Bosses urged to make the case on radical IR reform for Coalition action

Resources sector employers want the business community to campaign to pressure a future Coalition government to deliver radical workplace reform.

Australian Resources and Energy Employer Association chief executive Steve Knott said Nick Minchin was right when he said ‘WorkChoices didn’t go far enough’.

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Resources sector employers have urged the business community to campaign to pressure a future Coalition government to deliver a radical workplace law overhaul, including the abolition of awards, but acknowledged there was no broad public support for significant changes heading into the next election.

Australian Resources and Energy Employer Association chief executive Steve Knott said the Coalition could not be blamed for being a small target on industrial relations, and he did not believe the opposition would commit to repealing Labor’s workplace laws at the upcoming election.

“The parliamentary reality is that the balance of power in the Senate will remain captured by an increasingly radicalised left, and the political reality is industrial relations is unlikely to be a net vote-winner in the community at present,” he said. “This includes in the key seats the opposition will need to win to have any chance at forming government.”

In an address to the annual conference of the conservative HR Nicholls Society on Friday, Mr Knott said it was the responsibility of the business community to build the case for IR reform.

“We in the business community can and should collectively campaign as hard as possible to pressure future governments to do what needs to be done to the IR framework,” he said.

Society president Frank Parry will launch a policy paper that calls for major changes including the scrapping of awards; the exclusion of workers earning more than $125,000 from enterprise agreements; and a significant unwinding of unfair dismissal rights by increasing the small business definition from 15 to 50 employees.

Steve Knott

Mr Knott said he supported awards being abolished and replaced with a simple standard safety net for all employees and individual contracts being available to workers earning more than $125,000.

He said the former Howard government minister Nick Minchin was right in 2007 when he said “WorkChoices didn’t go far enough.”

Mr Knott said it would be easy for him to demand the Coalition commit to repealing en masse the Albanese government’s “terrible” workplace law changes “but as it won’t happen, there is little upside in doing so”.

“Peter Dutton and Michaelia Cash could take a leaf out of the Queensland Premier Steven Miles’s desperate politics playbook, and promise every worker a 10 per cent pay increase, free lunches, free parking, free transport and a free fully vaccinated and desexed labrador puppy, and the ACTU would still say it’s the second coming of WorkChoices,” he said.

“While there is some pressure on the Coalition to nail their flag to the mast during this coming federal election campaign and undertake to repeal much of the ALP’s recent IR changes, in my view this won’t happen.”

Rather than committing to scrapping Labor’s same job, same pay laws, a promise that would be framed by unions as a proposed pay cut, Mr Knott said the Coalition could seek changes to the laws to make them harder to access.

“A more nuanced approach could require the Fair Work Commission to be satisfied labour hire is being used specifically to avoid payment of in-term agreement rates, before it can make an order,” he said. “This would massively raise the evidentiary bar for applicants.

“Further, labour hire employees covered by an in-term enterprise agreement – and most labour hire employees in the resources sector are, and most involve

unions – could be exempted from making applications and being covered by an order.”

Mr Knott will release AREEA analysis of FWC decisions that he said showed six new Labor appointed presidential members had determined almost 70 per cent of major commission cases this year.

He said the “stunning” findings point to a continued politicisation by Labor of the nation’s workplace relations tribunal at its apex”.