How HR Nicholls helped stop the Work from Home Bill.
“I wanted to be the first to tell you we’re going to pass the right to work from home laws this week….But these laws need to work for business too, because the reality is if it’s not practical for employers the laws wont last. So, I’ve made some sensible amendments to these laws to make them practical and affordable for businesses while preserving the right for workers.”
Said Premier Carroll as he sat down on his office couch just after 6 pm on Monday, 7 September for an Instagram post.
Only one small problem. He hadn’t bothered to circulate any of these amendments to the crossbench who were meant to vote on them, the businesses who were meant to implement them or employees who are most affected by them.
The Premier had found time to announce the promise on Instagram but somehow the amendments had missed the upload.
By that Wednesday night we wrote to the Premier for a second time in weeks, but this time we copied in the crossbench.
“You describe this Bill as a world first, however unlike any other world first, the Government that proposes to pass it has provided no legal advice on its constitutionality and no economic modelling of its impact. Nothing to show the law is valid, nothing to show what it will cost and further, your proposed amendments to ‘fix’ the Bill only exist through an Instagram post.”
We demanded four things:
(1) Release the Solicitor-General’s advice on the Bill’s constitutional validity, or confirm none was obtained;
(2) Release the Government’s analysis of the Bill’s economic and employment impacts, or confirm non exists;
(3) Publish your amendments in full; and
(4) Support a referral of the Bill to a Parliamentary Committee.
And we finished with:
“When you took office, you told Victorians: ‘I’m not Daniel Andrews or Jacinta Allan.’ They, at least, could claim no one showed them the evidence. You have the constitutional advice, the modelling and the unanimous objection of the nation’s employers in front of you, and you are still proceeding anyway. So, on this Bill, Premier, you are right. You are not Daniel Andrews or Jacinta Allan. You are far worse.”
By then, independent legal advice commissioned by the Property Council from Nick Wood SC and Leigh Howard had added substantial weight to the constitutional objections. In their view inconsistency with federal workplace law would render the entire scheme inoperative if enacted.
A world first is less impressive when it may not survive its first court challenge.
Then came Thursday 10 September.
Our letter again made the papers and the Government’s assurances were meeting increasingly specific questions with the crossbench insisting on answers.
Jeff Bourman moved to refer the Bill to a committee. Adem Somyurek returned to the chamber after many months away and cast a vote that helped carry it.
Eighteen votes to seventeen.
The Bill was sent for scrutiny, with further debate deferred until the committee reports at a date too close to the election for it to be voted on.
The Premier’s Monday promise to pass it that week had lasted until Thursday.
Good.
There is something that shouldn’t be forgotten here, which is that 6 weeks ago these laws were set to sail through the Parliament with only amendments to show.
HR Nicholls took this battle on to win it, because although this was a Victorian bill the ramifications were national. Had it passed the laws would have put wind in the sails of every other state Labor government, emboldened the Greens pushing for the same model federally, and landed on the desk of every national employer.
It was the thin edge of the wedge in an economy that cannot afford it.
We were determined to stop that precedent being set.
Our position was clear from the beginning: withdraw the Bill. Its defects ran through its foundations and no amount of amendment could save the Bill.
On 31 July, HR Nicholls sent its first letter to the Premier, secured the support of leading industry bodies and set out the case:
“We therefore ask very clearly - Withdraw the Bill. It is constitutionally exposed, conceptually confused, operationally unworkable, duplicative of a federal scheme that already works, and an avoidable cost on Victorian business at the worst possible time. The problem is not a clause here or a definition there. The problem is the foundation of the Bill itself.”
By the next morning the campaign had the front page of the Herald Sun, a full-page news story on page 9, an OpEd from me, and a plug in the editorial. As the OpEd put it:
“Its problems are not cosmetic; they are structural… Drop the Bill, Premier. We have given you all the reasons why in writing.”
Then, on 27 August HR Nicholls released its economic modelling: on conservative estimates 1,800 young Victorians overlooked for a job every single year under this Bill, and as many as 13,300 on the upper numbers - in a state where 7,700 more young people are already unemployed than if Victoria simply matched the national rate.
The modelling made the news, carried a second OpEd, and earned another supportive Herald Sun editorial. As I wrote at the time:
“The evidence gave the Premier no pause - just consultation theatre… No modelling, no impact statement, no answer. There is still time. Drop the Bill. That is exactly what Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan would not have done. And you told us you weren’t them.”
All up, we had one front page, two opinion pieces, two supportive editorials and 3 news articles published in the paper. Not to mention the exhaustive number of meetings and conversations on this legislation.
This was a battle worth fighting, and it is precisely what HR Nicholls exists to do: to call out and fight industrial laws that damage the Australian economy, Australian workers and the businesses that employ them.
The worst piece of public policy in decades is dead. As, frankly, it deserved to be.
At our 40th Anniversary dinner on the 30th of September in Melbourne, I will be launching our biggest report for the year which forms the basis of our biggest fight ahead: the absurd complexity in Australia’s industrial relations system 40 years to the day when the first HR Nicholls paper was released.
This new report, just as the first one started the debate 40 years ago, details how Awards have grown out of control and are killing our economy.
I’ll give you a sneak preview – the modern awards that govern Australia’s pay scales have grown by 3,602 pages since they were first introduced in 2009.
That is nearly two pages every day for 17 years. Consider an employer just getting up to date with the already thousand plus pay scales in the award and then 14 more pages are added by the end of the week.
