Tuesday, 25 August 2026

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (16:21): I am more than happy to rise to make a quick contribution on the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026 this afternoon. When we talk about fair work and working from home, the first thing that enters my mind is COVID, and this is obviously where this has come from. You cannot help but be a little reflective about that time. I would reflect, but it is also a little bit traumatic. The Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Act 2009 and the Victoria Police Act 2013 allow specified Commonwealth protections concerning fixed-term contracts and casual employment to operate for relevant non-executive Victorian police sector and local government employees; extend flexible working and pay secrecy rights to specified public office holders, executives and higher managerial employees; and permit law enforcement officers to bargain and workplace determinations to be made about a wider range of employment matters presently excluded from the referral. They also establish the relationship between the Commonwealth act, the future police enterprise instruments, the Victoria Police Act 2013 and the dispute resolution jurisdiction of the Police Registration and Services Board.

The act will commence on a day to be proclaimed or automatically on 1 November 2026. The amending act will be repealed on 1 November 2027 without affecting the continuing operation of the amendments it makes. The bill refers specified workplace relations matters to the Commonwealth so that the Commonwealth Fair Work Act 2009 can apply to Victorian employers and employees who do not otherwise fall within the Commonwealth’s remit. The referral was designed to provide broad national system coverage while preserving exclusions concerning matters regarded as integral to the state’s constitutional capacity to determine the number, identity, appointment and senior management of its public servants, together with particular matters affecting law enforcement officers. The government links those exclusions to the principles identified by the High Court in Australian Education Union; Ex parte Victoria.

For background, this involves the scope of the intergovernmental immunity doctrine in Australian constitutional law. In the case of the High Court, it struck down a Commonwealth law on the grounds that it impaired the capacity of a state to function as an independent government, the first time that the court has taken such action. That judgement produced the following two practical impacts. First, some later Commonwealth reforms concerning fixed-term employment, casual employment, flexible working arrangements and pay secrecy have not applied uniformly across the Victorian public sector and local government. Secondly, law enforcement officers have remained unable to bargain validly or obtain federal dispute resolution and general protection coverage in relation to certain matters, including probation, promotion, transfer, fitness, discipline and termination. The bill narrows these gaps without making a wholesale referral of every matter presently reserved to Victoria. As a side note, Victoria Police members, if they are injured or off on a psychosocial injury, cannot then claim because of a little WorkCover loophole, because they are not technically an employee of the state. That is a real problem. I have had many officers contact me with regard to that little loophole, which is a real issue. How could such an oversight have come about, where police officers are not technically employees of the state and are thus effectively subcontractors, not allowing them to get proper WorkCover? We know WorkCover has been a basket case anyway, but I shall continue.

Going back a step, Victoria Police has come out against the background of difficult enterprise bargaining cycles, and it has caused deep consternation. This is a bit of a pattern by this Labor government too. There is a bill on the program – well, we think, later on this week – the Associations Incorporation Reform Amendment Bill 2026, speaking of workplace protections, that is going to essentially leave thousands of sworn police members without workplace representation, because this Labor government wants to get rid of any union that does not donate to the Labor Party. That is the sworn police association –

Dylan Wight interjected.

Jade BENHAM: No, it is not trash. That is what the Labor government in this place want you to think, that the unions that are not associated with the Labor Party, are not associated with Trades Hall and are otherwise incorporated in the state are not real unions and do not offer –

Mathew Hilakari: On a point of order, Acting Speaker: relevance.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Lauren Kathage): I believe the member is anticipating debate.

Jade BENHAM: Apologies, Acting Speaker. I know this is not something that the Labor government want to talk about. I thought that would have been up today, but we will get to that, and that will be an interesting debate when we get to it, won’t it?

On the main provisions, this is a bill that we do not oppose – for now, this one. Without anticipating debate, the rest of the week might be a little more controversial. In part 1 of this bill, ‘Preliminary’, clauses 1 and 2 set out the purpose and commencement. On the amendment of the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Act 2009, clause 3 inserts different definitions, including of ‘casual employee’, ‘fixed-term contract’, ‘enterprise agreement’, ‘workplace determination’, ‘emergency’, ‘major incident’, ‘tasking decision’ and ‘transfer’. A tasking decision is a temporary transfer of a law enforcement officer for up to 14 days to mitigate, respond to or undertake recovery operations following an emergency or major incident. While we are talking about this, this is actually an incredibly important change, having had a major police incident in our community over the last few months – in fact a couple – that has greatly affected the police attending and the police responding.

Out in this part of the state, which may come as a surprise – it is over 12,000 square kilometres ‍– there are three sergeants and one first constable. There was a senior constable; she is now gone. But when responding to a horrific incident like that, being able to transfer officers and to move officers around from one region to another is incredibly important. Of course because there are psychosocial and mental health issues that can arise, because police are doing such a hugely difficult job responding to some of these incidents, these police officers deserve every sort of workplace protection that they can obtain. So to have left a little loophole, which effectively means that some of these officers are not covered by WorkCover is – oversight is not even the right word. It is a gross injustice to have left the officers, who have been left for so long, without the workplace protection that they have required. I hate sending thoughts and prayers, but I can only hope that this offers some sort of comfort to those officers who I know now have been battling with this government to be seen and heard for so long.

There are other provisions. As I said, this is a bill that we do not oppose, but we do have some areas of concern. On the concurrent state and Commonwealth jurisdiction, the bill overlays the Victoria Police Act 2013, the Commonwealth act, future enterprise instruments or workplace determinations and the jurisdictions of the Fair Work Commission and Police Registration and Services Board. Although the concurrent operation provisions are carefully framed, disputes may arise about inconsistency, the scope of a dispute clause and the appropriate forum. It is a valid concern.

On general protection exposure and managerial decision-making, extending part 3-1 is not a substantive change. Promotion, transfer, fitness, discipline and determination decisions will need to be documented with particular care, because adverse action proceedings often turn on the reasons of individual decision-makers. On the unquantified financial and administrative effect, neither the bill nor the explanatory memorandum, nor the second-reading material actually quantify the expected number of additional Fair Work Commission proceedings, legal costs, training requirements or demands on the Police Registration and Services Board, so we do not know what it is going to cost. We just do not know. We often say the devil is in the detail. We are being asked to say yes, and in principle we do not oppose it, but we also do not know what the implication is on that bottom line. I think that is how Labor maths works anyway.

On this bill, also of concern is that the opposition could not get a bill briefing, which is incredibly concerning. There was wide consultation that did occur. Like I said, I know most members on this side of the house have excellent relationships with their local constabulary and consult with them often; sometimes it is on the record or sometimes over a beer at the footy, but we do consult with them often. But with almost no feedback received, other than from the Police Association Victoria, who obviously support the amendments, to not be able to get a bill briefing is – again, oversight does not do it justice either; it just seems like it is ill prepared. They realised there was a loophole here when a few former police officers made some noise – and so they should have. This has been going on for a long, long time. I am not going to take up any more of the time, given there is so much work to do on several bills throughout this week. Given that we have been told, how many times now, that we have to sit for an extra week, let us get on with it.

 Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (16:34): I would like to think this bill is a net positive for workers. I was a little bit confused by the member for Mildura. We strayed into COVID and then pseudo unions ‍– things that I do not think are particularly relevant to the bill. I would like to say that there was actually a bill briefing on 24 July at 1 pm. I hope that clarifies that particular concern that has just been raised. It was on 24 July at 1 pm. Perhaps something was lost in translation.

Juliana Addison: Did the member for Mildura hear that?

Nina TAYLOR: I do not know. Maybe they did not talk to each other. It is good to talk to each other. Anyway, I am just putting it out there. I think it is important to clarify that, because that was quite a strong statement to make, inferring there was not a bill briefing. But we are very happy to clarify that there has been. I hope that clears up the concerns of those opposite.

The Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026 makes important changes. This is what it is actually doing, as opposed to some of the other interesting tangents that we went on for the last, I do not know, 10 or 15 minutes or so: important changes for the working conditions and entitlements of several cohorts of Victorian workers, including Victorian public sector staff and Victoria Police. That is what it does, and I think in anyone’s language that is a net positive for those workers. The bill refers relevant components of our industrial relations powers to the Commonwealth, something the Victorian government has done from time to time as needed following the initial referral of our industrial relations powers in 2009.

Let us dive into this. What is the impact on law enforcement? For law enforcement officers the bill will enable more matters relating to their employment to be the subject of enterprise bargaining and be validly included in agreements, putting them in the same position as other public sector employees on these matters. That would seem to have a strong element of equity and fairness and therefore will work to the benefit and the betterment of the working conditions of those in law enforcement.

What sorts of matters are we talking about specifically? These include employment matters such as probation; promotion; transferring an officer from place to place or position to position, subject to a deployment exception of up to 14 days; assessment of physical and mental fitness; and matters around discipline and termination of employment. I think it goes without saying that we can see the relevance of these very important matters to those workers. Importantly, where provisions relating to these matters are included in a future enterprise agreement they will be subject to bargaining and ultimately to the approval of the government. Further, law enforcement officers cannot currently seek dispute resolution through the Fair Work Commission in relation to these matters, unlike other public sector workers who could seek to enforce terms of their enterprise agreement through the Fair Work Commission. We can see, even if we look at that element alone, the impetus for these very important reforms.

These amendments will ensure that law enforcement officers can bargain over matters in broadly the same way that all other public sector employees currently are able to bargain over these same matters. Where these terms are included in an enterprise agreement or workplace determination, they will now be able to be legally the subject of dispute resolution through the Fair Work Commission or enforced through the courts. Further, under our current industrial framework law enforcement officers are subject to a different standard when it comes to general protections claims under the federal workplace protections on the basis of any adverse action taken by their employer. These reforms mean that law enforcement officers will now have access to these protections under the federal legislation in the same manner as other public sector employees. That makes infinite sense to me and everyone on this side of the chamber, because we will always back in workers.

What about the impact on the VPS? For public sector workers the bill addresses the current disparity in how recent changes to the Fair Work Act 2009 apply to members of Victoria’s public sector workforce compared to those in the private sector. Our changes will ensure that recent federal amendments to the Fair Work Act now apply to the Victorian public sector and to local council employees. This includes key changes the federal Labor government introduced in their closing loopholes legislation, such as the ability to request flexible work arrangements. This means more workers can seek to amend their working arrangements to support their needs as a parent, a carer, a person with a disability or an older person, something we know is critical to ensuring greater workforce participation and more inclusive working environments. That also seems to be pretty fair and reasonable, I would have thought, and I would hope that those opposite would see the reason in that. They have said they are not going to oppose the bill, so we are going to rely on that and hope that they continue to maintain that commitment to these important improvements in terms of the lives of VPS employees.

It also includes a ban on pay secrecy, meaning that employees are no longer contractually restricted from disclosing their pay and remuneration. It will also see limitations on casual and fixed-term employment applied to non-executive public sector and local government employees as a matter of law, codifying current practices across the public sector that restrict the use of fixed-term or casual contracts for roles that are in fact ongoing in nature.

Entrenching these restrictions aligns closely with our government’s secure employment agenda – again, we can see the common sense in that ongoing work is certainly preferable to a casual arrangement – which preferences ongoing and secure forms of employment over non-ongoing and insecure employment models so that more workers have certainty about the future of their roles. Apart from anything else, you can think of the ongoing payments and commitments and liabilities that regular Victorians and others will have in their lives, whether it is their mortgage, their rent, covering insurance, being able to buy their weekly groceries, looking after their kids and so on or commuting et cetera – except for under-18s of course; they have free public transport, which is terrific. And we do have half-price fares for everyone else for the remainder of 2026. I am just putting that in there, thinking about workers and looking after the rights of working people in Victoria.

Fundamentally, this bill is about bringing the scope of bargaining and the conditions of our police, law enforcement, public sector staff and local council workers into line with their counterparts, not other weird tangents. I do not know where we were going – it was a little bit space cadet – but anyway, I am bringing it back to exactly what this bill is about. We are proud to deliver these reforms, which have been long advocated for by the Police Association Victoria and the CPSU. You can see we are there for listening, but also we have worked collaboratively to ensure that these reforms make good sense and can be practically applied.

