Crossbench Senators David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie will today table four private Senators’ bills in a bid to fast-track additional protections for workers.

With only four scheduled sitting weeks remaining for the year, the Senators are urging the Government, Coalition, and their crossbench colleagues to pass the four measures now, so workers do not have to wait until next year for straightforward additional protections.

The four private senators’ bills bring forward four sections of the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023 as follows: 

• Fair Work Legislation Amendment (First Responders) Bill 2023: This Bill requires the insurers of first responders in the Commonwealth and ACT jurisdictions to presume that PTSD was caused by a first responder’s job, unless the insurer can establish otherwise.
   
• Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency) Bill 2023: This Bill gives workers the right to safe and healthy workplaces by expanding the remit of the Asbestos Safety Eradication Agency (ASEA) to include prevention of silica-related diseases.
   
• Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Protections Against Discrimination) Bill 2023: This Bill would prevent employers from discriminating against people that are being subjected to family and domestic violence by making it a protected attribute under the Fair Work Act 2009.
   
• Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Small Business Redundancy Exemption) Bill 2023: When a larger business incrementally downsizes due to insolvency, either before or after liquidation or bankruptcy, it frequently falls below the 15-employee threshold and technically becomes a small business. This means that the last employees of a large business that has become insolvent will not receive a redundancy payment. This bill provides an exception to the operation of the small business redundancy exemption in the context of large businesses that are bankrupt or in liquidation to stop employees missing out on their redundancy payments.

“These changes are urgent, and I would love to see the parliament put politics aside and get behind some really straightforward measures to benefit workers rather than making them wait,” Senator Pocock said.

“We’re witnessing a really distressing increase in the incidence of family and domestic violence. We’re also seeing an escalation in business insolvencies, which in August were up 32 per cent on the same period last year. We’re seeing governments drag their heels on a silica safety ban and on implementing the full suite of recommendations in the 2019 Senate inquiry into the mental health of our first responders.

“We have to get on with delivering what added protections we can now, while we work through the also important but more complex elements of the Closing Loopholes omnibus bill.”

Senator Lambie said that including these non-controversial changes is simply the government playing politics.

“All we hear from Minister [Tony] Burke [Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations] is that he wants to do the right thing by workers – I would be very happy to see him put his words into action this week.

“David and I are taking a sensible approach to dealing with this beast of a bill that will have broad ranging impacts right across the economy.

“If the Government is serious about doing the right thing by workers – from our first responders who put their lives on the line everyday to those experiencing family and domestic violence – they would get behind our private Senators’ bills.”

Pocock opposes changes to environmental laws

Senator Pocock will also call on the Albanese Government to abandon legislation enabling the sequestration of carbon dioxide in the seabed, which he says scientific experts and environmental advocates have universally condemned.

The Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Amendment (Using New Technologies to Fight Climate Change) Bill 2023 is scheduled to come before the Senate today.

The bill seeks to amend the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act 1981 (Sea Dumping Act), which regulates the loading and dumping of waste at sea. The proposed amendments would enable the granting of permits for the export of carbon dioxide streams from carbon dioxide capture processes for the purpose of sequestration into a sub-seabed geological formation, and allow for the placement of wastes or other matter for a marine geoengineering activity for scientific research.

Senator Pocock said he was concerned the government would seek to push the bill through the upper house with the support of the Coalition.

“Australians sent a strong message at the last election that they want to see the Australian Government do a lot better when it comes to climate action and protecting Nature,” Senator Pocock said. 

“Sadly, it seems that message wasn’t heard, and the Albanese Government is continuing some of the approaches that failed us so badly over the past decade.

“It is an absolute indictment on Labor if – faced with a Senate crossbench that is urging them to do better on climate and environment – they choose instead to rely on the Coalition to get their environmental legislation through. 

“It also raises serious concerns about how they plan to pursue critical reforms of our national environmental laws.

“The upper and lower house crossbenchers and the Australian Greens have all put their concerns on the record.

“This bill is nothing more than greenwashing for gas companies with potentially catastrophic impacts on our marine environment, sea life and climate.

“It will enable the expansion of oil and gas projects that the IPCC and every credible expert says we can’t afford. “I urge Labor to have the courage to do the right thing by current and future generations and not put through legislation that will hurt our collective future.”