Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Readers of the amendments will know that the Greens have an extraordinarily similar amendment to the universal dismissal amendment that Senator Murray has moved on behalf of the Democrats. We are also moving to get rid of the concept of operational reasons for dismissal.

We will be supporting this amendment; it is extremely similar to our amendment. The declared intent of the government is to deal with the issues of unfair dismissal; we do not agree with them taking it down to 15 employees. I think the Greens have been on the record on many occasions saying we support universal unfair dismissal rights, hence our amendment. We will be supporting the Democrats amendment to take it to 15 employees and, if that is unsuccessful, then to 20. We realise that it is better than the current situation, although our preferred position is that it applies, as the Democrats amendment says here, ‘regardless of numbers of employees in a business’.

Senator Murray is right: it came up on a number of occasions during the Senate inquiry. It is clearly the government’s policy to deal with and change unfair dismissal laws. We would urge the government to do it now, rather than leave it until the substantive bill.