I should reiterate also that on this side of the house we are always proud to stand with workers, and we will always look for ways to improve their pay and conditions. I think that that makes perfect sense, because when you think of the amount of time that they devote to a career and the sacrifices that they make along the way – but also the self-fulfilment in roles where they work really hard, as those in law enforcement and our VPS employees most certainly do; we appreciate and respect their terrific contribution to our state – in return we are backing them in, backing in good advocacy and making sure that we are providing further protections for their working conditions and ultimately a good work–life balance and being able to maintain the home and other responsibilities they may have but also fulfilling all their working duties as well.

 Brad ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (16:43): I also rise to address the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026. I am grateful to the member for Mildura for her earlier contribution. I do take responsibility also for something which the member for Mildura addressed in her contribution which does not bear any resemblance to truth or accuracy. I provided her with that information, being that the government did not provide a bill briefing to the opposition. In fact I am informed that that did take place, and I am grateful to the Minister for Industrial Relations’ office for doing so and to their adviser Rebecca Andrews. For clarity for the chamber, this also took place at a point when I was on leave recently, and it was information that was not accurate but was put in front of the member for Mildura, which I am happy to take responsibility for.

Jade Benham interjected.

Brad ROWSWELL: I am very happy to take responsibility when I am at fault. I think that is something that my parents taught me was the right thing to do, member for Mildura.

As the member for Mildura has outlined, the opposition will not be opposing this bill. Needless to say, I am made aware by some of the comments of my colleagues, having spoken to them and been brought up to speed somewhat on the discussions around this piece of legislation, that the conversations had in relation to forming our position on the bill were quite lively and spirited. The position we have landed on is to not oppose the bill, principally because of the position of the Police Association Victoria, who in fact support the bill before us.

The member for Mildura addressed in some detail the concerns of the opposition, which are worth restating. It is also worthwhile considering a broader conversation here around the handing over of state powers to the Commonwealth. There is a legitimate question mark over whether the federal Fair Work Commission is equipped to deal with the matters at hand, to have a specific understanding of Victoria’s circumstance, to have a specific understanding of the Victorian public sector and local government employees and to have a specific understanding of the role and the professional engagement, professional circumstance, of Victoria Police.

It is entirely appropriate that a Victorian body investigate concerns relating to Victoria Police employees. I think that is the ideal circumstance. It is a great tragedy that IBAC investigates only 2 ‍per cent of police complaints, police corruption, as the member for Mildura will know, having served on the Parliament’s Integrity and Oversight Committee, as I did in the Parliament prior to this. I think that there is a resourcing question that needs to be asked and answered there. I do not think that is acceptable. The ideal circumstances for Victoria Police, who understand the circumstances of their officers and their employees, should be that they should have some part to play in investigating circumstances that require investigation, but I do not think it is necessarily the right thing to do for them to be investigating some 98 per cent of those complaints. But it is perhaps a better circumstance than the Fair Work Commission doing so.

I understand the position of the police association, and I do not disagree with it. They are best placed to offer their opinion on behalf of their members to the opposition, and it is something we have considered. It is something which has brought us to the point of not opposing this bill today. But I do think that there are some legitimate questions around the ability of that Commonwealth body to do what this bill enables them to do in an effective way, and I think that is yet to be demonstrated. I hope they can, but it is yet to be demonstrated.

This is what happens when there are two jurisdictions concurrently working with a similar purpose or in a similar area. As has been identified by the member for Mildura, the bill overlays the Victoria Police Act 2013, the Commonwealth act and future enterprise instruments or workplace determinations in the jurisdictions of the Fair Work Commission and the Police Registration and Services Board. It appears at face value to be an area of high complexity. But given some of the things that are required to be investigated, perhaps the answer here is not greater complexity but greater certainty and greater – what is the opposite of complexity –

Jade Benham interjected.

Brad ROWSWELL: clarity, simplicity. Greater simplicity would be ideal in the circumstance – general protections, exposure and managerial decision-making.

This bill, as I am sure you would be aware, extends part 3(1) on substantive change. Promotion, transfer, fitness, discipline and termination decisions will need to be documented with particular care. Adverse action proceedings often turn on the reasons of individual decision-makers. Then there is the final concern, being the unquantified financial and administrative effect.

We are in a circumstance where this is the operating circumstance that the opposition, the alternative government, finds itself in some 95 days before the Victorian state election. We are single-minded in having a depth of understanding and a depth of knowledge when it comes to what things will cost, because frankly I just do not think we can go down the same path of governing Victoria as has been displayed during the life of the Andrews, the Allan and now the Carroll governments over the last 12 ‍years, where there is a framework, an understanding and a basic principle that ‘things cost what they cost’, to quote a former Premier. We are minded to have a depth of understanding about what things actually cost before we say that they are better than button-up boots and better than sliced bread.

I do not think it is clear, certainly from my understanding of discussions I have had with colleagues, that the government has a mature understanding of the full financial and administrative effect of this bill. Neither the bill’s explanatory memorandum nor the second-reading speech materially quantifies the expected number of additional Fair Work Commission proceedings, legal costs, training requirements or demands on the Police Registration and Services Board. That remains a concern. Perhaps at this point in time it is important for us as the alternative government to indicate that we expect this legislation to be passed. We expect this legislation to be passed not only in this house but also in the other place and to be enacted and come into effect shortly afterwards. We reserve our right to monitor the impact and monitor the costs closely as the bill takes effect in the time ahead.

I will end in the 30 seconds I have where I began, by simply restating the earlier apology. My engagement with the government, and certainly government ministers’ offices and their advisers on matters, has been largely quite productive and constructive, and for that I am grateful to them. Perhaps the Shadow Attorney-General, who was putting together this bill report in the first place, was expressing a frustration with the former Premier’s office and engagement with them. That may very well justify the mistake, which I take responsibility for.

 Danny PEARSON (Essendon) (16:53): I rise to support the bill, a bill which in many respects is quite technical in detail and is seeking to clear up some anomalies. It is important to understand why these sorts of anomalies exist. I would like to draw the house’s attention to the impact of the French Revolution, because England and France were in conflict during the course of the French Revolution, and it became clear and apparent to the English that the French had a very well-organised police force as a way of ensuring that there was the ability to –

Brad Rowswell: My point of order, Acting Speaker, is relevance. However, just as a point of interest, I am wondering if you can share with us, or confirm for us, if the member on his feet is in the same seat that the former member for Broadmeadows Frank McGuire used to sit in?

The ACTING SPEAKER (Lauren Kathage): There is no point of order. Member for Essendon to continue, and I trust that it will come back around.

Danny PEARSON: Of course. The issue here is that there is a notion of separation of powers, which is the kernel of why there was different treatment in relation to Victoria Police officers. That goes back to the fact the English had a very different view in relation to modern policing. Sir Robert Peel – and I would have thought the member for Sandringham was a devotee of such an august representative as Sir Robert Peel – had the Peelian principles, among which was that the police are the people and the people are the police. That is why, for example, policing in England was devolved at a local level by having those boroughs. The Home Office in the mid-19th century sought to assert some level of centralised control in relation to the way in which policing was to be administered in England. That was rejected at that time, and it was only as a consequence of World War I, when there were a number of hostile actions – there were police strikes in 1918 and 1919, and we had our own police strike here in 1923–24 – that you saw that centralised power and control in relation to the police force. Why is this relevant? It is relevant because modern Western liberal democracies, particularly of a Commonwealth derivative, have taken the view that you need to treat these matters quite carefully.

The Kennett government made a determination back in 1996 that it would refer all its industrial powers on to the Howard government upon the Howard government’s election on 2 March 1996. But they made a point that they did not want to provide the Commonwealth with a degree of oversight in relation to some of the industrial conditions that Victoria Police were experiencing, because the Kennett government made a determination, which was only fit and proper, that those matters should have been properly dealt with at a state level. That was all fair and reasonable. But the reality is that as time has gone on it has become clearer that there have been some levels of inconsistency and some sworn officers of Victoria Police have been disadvantaged, which is why this matter has been raised by the Police Association Victoria to try to resolve and deal with these anomalies and inconsistencies. It is entirely fair and reasonable that you have got that level of consistent approach in relation to the way in which these matters should be dealt with. Again, these are relatively minor, but I would argue that it is clear that we need to make sure that there are those distinctions. Particularly if you look at the Victoria Police Act 2013, clause 10 refers to operational independence. It is important that Victoria Police has that level of operational independence. What we are trying to do here with this bill is deal with a very legitimate concern that individual members of Victoria Police are having in relation to the way in which their conditions are properly administered and dealt with and the way in which members can seek to raise matters if they feel that they have been disadvantaged. But there is a need to make sure that we get this balance right. Again, I think that is why we have got the balance right here on these matters.

I think as a nation we have been well served, and I think the member for Sandringham would be in full and hearty agreement with me that we have been well served, by having the English approach to the way in which justice is administered in this country, the antecedents of which go back to those Peelian principles of the early 19th century. We do need to make sure that there are those balances in place. You do want to make sure you have got that level of operational independence and that the leadership of Victoria Police can make up their own mind in relation to whether a crime should be investigated or not or what resources should be allocated to a particular issue. I believe that is a superior form of justice, as opposed to what you might see in other jurisdictions where the executive branch of the government directly controls and administers the way in which the police service operates. I think that is a dreadful model. I think that is a terrible model, and it has been shown that it can be open to abuse. You always must be mindful of these things, and that is why the way in which those Peelian principles were enunciated, I think back in 1829, with the development of that devolved structure in the way in which justice was administered in the United Kingdom has served countries like Australia and Canada particularly well.

The bill before the house does represent the work of consultation, dialogue and discussion between the government and the Police Association Victoria. I have got to say, having had a bit to do with the secretary of TPAV Wayne Gatt, he is a very effective secretary representing the interests of his members. In my discussions with him, both when I was the acting Minister for Police and Emergency Services for six months but also in my capacity as the Minister for Finance and the Assistant Treasurer, where issues like superannuation would crop up from time to time, he was a tireless advocate for his members. I always had a very strong and respectful engagement with Wayne. You always knew where you stood, because Wayne was always on the side of his members and he was a very strong advocate. It did not matter whether it was a relatively small issue involving a small number of his members or whether it represented the entire workforce of VicPol, Wayne was always forceful in his advocacy but in a very respectful and professional way.

The bill reflects those changes that were brought about by the Kennett government in 1996. Indeed it is entirely consistent with what you would expect from a modern Westminster liberal democracy that balances the rights of the individual – in this case serving officers in Victoria Police who are seeking to ensure that they have got an industrial instrument that fairly reflects their hopes and aspirations – while also making sure that we keep that operational independence, both in relation to Victoria Police with the Commonwealth powers and oversight and we have got that ability to ensure that we retain that operational independence as enunciated by clause 10 of the Victoria Police Act 2013. Those are fundamental principles, I think, that are important.

As I have got older I have developed a greater appreciation for the strength of the Commonwealth and the way in which those principles enunciated by the Westminster system have served Commonwealth nations by and large, not universally, but by and large very well. India would be a particular case in point where you would say it has not really worked well in the way in which the British administered that element of the Empire. But broadly these principles have served us well, and they will continue to serve us well. We must always make sure that we keep an eye on these matters to get the balance right, and I think this bill absolutely does. I commend the bill to the house.

 Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (17:02): Following the member for Essendon, I endorse his comments on Wayne Gatt. He has no doubt had more dealings with Wayne than I have. But in my dealings with him, he presents a very level-headed and sensible approach certainly on most matters. I do not think there is any disagreement across the chamber on that particular issue.

The Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026, as we have heard from previous speakers, amends the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Act 2009 and also the Victoria Police Act ‍2013. The federal act refers specifically to workplace-related matters in the Commonwealth so that the federal act can apply to Victorian employers and employees who would not otherwise fall within their remit. What we are seeing here, like we see with many pieces of legislation that come into this chamber for debate, is alignment across the different jurisdictions within our country. Quite often, and in fact with a number of the bills that I have spoken on recently, it is about aligning our policies and our platforms with what we see across other states and territories in the federal jurisdiction. The basis of getting that uniformity is one of the reasons that we are certainly not opposing this bill. While it does provide that degree of national uniformity, it preserves the matters regarded as integral to the state’s constitutional capacity. They are things like determining the number, the identity and the appointment of senior management within our public service together with particular matters affecting, as we have heard, law enforcement officers.

