Labor's new shadow IR minister is prominent frontbencher and former SDA organiser Tony Burke, who in his youth won improved pay and conditions for paperboys after threatening to picket a newsagency.
Re-elected Prime Minister Scott Morrison has stressed the importance of law enforcement in adding IR to the responsibilities of Attorney-General Christian Porter in his new ministry announced yesterday.
A mountain-climbing former radiographer who once found a future FWC vice president leading a team of dancing lawyers outside her office has become one of the tribunal's newest senior members.
The composition and role of the Fair Work Commission "must be re-examined" due to Coalition governments appointing 20 consecutive members from an employer background, according to an internal ACTU report.
In a valedictory speech tracing his arrival in Sydney as an "economic refugee" in 1973 to becoming a union leader and Labor shadow minister, Senator Doug Cameron has told the Senate that his belief in socialism drove him to seek a Senate seat and credited his wife with saving him from alcohol addiction.
A representative for IR Minister Kelly O'Dwyer has praised a new FWC presidential appointee for his HR expertise and direct business experience, observing it is "not a common attribute" of Commission members "who tend to operate in the IR system".
A baby who survived the devastating 1974 Cyclone Tracy by sheltering in a double-brick dunny with his parents in the backyard of their Darwin home has become one of the newest members of the FWC.
Former Howard Government IR Minister Peter Reith, barrister Stuart Wood and union leader Graeme Kelly have been recognised in this year's Australia Day Honours.