Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I move amendments (1) and (2) together:

That the following words be added after the words 90 days:   ."; and

(1)parts 1, 2 and 3 of the bill are added to the inquiry; and

(2)calls on the Government to change the definition of a small business from 15 to 100 employees".

The purpose of this amendment is to amend section 23 of the Fair Work Act with the effect of changing the definition of a small business. Currently, section 23 defines a small business as a business comprising of 15 employees or less. Casuals are not included in this count unless there is a systematic or regular nature to their employment. For most businesses this would mean most, if not all, of their casual the employees would be included in the employee count for the purposes of defining a small business.

My amendment seeks to change the number of employees that define a small business from 15 to 100. The rationale for this change is simple. Businesses with fewer than 100 staff do not have the human resources departments, they do not have the pay roster, they simply do not have capacity to expend resources—financial and human—to negotiate enterprise bargaining agreements that this bill will potentially force upon them. Without this change we are relegating the thousands of mum-and-dad businesses and entrepreneurial enterprises to an immediate future of costly union-led negotiations. These businesses, many of which are still trying to recover from COVID-19, cannot afford the time or the financial resources.

What we're looking at here is staff with a threshold of 15. Now, let me tell you: right across Australia, this is going to capture fruit-and-vegetable stores; this is going to capture independent service stations; this is going to capture independent and small supermarkets, IGAs. This bill is, I think, unwittingly pitting mum-and-dad operators against unions.

Let me tell you what small businesses are doing on their Saturday night. They don't have HR departments. They are doing the payroll themselves on a Saturday night or a Sunday. They simply cannot afford this.

What's going to happen to those businesses that have 15 or 16 staff, or perhaps even up to 20, is they're going to contract their staffing numbers to make sure that they have fewer than 15. That's going to mean job losses for those 15-year-olds and 16-year-olds that are working at the fruit and veg store every Sunday because on Saturday they're playing sport. This bill is really concerning, so I'm trying to remedy it in some way to take small business out of it. This government is setting up small business for a David and Goliath battle, where David is the small business and Goliath is the unions. I'm afraid that in this contest David will not be the victor.

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