Australian Industry Group has made a submission to the State Development, Infrastructure and Works Committee in relation to its consideration of the recently introduced Industrial Relations and Other Legislation Amendment Bill.

Australian Industry Group welcomes the overall direction of the reforms in the Bill subject to some refinement.

Two major issues identified in the Review remain unfinished and urgently need to be addressed. Australian Industry Group raised both of these issues in its submissions on the 2024 changes and again through the Review.

First, Australian Industry Group has called for Chapter 10A of the IR Act to be repealed. The circumstances underlying its introduction have materially changed, and the Commonwealth regulated-worker regime now provides the national regulatory architecture.

Second, Australian Industry Group has called for the 2024 enabling provisions that allow certain Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (Fair Work Act) regulated workers to be prescribed into the WCR scheme in the WCR Act to be repealed. If they are retained, any future extension of the scheme to regulated workers should instead require primary amending legislation, following consideration of the specific minimum standards order or regulated-worker cohort concerned and the full interaction with the scheme.

Unfortunately, the Bill does not address either issue, but both should have fallen squarely within its scope. The Bill amends the IR Act and the WCR Act, which are the very statutes in which Chapter 10A and the 2024 enabling provisions sit. The Bill is therefore the appropriate and timely vehicle to resolve them. Australian Industry Group strongly urges the Committee to recommend that the Bill be amended to address both issues.

Australian Industry Group does, however, strongly support the proposed psychological injury causation threshold and reasonable management action amendments, the fit-and-proper person test and tighter right-of-entry requirements, and the repeal of the employer information statement requirement. It also supports the public-interest powers to suspend or terminate industrial action (provided the threshold remains high) and the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission procedural and costs reforms. In principle, it supports the Bill’s bargaining reforms, including the new arbitration criteria, the scope order safeguards and the repeal of the award flow-on provisions, as well as the workers’ compensation claims integrity and fraud reforms.

In respect of the provisions it does support, Australian Industry Group seeks some targeted refinements so that certain of those provisions operate as intended. The detail of those refinements is set out in the submission.