The Turnbull Government is poised to introduce legislation to force greater disclosure from union-related funds including redundancy funds, which have about $2 billion in assets.
The Queensland Government will push for Australia's first State industrial manslaughter laws to go national at next year's review of the model OHS laws, IR Minister Grace Grace's office has confirmed.
Coalition senators, in a new Senate inquiry report, have rejected concerns about the "ensuring integrity" bill that introduces a public interest test for union mergers, while minority Labor and Greens senators have dismissed the legislation as "politically-driven" and "politically-motivated".
The Department of Employment has told a Senate inquiry that it didn't consult unions on the "ensuring integrity" legislation until just two days before its introduction to Parliament.
ACTU secretary Sally McManus told a hearing in Melbourne today that the Federal Government’s "ensuring integrity" legislation would impose harsher standards and punishments on unions and their officials than the Corporations Act does to employers.
The Coalition's legislation that would raise maximum fines from $750.000 to $10 million for secondary boycotts is no certainty to become law after Nick Xenophon Team senators joined the Greens and Labor to declare it would not support it.
The ACTU has taken aim at the proposed public interest test for union amalgamations, saying there is no basis for the Turnbull Government's claim that it is the equivalent of the competition test for corporate mergers.
The Turnbull Government has introduced legislation to make another attempt at partially deregulating Australian coastal shipping by easing the rules around foreign ships gaining temporary licences.
Victoria will establish a specialist regulator under its plan to hold labour hire firms to tougher standards, confirming it will become the third state to legislate the industry in the absence of any action from the federal government.
