Industrial legislation in Australia in 2018

Abstract

It has been a quiet year like last year for the passing of federal industrial legislation (due to a number of factors, including the political turmoil of the federal coalition government and their lack of an overall labour law reform agenda). This article examines key federal industrial legislative developments including the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth). The article identifies that the federal Act contains much weaker compliance measures than the counterpart New South Wales legislation also passed in 2018 – the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (NSW). Also, although the Coalition government has attempted to continue to prosecute its case for further union governance measures, this agenda has been less successful than in previous years, with key government Bills not yet passed by the Parliament. The stagnation in the federal Parliament continues to motivate certain State Parliaments to address worker exploitation, and the article goes on to examine key State industrial legislation passed in 2018 including the Victorian labour hire licensing statute. In light of the continuing dominant position of the federal Labor opposition in opinion polls and an impending federal election in 2019, the article concludes by briefly considering the federal Labor opposition's agenda for industrial legislation.

Industrial legislation in Australia in 2019

“…The bill seeks to regulate trade union governance through criminal processes and sanctions, implementing Recommendations 36--38 of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption (TURC). The bill was discussed by the authors in the past two annual issues of this journal (Rawling and Schofield-Georgeson, 2018, 2019). While certain sections of the bill have been renumbered in the latest iteration, its content remains mostly unchanged (subject to amendments discussed below).…”

“…Industrial Relations Minister, Porter, has written to his state and territory counterparts to begin consultation over the scheme (WE, 2019i). As reported in 2018 (Rawling and Schofield-Georgeson), state governments in Queensland and South Australia enacted labour hire registration legislative schemes in 2017, with Victoria establishing a scheme in 2018 (Rawling and Schofield-Georgeson, 2019). South Australia’s Marshall Liberal Government has introduced into the South Australian Parliament the Labour Hire Licensing Repeal Bill 2018 (SA) to abolish the South Australian scheme (established by the prior Labor Government).…”

“…As reported in Australian industrial legislation in 2018 (Rawling and Schofield-Georgeson, 2019), the NSW and Federal Parliaments passed modern slavery legislation in 2018. In July 2019, the NSW Coalition Government announced that it would delay the implementation of its Modern Slavery Act, instead referring it to a NSW Legislative Council committee (WE, 2019o).…”

“…The NSW legislation was intended to regulate certain corporate entities that the federal legislation would not (entities with a turnover of $50m – the federal legislation only applies to entities with an annual revenue of $100m). Unlike the federal legislation, the NSW legislation included civil penalties and an anti-slavery commissioner (Rawling and Schofield-Georgeson, 2019).…”

Australian industrial relations in 2018: Inequality, policy stagnation and a brewing storm

“…The Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations indicated that, should Labor form government after the 2019 election, it might be open to industry-wide bargaining (McCauley, 2018). As noted by Rawling and Schofield-Georgeson (2019) in their review of industrial legislation, the Australian Labor Party pledged at its December national conference to facilitate 'multi-employer collective bargaining'. On the other hand, employer associations were pushing for reform of the industrial relations system to one that encourages collaboration, is less complex and rigid, and less centralised (Thornthwaite and Sheldon, 2019).…”