Party of Small Business Appoints More Big Business People

18th September 2015

Is it just me or does anyone else see the irony in the latest round of government appointments to the Fair Work Commission and Workplace Gender Equality Agency?

The Minister for Employment, Senator Eric Abetz yesterday announced the appointment of former BHP executive Elizabeth Lyons as the Director of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. Geoffrey Bull, former officer of the Australian Mines and Metals Association has been promoted to a Deputy President position at the Fair Work Commission. Christopher Platt, currently the Manager of Employee Relations at BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam project and Tony Saunders a Newcastle based barrister formally with Allens Arthur Robinson, and Tanya Cirkovic have been appointed as Fair Work Commissioners. Only Tanya Cirkovic, another lawyer, states (in online bio’s) having an interest or experience in small business. I am sure that each of these people are very competent professionals and will perform their roles diligently. However, it seems to me that the appointments are indicative of the recently deposed Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his senior ministers’, such as Senator Abetz, inability to walk the talk.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s reporting requirements are oppressive and its policy agenda is generally a waste of taxpayer money. The only redeeming quality is most of its work doesn’t apply to small business. Nevertheless, it would have been nice to see a person who has actually owned and managed a small to medium enterprise take the reins for a change.

The Fair Work Commission is another story. Small business owners cannot avoid the heavy regulatory hand of the Commission.

The impact of Fair Work Commission decisions on small business are generally felt in the area of awards and unfair dismissals. The lawyers, ex-employer association and union officials that dominate the Commission bench have spent almost three years constructing ever more elaborate arrangements to regulate daily life in Australian workplaces (mostly anti-productivity). No better example of the appalling over regulation is illustrated in the arrangements the Commission has decided that must be followed to cash-out and direct employees to take annual leave. It seems individual employers cannot be trusted to manage their own workforces including when it is appropriate to approve period of annual leave. Maybe, just maybe, the decision might have been different if the voice of small business experience and reason was heard.

Similarly unfair dismissals are patently an opportunity for the disgruntled to grab a few extra dollars from their previous employer on the way out the door. By all means protect the genuine unlawfully dismissed employee. However, of the approximate 15,000 applications every year 80 per cent are settled at the first stage by a mix of payments and other benefits offered by employers unwilling to financially cripple themselves in legal fees to defend themselves. If the government is unable to properly reform the law, appointing persons with a background in small business management and advice might at least signal the government is serious about reducing the ludicrously high number of speculative claims.

But alas, it is not to be. The good Senator Abetz and the government kicks another own goal. Maybe one day a government that claims to represent small business might actually translate the rhetoric into action.