As we read in the second-reading speech, the reason we are here now is largely driven by a High Court ruling. That ruling within the High Court struck down a Commonwealth law on the grounds that it impaired the capacity of the state to function as an independent government. The judgement highlighted some Commonwealth reforms concerning fixed-term and casual employment and also flexible working arrangements and pay secrecy that have not applied to the Victorian public sector and local government. There we had this discrepancy across jurisdictions within our country. Secondly, law enforcement officers have remained unable to bargain validly or obtain federal dispute resolution and general protections coverage in relation to certain matters that involve their working arrangements. Those might be probation, promotion, transfer or discipline and then termination. The bill narrows these gaps by making a wholesale referral of every matter presently reserved to Victoria. The relevant Commonwealth reforms that this relates to – and they are relatively recent reforms – did commence at different times: pay secrecy rights took effect in December 2022; the strengthened flexible work regime commenced in June 2023; and the reformed casual employment framework, including the employee choice pathway, commenced in 2024 and is the most recent.

The police issue that has been put to members at different times comes against the background of what was an interesting enterprise bargaining agreement negotiation regarding Victoria Police. It is fair to say that certainly in some elements of the police force it caused quite a bit of consternation and a lot of very significant and heavy debate. Now, the changes in this bill do not relate to the current outcomes of the enterprise bargaining agreement; they will relate to future agreements, not reopening the current one.

The bill will allow specified Commonwealth protections concerning fixed-term contracts and casual employment to operate for relevant non-executive Victorian public sector and local government employees. It will extend flexible working and pay secrecy rights to specified public office holders, executives and higher managerial employees. And, as has been touched on by members on both sides of the chamber, it will permit law enforcement officers to bargain and workplace determinations to be made about a whole range of issues, some of which I touched on earlier but are currently excluded from the referral. Those are the changes that the Police Association Victoria has been seeking in its discussions with representatives on both sides of the chamber, and they are addressed in this bill. So in that regard, the advocacy has been well received.

Rather than commenting on those individual matters – and there will be some that will say that some in the public service should not have pay secrecy – the important thing here is that we have uniformity across the jurisdiction so that there is a level playing field. When I picked up this bill, went to the explanatory memorandum and had a look at the second-reading speech, it would have been good to have mention of any potential financial impacts or any assessments or guesstimates or whatever you want to call them of what the financial implications might be, not as a reason for opposing this legislation but because it will create an increase in Fair Work proceedings, you would imagine. Having that forecast would have been handy around what the additional Fair Work proceedings were estimated to be. Legal costs, training requirements or demands on the Police Registration and Services Board are all matters that perhaps could have got a mention in the second-reading speech.

But in general, across the board, we support this. It is good to have uniformity across the states in as many areas as we can. That is not always possible, because in different states we have governments of different persuasions that hold different views, but generally speaking it is good to have some consistency across those different jurisdictions. I will conclude my speech by restating that we have a not-opposed position and wish the bill a speedy passage.

 Josh BULL (Sunbury) (17:09): I am pleased to have the opportunity to make a contribution on the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026. I will not be doing as the member for Essendon did, which was of course to give us some really important history about the French Revolution and make some comments in relation to how some of those historical matters relate to the piece of legislation that is before the house this afternoon. I do want to follow on from what I think has been a reasonably measured debate and make some observations around what the changes in this amendment will do, but also go to some of those elements around Victoria Police. I did hear other members mention the work of the Police Association Victoria and the men and women of Victoria Police. I, as others have done, want to take the opportunity to thank the members of Victoria Police for the incredible work they do in keeping our community safe and for the service and the sacrifice that they give each and every day.

I think one of the opportunities we have as local members, Acting Speaker Mercurio, as you are, is to be able to interact with those members and discuss a whole range of issues which go to the work of keeping the community safe. This change strengthens some of the provisions around the work that they do, and the matters that go to both the Commonwealth and the state and the importance of making sure that they have the best possible protections in place are indeed a focus of our team, and I want to acknowledge the work that has been done in making that happen. It also is worth mentioning the extension and the provisions around Victorian public service staff and understanding the importance of making those additional components around the industrial relations powers to the Commonwealth. The work that has needed to be done in terms of alignment and making for a better, more robust system is something that other members have touched on and something that I want to put on the record as well. Importantly, where the provisions relating to these matters are included in future enterprise agreements, further subject to bargaining and ultimate approvals for government, making for the amendments which go to strengthening those additional services and making for that better alignment, as others have said, are really important.

Whether it is this piece of legislation or other pieces of legislation that go through this house and over the road in the Legislative Council, we want to make sure that we are always providing for the very best possible protection, whether it be for Victoria Police or whether it be for some of those members of the Victorian public service that I mentioned earlier in the contribution. Making for a better system that provides for the best protections is something that the government remains focused on doing. From time to time, making amendments or changes that go to those protections is something that is really important. I think, certainly looking across the globe and having of course three levels of government in this country – local, state and federal – and speaking to people within my community and, as I think all members have the opportunity to do, speaking to various sections of legislation, parts of the constitution, different states and territories and then also you combine local government with that as well, there are a whole range of complexities that come with that.

In this legislation, in terms of those protections that I mentioned earlier in the contribution, in having those three levels of government but also having federal agencies, state agencies and municipal bodies, whether they be councils or, going to a state level, statutory agencies and the like, and making for those provisions when they are tested, when an individual or an organisation needs that additional support or those services that are provided where you might have an issue or an incident, I think that is when it is tested. And when it is tested is the true measure of how the piece of legislation is used in an instance. What we see is that despite the incredible amount of work that goes into drafting and the incredible amount of work that goes into consultation – whether that be community consultation, discussions with agencies or discussions with bodies like the police association – and all of the work that comes with shaping a piece of legislation that comes before the chambers, both in the Assembly and in the Council, all of that then needs to be tested in a real setting. The disconnect between what that looks like on the ground compared with what a legislative body may implement or a series of changes to or the operational nature, if you like, of the way that the legislation is used is of course the real test of it.

What we remain committed to doing, and this takes me back to where I started in a lot of ways, is making for the most comprehensive and best set of safeguards and framework that we can put in place. We remain committed to doing that, and we remain committed to working with both those at a Commonwealth level and those agencies, which can be really particular, and in this case we have got an example in front of us. But more broadly, to have that system and framework in place is really important. What I think, certainly from a more technical level – and a number of members have spoken about a lot of the technical changes within this piece of legislation – and what we reserve the right to do is to make those changes to get this as strong as it possibly can be. The work that enables us to do that is looking at those practical examples of how it is dealt with and making for those provisions which we have gone to – and which other members I am sure in their fine contributions will go to as this moves through this chamber – and making sure that we have those provisions in place. Certainly for the support and the complexity of members that are in VicPol specifically, but also those other workers that are affected by this, we want to make sure that those safeguards and those provisions are in place. We want to make sure that we are able to do that work so that the framework is in place to support them at a time when they very much need it.

I heard other members speak earlier around the work of the association, and I do want to again make the observation that it is really important for those active, live, constant conversations to be happening. In the opportunity that I have had to perform various roles and in the opportunity that members from this side of the house have had on the government benches, to be able to do that work in a respectful, decent and honest manner is something that not just the community but those agencies and associations value. To have those conversations and to get to a place where we are able to deliver those changes that go to providing for a more robust system and the opportunities that we have got with this legislation today is something that we remain committed to doing. In making for those arrangements and those investments that we make through the budget and through other opportunities, it is really important that we continue to do that. It is really important that we have the opportunities to move forward in a sound, constructive and robust way.

I want to finish, in my final 10 seconds, by thanking and acknowledging the work of Victoria Police, our public service staff and all those that brought this legislation before the house. I commend the bill to the house.

 Kim O’KEEFFE (Shepparton) (17:20): I rise to speak on the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026. This bill makes a number of significant changes to the operation of Commonwealth workplace protections in Victoria. It amends both the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Act 2009 and the Victoria Police Act 2013; allows specified Commonwealth protections concerning fixed-term contracts and casual employment to operate for relevant non-executive Victorian public sector and local government employees; extends flexible working and pay security rights to specified public office holders, executives and higher managerial employees; permits law enforcement officers to bargain and workplace determinations to be made about a wider range of employment matters presently excluded from the referral; extends part 3-1 general protections of the Commonwealth act to those newly referred law enforcement matters, while not referring them for the purposes of part 2-3 unfair dismissal; establishes the relationship between the Commonwealth act, future police enterprise instruments and the Victoria Police Act 2013 and the dispute resolution jurisdiction of the Police Registration and Services Board; and expands bargaining rights and workplace protections for law enforcement officers in relation to a number of employment matters that have historically remained outside the Commonwealth workplace relations framework.

Victoria referred a significant proportion of its workplace relations powers to the Commonwealth in 2009; however, that referral was not unlimited. Victoria needs a workplace relations system that provides fairness to employees while also allowing public services and emergency agencies to do their jobs effectively. The challenge with this bill, therefore, is getting the balance right. Certain matters were deliberately excluded because they were regarded as being integral to the state’s constitutional capacity to manage its own public sector workforce and, importantly, its law enforcement agencies. Those exclusions have their origins in constitutional principles considered by the High Court, including Re Australian Education Union; Ex parte Victoria. As a consequence, subsequent Commonwealth workplace reforms have not always applied uniformly to Victorian public sector and local government employees. The bill before us seeks to address some of those gaps. It extends protections relating to flexible working arrangements, pay secrecy, fixed-term contracts and casual employment. These are protections that already apply to many workers within the Commonwealth workplace relations system. There is therefore a clear argument for greater consistency. Workers performing their duties in Victoria should not necessarily receive different workplace protections simply because of the constitutional arrangements applying to their particular employer.

The bill also seeks to address a different set of issues affecting law enforcement officers. It would allow future enterprise agreements and workplace determinations to deal with matters including probation, promotion, transfer, physical or mental fitness, discipline and termination of employment. Matters relating to physical and mental fitness are not simply employment issues when it comes to our police force; they are wellbeing issues. By allowing these matters to be considered through enterprise agreements and workplace determinations, law enforcement officers will have greater opportunities to advocate for fair, transparent and supportive processes regarding their health and fitness for duty. Importantly, this may help foster conversations about early intervention, access to support services, rehabilitation pathways and the protections available to officers when they are experiencing mental health challenges. We ask our police officers to protect our communities every single day, and it is only fair that we ensure there are appropriate workplace mechanisms in place to support them when they need assistance themselves.

Strong mental health support is not only good for individual officers, it is good for policing, good for workforce retention and ultimately good for community safety. We often speak about the physical dangers faced by our police officers, but we do not always acknowledge the psychological toll of their job. Victoria Police’s own reporting shows that there were 538 mental health injuries recorded in 2024–25 alone. A landmark mental health study found that 16 per cent of Victoria Police employees met the symptom criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, while rates of suicidal thoughts were higher than those seen in the broader community. These statistics remind us that behind every uniform is a person who carries the weight of the traumatic events they witness on behalf of our community. If we expect our police officers to protect us during our most difficult moments, we must ensure they receive the support, care and workplace protections that they need when facing their own challenges.

These are important matters. They are also matters that have historically been excluded from Commonwealth bargaining arrangements because they are closely connected to operational command, integrity and the effective functioning of law enforcement agencies. That is why the safeguards contained in this bill are particularly important. The bill does not simply hand all of these matters over to the Commonwealth system without qualification. There are important exclusions, for example, the expanded referral does not cover uniforms and equipment. It also excludes certain tasking decisions, including temporary transfers associated with emergency or major incidents.

Importantly, the bill preserves a 14-day tasking or deployment exemption, allowing law enforcement agencies to respond to emergencies and major incidents without those immediate operational decisions being compromised by the new industrial framework. There are also protections around transfers associated with disciplinary investigations and certain integrity matters. These safeguards recognise a fundamental principle: workplace rights are important, but law enforcement agencies must retain the capacity to respond quickly and effectively when public safety is at stake. The bill also makes clear that the Commonwealth’s unfair dismissal provisions are not being extended to these newly referred police matters. Instead, the bill extends the Commonwealth’s general protections regime to those matters. That distinction is important and should not be overlooked.

