IR reforms covering small business won’t come into law until 2024 as Senate pushes back

Small businesses have been given some breathing room before the next tranche of industrial relations reforms becomes law, after the Senate voted to push a report on the Albanese government’s ‘Closing Loopholes’ bill into 2024.

Seeking to pass the new industrial relations reforms before Parliament breaks over Christmas, the government pushed for the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee to table its report on the lengthy legislation in late November.

That timeline “allows for a reasonable amount of time for it to come back and be considered by this chamber,” Minister for Finance Katy Gallagher told the Senate on Thursday.

However, Coalition senators successfully partnered with the crossbench to set the reporting date back to February 1 next year, a move the Opposition said would give the committee more time to investigate the bill and its potential consequences.

Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Michaelia Cash said giving the Senate more time to deeply consider the bill would benefit the small businesses likely to be affected.

“Our fantastic small businesses in this country are currently saying to this government, ‘Please,'” she said.

Like the Secure Jobs, Better Pay bill, the first tranche of the Albanese government’s industrial reforms which passed into law late last year, Cash admitted the Closing Loopholes package is all but assured to pass into law.

However, the rapid-fire passage of that bill before the Christmas break raised eyebrows across Canberra and among employer representatives.

“I know the legislation will ultimately go through this place,” Cash said.

“I know that. The last lot of legislation did.

“But it doesn’t start till 1 July. So please give an opportunity to this Senate, to the small businesses of this nation and to the employers who actually wake up every day and provide the employees with their jobs.”

The extensive industrial relations package includes legislation that would criminalise wage theft at a federal level, refresh the legal definition of casual work, and impose new powers to the Fair Work Commission to set minimum standards for ’employee-like’ forms of work in the gig economy, among other major updates.

The Australian Retailers Association (ARA) welcomed the decision to push the report into 2024, given the major implications of the bill and its contents.

“The ARA has been advocating for deeper and better consultation around these changes which as drafted create more questions than answers,” said chief executive Paul Zahra.

“It is great to see democracy come to fruition with the crossbench working collaboratively to ensure full scrutiny of the proposed legislation.”

The organisation is looking forward to further consultations with the government, while noting the need for businesses to focus on their trade, not legislation, through the busy pre-Christmas period.

“We need to be extremely careful with any policy changes that could potentially drive price increases or result in added complexity for businesses – many of whom already struggle to comprehend the existing regulatory framework,” he said.

Earlier, other business representatives issued a broad-scale rejection of the bill and its proposed reforms.

In a statement, the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia said the reforms will add new difficulties for business operators.

“The small business community rejects the intrusion of so much more complex regulation into the ability to be productive and flexible, let alone just getting on with being in business and employing more people,” the organisation said in August.