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

Section 186, which you refer to, falls within the part of the bill that deals with enterprise agreement approvals. Overall, what we're seeking to do is simplify the process and remove unnecessary complexity for workers and employers by simplifying the agreement preapproval requirements. As to why we're doing this, there's consensus that the preapproval requirements for enterprise agreements are onerous, complex and unnecessarily prescriptive. This can be a disincentive to bargain and can sometimes have significant consequences for employers and workers where an agreement was been reached but cannot be approved because of a procedural error during the course of the bargaining process.

As to what the amendment involves and the proposal involves, it would replace certain preapproval requirements with a broad requirement that the agreement has been genuinely agreed to by relevant employees. A government amendment retains the existing requirement that employers must take all reasonable steps to ensure that the terms of the agreement and the effect of the terms are explained to employees in an appropriate manner, taking into account their particular circumstances and needs. The Fair Work Commission must also be satisfied that the employees requested to approve the agreement by voting for it have a sufficient interest in the terms of the agreement and are sufficiently representative having regard to the employees the agreement is expressed to cover. The Fair Work Commission will issue a statement of principles on genuine agreement to provide guidance to employers on how to ensure an enterprise agreement has been genuinely agreed to by employees.

I suspect that might be something of interest to you and the people who've been in touch with you as to what genuine agreement amounts to, and that's something that the Fair Work Commission will issue a statement of principles on. That document, when it's issued, will play a significant role in ensuring the changes do not erode employee safeguards. A government amendment also provides that, before an employer requests employees approve a multi-enterprise agreement by voting for it, the employer must obtain written agreement to the making of the request from each bargaining representative for the agreement that is an employee organisation. The government wants to ensure that employers are not unreasonably prevented from putting agreements to a vote, and that's why a further proposed government amendment would permit the Fair Work Commission to order, on application by a bargaining representative, that an employer be permitted to put a multi-enterprise agreement to a vote where employee organisations' failure to provide their agreement is unreasonable in the circumstances.