AREEA has successfully campaigned the Government to exclude contracting businesses delivering services from its Closing Loopholes Bill.
Under the new amendments, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) will be unable to make labour hire pay orders where businesses are providing a service to a client rather than supplying labour.
“With the Government committed to passing its “Closing Loopholes Bill” into law, protecting the resources and energy sector supply chain has been the overwhelming priority for AREEA and its broad national membership,” AREEA chief executive Steve Knott said.
“The industry cannot operate without contract mining and petroleum production services, maintenance service contractors, shutdown service providers, facilities management providers and other specialist service providers – none of which are “loopholes” to circumvent client enterprise agreement rates.”
Tight criteria will direct the FWC to focus only on factual matters of supervision, control, provision of equipment, statutory obligations and whether the work is of a specialist or expert nature.
“Legal review has confirmed the negotiated amendments would significantly strengthen the service contractor exemption and ensure only businesses providing labour hire to clients could be captured by future orders,” Knott said.
“These contracting arrangements are essential to the resources and energy projects that account for 15 per cent of national economic output, enabled the Federal Government to deliver its $22 billion budget surplus and, according to the ATO, pay more tax than all other sectors combined.”
The amendments come as the Bill was split earlier this month in order to pass less contentious protections.
The proposed split saw four separate bills established relating to family and domestic violence leave, PTSD, silica management, and small business redundancy exemptions.
Subscribe to Australian Mining and receive the latest news on product announcements, industry developments, commodities and more.
