Wood MichaelHon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I'm very pleased to be here for the committee stage of this important piece of legislation the Fair Pay Agreements Bill. The House enjoyed a good robust debate on the second reading of the bill earlier this week which canvassed the general principles of the bill and enabled members of the House to put down in general terms their views about the bill and the reasons for it and against it and I thought that was a good robust debate. Obviously the committee stage which we'll be making our way through over the next little while focuses on the particular details of the bill on a part by part basis and especially those changes that are recommended by the select committee in its report back. At the outset I do want to thank all members of the Education and Workforce Committee who did consider the bill and did report back. It was a very considerable report back and I encourage all members who are interested in this bill to fully acquaint themselves with the report back from the select committee and also with the full departmental report from officials on the bill. It's a document of gosh about 250 pages or so which provides a really detailed account of the submissions process the arguments and issues that were put forward and the responses from officials to those points.It's notable and worth the attention of the committee of the whole House that the report back from the select committee includes quite a number of changes to the bill and that is consistent with the approach that I wished to see at the beginning of this process. The Government is extremely committed to this bill and the positive changes it will make to our employment relations system. But we always said that we wanted there to be a good robust select committee process and that we expected there would be changes to improve the bill in response to submissions. And if one looks at the changes that are proposed by the select committee in the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 264 that I have tabled I think the committee can see that the Government has followed through with that approach. In respect of Part 1 this is a part which is narrowly focused on the preliminary provisions and includes key terms that are used throughout the rest of the bill. So it's important but a fairly narrow part of the legislation. There were some changes that were recommended by the select committee and I think probably the most substantial in this was in response to a range of submissions actually from both sides of the debate from employers and from unions from those who felt strongly in favour and perhaps those who were not who said that it was really important that there was real clarity around coverage of fair pay agreements (FPAs) so that workers and employers knew who was in and knew what the rules were for ensuring when a fair pay agreement will cover the work of an employee. And so changes have been made to make that as clear as possible. There's what one might term a 25 percent test which is now in the legislation. So in terms of the work being performed by a worker 25 percent of that work has to be covered by an FPA for the FPA to set terms and conditions for that worker and in the event that any individual worker does work covered by more than one FPA it will simply be the FPA that covers the most work that is done by that worker. So there won't be any confusing situations where a range of FPAs will apply to an individual. I think that was a really useful clarification that the select committee has recommended and there were changes in response to those submissions. In the SOP I have tabled there are a range of relatively technical wording changes which are around terms like standard hours" "overtime rates" etc. to make sure that those terms are defined as consistently and as accurately in the bill as possible for the purposes of those issues being included in fair pay agreements. So that is what this part is about and some of the key changes that are proposed for the consideration of the committee and I'll be very happy to answer any questions focused on Part 1 now."