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.
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 Coalition's bill to re-establish the ABCC looks doomed in its current form, with two cross-bench senators already telling Parliament they will vote against it and at least one more set to do the same.
The Federal Government has further tightened its construction IR code and warned, on the eve of the Victorian election, that states that don't agree to apply it to infrastructure projects will not receive Commonwealth funding.
The Fair Work Commission will have to consider whether enterprise agreements contain productivity improvements before it approves them, while unions face additional hurdles to protected action, under the Coalition's latest IR bill.
Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie says FWC expert panel member Tim Harcourt is still playing politics despite being counselled by tribunal president Iain Ross that some of his public comments are inconsistent with the Commission's code of conduct.
In the first real IR test of the post-July 1 Senate's precarious balance of power, Palmer United Party senators voted with their Coalition colleagues last night to preserve, by one vote, the rights of the WA government and third parties to ask the Fair Work Commission to terminate damaging industrial action.
