BREAKING NEWS: Gutted IR Omnibus Bill Passes in Senate.

(source)

A heavily amended IR Relations Bill just passed in the Senate, 35 votes (COALition, One Nation and Centre Alliance) to 33 (Labor, the Greens, Rex Patrick and Jacqui Lambie).

The Bill (minus the scrapping of the BOOT, which had been withdrawn earlier) still contained a number of measures intended to screw workers. As a sweetener, the COALition had included watered-down provisions to criminalise wage-theft … with a sting in the tail: if this was passed at Commonwealth level it would have superseded stronger state legislation already in application in QLD and VIC.

Faced with opposition to most of their measures (of all the anti-worker measures included, only the so-called anti-double-dipping provision was passed) the COALition decided to vote against their own sweetener (see above)!! So the COALition is giving green light to wage theft. Call me misogynistic as much as you like (I am looking at you both, Albo and Laura Tingle), but Michaelia Cash (acting Minister for Industrial Relations in charge of the Bill) is a mean, terrible, petty creature.

Senator Griff Stirling (Centre Alliance), who had called that “shameful and spiteful”, still voted for the Bill. Aussie pollies are something, uh?

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Because of all the amendments, the Bill will have to go back to the Lower House. I don’t know how Rebekha Sharkie, MP for Centre Alliance, will vote now, as she, unlike her colleague Stirling, had voted against the Bill.

A visibly upset Josh Frydenberg, in interview with Patricia Karvelas, threatens to double down on the bright idea of extra-long greenfields enterprise bargaining agreements without bargaining and without agreement.

You have to hand the COALition this: they really know what they stand for. As long as workers have a drop of blood in their veins, they will keep sucking.

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ACTU President Michele O’Neil and ACTU Secretary Sally McManus
address the media in Canberra (credit: ACTU)

Australian workers, like myself, are indebted to those whose efforts made this result, however qualified, possible. On my own behalf (although I am sure many others would agree) my sincere thanks to comrades Michele O’Neil and Sally McManus and all the folks at ACTU and all the unions who contributed to this.

Join your union. There is strength in union.