Industrial Legislation in 2007

The Howard government’s draconian Work Choices laws will soon be history. A change of government at the 2007 federal election means that Australian industrial relations legislation will continue to be a turbulent field, for some time yet. This review provides an account of the last piece of industrial legislation passed by the Howard government, to introduce a ‘Fairness Test’ in an attempt to ameliorate public concern about the patent unfairness of some aspects of the Work Choices laws. The same Act made some changes to the way in which ‘prohibited content’ is regulated in workplace agreements. We also provide a brief summary of some of the more significant State manoeuvres in what remains to them of the field of industrial relations law