Ash Ambihaipahar (Barton, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026, and I do so with a particular sense of purpose. Before I came to this place, I spent more than 10 years in the workplace relations and employment law trenches. I worked for the Electrical Trades Union, standing beside electricians and apprentices who had been shortchanged, underpaid or dismissed without cause. I also worked with the Nurses and Midwives Association, representing nurses working double shifts in understaffed wards who came to me pretty much exhausted and afraid of what would happen if they did speak up. I also worked for the Australian Hotels Association and their legal firm, advising employers in the hospitality sector—some were small, family-run operations who were trying to navigate a system that can feel complex and overwhelming. I regularly appeared in front of the Fair Work Commission as well as the Federal Circuit Court. I say this not to pad out my biography but more in relation to this particular bill not being an academic one. Every provision in it corresponds to something I have seen with my own eyes, experienced in real time and felt the weight of on behalf of real people.

Let me start with the Fair Work Commission, because I think we sometimes forget what an extraordinary institution it is and what we ask of it. When I was appearing in the commission proceedings as a young lawyer—whether it was a general protections application for an ETU member who had been sacked after raising a safety concern or an unfair dismissal matter for a hospitality business owner—I saw firsthand how important it was that the commission could operate efficiently. When a worker is dismissed, every week that passes without resolution is another week of financial stress, anxiety and uncertainty. And for employers, too—unresolved disputes hanging over a business creates uncertainty. It adds to costs and impacts operations significantly not only financially but also through the added pressure for other team members in the business. The commission's workload has grown substantially, and the bill before us identifies several new pressures: the rising prevalence of paid agents making applications of very questionable merit; the emergence of artificial intelligence being used to generate applications that are misconceived or frivolous; and consequences of the Milford decision, which has imposed significant additional procedural burdens on the commission that were never intended.

I want to speak to each of these, because each reflects something I recognise from practice. On the Milford decision—when I was appearing in general protections matters, one of the things I valued about that jurisdiction was that it was nimble. The general protection provisions of the Fair Work Act exist to protect some of the most fundamental rights of a worker: the right to exercise a workplace right, the right to take industrial action and the right to be free from adverse action. These are serious protections, but the commission's ability to deal efficiently with these matters has been disrupted by the unintended consequences of the Milford decision, which now requires the commission to address the jurisdictional issues before getting to the substance of the actual dispute. This bill corrects that, and it is the right thing to do.

On the question of artificial intelligence and misconceived applications, this is a genuinely new challenge. The bill's response is measured and very sensible. In my time at the bar table, I encountered applications that lacked merit, and that is inevitable in any legal system. Not every claim succeeds—and not every claim should—but there is a meaningful difference between a claim that fails on merits and a claim that was never a legitimate claim at all. The commission's current powers to dismiss applications that are misconceived or lacking in substance are being tested by the volume and the character of some of the applications now being generated, sometimes with the assistance of AI tools that can produce plausible-looking documents without any genuine legal foundation beneath them. The bill broadens the grounds on which the commission may dismiss such applications and, critically, enables the commission to prevent vexatious litigants from making further applications.

This is a proportionate response. It protects the integrity of the system. It protects respondents, often small businesses, from the time and cost of defending claims that should never have been brought. It frees up the commission's capacity to focus on matters that genuinely require its attention. I want to emphasise that strengthening the commission's ability to deal with vexatious or misconceived applications is not about limiting workers' access to justice; it is about protecting that access. It's ensuring that a system is not so clogged with bad-faith or AI generated noise that genuine claims cannot be heard. The workers I represented deserved a commission that had the time and resources to properly hear their cases, and so do the workers of today.

The bill also removes a Howard-era prohibition on the Commonwealth considering whether to preference employers with enterprise agreements when making funding and procurement decisions, and I want to spend a moment on this because I think it goes to something fundamental about what enterprise agreements are and what they represent. In my experience, I've been able to see both sides of this table. A genuine enterprise agreement, bargained in good faith, is one of the most effective mechanisms we have for delivering fair wages, secure jobs and workplace flexibility simultaneously. When I worked at the ETU, we bargained enterprise agreements that gave electricians certainty about their rosters, their allowances and other employment conditions. When I worked at the AHA, we helped employers, particularly small businesses, use enterprise agreements to structure their workforce in ways that made business sense while providing workers with above-award conditions and attracting skilled employees.

