Hey John,
I hope those of you who can - are having a break. If you’re working, thank you and good on you! I hope everyone gets time with their loved ones.
I am so glad to be back home for a bit. It’s a been a busy year, but we got some wins!
Senator Tyrrell pushed hard and got more houses into the governments housing investment fund.
And, after months of pushing, Senator Pocock and I got the Minister to split the Industrial relations bill. You might know it as the ‘closing loopholes’ bill. As I have been saying for the last three months, this was a big bill. It makes sense to get some of parts of it across the line, so we have time to go through the rest of it. As part of the split, the Minister agreed to an independent inquiry on ComCare, it has many of the same problems as DVA and those issues need to be fixed.
From January 1st; Federal Responders won’t have to prove they have PTSD to get help, victims of family and domestic violence can’t be discriminated against at work, Silica will be treated like asbestos and larger businesses facing insolvency will still have to fork out for staff redundancy payments. Industrial manslaughter is now a federal criminal offence and big companies like QANTAS won’t be able to use Labour Hire firms to fix different rates of pay for the same job.
The other bits of the bill, the gig economy, casual work and road transport need more time. In my speech in the Senate – which you can see here, I thanked the Red team and the Blue team. The Coalition joined the cross bench to push for the bill to be split, and then the Government came to the table. That’s what Tammy and I do, we work with everyone across the parliament. I believe that’s what Australians expect, we are paid by the Australian people and it’s our job to get things done.
