Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Cameron, again, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way an agreement process actually works. You will go into a negotiation between a minimum of two parties. If there is more than one union, then there will be unions and there will be more than two parties. I would hope that for the majority of times you will actually reach agreement and you will be able to proceed with the project and employees will be able to come and work on the project. But in the event that you cannot reach agreement, there is a mechanism that after that six-month period a proposed agreement can go to the Fair Work Commission and the Fair Work Commission would say, 'You've agreed to 95 of these conditions', or whatever you wanted to agree to, and then it would have a look at the agreement that has now been submitted for approval. It would factor it against all of the criteria that we have been through tonight, quite literally ad nauseam, including—and for me this is the key difference, and I am sure for employees out there this is the key difference—that it is not just the better off overall test that is currently reflected in your legislation. We require the Fair Work Commission to look at prevailing pay and conditions as an agreement approval criterion. That is a good thing for employees.