Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for the Environment and Water) (11:02): The government will be opposing this amendment. The government has been clear that the scope of this bill is in relation to penalty and overtime rates in modern awards. It does not seek to make amendments to the enterprise bargaining framework.

It remains the government's position that the process for resolving intractable bargaining should not be used to find ways of making workers' terms and conditions go backwards. Section 270A of the Fair Work Act provides a specific requirement to ensure that a term in an intractable bargaining determination must be no less favourable than existing terms in enterprise agreements.

This provision should inform the commission in its approach to this legislation.