Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

As I said yesterday, the Attorney-General has indicated that he will issue a discussion paper on the possible review of the Small Business Fair Dismissal Code. We know that the code, of course, arose from Labor's Forward with Fairness policies that they took to the 2007 election and were ultimately recognised in the Fair Work Act. When the Fair Work Bill was introduced, the then minister, Minister Gillard, said:

The bill provides a new scheme of unfair dismissal protections to ensure good employees are protected from being dismissed unfairly, while enabling employers to manage under-performing employees with fairness and with confidence.

I understand that the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman has reviewed a range of decisions and reports on the effectiveness of the code and indicated that the code is not achieving its original intent. There are a number of other points about its original intent that I could go into. But what the discussion paper will canvass is the views of employees, employers and their representatives on how the code might be amended to provide clearer guidance to small business employees and employers on the fairness of decisions to dismiss employees.