I must highlight that I heard the contributions from the member for Wentworth, and I refute some of those bold assertions by the member for Wentworth. I've had really good experiences of the use of EBAs, particularly for small businesses. Enterprise agreements work because they require genuine engagement between employers and employees. They are transparent, they are registered, they are enforceable and they create a shared stake in the success of that enterprise.

The previous government's prohibition on the Commonwealth considering enterprise agreements in procurement decisions was a peculiar difference, a legislative restraint that prevented the Australian government from using its own purchasing power to support the very outcomes it said it valued. This bill removes that prohibition. It does not mandate that the Commonwealth must preference enterprise agreement employers; it simply removes the legal barrier to doing so where appropriate. The Secure Australian Jobs Code will develop the policy framework for how and when such preferencing occurs, and that is the right sequencing: remove the legal obstacle now and develop the policy settings carefully.

The bill also contains provisions supporting the National Construction Industry Forum and clarifying aspects of the CFMEU administration's reporting obligations. The construction industry has had troubled periods, and I think it's fair to say that is something that we can agree on. But the tripartite National Construction Industry Forum, bringing together governments, employers and unions, represents a serious attempt to chart a different course, one that is based on lawful behaviour, genuine cooperation and a shared commitment to a construction industry that is productive, safe and fair.

Minor but meaningful amendments in this bill clarifying travel allowances for NCIF members, updating ministerial membership to reflect mechanism-of-government changes and adding the Minister for Skills and Training as a permanent member reflect the genuine work the forum is doing and the importance that government places on it. The skills component of the forum's Blueprint for the future is not incidental; it is very much central. A construction industry that invests in training, apprenticeships and the development of its workforce is one that can be genuinely productive and genuinely safe.

Finally, I just want to speak to the road transport provisions because I think they are something very much overlooked in the broader discussion of this bill, and they should not be. We know truckies occupy a unique position in our economy and in our national life. They are the people who move our goods, stock our shelves and keep our supply chains running. They are often owner-operators or small contractors. They are their own boss in name but are often subject to commercial pressures that leave them with little real bargaining power. The cost structures they face are genuinely different from other industries'. With fuel, maintenance and insurance compliance, the out-of-pocket expenses of running a truck are significant and ongoing.

The existing high-income threshold that determines access to the Fair Work Commission's unfair contract jurisdiction was designed for employees, not for contractors who may have a turnover that looks substantial on paper but a take-home income that tells a very different story. So this bill will allow a new road transport industry high-income threshold to be developed in consultation, one that actually reflects the economic realities of this industry. I think of contractors, small operators, who have taken on work under contracts that gave them very little protection and found themselves locked in arrangements that were generally unfair but with no practical avenue to challenge them. This reform changes that. It says to those contractors that they deserve access to the same quick and accessible process that others can use to challenge an unfair contract.

When I left practice and came to this place, I brought with me a conviction that the workplace relations system is one of the most significant things a government manages. It shapes the conditions under which millions of Australians spend a third of their waking lives. It determines whether work is secure or precarious, fairly rewarded or exploited, safe or dangerous. This bill is definitely not a headline-grabbing piece of legislation, but it is exactly the kind of careful, evidence based, consultatively developed reform that makes a system that works better and that ensures the institutions and mechanisms we rely on are fit for purpose.

I think of workers I represented—electricians and nurses. I think of hospitality and hotel employers I advised and supported who wanted to do the right thing and needed the system to help them do it. I think this bill is for all of them. It is for the Fair Work Commission, which needs these tools to manage its workload and deliver timely justice, it's for the workers, who need the commission to hear their cases on merit without unnecessary delay, it is for the truckies, who deserve a fair go when they challenge an unfair contract, and it is for the principle that government procurement, the spending of public money, should, where appropriate, promote the standards we want to set across the economy.

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