Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Commission will assess those matters and the other matters that it's required to assess. On this side, we place great confidence in the independence and the capacity of the Fair Work Commission. Over the last few decades, I think the historical record demonstrates that we treat that independence seriously. You'll find that, when Labor was in government the last two times, we took industry and the industrial relations community seriously. We took expertise and independence seriously. You'll find that people with great capacity from the trade union movement, from employer associations, from the community sector and from the legal fraternity were appointed by previous Labor governments, with an ethos of independence and a commitment to the public interest. That wasn't demonstrated by the last government. I think 11 out of 44 appointments were not friends of the previous government and from employer associations. The last government treated the Fair Work Commission the same way it treated the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. That has undermined industry's confidence in the independence of that institution. But on this side we put some faith in the capacity of the commission and its full bench to work through these issues in a sensible, pragmatic kind of way.