However, while there are legitimate reasons for the reforms contained in this bill, there are also significant issues that this Parliament needs to consider. The first is jurisdictional complexity. We are effectively creating an interaction between the Commonwealth Fair Work Act 2009, the Victoria Police Act 2013, future enterprise agreements and workplace determinations and the Fair Work Commission and the Police Registration and Services Board. The bill contains provisions intended to establish how these different frameworks will operate alongside each other, but legislation that creates multiple overlapping jurisdictions inevitably creates the possibility of disputes about which frameworks apply, which body has jurisdiction and how competing provisions should be interpreted. That is not merely a technical legal issue; it has the potential to create uncertainty for employees, managers and agencies.

The second concern relates to general protections claims. Once promotion, transfer, fitness, discipline and termination decisions fall within the Commonwealth general protections framework, managers and decision-makers will need to exercise considerable care. Their decisions will need to be properly documented, and the reasons for those decisions will potentially receive much greater scrutiny. For organisations such as Victoria Police, where decisions can involve operational requirements, discipline, integrity and public safety, that is a significant consideration.

The third issue is the financial and administrative impact. We do identify that the material before us does not qualify the likely number of additional Fair Work Commission proceedings, the associated legal costs, the additional administrative burden, training requirements or the potential impact on the Police Registration and Services Board. These are reasonable questions. Whenever Parliament changes the industrial relations framework, there will be costs associated with implementation, there will be new obligations, there will be training requirements, there may be additional legal proceedings and there may be pressure placed on existing dispute resolution bodies. Yet we do not have sufficient qualified information about those impacts.

I also note the consultation undertaken in relation to this legislation. While consultation occurred across sectors, very limited feedback was received beyond support from the Police Association Victoria for provisions affecting its members. For legislation of this significance, particularly legislation involving the intersection of Commonwealth workplace law and Victoria’s policing framework, meaningful consultation is essential. The government needs to ensure that those responsible for implementing these reforms understand precisely how they will operate in practice.

I acknowledge that the bill contains some transitional and savings provisions. In particular the existing Victoria Police enterprise agreement 2025 is preserved, meaning the broader referral will primarily affect future bargaining and future workplace determinations rather than reopening the current agreement. This is a sensible and important safeguard. That position recognises the legitimate policing objectives of the bill. There is merit in seeking greater consistency in workplace protections for Victorian public sector and local government employees. There is no doubt about that. There is also merit in providing law enforcement officers with a fairer bargaining framework and access to appropriate workplace protections. We must remain vigilant about the practical consequences, we must ensure that workplace rights do not inadvertently compromise operational effectiveness, we must ensure that managers and agencies are properly equipped to operate within the framework and we must ensure that jurisdictional uncertainty does not result in unnecessary disputes, costs or delays. Most importantly, Victoria needs a workplace relations system that provides fairness to employees while also allowing public services and emergency agencies to do their jobs effectively. The challenge with this bill therefore is getting that balance right.

 Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (17:29): I rise to speak in support of the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026. Just quickly, Acting Speaker, I do not know if you were in the chamber at the time, but the member for Essendon gave us an incredible synopsis on the evolution of modern policing, starting back with the Peelers and bringing us through to our time here in Australia. There were some objections from those opposite at the time, which was a little bit disappointing, given it was a great run-down on the history of policing. I actually learned quite a lot, and anyone else who was listening in would have learned quite a bit. I just want to commend the member for Essendon, because every time he stands up here, I do feel like my knowledge of history expands just that little bit further. It was actually quite interesting, and he ran through the referral of our industrial relations powers under former Premier Kennett in 1996, when he referred most of our industrial relations powers to the Howard government. Some aspects did not get referred at the time and, as the member for Essendon has explained, that was because there was a belief that some of those matters pertaining to Victoria Police should remain with the state, and there was probably a good reason for that as well. But over time there have been disadvantages to Victoria Police, and this bill seeks to address them.

I was looking through the history and recoiled at the fact that more powers were handed over to the Commonwealth at the commencement of the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Act 2009 on 1 July 2009. That was just before I entered the fray of industrial relations and had to deal with the joy of award modernisation, which still leaves some of us who went through it a bit traumatised, because it was a very long, very complex process. But it was worthy nonetheless; it actually was quite groundbreaking in what it did. It brought multiple awards together, distilled them down and simplified a system that was incredibly complex around the nation. The current system, the Fair Work system, I actually think works very well, and to refer some of these matters to the Fair Work system is completely appropriate because it is an important bill which is going to deliver practical improvements to the working lives of thousands of Victorian workers. We cannot do enough when it comes to supporting our Victorian workers, especially our very hardworking public servants, and very much so Victoria Police.

In speaking about Victoria Police, I will stray from the content of the bill for a moment because I just want to take the opportunity to note that tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of the murder of both Neal Thompson and Vadim de Waart-Hottart, and I know that still has a profound effect on the Victoria Police family. They are a family. The wonderful Victoria Police who work across Monbulk, who I have a very good relationship with, are fabulous members of our community, and I know that the effect of this has been deeply felt by many. So I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that, and I know we will be doing that in the chamber tomorrow as well with a minute’s silence.

But back to this bill. It is about ensuring public sector employees, local government workers and Victoria’s law enforcement officers have access to the same rights and protections that many other Australian workers already enjoy. It recognises a really simple principle that a worker’s access to fair conditions and workplace protections should not depend on whether or not they work in the private or the public sector. We have got a long history in this state – Acting Speaker, I am sure you are familiar with it – of standing up for working people. We know strong workplace rights are not accidents of history. They are won through collective effort and they are maintained through governments that are prepared to stand with workers, and this bill continues that tradition, I am proud to say. Many Victorian workers will benefit from important reforms made at the Commonwealth level.

The bill ensures that recent reforms introduced through the Commonwealth Fair Work framework apply to Victorian public sector and local government employees where those reforms do not currently operate, and it expands the range of matters relating to law enforcement officers that can be subject to enterprise bargaining and workplace determinations. They are really sensible reforms, and they are reforms that have been strongly advocated for by employee representatives, including the Community and Public Sector Union and the Police Association Victoria. Many, many members have been commenting on the work that both have done in representing their members so well.

I would like to talk first on the impact of the bill on public sector workers. Public servants deliver essential services every day for Victorians. They support our schools, our hospitals, our courts, our child protection systems, emergency services and community programs, and local government workers keep our communities functioning. They maintain vital infrastructure. They deliver services and support residents in every corner of our state. They deserve workplace protections that reflect modern expectations and modern workplaces, and one of the most significant reforms extended through this bill relates to flexible working arrangements. We all know that flexibility matters. It matters to parents balancing family and work commitments; it matters to carers supporting loved ones or people living with disability; and it matters to older workers who may seek to remain active participants in the workforce. The ability to request flexible working arrangements can make the difference between someone remaining in employment or feeling that they can no longer remain and ostensibly feeling that they are forced out of employment. By extending these provisions to Victorian public sector and local government workers, we are helping create workplaces that are more inclusive, more supportive and more responsive to the realities of modern life, and we are supporting greater workforce participation. We are helping retain valuable skills and knowledge and experience across the public sector.

This bill also extends provisions regarding pay secrecy. Pay secrecy clauses have long contributed to inequity in workplaces because they prevent workers from openly discussing their remuneration. If we want to be really fair, we need transparency. It is such an important tool for that, and workers should have the right to discuss their pay without fear of breaching contractual obligations. Removing those restrictions on pay discussions helps expose unfair disparities and supports progress towards greater equity and accountability in workplaces, and that is something to be championed. It is particularly important in the ongoing effort to close gender pay gaps and address other forms of workplace disadvantage. It is a real concern and issue that in 2026 there is still a very distinct gender pay gap, and that is problematic. Hiding people’s wages, not allowing people to discuss what salaries they have, compounds that further. Shine a light in the corners of the darkness and you may actually find that good things come.

Another key reform in this bill relates to casual and fixed-term employment, and secure work really does matter. We know that. On this side of the chamber we know how important secure work is. Victorians want the opportunity to plan their futures with confidence, and they are entitled to that. They want to know they can pay the mortgage, support their families and build a career without constantly worrying about the end of a temporary contract. This bill extends limitations on casual and fixed-term employment to non-executive public sector and local government employees. In many respects this reform embeds practices that are already occurring across the Victorian public sector. Where a job is genuinely ongoing, workers should not be trapped in an endless cycle of insecure contracts.

I know when I first started teaching, and this is many years ago – far too many for me to say out loud ‍– there were only contracts on offer in the public schools. I really wanted to teach in a public school, but I also needed secure employment, so I ended up taking a permanent position in a non-government school because that was on offer. But there was no way I could get that in a public school back then, and I know it affected the decision I made. Unfortunately, at that time I left public school teaching. I did go back to it later, but it was one of the reasons I could not stay on. We were looking to buy a house, and I needed secure employment so the bank would actually lend to us. These changes we are putting in reinforce our government’s commitment to secure employment and recognise the benefits that ongoing employment delivers not only for workers but also for organisations through improved retention capability and workforce stability.

Coming back to Victoria Police – with only a minute on the clock, I am afraid – the bill delivers important reforms for them. They perform really difficult and often dangerous work in service of our Victorian community. I said in my speech a year ago, in acknowledging the two police officers who were killed, that when they don their uniforms, they take a risk every time. They know that they are walking towards danger when the rest of us are doing our best to avoid it. They actually step into it, and they do it to protect us. We owe them a debt of gratitude that none of us really can ever repay. I will finish where I began in acknowledging those two fine police officers much loved by their friends, by their family and by their fellow blue police officer family. I acknowledge that tomorrow will be a very difficult day for many of the police in my community, and I send my thoughts and best wishes to all of them. I commend this bill to the house.

 John LISTER (Werribee) (17:39): It is my honour to speak on this legislation extending some of the protections under the Fair Work Act 2009 to more employees here in Victoria. I always have an appreciation, when it comes to this legislation, seeing that interaction between our different levels of government, between the Commonwealth and state. It is that legal studies teacher brain in me that gets a little bit excited seeing sections 51 and 107 of the constitution start to play out as we really work through how we ensure that protections for workers across Australia extend to employees in our state system. In particular I would like to recognise the leadership of the federal Labor government in improving workers rights, particularly in this last term. Things like extending paid parental leave; multi-employer bargaining, as some of my colleagues have also referred to; ending pay secrecy and the ‘same job, same pay’ principle being enshrined in legislation; and secure work for casuals are all things that have come into being and that we are also looking at making sure our legislation reflects here in Victoria.

This bill makes important changes to working conditions and entitlements, particularly for Victoria public service staff and Victoria Police. Industrial relations when it comes to Victoria Police has been quite an interesting subject over the years. I recognise the work of the Police Association Victoria (TPAV), with over 100 years representing workers. Police, despite the fact that they have got a badge and a gun, are workers and go to work every day wanting to have good conditions. Despite the fact that the conditions are often very dynamic, they should be able to expect that their days start and end safely. The police association have always been champions of this, ever since they were first established back in 1917. Through some tumultuous times during the 1930s, with the industrial action that happened back then, we have come to this understanding of wanting to make sure that we respect workers rights, particularly for police officers, while also recognising police officers’ very important role as officers of the law.

We are very much, on this side, champions of the operational independence enshrined under section ‍10 of the Victoria Police Act 2013. At the time when we were referring industrial powers to the Commonwealth, there was good reason for making sure that this operational independence was still maintained, particularly around some of the things that this bill carves out following negotiations between Victoria Police, TPAV and government. But we need to make sure that as many workers as possible are protected by these Commonwealth powers. The carve-outs and the arrangements in this legislation are particularly important for ensuring that.

There are a lot of different matters that are protected under Commonwealth law that have not necessarily been able to be protected under the agreements made between the police association and their members, Victoria Police and ultimately the government. Things around their deployment, probation, promotion and transfer are all very important things across Victoria Police. One of the important roles that the Chief Commissioner of Police has and delegates to commanders, inspectors and people managers at a local level is being able to make sure that their people are in the right place at the right time to meet different crime concerns in the community. But we also want to make sure that there are some guardrails in place. Over time there have been negotiations in enterprise agreements around this, but it has always been something where we need to make sure we have good protections in legislation and the ability between Victoria Police, the association and organisations like the PRSB, the Police Registration and Services Board, to be able to make sure that people have a fair process if they disagree with some of those decisions made around those areas.

