Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

by requiring the Fair Work Commission to take into account that workers may work on more than one platform at a time—multi-apping—and consider the impacts standards would have on users of platform services and on business costs.

The amendments require the Fair Work Commission to publish a notice of intent before setting minimum standards for employee-like workers and to genuinely engage with affected parties. Further guardrails will provide greater certainty. The amendments limit standards relating to penalty rates, payments before and between accepting engagements, and minimum periods of engagement to where it is appropriate for the type of work performed. The amendments provide further assurance that employee-like workers to whom a minimum standards order applies are not employees of any person in relation to that work.

We're also ensuring that the new definition of employment commences on 1 July 2024, the same time as the employee-like reforms. The amendment provides an important new protection for employee-like workers against being unfairly removed from a digital labour platform. It will ensure that legitimate management action, including temporary suspension, can occur where there is a reasonable belief of fraud or health and safety concerns. In certain circumstances a platform may suspend a worker's access to a platform for a period of up to seven business days.

On delegates rights, the small business definition had the term 'small business' rather than 'small business employer', and that's being fixed. On the protected action ballot conferences, this amendment clarifies that only the bargaining representative or representatives who apply for a protected action ballot order must attend the conciliation conference in order for subsequent employee claim action to be protected. It also clarifies that employer bargaining representatives must attend the conference for any employer response action to be protected.

There's an amendment to the Coal Long Service Leave Corporation board of directors provision, simply to update the withdrawal of the mining and energy division from the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining And Energy Union. On the Financial Framework (Supplementary Powers) Act silica awareness-raising activities, this is a technical amendment to clarify the relationship between the new functions that will be conferred on ASEA and the Commonwealth's powers under the Financial Framework (Supplementary Powers) Act 1997 in relation to silica awareness-raising activities.

On the Family and Injured Workers Advisory Committee, this amendment to the Work Health and Safety Act establishes a new Family and Injured Workers Advisory Committee, which will provide advice to me, to future ministers and to the Commonwealth work health and safety regulators on the support needs of those affected by serious workplace incidents and to help inform the development of relevant policies and strategies. The establishment of this committee follows ongoing discussions I have had with families affected by a workplace fatality, including courageous advocates whom members will have met with, like Kay Catanzariti, Dr Lana Cormie and Michael Garrels. Thank you for your tireless commitment to reform. We are committed to taking action to prevent tragic accidents from occurring but, if they do, to ensuring that we have the right supports in place.

I thank all members for their engagement on the bill. In short, other than the committee, this is largely a set of technical amendments to the bill, including the three areas in consultation with the gig platforms, in consultation with the hotels association and in consultation with AREEA to make sure that the policy intent of the original bill has been met.

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