James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations. Will the Attorney outline to the House why it is important for the Morrison government to provide a stable and certain approach to considering changes in industrial relations which would make life better for businesses and workers in key sectors of the Australian economy, and is the Attorney aware of any alternative approaches?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. The member is aware, as I am and as the Prime Minister is, that, amongst the many contentious issues inside the industrial relations system, the system itself is actually full of a range of practical problems that are looking for practical solutions, and, as the member is aware, industrial relations plays a critically important and central role in contributing to the strength of the Australian economy. As the member is also aware, the Morrison government has undertaken to clearly identify ways in which we can increase productivity and make the IR system more efficient and fairer for both employers and employees, the idea being that we need to find ways, where there is a consensus that can be built around policy changes, that would put upward pressure on wages and make businesses stronger and help them to employ more people. In discussing just one of those potential areas for improvement, I might use some words spoken by the former Leader of the Opposition before the last election, when the member for Maribyrnong said:

We want to look at the ability for companies to negotiate with unions for extended greenfields agreements, project life, you can go to the global investors who will back it.

That is a very, very good idea. Enterprise agreements are a critical part of the system. They allow flexibility and they're particularly important in the mining and resources sector, particularly in Western Australia and Queensland. In the last parliament, there was a decline in EAs because of the fact that many of them were being invalidated by minor technical issues. Literally it was the case that enterprise agreements were being invalidated if they had a mistaken document stapled to the back of them on submission. This was causing immense problems—inefficiency, waste, cost—for business. In the last parliament, we brought in legislation so that it was the case—

Mr Brendan O'Connor interjecting—

Indeed, and I congratulate you for supporting it. This is about finding other things that we can do together to make the system more efficient. That has definitely worked to make the system more efficient. The number of days that it was taking to conclude an enterprise agreement has dropped from 76 in the last seven months to 34. That saves business money and helps business become more efficient.

But when we have these big projects, if it is the case, as we have suggested in a recent discussion paper, we can find consensus about how to have enterprise agreements for the life of those projects. These are projects like Woodside's Burrup Hub natural gas project, which will create on average 4,000 jobs a year, every year for decades. These are the projects that are more likely to get across the line from banking feasibility stage to reality if we can provide them with the ability to negotiate an enterprise agreement for the life of the projects. This is one of two discussion papers, the other being about how to properly define wage theft. And we look very much forward to talking about these with the opposition. (Time expired)