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.
As a brilliant ACTU advocate, the young Bob Hawke once delivered an "address-in-reply" in the then Conciliation and Arbitration Commission that lasted 12 days.
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.