Tuesday, 2 May 2023

Labour hire regulation

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:55): (167) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Industrial Relations. The federal government has recently revealed that it is now consulting on proposed changes to the federal industrial relations system intended to be introduced in the second half of 2023. One of the policy measures included in this consultation is the proposal for a framework for the regulation of labour hire at the national level. The publicly available documents regarding this proposal reveal that the federal government intends to introduce ‘a single national framework for labour hire regulation’ which would exclude the operation of all state and territory labour hire regulatory schemes.

It is anticipated that the federal government will likely seek to introduce labour hire regulation as a single national framework by persuading the state and territory governments that have labour hire regulatory schemes in operation to repeal those schemes rather than relying on section 109 of the Australian constitution to override state and territory laws on the basis of their inconsistency with Commonwealth laws.

In 2018 the Andrews government introduced a licensing scheme for labour hire in Victoria. Accordingly, we must presume that the federal government is currently in negotiations with the Victorian government regarding the repeal of Victoria’s licensing scheme. Over the 2021–22 period Victoria’s Labour Hire Authority extracted $12.833 million in licence fees from productive labour hire businesses, which perform a pivotal role in the Victorian economy by meeting demand surges, filling staff vacancies and providing employment opportunities.

Victoria’s burdensome labour hire regulation should be repealed on principle but given the Andrews government’s failed management of the economy, the state’s precarious financial position and now the Premier’s efforts to obtain a bailout from Canberra there is no doubt that the government will be seeking some form of quid pro quo from the interstate taxpayers to fill this hole in the rapidly deteriorating Victorian budget. So the action I seek from the minister is very specific: the minister should reveal what negotiations have taken place on this matter to date and what the Andrews government is seeking in return from the federal government for the repeal of Victoria’s labour hire regulatory scheme.