Christian Porter reinstates consultation period for EBA changes

A government regulation slashing the required consultation period for enterprise agreement changes has been dropped ahead of a Federal Court judgment.

Attorney-General Christian Porter. Picture: AAP

Attorney-General Christian Porter has reinstated the required consultation period for enterprise agreement changes to seven days, after a review found a contentious government regulation cutting the time period to one day was no longer needed.

The decision came ahead of a Federal Court ruling on Friday on legal action by the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union seeking to overturn the regulation.

Federal Labor and unions had attacked the regulation, claiming it would allow employers to ram through cuts to pay and conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The government agreed to a One Nation call that any changes would expire after a year.

Mr Porter said on Thursday the “emergency measures” would now be wound back in line with the easing of other restrictions.

An Attorney-General’s Department review found the regul­ation was used 23 times, with two-thirds of the new agreements allowing three or more days for changes to be considered.

Mr Porter said the review had not identified misuse by employ­ers but “concluded that the need for the change had now passed and the original seven-day access period should be reinstated”.

“This was only ever intended to be an immediate, temporary measure designed to assist businesses during the peak of the pandemic and it is clear to me that it has served its purpose and can be withdrawn, which will reinstate the usual seven-day access period,” he said.

Labor industrial relations spokesman Tony Burke said the regulation had been available to any employer, not just those experienc­ing a downturn as a result of coronavirus.

“It was a lousy move that has undermined the tremendous goodwill and co-operation that was established between employers and workers when the coronavirus crisis began,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Coalition's union-restricting Ensuring Integrity Bill has been officially killed off after the government agreed to a Labor motion to remove it from the Senate notice paper.

Labor's motion passed, which means the bill, which proposed to make it easier to ban union offic­ials and deregister unions, is no longer before federal parliament.

Scott Morrison dropped the bill last month ahead of four months of government-initiated talks with unions and employers on five working groups, to try to break a long-running political­ and policy deadlock on workplace relations.

The CFMEU will be on the greenfields working group along with three other unions, the ACTU, and five employer groups.