The Abbott Government has quietly dropped re-establishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission and creating the Registered Organisations Commission as "major priorities" in its 2015-16 Budget.
A leading silk has told a gathering of major employers that the federal government should adopt the Harper competition review's recommendation to outlaw agreement clauses that limit employers' use of contractors and labour hire employees.
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 Senate has agreed to a wide-ranging inquiry into Australia's working visa regime, just a week after the Coalition announced extensive changes to the 457 temporary skilled program following a panel review.
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.
A group of leading IR academics has made a preemptive strike against any attempt to use the Coalition's "freedoms" inquiry to diminish the immunity from common law liability conferred by the Fair Work Act's protected industrial action provisions.
A major employer-clientele law firm is predicting that unions will become more aggressive in their pursuit of wage and job security claims this year, and that employers will respond in kind by seeking to unilaterally end bargaining negotiations and turning to regulators like the ACCC.
The AiG says that the Abbott Government should amend the Fair Work Act to prevent unions from taking industrial action when they are bargaining for "non-permitted" matters, in the wake of a FWC full bench decision on the issue this week.
