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Information about the provisions of the Workplace Relations Amendment
(Small Business Employment Protection) Bill 2004:
This
proposed amendment to the WR Act is to exempt small businesses from the
requirement to make redundancy payments. This will overturn recent
decisions of the AIRC to impose redundancy pay obligations on small
businesses. The effect of the AIRC decision, unless overturned, will be
that small businesses that are constitutional corporations, and covered by
state awards will have to make redundancy payments if the AIRC decision
flows to state jurisdictions.
The
Government argues that implementation of this legislation would be
consistent with its policy of ensuring the profitability of small
businesses, and therefore maintain the ability of this sector to increase
employment opportunities.
Several submissions were received for the WR
(Protecting Small Business) Bill during the last parliament, and they can
be treated as current if that is agreeable to the organisations concerned,
and we request some advice on this.
Closing date for new submissions is 18 February. The committee is due to
table its report on 14 March 2005.
Inquiries from hearing and speech impaired people should be directed to the Parliament House TTY number (02) 6277 7799. Adobe also provides tools for the blind and visually impaired to access PDF documents. These tools are available at: http://access.adobe.com/. If you require any special arrangements in order to enable you to participate in a committee inquiry, please contact the committee secretary.
Additional information
For further information, contact:
Committee Secretary
Senate Standing Committees on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia