Zoe McKenzie
Flinders · Liberal Party · Australia
“Wet lettuce. That is the official verdict on this government's attempt to prevent harm to Australian kids via social media regulation. 'Wet lettuce' were the exact words the eSafety Commissioner used to describe the reforms a month ago in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald.”
“Schedule 1 contains a large number of technical amendments across Commonwealth legislation, while schedule 2 repeals more than 100 obsolete amending acts that no longer have any operative effect.”
“They include amendments affecting the Criminal Code, veterans legislation, radio communications, the Midwife Professional Indemnity Scheme, marine safety legislation, family law, freedom of information and electoral legislation.”
“Too often we have seen legislation introduced in haste, legislation requiring significant correction after introduction or legislation producing unintended consequences because proper scrutiny was lacking. Australians expect better.”
“I rise to speak on the Statute Update Bill 2026. The coalition recognises the important role that the statute update legislation plays in maintaining the quality and integrity of the Commonwealth Statute Book. These bills have long been a feature of good legislative practice.”
“It strengthens parliamentary scrutiny, it improves transparency and it provides confidence that the legislation described as technical does not, inadvertently or otherwise, produce substantive legal change. Good lawmaking is not just about good drafting; it is about careful scrutiny.”
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“Wet lettuce. That is the official verdict on this government's attempt to prevent harm to Australian kids via social media regulation. 'Wet lettuce' were the exact words the eSafety Commissioner used to describe the reforms a month ago in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald.”
“It strengthens parliamentary scrutiny, it improves transparency and it provides confidence that the legislation described as technical does not, inadvertently or otherwise, produce substantive legal change. Good lawmaking is not just about good drafting; it is about careful scrutiny. It is about ensuring parliament understands precisely what it is being asked to pass. Accordingly, while the coalition supports the objectives of maintaining an accurate and coherent statute book, we believe this bill should first be examined by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee before proceeding through the Senate. Debate adjourned.”
“They include amendments affecting the Criminal Code, veterans legislation, radio communications, the Midwife Professional Indemnity Scheme, marine safety legislation, family law, freedom of information and electoral legislation. Those amendments may well be entirely mechanical in nature, and, if they are, the government should have no difficulty explaining them to the committee and placing that explanation on the public record. In particular, we would expect confirmation that the amendments affecting veterans legislation have no impact whatsoever on veterans entitlements, that the relocation of existing statutory powers does not alter their legal operation and that the repeal of transitional provisions has no continuing legal consequences. That is exactly the purpose of the committee process.”
“Too often we have seen legislation introduced in haste, legislation requiring significant correction after introduction or legislation producing unintended consequences because proper scrutiny was lacking. Australians expect better. For that reason, the coalition will be seeking referral of this bill to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee. That is not because we oppose this bill; rather, it is because parliament should take the opportunity to test the government's assertion that every amendment is genuinely technical and that no substantive legal rights, obligations or entitlements are affected. A small number of amendments extend beyond straightforward editorial corrections.”
“Schedule 1 contains a large number of technical amendments across Commonwealth legislation, while schedule 2 repeals more than 100 obsolete amending acts that no longer have any operative effect. The overwhelming majority of the amendments appear to be precisely the kind of technical machinery changes that statute update bills are intended to contain. They correct drafting errors, modernise language update references and remove spent legislative provisions. The coalition supports the principle that the Commonwealth Statute Book should be kept accurate and up to date. However, we also believe parliament has an obligation to verify, not simply assume, that legislation described as technical is in fact technical. Unfortunately, this government's legislative record gives parliament good reason to exercise that scrutiny.”
“I rise to speak on the Statute Update Bill 2026. The coalition recognises the important role that the statute update legislation plays in maintaining the quality and integrity of the Commonwealth Statute Book. These bills have long been a feature of good legislative practice. They correct drafting errors, update terminology and cross-references, repeal spent provisions and improve consistency across Commonwealth legislation. Keeping the law accurate, coherent and accessible benefits everyone from the courts and legal practitioners to government agencies and ordinary Australians seeking to understand their legal rights and obligations. On its face, this bill is consistent with that longstanding purpose.”
“This time last year, I met with the French president's advisers at the Elysee on this topic, and, in January, France's National Assembly passed a bill to ban social media accounts for under-15s. In February of this year, I met with members of the German Bundestag, looking at this as a possible reform. I was in the room at the CDU national conference in Stuttgart when the then-ruling CDU committed to a ban for under-14-year-olds. I'm proud to say that, unlike the Minister for Communications, the Australian taxpayer didn't need to pay a single dollar for me to have these conversations with policymakers around the world. I do thank the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and the Meliore Foundation for their support, and I thank others for agreeing to meet with me and to do work together on my self-funded holidays to get meaningful reform done.”
“It seems this government is determined to repeat its mistakes through haste and being seen to address issues rather than addressing them in any meaningful way. We are being asked to pass this bill within 24 hours, and it is not clear from the content of this bill that it will actually bring about change and efficacy in the operation of this reform. Efficacy here is not optional. The rest of the world is watching us. I addressed a political tech conference in Berlin in January of this year which brought together hundreds of politicians, public policy makers and regulators in the social media space across all continents regarding our laws and especially the importance of the EU, France and Germany following suit to provide ballast and back in the reforms with a 450-million person market.”
“We had the new minister for communications spend some hundred thousand dollars to wear the shiny ribbon of reform at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York in September 2025 before a single social media account had been cancelled. On the weekend just passed, almost out of nowhere, the Prime Minister declared that the reform had failed and recognised that failure by social media companies to comply with our 'world-leading law' needed to be addressed. Then, to double down on this government's ineptitude, this bill was rushed in yesterday afternoon—so rushed that there were no copies of the bill at the table yesterday when the minister god up to give her second reading speech.”
“At the time, my side knew the reform was flawed, but we were on the eve of an election and something, anything, was better than nothing. We were comforted that, should we be successful at that election, we'd be able to make the reform more rigorous. Frankly, as we've heard from others, parents were desperate. When I quietly said to parents groups, 'I cannot promise you yet that this will work,' they would invariably reply, 'I am desperate; you have to give me something to strengthen my arm at the nightly battle at the dinner table,' and so we did. The social media platforms had a year to adapt to the reforms, but, rather than rigorously test the adequacy of the implementation, this government got busy on a world victory tour. It was shameless, it was grandiose, it was decadent, and it was a dereliction of duty.”
“But, in the eSafety Commissioner's own words, which she has subsequently shared publicly, she was not given the powers she needed to do the job. In a lunch with Jacqueline Maley, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the legislation was drafted 'very quickly' and said: … if you're going to take on the biggest technology companies in the world … it's not like you're sticking a pink parking ticket on a windshield … She said: What you're effectively asking us to do with this is fence the ocean. We might be able to create some friction and some degree of safety but it's a futile exercise if you think you're totally stemming the ocean. That would all be fair comment if the government who had given her instructions in these tasks without the requisite powers had not been on notice for at least 2½ years, if not, in fact, four.”
“On 8 November, after a National Cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister announced an intention to legislate a minimum age for access to social media, and many of the committee's coalition members' recommendations found their way into a speech given by the then Minister for Communications at the Sydney Institute on 13 November 2024. I sat up the back of the room that night, somewhat flabbergasted to hear her commitment to all the things which the member for Fisher and I had argued for throughout the select committee process but which had gone unsaid, unsought and unfought for by her colleagues on the committee. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 was passed on 29 November 2024 with bipartisan support.”
“We demanded that platforms report on foreign interference and transnational crime, as well as intelligence relating to child sexual abuse material, child sexual exploitation material and non-consensual sexual images. We demanded action on scams which flourish on Australian social media platforms but not elsewhere, and we demanded additional resources for the eSafety Commissioner and the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation. We demanded a statutory duty of care on social media platforms, and we demanded concerted action in relation to the possible perils of generative artificial intelligence as well. But, above all, we demanded that Australia create an effective market for safer social media as it concerns young people.”
“It has always been clear to me that Australia will not get there alone—without bigger, more substantive and more lucrative markets getting on board to force change and practice within the social media business model. But there's another reason why the joint select committee's report is worth reading. That is because, in the final report, called Social media: the good, the bad and the ugly , nowhere in it do the Labor members of the committee recommend a ban on under-16s holding social media accounts, the accounts being the vector for algorithmic push and influence. The coalition members' comments, written by the member for Fisher and me, argued for meaningful measures to address recommender systems, persuasive design features and customised feeds.”
“In May, the Prime Minister sought to pump the issue into the long grass, referring the matter to a select committee, the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society. Unsurprisingly, the member for Fisher and I bullied and begged our way onto that committee. I do recommend the committee report to all and sundry to read, as indeed I did this morning when talking to Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, an Independent Quebecoise senator in Canada. Julie rounds out conversations and communications I have had with policymakers and influencers in New Zealand, the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the EU and the OECD since 2022 on this issue.”
“Listeners will recall she was the person who revealed that Meta knew exactly how much damage was being done to young people, particularly girls, on their platforms. I thank Frances for coming to Flinders and for meeting with me and my local schools to talk to young people about their experience with social media. On 13 June 2024, Peter Dutton made an even clearer statement committing a future coalition government to implementing an age limit of 16 for social media platform use and making it a top priority for his first hundred days in office. Premiers Minns of New South Wales and Malinauskas of South Australia were quick to read the room and held a summit a few months later. But, for months, Australia's Prime Minister remained largely silent on the issue, as was his then communications minister.”
“We think that's something that the government should pick up straightaway as well, but the Online Safety Act has significant powers in it, we passed it when we were in government and it needs to be enforced. If the laws are inadequate and they need to be strengthened or added to, then we would support any effort from the government.' By then, a number of parents groups had already got organised and were running hard, demanding reform, like the Heads Up Alliance, and 36 months and News Corp's Let Them Be Kids campaign had kicked off in May 2024. A local hero from the Mornington Peninsula, dad Wayne Holdsworth, had started his SmackTalk outreach work across the country. All these efforts were getting increased public attention. Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen visited Australia a number of times.”
“Can we have a chat?' It was perhaps helpful that many by then had kids who were in their teens and the battle over iPhones and platforms was real and rife at the dining room table. Haidt's thesis was that we had 'rewired childhood' and that we had let play cede way to phones. Again, Haidt detailed a number of perils—social isolation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction—particularly the trap of the compulsive dopamine driven design of many of the social media platforms. Early in 2024, my then leader Peter Dutton stood up and said, 'There's an age verification regime which has been recommended by the eSafety Commissioner from 2023.”
“Twenge's book i G en provided reams of data on what we were seeing in terms of behavioural change, cultural change, and social and economic change due to social media but also on mental health, social cohesion and to a lesser extent radicalisation. I thank Professor Twenge for the time she has given me personally while being here speaking in Australia. Her work has been pivotal in giving me the data and determination I needed for what I could already see was happening in our homes and communities over the last decade. Twenge's work was followed by Jonathan Haidt's more popular work of 2024, T he Anxious Generation , which captured the public's attention. It also captured interest in this place. Many of my colleagues pulled me aside, saying: 'I remember you mentioning this in your maiden speech.”
“At the time, I admit, no-one much was listening, but it was a conversation I continued with former colleagues in tech and telco from my time on the NBN board, with families and teachers across my electorate, and with researchers and policymakers around the world. The work by Professor Jean Twenge was already detailing the impact of technology on young people. Published in 2017, her book iGen detailed the impact of technology on the generation who had grown up with it in their hands. She studied the cohort of young people born between 1995 and 2012 and the impact internet enabled devices were having on that generation.”
“I went on: … increasingly, data shows us that today's adolescents—24/7 connected to devices, addled by algorithms and autoplay—are showing signs of stress and, indeed, in some cases, distress. Self-control difficulties, impulsivity, family conflict, sleep disturbance, inactivity, concentration impairment and poor language development are often observed among those children whose technology use is above the recommended two hours a day. Of highest concern is the well-documented epidemic of anxiety and depression in teenage girls, which we know correlates with high use of social media.”
“In that speech, I reflected on the period the Mornington Peninsula had just passed through and what it had done to the relationship between young people and screens. I said: The 262 days of lockdown in metro Melbourne, in which the Mornington Peninsula, bafflingly, found itself included, further embedded their generation's relationship with screens, social media and other online content. Whatever systems our households had in place to balance online time with offline time in the form of study, sports, sleep or social activity collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Worse still, the school system became the dealer of the digital drug, putting laptops and tablets into every lounge or bedroom.”
“Many of the members of the then House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs remain on the government's benches today—the members for Newcastle and Macarthur. While the formidable former member for Dunkley Peta Murphy is no longer here, her presence is felt loudly and proudly for her leadership on the topic of age verification and gambling. Her impact remains felt in this chamber each and every day. Learning from his strong leadership in this policy space, the member for Fisher became my firm friend after I got up in my very first speech and discussed the impact of screening and social media on the generation of young Australians that had just come through the COVID era.”
“They also drew attention to comments by the Communications Alliance: Translating this objective [of ensuring that Australians younger than 18 years should not have access to online wagering and pornography sites] into a robust and practicable framework that also protects the privacy and cyber security of individual users of an age verification system is, however, a complex task that must be approached carefully and methodically. Further, they said: Labor members of the Committee acknowledge that the necessary review and research requires time, expertise and resources to properly examine the complex range of issues that age verification gives rise to, across data security, trust, privacy and freedom of expression.”
“That report was largely bipartisan, but, in Labor's minimal additional comments at the time, they posted a warning to their future selves, where they quoted the eSafety Commissioner: Age verification is a nascent field, and if it is to be leveraged to protect children and young people from accessing online pornography, then we need to develop a supportive ecosystem, develop robust technical standards and requirements for this type of technology, and better understand the effectiveness and impact of age verification solutions in addressing this policy concern.”
“Protecting the a ge of i nnocence was handed down on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it set out a future course of conduct, including that the Digital Transformation Agency should lead the development of standards for online age verification, that the eSafety Commissioner should lead development of a roadmap for mandatory age verification for online pornographic material, that the Australian government should implement mandatory age verification for online wagering alongside existing identity verification requirements and, finally, that some educational resources for parents should be prepared.”
“Is it any surprise that we find ourselves here? Let me start with a history lesson, because, in respect of this reform and its failures which today we are here trying to mop up, a history lesson actually matters. Back in the 46th Parliament, my friend—a strong-minded, most clever coalition MP—the member for Fisher led an inquiry into age verification for pornography and gambling sites. That committee concluded in its report, which was called Protecting the a ge of i nnocence , that age verification is not a silver bullet but a useful tool to create a barrier to young people's access to harmful online content.”
“My question is to the Treasurer. The day after the budget, the Treasurer was asked by Peter Stefanovic if he negatively gears any properties, and the Treasurer said, 'I don't, Pete, no. I did maybe a decade ago or something like that.' Can the Treasurer explain to Australians why it's fair for him to benefit from negative gearing and then rip up the same opportunity for millions of aspirational Australians?”
“If ever you needed proof of the uniqueness of this region, Sheree's discovery of the biofluorescence of the swell shark in the waters off Cerberus is it. I have written to both the Minister for Defence and the Minister for Finance a number of times, outlining the concerns raised by locals and questioning whether this land has genuinely been assessed as surplus to future defence requirements. The people of Western Port have a deep connection to HMAS Cerberus . Generations of servicemen and women have trained there. It forms part of our local identity and part of Australia's naval story, and that is why I will keep fighting with my community to call off this hasty and ill-planned sell off.”
“Many in my electorate, with significant service to the nation in their past, are asking a very reasonable question: if Australia expects HMAS Cerberus to play a bigger role in training sailors under AUKUS, why on earth are we reducing the land available to support its future growth? Others have raised concerns about the environmental significance of the site and the possibility of future development, as it's part of the Ramsar designated region of Western Port. One resident wrote to me: Please protect the beautiful wildlife and pristine coastline around Somers and Crib Point from development. The remarkable local underwater documentary maker Sheree Marris is currently producing an extraordinary work on the wondrous waters of Western Port. Just a few weeks ago, she discovered a unique glow-in-the-dark shark.”
“Two weeks ago, hundreds of them gathered together at a community information session run by Defence, and the message was loud and clear: the community does not agree that this land is surplus. Much of the land being sold is environmentally significant and virtually untouched. One former sailor who joined the Navy at just 17 years of age wrote to me, 'I do not want to see this land sold off.' His sentiment and the determination that sits behind it has been repeated time and time again. People understand that once defence land is sold, it is virtually impossible to get it back.”
“What kind of government says Australia faces the most challenging strategic environment since World War II, signs up to AUKUS, promises a larger and more capable Navy and then starts selling off parts of Navy bases? That's exactly what is happening at HMAS Cerberus , in my electorate. The Albanese government has identified 67 defence sites across Australia for disposal, and the list includes historic sites like the Victoria Barracks in Melbourne and the Victoria Barracks in Sydney—and, now, a huge part of HMAS Cerberus , the cradle of the Royal Australian Navy, is also on the chopping block. It's a world-leading training base which welcomes over 6,000 people each year, preparing future leaders for the AUKUS fleet. Over the past few weeks I have heard from hundreds of local residents.”
“My question is to the Minister for Housing. According to media reports, the Minister for Housing negatively geared an investment property, which was sold in 2023 for $1.375 million. In the last month's budget, the government broke its promise and changed the negative gearing rules. Can the minister explain why it's fair and financially sensible for her to have benefited from access to negative gearing but then pull up this ladder of opportunity from millions of aspirational Australians?”
“The CFMEU has bullied and intimidated its way through the Labor caucus to the point where, despite clear evidence from Victoria Police, a royal commission into union corruption on taxpayer funded worksites remains unthinkable in my home state of Victoria. Rather than clamp down on the CFMEU, this bill continues that union's grip on this country's public policy agenda. Why? Because Labor is the political arm of the CFMEU.”
“Yes, that's in their pattern bargaining laws, so it's a tick. Unions must have free access to workplaces to represent and protect workers. Tick, tick, tick. The list goes on; it's all here. The member for Watson got most of this manifesto implemented, and a couple more were done by Senator Watt in the other place. Now it falls to the member for Kingston to get the rest of the CFMEU wish list done. All the while, the evidence of CFMEU corruption continues to build up. The CFMEU has allowed rival bikie gangs to compete for control over drug dealing on government construction sites in my home state of Victoria. The CFMEU allegedly required workers to pay $100 in cash to former CFMEU officials under the guise of a charitable donation in order to be allocated a shift, generating $10,000 per occasion.”
“As such, Labor should implement procurement rules that require tenderers to meet conditions of participation in order to qualify for government work, including having a unionised workforce/union agreement. There it is. This follows Labor's compliance with at least half the orders listed in the CFMEU's manifesto. The ABCC and ROC must be abolished. Tick. Make industry assistance conditional upon having a unionised workforce. Tick. Define casual work, rather than leaving it up to employers and employees. Tick. Encourage superannuation funds to promote unionism and direct their investments accordingly. Tick. Hold a referendum—can you believe this is in here?—to constitutionally enshrine a First Nations Voice to Parliament. Tick. Allow bargaining at any level: enterprise, industry, regional and national.”
“Yesterday the Australian Chamber of Commerce tallied up the number of demands this government had met from the CFMEU's 2018 manifesto, Goodbye neoliberalism penned by John Falzon but fully endorsed by the National Secretary of the CFMEU at the time—in which they stressed that the moral responsibility of government is to solidify the proper role of organised labour in a democratic society. The document has an 18-point plan and, for anyone wondering how it's relevant to this bill today, the bill is represented in point 5 of the document, which demands that the next federal government: Implement Government Procurement rules that support trade unionism. Government should use their procurement decisions to achieve broader policy objectives that support the economy, jobs and working people.”
“This bill reduces the rigour required of that financial reporting, and no longer will the administrator be required to provide a financial report—but rather a scheme operation report. A financial report will still be required, albeit on a much looser timeframe. Yet again, this government is loosening the expectations placed on the CFMEU at precisely the time those demands for accountability and transparency should be getting louder each day. The Commission of Inquiry into the CFMEU in Queensland reveals more corruption linked to the CMFEU's conduct in my home state that had an estimated cost of $15 billion to Victorian taxpayers. Despite all that evidence, this government continues to sing to the CFMEU's tune.”
“More importantly, Master Builders reminded the Albanese government of the potential backwards impact this will have on the building industry, where 98 per cent of building and construction is made up of small businesses who typically do not rely on enterprise agreements. Finally, this bill lessens the requirements on the CFMEU administrator, which were set down when the Construction and General Division of the CFMEU was placed into administration in August 2024. Under the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act of 2009, the CFMEU administrator is required to prepare and submit reports to the minister regarding the performance of the administration, including detailed financial reporting requirements, which failed to include the requisite level of financial reporting.”
“That creates a major corruption risk." … … … "Public money should go to businesses that can deliver, not businesses that have signed the right union agreement," Mr Black said. "The reach goes far beyond a single contract. A single Commonwealth project could impose these conditions on every business in its supply chain. The consequences would ripple through entire industries." Master Builders addressed the proposed reforms with their typical plain speaking: In the end, this provision will send a message that if you don't have a union backed bid then don't bother lodging a tender.”
“The Business Council of Australia condemned the legislation, saying, 'It would corrupt the integrity of Commonwealth procurement by allowing discrimination against businesses without union covered enterprise agreements,' which should alarm every Australian business and taxpayer. Bran Black, the CEO, summarised the provisions thus: "This would give unions effective control over where taxpayer money goes. It is being introduced against every lesson the country has learned from the recent CFMEU investigations," Mr Black said. "Geoffrey Watson SC found some enterprise agreements in construction were bought for cash and awarded to criminals, and that these practices could drive legitimate businesses out of the market." "Now, the Federal Government wants to make those same agreements a gateway to public contracts and grants.”
“They say the bill 'completely risks' undermining the principle of freedom of association 'by opening the door to either the current government or future governments forcing employers and their employees to strike deals with unions in order to commercially deal with the government'. Yesterday, in the Australian , chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Andrew McKellar, pointed out: There are nearly one million employing businesses in Australia that operate without a union-negotiated enterprise agreement. This legislation marks every one of them as a second-class citizen in the eyes of the commonwealth, pushing them out of consideration and out of employment opportunities and revenue streams.”
“Then, for good measure, the Albanese government throws in a definition of contractual arrangement: 'any deed, contract, undertaking or any other form of legally binding arrangement'. I'll paraphrase in oldspeak: 'Dear taxpayer, from now on we are only going to spend your money if, at the end of the day, the recipient has a union deal in the bag—one which our masters in the union movement tell us is good enough.' It is unsurprising, therefore, that Australian industry's response to this part of the bill has been nothing short of well-founded outrage. The Australian Industry Group said: Federal Government legislation that opens the door to favouring employers who have enterprise agreements with unions for taxpayer-funded procurement services is both deeply alarming and concerning.”
“In relation to 'making or administering a grant of financial assistance', 'procuring or providing goods or services' and 'entering into or fulfilling the terms and conditions of a contract of a type determined under proposed subsection 354(2C)'. If that's not enough, then there's a catch-all clause in item 55, which gives the minister power to determine any contractual arrangements to enliven the permission to discriminate against employers whose employees are not covered by a union agreement. The bill's digest, almost hiding its own discomfort, states: The EM does not provide guidance on which types of contractual arrangements might be the subject of such determinations.”
“In plain language, which, may I say, even defied the writers of the Bills Digest in this instance, discrimination will be allowed where employees are not covered by an enterprise agreement, where employees are covered by an enterprise agreement that does not cover an employee organisation—also known as a union—or where employees are the subject of proposed coverage or noncoverage. Who is allowed to do the discriminating? The Commonwealth or 'a person acting as required or authorised under a contractual arrangement with a Commonwealth entity'—which, itself, is defined as the Commonwealth or a Commonwealth authority—'or in a Commonwealth contractual arrangement chain'. When is this discrimination allowed?”
“Indeed, one might give the minister's second reading speech on this bill an encouraging B+ in the dialect. These provisions do not elevate or incentivise job security, fair conditions, good faith and genuine agreement. They entrench union power, effectively operating to let the Commonwealth grant lucrative contracts to enterprises in a union headlock. Currently, discrimination is not allowed to preference or punish employers whose employees are covered by an enterprise agreement, but this bill creates exceptions to make that discrimination not only acceptable but encouraged, to increase participation in enterprise bargaining. Item 55 in the bill inserts proposed subsections 354(2A) to (2D) and effectively says it's okay to discriminate on the basis of coverage or noncoverage of an industrial agreement.”
“Newspeak is a controlled language with a simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary so as to minimise critical thinking and critique and, indeed, to deny the neurological path to criticism itself. In Orwell's appendix to 1984 , when commenting on the methodology of newspeak, he described it as follows: Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. The appendix goes on to say: It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050. With the members for Rankin and Kingston in their current roles, we are well on our way to newspeak by 2050.”
“This brings me to the part of the bill which the coalition cannot and will not support, which goes to the Commonwealth preferencing employers with enterprise agreements in relation to grants, procurements or other contractual purposes. Here is where the devil is to be found in the detail, hidden behind a cloak of Orwellian language, such as 'preference enterprise agreements negotiated in good faith and genuinely agreed' or 'support enterprise bargaining that promotes job security and fair conditions'. I have found myself in recent months needing to go back to Orwell's 1984 and the principles of newspeak that were espoused in it. You might remember that newspeak was the language of Oceania, the totalitarian superstate invented to meet the needs of English socialism, known in the book as Ingsoc.”
“A second measure to streamline the work of the commission is to enable it to deal with matters involving an alleged dismissal without first having to determine whether an actual dismissal has occurred. This is in response to the case of Coles Supply Chain v Milford back in 2020, which has effectively required the commission to determine if a dismissal had occurred as a threshold issue, thereby increasing the commission's workload before the somewhat preliminary processes of conciliation and mediation could begin. The bill therefore addresses an issue which, according to its own testimony, the commission has been raising with this Albanese government for some three years. These are reasonably sensible reforms, which the coalition supports.”
“I have been somewhat taken aback by the uniformity in views that something must be done about the avalanche of cases being brought before the commission, well written, yes, but often riddled with false facts or assertions rather than borne out in the applicant's actual workplace experience. Given this change in the nature of the work, as well as the constrained resources of the commission, these changes all seem sensible. We hope it will do something to produce a more manageable workload at the commission while retaining applicants' and respondents' rights for proper consideration of workplace matters and a right to be heard, in respect of cases which should be heard.”