Institutions, tribunals, courts page 348 of 356

The Victorian Government has revealed that its employee expenses will grow by just over 7% this financial year, ahead of bargaining for major replacement agreements with public sector workers over the next year.

Former NSW ETU leader Bernie Rordan says he was warned that litigation by a fellow union secretary could prevent his appointment to the Fair Work Commission in 2012.

The Department of Employment has crunched the numbers on Australia's 122 modern awards, finding that just half provide for weekend penalty loadings, and 26 rule them out.

The Senate committee inquiring into the federal government's bargaining bill has handed down a report free of any recommendations to improve it, with Coalition senators wanting it passed without amendment and Labor and the Greens calling for its rejection.

The Abbott Government has appointed to the High Court the Federal Court judge Michelle Gordon, who last month was part of a full bench that struck down the Coalition's attempt to exclude foreign workers on offshore resources projects from Australian labour standards.

The FWC has issued a new, unconditional entry permit to the CFMEU construction and general division's Queensland leader, rejecting the building watchdog's argument that it should be withheld because of union conduct that has attracted more than $900,000 in fines during his eight years as "ringmaster".

There are "promising" early results from a 12-month pilot program that is seeking to speed-up the appeals process in the FWC and reduce parties' costs, according to the tribunal's president, Justice Iain Ross.

The ACTU will ask the Fair Work Commission for an extra 0.5% in award superannuation to compensate for the Abbott Government's freezing of Labor's scheduled increases to the guarantee levy, in its submission to this year's annual wage review to be lodged on Friday.

The head of Networks NSW, which owns the power "poles and wires" entities that are to be privatised if the Coalition wins Saturday's NSW election, is pushing for FWC approval of agreements to be conditional on them undergoing an objective "productivity test" and is backing calls for the creation of a separate FWC appeals jurisdiction.

The ACCI wants Australia's Fair Work regime wound back, and to instead build on the "policy reform trajectory that commenced in the 1990s".