6th Jun 2013, 3:40 PM – Representatives Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013 - Consideration in Detail - Workplace bullying

The motion voted against a motion to amend the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013.(More information about the bill and the context surrounding it can be found here. The text of the proposed amendment can be found here. ) The amendment was introduced by Liberal Party MP Sussan Ley to address concerns that the Opposition held about the bullying provisions contained in the Bill.

Someone who voted Aye supported the amendment. The majority voted No, so the amendment was unsuccessful.

The amendment was directed at the part of the bill that enabled an employee who is bullied at work to apply to the Fair Work Commission (‘FWC’) for an order to stop the bullying. MP Ley argued that it was inappropriate to include bullying provisions in the bill as there are already several state and federal agencies that address that issue.(More information about the bill and the context surrounding it can be found here. The text of the proposed amendment can be found here. ) For that reason, MP Ley considered that workers should only be able to approach the FWC for an order after they have first approached an independent regulatory body for help and advice, such as Work Safe Australia. She also argued that the bullying provisions should be “expanded to include the conduct of union officials towards workers and employers”.

Background to the bill

This bill was partly made in response to a review of the Fair Work Act 2009 (‘the Act’) by an independent review panel in 2012. The Panel found that the Act was broadly meeting its objectives and so its recommendations were mainly technical. Approximately one third of these recommendations were implemented by the Fair Work Amendment Act 2012 and this bill was introduced to implement several more of the recommendations as well as other reforms.

References