IR Minister Michaelia Cash has defended the appointment of former federal Liberal frontbencher Sophie Mirabella to the FWC, maintaining that experience in employment law or IR is "not necessarily" a requirement.
The FWC has in officially welcoming two new members heard how one negotiated her own pay rates as a 12-year-old and the other was indebted to a member of the bar who always took her enquiring phone calls as a junior lawyer "and never told me the answer".
The McGowan Government has appointed long-serving WA IRC senior member Stephen Kenner as the tribunal's Chief Commissioner, with Perth-based barrister Rachel Cosentino to replace him as Senior Commissioner.
The Attorney-General's Department has moved to speedily appoint a new general manager to the FWC, while signalling that a key part of the role is to oversee "significant transformation" of the tribunal's "digital capabilities".
Australia Post's standing aside of chief executive Christine Holgate unlawfully breached her employment contract, according to a legal opinion tabled at a Senate inquiry into the publicly-owned enterprise.
John (Thommo) Thompson, who recently retired from the Queensland IRC after more than 20 years on the bench, says the tribunal has fared better than some its counterparts because of successive state governments' willingness to expand the matters within its ambit.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has today stripped Christian Porter of his IR and Attorney-General's portfolios and handed them to Senator Michaelia Cash, who has been acting in the roles.