The things that we have ensured in this legislation are still subject to the normal arrangements through the Victoria Police Act. They are things like the number of employees, their identity, what classifications they have, how many are in those classifications and the process of appointing police officers. These are not things that can be referred to the Fair Work Commission. These are things where the operational independence of the chief commissioner is still maintained, which is particularly important, because unlike other public servants where those sorts of things are put into agreements through Fair Work, this is something that very much goes to operational necessity for police. How many there are, where they are and who they are are things that should really only be determined by the chief commissioner as that expert law officer responding to community concerns.

I have spoken a little bit about the police association, but this also goes to other workers and making sure that some of those initiatives by federal Labor over the years are protected for those workers as well. I note that the previous speaker – also one of our little bit of a band of former teachers on this side – referred to the experience in public schools of contracts. It was very much a regular thing, especially when you started your career, that you would be on a contract for many years and it would be rolled over year to year. You were not quite sure if you would get that coveted permanent position. Over the last 10 or so years this government has made a conscious effort to make sure that more people are getting permanent positions at our schools, something that we worked through not only industrially with the union but also through funding opportunities. The provisions in Fair Work around casualisation are something that this bill goes to, and we make sure that for those different protections, all those loopholes are closed.

Some of the other changes that federal Labor has introduced in these different pieces of closing-loopholes legislation are around requesting flexible work arrangements, meaning that workers can amend their work arrangements to support their needs as a parent, a carer, a person with a disability or an older person. This is really important not only to ensure a diversity of workforce in terms of gender and the different family roles that are required but also to make sure that people can work for longer. There is a bit of a topic at the moment around superannuation and retirement. I think one of the realities we are facing industrially across Australia at the moment is that people do want to work for longer. However, we need to make sure that their work arrangements are done in such a way that we can help them to work for longer.

It is interesting. Back in the day when I first started casual work, you got a bit of a conversation from the boss that said you were not allowed to talk about your pay with other workers. It was a really weird, taboo thing that was set up in some of my first retail jobs, and I often thought it was a little bit weird. We obviously spoke about it anyway. We were not necessarily bound by some of those contract provisions that people have had in the past. We just gossiped about our pay anyway and came to a pretty quick conclusion that a lot of us were getting paid vastly different sums, not necessarily because of the type of job we did but because of the arrangements we had come to as we onboarded or as we changed to different roles within the organisation. But you ended up doing very similar work. Making sure that we have that ban on pay secrecy and making sure that that applies to all Victorian government workers through the carve-out in this legislation is really important to make sure that that principle, which is now an Australian principle, is very much a Victorian principle as well.

We want to make sure that many Victorians have secure employment. That is why these sorts of provisions and making sure that we have this work done between the Commonwealth and the state when it comes to industrial relations is really important. I think we have spoken about it a few times, but I really, really want to emphasise it. Earlier today I spoke about our local officers in Werribee and the hard work that they do. I really do want to emphasise that our police officers are workers and they deserve the protections that every other worker has out there. Having the extraordinary powers that they have does not preclude them from those protections. I would like to thank the police association, especially in the years that I engaged with them in a previous life, for the work that they do every day to look after their workers and make sure people come home safe. I would like to commend them for that work. I would also like to commend those other public sector unions that have engaged with us to make sure that this legislation goes a fair way to reflecting those Australian values.

 Jordan CRUGNALE (Bass) (17:49): I rise to support the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026. At its core this legislation recognises that workplaces continue to change and workplace protections need to keep pace with those changes. For many Victorians the way we work today looks very different from what it did a decade ago, and the balance between work, family responsibilities and caring commitments has shifted. Expectations around transparency and workplace culture have evolved. There is a growing understanding of the importance of job security and the role it plays not only in supporting workers but in strengthening families and communities. This bill responds to those changing expectations by ensuring Victorian public sector and local government employees can access protections that many other workers already enjoy, while also addressing longstanding inconsistencies affecting law enforcement officers.

This bill builds on Victoria’s longstanding referral of workplace relations powers to the Commonwealth, ensuring public sector employees continue to benefit from a modern and consistent workplace relations framework as federal workplace laws evolve. At the centre of these reforms are people: the people who teach our children, care for patients, respond in emergencies, support vulnerable Victorians, maintain local infrastructure, keep communities safe and deliver the services that so many rely upon every day. Across the public sector and local government there are thousands of workers whose contributions often go unseen, yet their work is fundamental to the strength, wellbeing and resilience of our communities. Whether they are in a classroom, a hospital, a council depot, a government office or a community organisation or on the front line of emergency response, they each play a role in helping our communities thrive.

This bill is ultimately about ensuring those workers have access to workplace protections that are consistent and reflective of modern working life. These are conversations that I hear regularly across the electorate. Whether I am speaking with a teacher, a healthcare worker, a council employee, a community organisation, a police officer or someone working within the public service, there is a common desire for workplaces that are supportive, respectful and responsive to the realities of modern life. People want to know that their contribution is valued, they want confidence that workplace arrangements will support them through different stages of life and they want to know, if protections exist for some workers, is there good reason why those same protections should not also be available to others performing important public service roles? That is why consistency is important. Workers should not find themselves excluded from contemporary workplace protections simply because of the type of public sector organisation they happen to work for.

Across Bass, from Pearcedale through our coastal villages across to Clyde, up to Koo Wee Rup, Lang Lang and surrounding communities, over to San Remo and down to Inverloch, we know the importance of strong public services and the people who deliver them. We see it in our schools and our health services, our council, our emergency services and our community organisations. These are the workers who keep our communities functioning every day, often without fanfare and often under considerable pressure. Whether it is a nurse caring for patients at Bayside Health’s Koo Wee Rup health service; a teacher supporting students at Kongwak Primary School; a police officer serving the community on Phillip Island; a Casey, Cardinia or Bass Coast council worker maintaining local infrastructure; a public servant helping families access services across the rapidly growing communities of Cranbourne South, Devon Meadows, Tooradin and Clyde; or a community sector worker supporting vulnerable residents anywhere across the Bass electorate, these workers are fundamental to the strength of our communities. The reforms before us recognise the contribution they make and seek to ensure workplace arrangements remain contemporary, consistent and relevant to modern working life. What all of these roles have in common is a commitment to service. These workers are there for our communities during the routine moments of everyday life and during some of the most challenging moments as well. They help families navigate difficult circumstances, support young people to reach their potential, care for those who are unwell and provide assistance when communities face emergencies.

A key objective of the bill is extending important Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Act 2009 provisions to public sector and local government employees. Importantly, these reforms extend not only to the Victorian public sector but also to local government employees, helping ensure greater consistency across councils and public sector workplaces alike. Specifically, these reforms extend provisions relating to flexible working arrangements, pay secrecy protections and limitations on inappropriate use of fixed-term and casual employment. While those matters may appear technical, they have practical consequences for people’s everyday lives. Flexible work arrangements can make an enormous difference to parents balancing work and family responsibilities; carers supporting ageing relatives; and workers managing illness, disability or changing personal circumstances. The way people participate in the workforce continues to evolve, and these provisions recognise that flexibility, when implemented effectively, benefits workers, employers and the wider community. Flexible working arrangements are often described in policy terms, but their impact is intensely personal.

The bill also extends pay secrecy protections. Transparency helps build trust within workplaces. It supports accountability and contributes to more equitable outcomes for employees. These are expectations that many workers now reasonably hold, and they are important elements of a modern workplace system.

Another important aspect of the bill is its application to fixed-term and casual employment arrangements. Secure employment matters. It matters because it provides people with confidence about their future. It helps families plan, supports participation in local economies and allows communities to grow and prosper. This is particularly relevant in fast-growing areas such as Clyde and Cranbourne, as well as in regional communities across Bass, where people are putting down roots, building careers and raising families. Importantly, the bill does not remove the legitimate use of fixed-term or casual employment. There will always be circumstances where those arrangements are appropriate. What it seeks to do is ensure that ongoing work is supported by ongoing employment wherever practical, particularly for non-executive public sector and local government employees. For teachers, education support staff and many other frontline workers, that principle of greater job security has the potential to provide stronger workforce stability and greater certainty.

Job security also plays an important role in workforce attraction and retention. Across regional Victoria employers compete for skilled and experienced workers. Public sector agencies, schools, health services and councils all benefit when employees are able to see a future in the work they do. Retaining experienced workers means retaining knowledge, skills and relationships within organisations. It supports continuity of service delivery and strengthens the capacity of organisations to respond to the needs of their communities. Ultimately, secure employment is not simply beneficial for employees; it is beneficial for the communities those employees serve.

I also acknowledge the role played by unions, employee organisations and professional associations in advocating for many of these issues over time. Questions relating to workplace flexibility, secure employment, pay equity and workplace protections have been the subject of significant discussion across a range of sectors for many years. While views will not always align on every aspect of reform, those conversations have helped shape broader discussions about what modern workplace protections should look like.

The bill also addresses a longstanding issue affecting law enforcement officers. One of the strengths of this bill is that it seeks to address disparities that have developed over time. Workplace relations frameworks evolve, new protections are introduced and community expectations change, and from time to time there is a need to review existing arrangements to ensure they remain fit for purpose. This legislation reflects that process. It recognises that some groups of workers have not always had access to the same workplace protections or bargaining arrangements as others, and it seeks to bring about greater consistency across the public sector.

The role performed by police officers and other law enforcement personnel is unique. They are called upon during emergencies, major incidents and some of the most difficult moments in people’s lives. Their work requires professionalism, resilience, sound judgement and a deep commitment to public service. This bill seeks to address that disparity by allowing bargaining and agreement-making in relation to matters such as probation, promotion, transfer, physical and mental fitness, discipline and termination of employment. In the very short few seconds that I have left, I commend the bill to the house.

 Eden FOSTER (Mulgrave) (17:59): I take pleasure in rising today to speak in strong support of the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026. This legislation is about uniformity, but it is also about fairness, equality and dignity at work. It ensures that workers across Victoria, whether they are delivering frontline public services, supporting our schools or keeping our communities safe, are afforded modern, robust workplace protections.

I represent a community built on hard work, diversity and strong local connection. In Mulgrave our families know that when you go to work you deserve fair conditions, job security and the knowledge that if you face hardship your rights will be protected under law. I have seen firsthand the vital link between workplace security, mental wellbeing and family stability. When workers lack certainty or face systemic barriers to flexibility, the impact ripples through homes and communities. That is why this bill is so important. It delivers on our government’s commitment to modernising Victoria’s workplace relations referral framework, ensuring our public sector workers and our dedicated law enforcement officers enjoy protections that reflect contemporary community expectations.

One of the central pillars of this bill is ensuring that key protections recently introduced into the Commonwealth Fair Work Act 2009 are fully extended across the Victorian public sector. While national system employees have benefited from crucial reforms under the national workplace relations system, legal nuances in our referral framework meant that certain public sector employees did not automatically access these same statutory entitlements. This bill directly addresses those gaps. Specifically, the bill clarifies and expands references under the referral act to ensure public sector employees benefit from flexible working arrangements, which will give employees genuine statutory avenues to request flexibility to balance family caregiving and health needs. They also benefit from pay secrecy protections, which will ban restrictive pay secrecy clauses so that workers can discuss their remuneration openly, a crucial step in closing the gender pay gap and ensuring wage fairness. It also results in secure employment limits by placing clear restrictions on the misuse of successive fixed-term contracts and setting pathways for casual conversion, aligning with this government’s core priority to deliver secure jobs for Victorians. Whether someone works in an administrative role, education or government services, secure employment and fair conditions must be guaranteed, and this bill brings uniformity federally and across the states.

