act to prevent business from doing that have never been used because they're completely ineffective. There was a big song and dance: 'We will never let this happen again.' But, time and time again, we see workers done out of their hard-earned entitlements, and we see government now legislated to pick up the pieces under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee. Government is picking up the pieces after big business did over workers. At the time the Fair Entitlements Guarantee came in place, big business just happened to be mates of the former government, and they didn't want the stain on them of being seen to be walking away from workers.

So here we are today in this place. Sure, this will pass. It's probably a good thing, but I really just want to remind the crossbench that we need to continue to work through these issues in good faith and not leave people behind on all the other mounting and important issues.

We've got a much bigger job to do here, and that will take our time and attention. Sure, let's do the low-hanging fruit, let's do the easy things that are no-brainers. But let's not lose sight of what's really going on here and who this really panders to in terms of the labour dynamics in our nation. We need workers to be able to come home from work safely and take home a decent pay packet for a fair day's work because we have big problems in this area. We have big problems because the bargaining table is not fair. There are so many other loopholes that we must fix in order to achieve the outcomes we need. We are not going to fix redundancies and unfairness in entitlements in these uncertain economic times when and more businesses are likely to go bankrupt. These bills don't fix those things. We need comprehensive, holistic industrial relations reform to put our nation on the right footing.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Lambie and Senator Pocock, I congratulate you for bringing forward this set of bills, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Small Business Redundancy Exemption) Bill 2023, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Protections Against Discrimination) Bill 2023, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency) Bill 2023 and the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (First Responders) Bill 2023. You really did bell the cat, and we just heard from Senator Pratt the belling of the cat. The fact is that these bills are low-hanging fruit because I suspect it is very clear that the entire Senate supports them. We shouldn't take anyone's vote for granted, but it seems as though the entire Senate will support these bills through this chamber in a very quick fashion.

They are low-hanging fruit, but this legislation also bells the cat on the wedge the Labor Party was attempting to impose on the chamber through the omnibus IR bill. I ask those listening: what have the very important provisions to do with first responders in these bills got to do with so-called same job, same pay? Absolutely nothing. What have the very important provisions to do with silica dust in these bills, which we will pass today, got to do with casual workers? Absolutely nothing. These provisions were there to make it more difficult for this chamber to address these very important issues. They were grouped into an omnibus bill by the Labor government to make it more difficult for this chamber to deal with this legislation and put pressure on the crossbench and the opposition. That was the entire design, Senator Pratt.

The fact is, as Senator Cash so rightly pointed out, that the vast bulk of the provisions in this legislation don't even come into effect until after the normal reporting date and consideration in this chamber next year. The rest of the bill, the more controversial aspects of the bill, will in the normal course of events be considered well before the implementation date of all those measures. The only one that is scheduled to come into effect earlier concerns union workplace delegates—surprise, surprise! The Labor government through this omnibus bill is doing the bidding of the unions. That was clear on day one. The other provisions in the bill, the parts of the omnibus bill that have been split out, very sensibly by the crossbench today, deal with matters that are completely unrelated to defending the union movement: giving the union movement new power, giving the union movement new powers of entry to workplaces in this country, giving the union movement new access via chain agreements to training levies and health and safety levies.

I mean, the reality of what the government was doing here was very transparent. I congratulate the crossbench for seeing through what the government was doing and I congratulate them for taking these non-controversial parts of the omnibus bill— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

Bills read a second time.