Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

enator WATT (—) (): Senator Cash, as we were discussing yesterday, I'm not going to categorically say what an independent Fair Work Commission will or will not find when a case is brought to it. But it is certainly the intention of the government to, if you like, fix the Officeworks-type situation. Again, I direct you to the supplementary explanatory memorandum, paragraph 28, which says:

The FWC would no longer be required to consider hypothetical working arrangements that are not reasonably foreseeable, given the nature of the particular enterprise, and employers—

This is the important part—

would accordingly no longer need to provide undertakings in relation to such arrangements (as occurred, for example, with an undertaking about the holding of a liquor licence and work in a cool room, despite the enterprise not serving liquor or having a cool room—

And there's a direct reference in the explanatory memorandum to the Officeworks decision.