I would like to turn now to how this bill impacts our law enforcement personnel – that is, our police officers, protective services officers, police recruits and reservists. Historically, under the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Act 2009 a significant range of workplace matters relating to law enforcement officers was excluded from enterprise bargaining and the national system. This created an unfair disparity between police personnel and other public sector workers. This bill expands the scope of matters that can be validly included in enterprise agreements and workplace determinations for law enforcement officers. Crucially, the bill allows enterprise bargaining and dispute resolution through the Fair Work Commission across vital employment matters, including probationary periods and promotion arrangements, transfers from place to place or position to position, physical and mental fitness standards, discipline processes and termination of employment. This bill ensures that law enforcement officers have full access to the general protections regime under part 3-1 of the Fair Work Act. This means that if a police officer or PSO experiences adverse action based on a protected attribute, they can now access independent recourse through the national industrial tribunal. Our police officers and PSOs put their safety on the line for us. They deserve a fair, transparent workplace where their rights are protected by an independent umpire, and we are delivering that.

We must also recognise the direct link between fair workplace conditions and worker retention, particularly across our public institutions and emergency services. When workers feel supported, when they know that career progression, transfer arrangements and workplace adjustments are managed transparently and fairly, it fosters a healthier, more resilient workplace. Burnout and occupational stress often stem not just from the demands of the job itself but from structural frustration when employees feel unheard or lack agency in their working lives. By providing clear statutory rights around flexible work, independent dispute resolution and protection against discrimination, this bill helps create supportive working environments. It signals to our dedicated public servants and emergency service workers that their contribution is valued, helping us retain skilled, experienced personnel who serve Victoria every single day.

While this bill delivers expanded industrial rights, it does so with careful precision and balance. It respects the operational realities of frontline policing while maintaining clear boundaries between workplace bargaining and essential command duties. The bill preserves the Chief Commissioner of Police’s capacity to respond immediately to community emergencies and major incidents. Under the refined provisions, tasking decisions are explicitly retained as essential operational powers. This creates a fair, sensible balance protecting officers’ industrial rights during standard career progression and transfers while ensuring Victoria Police can mobilise rapidly when an emergency threatens public safety.

When we evaluate legislation like this, it is impossible to ignore the stark contrast between those on this side of the chamber and the history of those opposite when it comes to industrial relations. Historically in Victoria the coalition’s approach to workplace relations has been defined by deregulation, stripping back employee entitlements and curbing collective bargaining. We remember the Kennett coalition government, when Victorians saw the abolishment of state awards, the dismantling of conciliation systems and the forced referral of industrial powers to the Commonwealth without safeguarding basic workers rights. Even nationally their ideological approach culminated in the WorkChoices framework, a regime designed to undermine penalty rates, weaken job security and dismantle the independent umpire. More recently, federal coalition members voted against the Fair Work legislation amendment, which tells us the philosophy of those opposite when it comes to workplace protections. Labor’s history stands in complete opposition to that record. On this side we believe that economic prosperity and fair working conditions go hand in hand, while the coalition views workplace protections as a burden to be cut. This bill continues Labor’s legacy of restoring fairness, guaranteeing dignity and ensuring every Victorian worker returns home safely with fair pay for a fair day’s work.

Good legislation is built through open, constructive dialogue, and this bill is the product of extensive consultation across key agencies and employee representatives, including the Department of Justice and Community Safety, Victoria Police, the Police Association Victoria, the Department of Education and local government representatives. Stakeholders have broadly supported these amendments because they deliver on written commitments made by the government. They provide clarity, certainty and fairness for frontline personnel and public sector workers alike. The Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026 reinforces the fundamental principles that underwrite our industrial relations framework: fairness, choice, secure employment and independent dispute resolution. It ensures that Victorian public sector employees receive modern national standards around flexible work, pay transparency and secure job pathways. Equal to this, it grants our hardworking law enforcement officers the enterprise bargaining rights and general protections they have long deserved. Ultimately, when we treat our workforce with fairness, dignity and respect, we build stronger services and a safer, more equitable Victoria for everyone. I commend the Minister for Industrial Relations and the Attorney-General for bringing this crucial legislation before the house. I am proud to stand here in support of this bill, which upholds fairness and respect for our workplace, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (18:08): I rise to support the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026. I do so proudly because this bill sits within a much bigger Australian story, and it is a story that goes to the very reason the labour movement exists. It is a story about the simple but powerful proposition that working people deserve a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work; that they deserve dignity, security and respect at work; and that the prosperity of our nation should be shared by the people whose labour helps create it.

Long before any of us sat in this Parliament working people had to fight for rights and conditions that today we take too easily for granted. Here in Melbourne of course, in 1856, stonemasons famously downed their tools and marched from the University of Melbourne building site to demand the 8-hour working day. Their demand was revolutionary for its time: 8 hours labour, 8 hours recreation, 8 hours rest. They were not asking for privilege, they were asking for balance. They were saying that a worker was not simply an input into an economy but a human being – a parent, a husband, a wife, a member of the community, entitled to a life beyond work – and they won. That achievement made Melbourne and Victoria pioneers of the international 8-hour day movement. Then in the great industrial struggles of the 1890s, including the maritime strike and the Queensland shearers strike of 1891, working people confronted wage cuts, insecure employment and attempts to undermine organised labour.

Those disputes were bitter; many workers lost. But from those defeats came the extraordinary realisation that working people needed not only industrial representation but political representation. They needed a voice in Parliament. They needed representatives who would make laws for working people rather than simply leaving working people subject to the laws made by others. Around the shearers camps of western Queensland, immortalised through the Tree of Knowledge in Barcaldine, that political labour movement gathered strength, and out of those struggles emerged the Labor political movement that we know today. That is why the history of Labor and the history of workplace rights in Australia are inseparable.

From the workshop, the quarry, the shearing shed, the factory floor and the picket line, working people brought their cause into Parliament, and once they did Australia changed. Here in Victoria the Factories and Shops Act 1896 established wages boards, which set Australia’s first statutory minimum rates. Then came the landmark Harvester judgement of 1907, delivered right here in Melbourne at the Sunshine Harvester works, in Brimbank today. Justice Higgins famously approached the fair wage according to the needs of an employee as a human being in a civilised community. That decision became the foundation of Australia’s national minimum wage system. What a profoundly Australian idea that became – that wages should not simply be determined by how little an employer could get away with paying but by what was fair and reasonable for a human being to live with dignity.

Over the generations that followed, organised labour, working people and Labor governments continued that work: the 8-hour day, the 40-hour working week, penalty rates, overtime, annual leave, sick leave, long service leave, equal pay, occupational health and safety protections, superannuation, maternity and parental leave, protections against unfair dismissal, minimum employment standards and the right to collectively bargain. Beyond the workplace, Labor’s belief in dignity and security helped build the great institutions of Australia’s social compact: Medicare, the pharmaceutical benefits scheme and, recently, the national disability insurance scheme. They are different reforms, different generations, different circumstances, with one common principle: everyone has the right to aspire to secure and safe work and to not be left behind. None of those achievements simply fell out of the sky: they were fought for, they were organised for, they were legislated for by Labor governments and the labour movement, and they must continue to be protected and built upon by Labor governments and the labour movement. That is the tradition which this bill actually stands on.

In 2009 Victoria referred significant workplace relations powers to the Commonwealth so Victorian workers could benefit from the protections of the national Fair Work Act 2009. But our workplace relations system does not stand still. Work changes, the economy changes, Commonwealth legislation also changes, and when the Commonwealth strengthens the Fair Work Act there can be circumstances where those reforms do not automatically flow through to sections of Victoria’s public sector workforce, because of the constitutional arrangements underpinning our national workplace relations system, and that is what this bill addresses. At its heart, this legislation is about fairness, consistency and parity in Victoria and across the country, and it asks a very straightforward question: why should a Victorian public sector worker be denied an important workplace protection simply because of the constitutional character of their employer? Why should someone working for the Victorian public sector or local government have lesser statutory protection in areas such as flexible work, pay secrecy or insecure employment than a Victorian performing comparable work elsewhere? Our answer is simple: they should not, and this bill fixes that disparity.

Firstly, the bill extends important recent reforms to the Commonwealth Fair Work Act to Victorian public sector and local council employees, where those reforms do not currently apply to them as a matter of law. That includes important protections relating to flexible working arrangements, and that matters enormously in the modern workplace. It matters to the parents trying to balance work and raising a family. It matters to the carer looking after a loved one. It matters to an older worker and those workers with disability. Flexible work is not about workers doing less, it is about enabling more people to participate in the workforce and remain in the workforce while meeting the realities of their lives.

Secondly, the bill extends protections relating to pay secrecy. For too long secrecy around wages could operate to the disadvantage of workers. Employees should not be contractually silenced from discussing their remuneration. Transparency can empower workers to identify unjustified pay disparities and to have informed conversations about their worth.

Thirdly, the bill extends Commonwealth limitations on the inappropriate use of fixed-term and casual employment to non-executive public sector and local government employees. That is entirely consistent with this Labor government’s secure employment agenda, because there is an enormous difference between having a job and having job security. If somebody is performing work that is genuinely ongoing in nature, governments and employers should not use rolling temporary arrangements simply to deny that worker certainty. This bill will continue to permit legitimate use of casual and fixed-term employment – it does not abolish those types of employment – but what it will do is ensure that the same contemporary Fair Work protections apply more consistently also to Victorian workers.

The second major reform in this bill concerns Victoria’s law enforcement officers, our police, who do extraordinary work. I just want to acknowledge that on 14 May I was really delighted to help and thank our local Victoria Police members by attending the Pascoe Vale Rotary’s Ivor ‘Monty’ Montgomery Memorial Community Police Awards at the Northern Golf Club. The nominees and recipients for this year included Detective Senior Constable Jack Talmage, recognised for initiating Operation Laverna in 2025 which targeted recidivist shop stealing; Sergeant Geoffrey Kwist for his efforts in managing the liquor licensing portfolio and representing the LGBTQIA+ community across Merri-bek; Acting Sergeant Christian Fenyk for his work as the disability liaison officer for Merri-bek; and Leading Senior Constable Andrea Barnden, who commenced with Victoria Police in 1989, for performing a wide range of duties including the Merri-bek crime scene office from 2012 and mentoring many junior members to this day. The overall winner was Georgia Barnes, who is a Victoria Police Service level ‍3 public service officer, who received the overall award for her efforts as the new and emerging communities liaison officer, doing particularly important work across all of Merri-bek with our sporting clubs, particularly our football clubs, and particularly up in Fawkner in the member for Broadmeadows’s area, where she is doing fantastic work with the Fawkner Soccer Club – Fawkner Azzuri – and the Blues up there with the local member, who does magnificent work in the seat of Broadmeadows.

But this bill is also about supporting our Victoria Police members. Every day they walk into situations most Victorians would instinctively walk away from. They respond to family violence, road trauma, serious crime, mental health incidents, emergencies, public disorder and some of the most confronting circumstances imaginable. They deserve our gratitude, but gratitude must also be reflected in fair industrial settings. Under the existing arrangements, law enforcement officers cannot validly bargain over certain employment matters in the same way as other public sector workers, and this bill changes that. It expands the matters which can be the subjects of collective bargaining, and validly, including enterprise agreements or workplace determinations for law enforcement officers. Those matters include probation, promotion, transfer from one place or position to another, physical and mental fitness, discipline and termination of employment. This is significant because collective bargaining only works properly when workers and their representatives can actually negotiate the matters that meaningfully affect their working lives and, importantly, where agreed provisions covering these matters are included in a future enterprise agreement or workplace determination. Disputes about those provisions will be capable of being dealt with through the appropriate industrial framework, including the Fair Work Commission.

The reforms also extend the general protection regime of the Fair Work Act more broadly to law enforcement officers in relation to all of these matters. That means greater access to protections against adverse action taken for prohibited reasons. Again, the principle is straightforward. Our police officers should broadly enjoy the same fundamental workplace protections available to all other Victorian public sector workers. This bill also carefully gets that balance right as well, through a number of other provisions. But in essence, these laws are building on that ongoing work that we have been doing as a Labor government and as a labour movement over many years. The tools might change, the workplaces might change and the economy might change, but the principle endures: dignity in work, fairness in pay, security in employment and a genuine voice for working people. It was worth fighting for in 1856. It was worth fighting for in 1891, 1896 and 1907, and it is worth fighting for still in 2026 here in Victoria.

