Parliament Introduces Bill To Repeal 4 Yearly Award FWC Review Requirement

Thursday 2 March 2017 @ 11.22 a.m. | Industrial Law

Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton has introduced a Bill into the House of Representatives that would repeal the requirement for the Fair Work Commission to conduct 4 yearly reviews of modern awards from the beginning of 2018.  The Fair Work Amendment (Repeal of 4 Yearly Reviews and Other Measures) Bill 2017 was introduced into Parliament on 1 March 2017.  The Bill is a response to recommendations made in two reports, the Productivity Commission’s Final Report into the Workplace Relations Framework and the Report of Inquiry into Complaints about the Honourable Vice President Michael Lawler of the Fair Work Commission and Related Matters, which was carried out by the Hon Peter Heery AM, QC.

Introducing the Bill into Parliament, Mr Dutton said:

“With this bill, the government is continuing to implement commonsense reforms to the workplace relations system to reduce complexity and costs.

There is broad support for reforms to repeal four-yearly reviews. In November 2016, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Industry Group and the Australian Council of Trade Unions jointly wrote to the Minister for Employment, asking the government to abolish these reviews.

Abolishing the reviews is also consistent with recommendation 8.1 of the Productivity Commission's inquiry into the workplace relations system. The commission found that the reviews are 'hugely resource intensive for all involved'.

Employee groups, employer groups and the Fair Work Commission spend an enormous amount of time and money in undertaking these reviews. Their abolition will save employers and unions about $87 million over the next 10 years. This amount represents a significant regulatory burden.”

Key Provisions

As already mentioned, the Bill would repeal the current requirement for four-yearly reviews of awards from 2018.  Current reviews that have commenced prior to 1 January 2018 but have not been completed will be able to be finalised after that date.  The currently existing framework that exists under Division 5 of Part 2-3 of the Fair Work Act 2009 will be retained.

The Bill also contains provisions enabling the Fair Work Commission to “overlook minor procedural or technical errors when approving an enterprise agreement, as long as it is satisfied that the employees were not likely to have been disadvantaged by the error.”  Mr Dutton said these provisions were a “commonsense reform”, citing a case where “an agreement was rejected because the employer stapled additional pages to the Notice of Employee Representational Rights form.”

The Bill also makes some changes to complaint-handling powers stemming from the Heerey Report.  In his second reading speech, Mr Dutton said that the report had “revealed that there is no formal mechanism to inform the parliament's consideration of allegations of misbehaviour or incapacity against Fair Work Commission members.”  The Bill will clarify that the Minister for Employment and the President of the Fair Work Commission’s complaint-handling powers apply to all Fair Work Commission members, including those who formerly belonged to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.  The Bill will also modify the application of the Judicial Misbehaviour and Incapacity (Parliamentary Commissions) Act 2012 (Cth) so that Parliament may establish a Commission to investigate and report on alleged misbehaviour or incapacity of a member of the Fair Work Commission.

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Sources:

Fair Work Amendment (Repeal of 4 Yearly Reviews and Other Measures) Bill 2017, Explanatory Memorandum and Second Reading Speech - available from TimeBase's LawOne Service

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