Insight,

Parts of the Government’s IR reform package pass parliament

08 December 2023

In a surprise move, the Federal Government has now reached agreement with key crossbench senators, David Pocock and Jacquie Lambie, to divide the Closing Loopholes Bill into two. This has had the effect that some parts of the Closing Loopholes Bill have been passed by parliament yesterday (and will shortly become law), while the remainder of the Bill will continue to be subject to a Senate inquiry due to report by 1 February 2024 and further consultation and debate.

While some of the parts of the Closing loopholes Bill passed yesterday were previously introduced in four separate bills by those crossbench senators, as being less controversial reforms that had wide support, the measures passed yesterday go beyond what had been contained in those separate bills.

The measures passed by Federal parliament yesterday include:

Change effective from the later of 1 January 2025 and the declaration of a Voluntary Small Business Wage Compliance Code	introducing a new criminal offence for wage theft and the non-payment of superannuation contributions;
Changes effective from the day after the changes receive assent	the ‘same job, same pay’ measures granting the Fair Work Commission (FWC) the power to make orders protecting bargained wages in enterprise agreements from being undercut by the use of 'labour hire' workers who are paid less than those minimum rates; amending the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (Act) to include a new protection for employees and prospective employees by recognising being subject to family and domestic violence as a protected attribute within the Act’s anti-discrimination provisions; amending the exemption to the obligation to make redundancy payments under the “small business redundancy exemption”, so that employees of large companies are properly covered where those companies downsize due to insolvency; expanding the functions of the re-named Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency to include coordinating action on silica safety and silica-related diseases; amending the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (Cth) to introduce a rebuttable presumption that post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by specified first responders (now including Australian Border Force employees and with a discretion to widen the existing employee classes) was contributed to, to a significant degree, by their employment; and
Change effective from 1 July 2024	introducing a new offence of industrial manslaughter in the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth).

Some of the other important proposed changes – including changes to casual employees and the introduction of safeguards for ‘employee-like’ workers in the gig economy and road transport sectors - remain subject to further lobbying and the current Senate inquiry and report back by 1 February 2024.

As part of their agreement with the Federal government, senators David Pocock and Jacquie Lambie also secured:

changes to the Act to assist officials assisting a health and safety representative (on request under a provision of a State or Territory work health and safety law) to enter a workplace;
additional resourcing from the government for the Fair Work Ombudsman to help small businesses understand and comply with their obligations under the Act;
a commitment to initiate an independent review of the Comcare scheme aimed at improving outcomes for injured workers; and
support to amend the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (Cth) to address how independent medical assessments are used. Those changes will require Comcare to prepare a guide for arranging rehabilitation assessments and requiring examinations, to support ethical, transparent and accountable decision-making in relation to arranging a rehabilitation assessment and medical examinations for an employee.

For a comprehensive summary of all of the changes proposed in the Closing Loopholes Bill, including recent amendments proposed by the government itself and as agreed with the Greens, please refer to our previous article: https://www.kwm.com/au/en/insights/latest-thinking/political-compromise-changes-to-the-governments-ir-reform-package.html

Our national Employee Relations and Safety team will continue to keep you up-to-date on all the latest changes to the Closing Loopholes Bill.