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O’Connor defends Burke over letter to Fair Work Commission

O’Connor is asked about allegations that workplace relations minister Tony Burke wrote to the Fair Work Commission flagging the government’s intention to remove the right of employers to terminate agreements at a time when Dominic Perrottet is threatening to tear up an enterprise agreement with rail workers in New South Wales.

Firstly, the first time it was raised by the government was in relation to the tugboat dispute. The NSW government was looking to terminate that, which would have reduced wages by 40%. The premier himself called these people heroes. That was the first time I think Minister Burke then raised concerns about that, rightly. I think the letter has just been a foreshadowing of our intent to the Fair Work Commission.

The Fair Work Commission is independent and the president and the commissioners are pursuant to the Fair Work Act. The government, as a protocol, was foreshadowing our intent and we know there may well be employers that may seek to terminate agreements before the legislation.

I think there’s been goodwill and an effort to work it through. What I will say is there are a lot of moving parts is because with rights to take action, either for employers or for employees or unions, there’s the role of the commission in terms of arbitration. That’s been a very important mechanism of any form of multi-employer bargaining. Also constraints on the level of action.

I think you have to look at it all together. The focus is on getting agreements. What happened is we’ve seen collective bargaining halve in a decade and that has led to the lowest wage growth of any decade in living memory. Would it be compulsory or opt-in? All the business groups, even the Council of Small Business Organisations, say it has to be opt in. That will obviously be subject to discussions.