Business Council of Australia pays $52,000 for silk’s legal advice

The Business Council of Australia paid $52,800 for legal advice from barrister Stuart Wood that found Labor’s IR changes would cause cuts to take home pay and fewer jobs.

Anthony Albanese with BCA chief executive Bran Black.

The Business Council of Australia paid $52,800 for legal advice from barrister Stuart Wood that found Labor’s industrial relations changes would cause cuts to take home pay and fewer jobs.

Providing written answers to questions from ALP senator Tony Sheldon following its appearance at the Senate inquiry into the Closing Loopholes Bill, the BCA said it had spent $269,473 on its “Casual Works For Me” campaign that detailed concerns about the bill.

The amount included the $52,800 paid to Mr Wood to review the bill’s key elements.

Mr Wood said he believed the bill’s proposed new definition of casual employment would be unworkable and he expected many employers would decide to structure their workforce so casual employment was no longer a choice for employees.

“They’ll only be left with inflexible full- and part-time employment,” he wrote. “Alternatively, casual employment might be reduced to an unattractive offering for employees that is characterised, from the get-go, by irregular shifts, no representations about any certainty of shifts, and short-term employment to mitigate as much as possible any risk of the employment drifting into something more permanent.”

The ACTU, which has attacked the Minerals Council for committing up to $24m to campaign against the bill, criticised the BCA expenditure on the legal advice.

“This is just another example of big business throwing money around to stop changes that are supported by the public and will get wages moving,” an ACTU spokesman said.

The government is planning amendments to the bill including changes to the casual, labour hire and gig work provisions. They are not expected to be tabled later this month.

BCA chief executive Bran Black said the government’s “ad hoc” amendments confirmed Labor had got the bill wrong and “these radical changes are bad for business and bad for workers”.

“Unfortunately changes won’t fix what is a fundamentally flawed bill. Business is urging the government to listen to the community, businesses, the crossbench and Opposition and go back to the drawing board and start again fresh in 2024,” he said.

Following discussions with the Australian Hotels Association, Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke will ­remove the ­proposed ban on employers misrepresenting permanent employment as casual to ensure that heavy penalties not apply to companies that mistakenly misclassify an employee.