 Steve McGHIE (Melton) (18:18): What a great contribution from the member for Pascoe Vale. Thank you for that history lesson. It was fantastic. I rise to speak in support of the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026, a bill that is about fairness, consistency and respect for the people who serve our state. Victorian public sector employees and local council workers should benefit from important workplace protections already available to many private sector employees. Of course, this bill does that, and it gives Victoria’s police and other law enforcement officers greater capacity to bargain collectively over matters affecting their employment and to enforce agreed conditions through the appropriate industrial processes, primarily being the Fair Work Commission. These are sensible reforms, and they address disparities in our workplace relations frameworks. They reinforce a simple Labor principle: that people doing important work deserve secure employment, fair conditions and of course an effective voice in their workplace. We know that our law enforcement officers are represented fantastically by the Police Association Victoria.

Victoria referred significant industrial relations powers to the Commonwealth in 2009 so that Victorian employees could have broader access to the protections of the federal Fair Work Act 2009. That referral remains important because the Commonwealth’s constitutional powers do not automatically capture every Victorian workplace. While the federal Corporations Act 2001 applies to constitutional corporations and their employees, it does not necessarily cover the core Victorian public service of every public sector and local government employer. We see a number of local government employees at the moment trying to do collective bargaining, and they are obviously in dispute with a number of councils around the state of Victoria, in particular in my electorate over in Melton. They are trying to force a single agreement onto the employees and, I would almost say, intimidate them into agreeing to a single agreement outside of the collective arrangement with the other nine councils, is my understanding. There are quite interesting developments going on out at Melton.

I will come to another issue very shortly about in-home aged care support. They are getting out of it in July of next year and are going to outsource it. They will blame the Commonwealth, but it will be 80 jobs that will go missing from the Melton City Council by outsourcing these services. People are in need of those services. I think that is very unfair. I would like to see the council rethink their position on that. I know the ASU is representing their members and taking that battle up to the council. I know that there will be a dispute in the Fair Work Commission. There are people out there in the Melton community that rely on those people from the Melton council serving them and helping them within their homes.

The referral act therefore helps provide a consistent workplace relations system across Victoria. However, when the original referral was made, several matters relating to public sector employment were excluded. Some exclusions reflected constitutional considerations arising from the High Court’s decision in the Re Australian Education Union; Ex parte Victoria. Others sought to preserve the operational independence of the state, particularly in relation to Victoria Police, who in my opinion are the finest police force in the country, and of course they are the largest police force in the country. I would like to commend the remarks by my friend the member for Monbulk concerning the one-year anniversary tomorrow of the murders of Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson and Senior Constable Vadim De Waart-Hottart. I share those sentiments and extend my condolences to their families and of course their friends and colleagues.

The workplace relations system has continued to evolve since then. The Commonwealth has amended the Fair Work Act, working practices have changed and some of the original exclusions now produce disparities that were neither intended nor justified. The Victorian Parliament must therefore update the referral act so that Victorian workers can take advantage of important national reforms. On public sector and local council employees, of which there are so many living and working in Melton, I would particularly like to mention the Melton City Council, who I have had the incredible privilege of working with for the last eight years. I have had a pretty good working relationship with them. We do not always agree on things, but we have had a pretty good working relationship. As I referred to earlier, they have made some interesting decisions of late in regard to outsourcing the in-home aged care services, and as I said, it will cost 80 jobs from the Melton City Council. We are hoping that they will rethink their position on that.

This bill extends the application of recent federal provisions to those important workers concerning flexible working arrangements, pay secrecy and the use of fixed-term and casual employment. I have been a strong advocate as an ex-union secretary in regard to the concerns around fixed-term employment and how that is an avenue for employers to keep wages and conditions down, to keep a lid on them. It is a way that some employers, in regard to the insecurity when someone is on fixed-term contracts and casual employment, make those unfortunate individuals too scared to speak up. They are too scared to seek a wage increase. They are too scared to improve conditions. They go to the boss and ask for a wage increase and the boss tells them to eff off. What can you do? What actions can an individual take? That is the importance of being in a union and being collective.

Those people cannot change anything unless they have a sympathetic boss that is prepared to pay them more money and improve their conditions. They keep extending these fixed-term contracts, just keep these employees dangling at the same wage rates and with the same conditions for many, many years when they probably should be permanently employed or ongoingly employed and have some level of security. We have seen that many, many times. I saw that in my days as a union secretary when I worked for the ambulance union for 23 years. That is why we say these are practical protections that can make an enormous difference in people’s lives.

The right to request flexible work arrangements is particularly important for parents, carers, older workers and people with disabilities. Flexible work is not just merely about convenience. I would like to challenge that concept that gets thrown around, that it is about convenience. No, it is not. For many people it determines whether they can remain in the workplace at all and whether they can balance family life with working life and bringing in an income and putting food on the table.

I noticed in the media yesterday that it was reported that Melton Secondary College are trialling teachers working from home one day per fortnight, which I think is a fantastic way to manage teachers’ time in regard to being able to do the non-student day things, whether they have to do reports and all that sort of stuff. I am pleased, and I commend Kathryn Sobey, the principal at Melton Secondary College, for trialling this. I notice it captured a lot of attention in the media yesterday, and good on her for allowing her teachers to trial that concept of one day per fortnight working from home. I noticed some people that rang up the radio station yesterday, the ABC, saying that they did not think it was a good thing and people are just getting lazy. It is not that they are having a day off. They are actually working from home in a more constructive way, and it is a better way of utilising their time. I think it is a great model and I am sure other schools will take it on. As I say, Kathryn Sobey, the principal, should be applauded for that.

In our growing community in Melton, many residents balance work with raising their children and caring for relatives, managing disability or health needs and travelling significant distances to their workplace. Seventy-three per cent of people travel outside of Melton to go to work. It takes an hour and a half to get to the city from Melton, and that is on a good day when you have not got someone running up the backside of someone on the Western Freeway. It is a minimum of an hour and a half by car, let alone by train when the trains are running, so it is important to have flexible work arrangements. The degree of flexibility can help a parent manage school and childcare responsibilities. It helps a carer support a loved one, and it also helps an experienced employee remain in a job and like their job and not have the burden of the trudge of long distances of travel but having that flexible arrangement of balancing it with their family.

I know I have only got a short time left. I do want to commend again our police officers. This bill allows our police officers to be treated like all other workers that are covered by enterprise agreements and covered by the Fair Work Act. It means that some of the provisions that previously could not be included in their agreements or could not be negotiated can be now and can be included in an agreement. It does not take the power away from the Chief Commissioner of Police to negotiate with VicPol officers and the police association in regard to what can be included in an agreement. Again, it is about an agreement, it is about working conditions, it is about fairness, it is about security. I am pleased, and again I commend the police association for the great representation of their colleagues. This is an important bill, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Alison MARCHANT (Bellarine) (18:29): I rise to speak in support of the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026. When looking at this, at first glance I suppose it looks fairly technical in terms of a piece of legislation. It does deal with industrial relations powers between the Victorian and Commonwealth governments, and we do that regularly here in this place to align our legislation. But it is amending the principal act which was established back in 2009, and it is making sure that changes that were made to the Commonwealth workplace laws can now flow through to Victorian workers who would otherwise miss out.

Behind all that technical language and behind the act and the amendments are people. They are workers. They are people who get up every morning, they go to work, they provide for their families, they care for others, they serve our communities and they contribute to our economy and the society that we all share together. I think it is really important that we talk about workplace relations in this place and remember that there are people behind this legislation. Ultimately, it is making sure through this bill that workers have fair and modern workplace rights, and it is making sure that people have a fair go at work. It is something I am really proud to say, being part of this government: we have always believed that workers should have the dignity of work. But it is more than just a pay packet. It provides security, it provides for families and it allows people to support themselves. People and workers should have a reasonable say in the conditions under which they work, and that is the principle that sits behind this bill.

The Victorian government first referred aspects of its industrial relations powers, as I said, in 2009 to the Commonwealth, and the reason for doing that was pretty simple at the time. Without that referral, many Commonwealth workplace laws would only apply automatically to employers who were constitutional corporations. That means that there could be circumstances where a reform may happen at the Commonwealth level and apply to private sector workers but not automatically apply to someone doing very similar work, maybe in Victoria, particularly in the public sector or local government. Obviously, we do not want that, so from time to time we have had to update this referral act to make sure that changes in the Commonwealth workplace laws do flow on to Victorian workers where appropriate. This is another step that we are taking in that process today, and these changes matter. It matters to workers who need flexibility, it matters to workers who want transparency about their pay and it matters to workers who certainly need that security and knowledge that their work and their job is going to be genuinely ongoing.

I just want to start with that flexible work, and I heard the member for Melton talk about this as well. For many people the idea of flexibility sounds like a small thing, but when you are juggling a whole lot of things in your life – parents may be juggling kids – it can make a difference to have a bit of flexibility to being able to stay in that workforce. Maybe it is about working from home; it might be about reducing hours. But having that flexibility can absolutely support a worker. You may be, as I think they call them, the sandwich generation or age, where you might be dealing with or supporting young children or children at home but also ageing parents, and that flexibility might mean that you need to take your parents to an appointment or give care. For someone living with a disability, having flexible working arrangements absolutely makes sense and makes employment more accessible. These are really important issues that we need to reform, and we need to think about what our work participation will look like going into the future. The Commonwealth reforms have strengthened the rights around that request for flexible work arrangements, and this bill ensures that those protections can apply to the Victorian public sector and local government employers as well. Ultimately, it is about fairness.

This bill also addresses pay secrecy. I think this is a pretty straightforward principle, that people should be able to talk about their pay if they choose to; there should not be a contractual prevention, I suppose, from discussing their pay. The Commonwealth reforms give employers the right to share or not to share information about their pay and conditions. Again, this is making sure that the Victorian public sector and local government workers are not left behind and that pay transparency matters. I suppose it goes to fairness, whether a worker is being fairly remunerated, and it can help identify any differences in the workplace and with making decisions about their future.

The third area I want to touch on in this bill is about secure employment. This is pretty important to me because I think there is a fundamental difference between having a job and having security in a job. If someone is doing work that is genuinely ongoing, then they should be kept ongoing. They should not be kept in that cycle of temporary uncertainty or insecure employment simply because it is convenient for the employer to keep them like that.

The Commonwealth reforms have strengthened the rules around casual employment, introducing new limitations around fixed-term contracts. They also provide a pathway for eligible casual employees to move to permanent employment circumstances where there are requirements and the employers can do that. It does, I suppose, align directly with our government’s policy and our government’s broader commitment to secure employment as well. We want workers to have certainty about their future and certainty about their employment, because ultimately, at the end of the day, you need to be able to plan for your future. It might be that you need to plan for a mortgage. It might be that you are wanting to raise a family. Having certainty about your job and your future absolutely gives you the confidence that you can move into the future knowing and planning, making long-term decisions for yourself and your family. That is why I really do welcome these changes as well.

The bill also makes some important changes for law enforcement officers, and I will just touch a little bit on that part of the bill regarding our law enforcement officers and police officers. It particularly goes to probation, promotions, transfers, physical and mental fitness, discipline and termination. Because of the existing exclusions in the referral act, these matters cannot be validated, bargained over or included in enterprise agreements in the same way as for other public sector employees. There is a little bit of inconsistency there. The bill addresses that inconsistency, and it also will allow law enforcement officers to bargain over those matters broadly in the same way as other Victorian public sector employees.

We are making these improvements, as I have said, because it is about working people. It is about working conditions and making sure people have a genuine voice in their employment conditions. It is not about handing over operational control. In terms of enterprise agreements, those are still going to be determined through bargaining, but it is about making sure that workers have a legitimate say in the employment conditions that affect them. It is also – just to touch on the bill – about access to protections in the same way as for other public sector employees. At the moment law enforcement officers face different arrangements when it comes to accessing federal general protections in relation to some of these matters. I want to acknowledge the advocacy of a couple of groups and acknowledge the work of the Police Association Victoria and also the Community and Public Sector Union, who have been advocating for these reforms for a long time. They represent workers who are going to be affected by this legislation. It is fantastic to have their advocacy as part of this and the consultation that the government has done with them. That is really important.

