Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to remark upon the motion moved by the Minister for Jobs and Industrial Relations because I think the House does deserve some context. The Fair Work Amendment (Repeal of 4 Yearly Reviews and Other Measures) Bill 2017 was debated in the other place and amendments were successfully voted upon. Of course, if those amendments were accepted here, they would be incorporated into the bill. Labor supported and, indeed, moved those amendments. We still support the tenor and the intent of the amendments; however, the government was in a position not to support them.

However, both the government and the opposition support all other provisions of the bill. In order to ensure that the provisions of the original bill are enacted and, therefore, to allow the government to introduce this matter without having to debate and have the amendments considered, the opposition have accepted that we won't insist on the amendments, even though they were successful in the other place.

The opposition still hold the view that parliament is in a position to restore penalty rates as of 30 June last year but there are other ways for us to consider this matter and continue to put our case that workers should not be deprived of income. In that vein, we support the motion of the minister.

We do think the technical issues have become a problem for parties before the commission. We do believe the commission needs to deal with circumstances that go to the conduct of commissioners. We do accept that the annual review for the modern award is no longer an appropriate approach to take to deal with awards. I also add—and I think the minister would agree—that both employers and unions support the provisions of this bill. To that extent, it is a bipartisan position. I needed to place on the record our ongoing support for the amendments, but we'll seek other avenues to pursue that.

Question agreed to.

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