‘Botched legislation’: business chamber concerned criminal penalties still baked into right to disconnect law

Australia’s peak business lobby has lambasted “rushed” and “botched” laws giving employees leverage to ignore after-hours contact, as Woodside’s corporate services boss warns same job, same pay amendments will do nothing for productivity and create an administrative burden. Right to disconnect laws were of top of the hit list when Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar unleashed on a raft of new workplace reforms passed by Parliament on Monday. He was concerned the laws had passed without removing the possibility of criminal penalties, an element that had been mooted initially but was withdrawn following intense public push back. “Rather than waiting for another Senate sitting day, the government decided to push the bill through today without removing the criminal element to the new right to disconnect laws,” he said. “It is unfathomable that this botched legislation will become the law of the land once given royal assent. “It is essential that the government makes crystal clear when the amending legislation will be introduced to fix this mess.” Federal Employment Minister Tony Burke said the government would introduce legislation removing criminal penalties later this week. “This should have been fixed in the Senate last week – but the Liberals threw a pathetic tantrum to keep criminal penalties in,” the Minister said. The comments came the day as Woodside Energy’s executive vice-president corporate services Julie Fallon said same job, same pay legislation — also part of the Albanese Government’s broader Closing Loopholes Bill — would only mean more bureaucracy and wouldn’t do anything for productivity. She said the Perth-based oil and gas major did not use much labour hire but would need to work carefully around arrangements with contractors, which would in turn create admin burdens she said were “certainly not going to help” productivity in the resources sector overall. “The key thing for us is going to be to make sure that we are really clear when we are contracting out, that it falls under service provision, which is not intended to be captured under Closing Loopholes, as opposed to labour hire,” she told a Sydney business summit on Monday, noting that it wouldn’t be until November — when the laws come into effect — before it’s exactly clear how they will work. “We’re going to have to make sure we’re really careful upfront in scoping our work and we have to be prepared to work with our contractors that if it gets challenged that we can support them in demonstrating whether or not it is captured. “So that’s a lot of bureaucracy that’s not actually going to add anything to our productivity.” Same job, same pay provisions were met with considerable pushback from the mining sector in particular, which relies heavily on contractors in its workforce. BHP was an especially vocal critic of the legislation, claiming the changes would cost it $1.3 billion a year.