In closing, we could summarise this bill as making sure that workers have a voice. Unions should have a voice, employers should have a voice, and government is going to align a framework and create a fairer framework through which those parties can now negotiate. As I said at the start, this is about working people. This is about people that get up every day, serve our community, work hard in our community and contribute to our society. We want to thank them for that, and we want to give them the right conditions so they can continue to do that work and have protections from our government but also from the Commonwealth government and have those protections aligned. I commend the bill to the house.

 Matt FREGON (Ashwood) (18:38): I also rise to speak on the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026, and I think I am right in saying the opposition are not against this bill. I think I am right; I am getting a nod. That is good. I would be very surprised if anyone was. In some ways it seems a strange concept that we are in a position where we are making the same rights available to some of our law enforcement officers that everyone else has had in the public service, and I am obviously glad we are doing it. The key objective of this bill is to amend the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Act 2009, the referral act, to expand the category of matters that can be the subject of enterprise bargaining and validly included in enterprise agreements and workplace determinations as they relate to our law enforcement officers.

I should say at this point – like other members have, I am sure, on both sides – our sincere condolences on the tragedy 12 months ago tomorrow of the two officers who were slain in the actions of their daily work. I remember when we passed industrial manslaughter laws in this place, which I think we are all very proud of, because the idea that anyone would go to work and not come home is just abhorrent. Yet our police officers too many times – because one would be too many – take on that risk when they serve us day to day. We all grieve for the losses of those officers, none more so than obviously their family and their friends. As many have said, we send our condolences to them and the communities that they served.

I am just looking at the list, and others have mentioned that the bill amends the referral act to ensure the following matters are referred to the Commonwealth with respect to law enforcement officers: probation; promotion; transfer from place to place or position to position, subject to a deployment exemption; physical or mental fitness; discipline; and termination of employment. We had a period last year where EBAs were negotiated with our police. EBAs are like laws and sausages: you do not really want to see how they are made, you just hope to get a good result at the end. To my knowledge, our police are happy with the EBA that was negotiated, but obviously from the fact that we are here passing this bill today, the things that I just read out before could not be in the EBA that was passed. Presumably that is something that they will argue for in the next EBA when that comes up. As I said, it surprised me that we had not completed that sort of equity, if you like.

The bill also goes to the security of work. Over the last number of years we are talking more and more in many ways that are not great about labour hire and about insecure work. It strikes me that a focus on the security of work for people – and the member for Melton said this quite eloquently – is always important to protect. I think over the last 40 years, and certainly in my working life, I have seen that degrade, year on year, slightly on slightly. This is not a whack at any side of politics. We have all got ourselves to this point, but I think we are ready as a society to start folding that back. I think the populace are ready to have a conversation about less insecure work and more people being directly employed, whether it be by private corporations or by public corporations. I see this not just here in Victoria when I am talking to people on the doors or in my community, I see it also around the country, but also around the world. If you look at what England are doing at the moment, they are having conversations in similar frames.

I remember – and I have probably said this in the house before, so forgive me for repeating myself – being a young worker at one of my first jobs at NEC in the 1990s. I remember turning up to work one morning and out of the 50 or 60 PABX technicians who were gainfully employed by the company at the time – and I am not having a go at NEC; great stuff – they were all told, ‘You are now redundant. Thank you for your service. Here’s your package’. There would have been a package, and it probably would have been quite generous back in 1991 as well, because the packages early in this outsourcing phase we went through as a world were relatively generous. The next day, to my knowledge, about a third of them or maybe a quarter of them got a phone call from the same person they used to work for, who said, ‘G’day, mate. Hey, listen, we’ve got some work for ya. Can you go get yourself an ABN and a couple of your mates who you like, who you trust, one of the other guys, and do you mind starting up a company to do the same work you were doing last week, except we’ll pay you as contractors, not employees.’

The accountants love this because it changes the way you look at the books. On the paper side of things it can make a company look more viable and more flexible, and these are all good things. At the time in the 1990s we were all sold, ‘This is the way of the future. It’s going to be great. We’re going to have lower prices. We can talk about the SEC. We can talk about a whole heap of other things we’ve done.’ I think the jury has been out since the early 1990s. It is not cheaper, to my mind, because we end up just paying the same people to do the same jobs, but we pay an extra 25 per cent return on investment over five years for the privilege. For private business it is fine – that is great; everyone should be entitled to make some money – but for public services one would hope we would never suggest that we outsource our police force. That would be, I think, anathema to all of us in this place. But we have done it to so many of our public sector workers who this bill affects as well. I just think we are ready to start bringing this back in. For crucial services that we always do, essential services, we should bring this back in.

There are two reasons. Firstly, I think it is cheaper. I had a parliamentary intern – Otto, who did a fantastic job – have a look at this about roadworks for me. There are examples overseas where it can be cheaper to outsource. Texas, for instance, was one he put in, but they have much more competition. In some markets – in our state, where we have less competition – it is not cheaper, because it ends up just basically finding a price amongst the small number of people who compete. The second reason why I think we are ready to bring some of this stuff back is accountability. Whether you are public service or whether you are private business – have a look at some of the big four and the trouble they are in with some of the accountability at the moment – if you outsource everything, you also, and this is one reason why the bean counters and the lawyers love it, outsource some of your responsibility. You can easily say, ‘That contract that we held, they’ve done the wrong thing. That’s all their fault. We won’t use them anymore.’ But the reality is you employed them to do the job. I would much rather back in our law enforcement officers and our public services – anyone who does essential work that the people of Victoria need done day in, day out, day in, day out by government. I would much rather they were directly employed with all of the benefits of direct employment, including the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Act 2009 and including all the things that protect employees. I would much rather that because, again, I think it is cheaper but also it means that the people in charge are responsible to make sure things are done right. With that, I commend the bill to the house.

 Katie HALL (Footscray) (18:48): I feel like I am probably, like everyone in this place, getting a little bit croaky at this time of day. The Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026 makes important changes to the working conditions and entitlements of several cohorts of Victorian workers, including Victorian public service staff and Victoria Police. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that this is going to be a very difficult week for sworn and unsworn staff of Victoria Police. I remember being in this place on this day last year when we heard the reports of the terrible incident in Porepunkah, and my thoughts are with everyone at VicPol and their families and loved ones as well as the communities of Porepunkah and Bright, who are still grappling with how such a terrible, terrible thing could happen. As someone who used to work for Victoria Police, I know how committed and passionate those employees are and that this will be a really challenging time for them.

At its heart, this bill is about bringing greater fairness and consistency to the workplace relations framework for Victorian public sector and local government employees. For many workers the Fair Work Act 2009 provides a familiar set of rights and protections, as it should. But because of the way Victoria’s industrial relations powers have historically, sometimes rightly or wrongly, been referred to the Commonwealth, there are important areas where Victorian public sector employees have not had the benefit of the provisions that apply to other workers, and this bill is about addressing some of those gaps. It extends important Fair Work protections relating to flexible working arrangements, pay secrecy and casual and fixed-term employment. It also expands the matters over which Victoria Police officers can bargain collectively, something that we on this side of the chamber are proud advocates for. These are practical reforms that will make a real difference to workers.

Flexible work has become an important feature of modern employment. Workers have responsibilities outside the workplace: they might have kids or caring responsibilities, health or accessibility needs, or simply circumstances that make a degree of flexibility essential to maintaining their employment. And for an employer, flexible work can also be an important tool for attracting and retaining skilled and experienced employees. Therefore there is a strong case for ensuring our Victorian public sector employees have access to the same modern, flexible work protections available elsewhere in the Fair Work system. This bill also addresses pay secrecy. Workers should have the ability to discuss their remuneration and understand how their pay compares with the work being performed by others. One of the things I am really proud of as a Labor member of Parliament is our efforts, both at the state and federal level, to deal with the gender pay gap.

This bill also deals with casual and fixed-term employment. There are circumstances where these forms of employment are appropriate and necessary, but secure ongoing employment should be the norm, where the work itself is ongoing. As I mentioned at the outset, a really significant part of this bill is to support the employees of Victoria Police, and that is an especially important reform. We know that police officers undertake demanding work on behalf of our communities; they work in incredibly challenging environments, they make difficult decisions and carry significant responsibilities. Yet the industrial relations arrangements have restricted the matters over which they can bargain collectively. This bill changes that by enabling bargaining over matters including probation, promotion, transfers, physical and mental fitness, discipline and termination – significant aspects of an employee’s working life.

I am mindful, with the time remaining this evening, that one of my other colleagues, the wonderful member for Wendouree, would also like to make a contribution. I will conclude by saying that unions are an essential part of a functioning industrial relations system.

Richard Riordan interjected.

Katie HALL: There is an old man shouting at a cloud over there. An individual worker may find it difficult to negotiate with a large employer over complex employment matters, and collective representation changes that balance. We know it, we believe in it and I commend the bill to the house.

 Juliana ADDISON (Wendouree) (18:54): I thank the member for Footscray for sharing her time with me tonight to talk on the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Amendment Bill 2026. I stand today as a proud ASU member, a former AWU Port Kembla organiser and a former AMWU printing division national industrial officer. Fair work is so important, and I look around this chamber and look at the number of people who have done amazing work with unions over the years. I worked with the member for Thomastown at the AMWU. Obviously we have got the former head of the Victorian Ambulance Union with us. They are all amazing people, who have supported hardworking, decent Victorians all their lives as union officials and are now continuing to do so as local members representing their communities, and this is what this bill is about. It is about looking at industrial relations law, but at the heart of it are the people – the people who make up industrial relations. It is about a police officer finishing a night shift and wanting confidence that their workplace rights are protected. I too want to thank my local police in the Ballarat command and say that I am thinking of them and all of Victoria Police during this very, very sad time on the anniversary of the dreadful, tragic events that happened at Porepunkah.

I would also like to say that this bill is about public servants caring for an aged parent and needing flexibility to balance their work and family responsibility. It is about a local government employee who wants the security of an ongoing job rather than rolling short-term contracts, and we know that impacts every aspect of their life, in trying to give their kids security at the same school, not having to rent, being able to get that mortgage and being able to lay down roots in a community and say, ‘This is where our family is.’ It is impossible to do that unless you have secure employment and you are not relying on short-term contracts. It is about ensuring that Victorian workers have access to fair protections, regardless of whether they work in the public sector or the private sector.

One of the things that I have learned throughout my time representing workers is that fairness is so important. Workers want to know that if they work hard, if they contribute to their workplace and if they serve their community, they will be treated with dignity and respect. That is what every worker in Victoria deserves. That expectation should not stop at the workplace door. It reflects a simple proposition: workers in Victoria’s public sector and local government should be able to access many of the same workplace rights and protections that have been extended to other Australian workers through recent reforms to the Fair Work system. To the workers of the City of Ballarat, whether you are working in our libraries, in our maternal and child health, in our gardens or in our civic support teams – whatever you are doing at the City of Ballarat, which is one of the largest employers in my community – you are valued, you deserve to have dignity and you deserve to have fairness in the job.

That is also why this fairness is so important – pay secrecy. When Mike was working for an American company, there was all this secrecy. You could not tell anyone else what you were doing. As a fitter and turner, he did not know what the other fitters and turners working alongside him in the factory were earning. They were doing the same work of the same value, yet there was secrecy. Some people could have been on sweetheart deals; other people could have been getting underpaid. To be able to have pay transparency is the basis for a decent, transparent workplace. We know that it causes divisions when people do not think that there is fairness in the workplace. I have seen that firsthand. Mike, being a strong unionist all his life, as a delegate working for this company, said he felt grubby. He felt grubby when he was prevented from talking to people about his wages and conditions, and it was not right. Between you and me, he did not keep that secrecy, because he is not that kind of person, and if he thought that someone was getting underpaid he was the one who would speak up and do it. Employers think they can have this power over people. They think they can make people vulnerable in the workplace where they will not question it, they will not speak up, they will not stand up for themselves and they will not stand up for the collective. That is what pay secrecy is about. It is about really striking at the heart of the collective of workers, and that is not okay, because they conceal inequality and make unfair treatment a part of the workplace culture.

We know that this is important. It is important for job security, for secure employment and for providing certainties for people with housing, education, child care and financial planning. Victorian workers deserve the best, and our Labor government is here to stand with them every day. That is what we do. I commend the bill to the house.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.