We informed you yesterday about our efforts in Parliament House on Monday around the new anti-self-employed industrial relations Bill. We called it a ‘spaghetti bowl’ of legislation.
The government had wanted to have the legislation passed before Christmas. However, according to media reports, the Coalition and the independent Senators have this evening voted to push consideration of the Bill out to February of next year.
The Senators have declared that the Bill requires considerable time to understand it. This is not surprising. One prominent labour law professor, Andrew Stewart, is quoted in the media as saying “The drafting is very complex… that it’s as impenetrable as what many of us think. And I don’t envy you [the Senators] trying to make sense of it.”
We think this move from the Senators is common sense and we thank them for this.
As we said yesterday, we are going to seek to break the Bill up into its bits so that we can understand it before doing our analysis. We will share this with the Senators and on our website for SEA members/supporters.