Mr TRUSS —My question is addressed to the Minister for Industrial Relations. I remind the minister that a sensible industrial relations framework is crucial to small business and jobs. What measures is the government taking to make it easier for small business to employ people while at the same time maintaining sensible safeguards for employees?

Mr REITH —I thank the member for Wide Bay for his question. This government is unashamedly pro small business. The reason we have brought down the statement today is to give some encouragement and institute some practical, sensible measures to help small business. In the area of unfair dismissal, only my predecessor could have invented a solution to a problem that did not exist before he arrived, which is why we have had the tremendous problems we have had with unfair dismissal. That is why, when we drafted the legislation on the Workplace Relations Act, we made provision for reasonable exemptions, and particularly exemptions that related to small business.

What we have announced today is in conformity with the legislation. We intend to bring down a regulation that says a small business with 15 employees or less will not be subject to the unfair dismissal provisions in respect of new employees in their first 12 months. I think the response of the small business community will be that they will have greater confidence that they can go ahead and give people the chance of a job—which hopefully most Australians, apart from the Labor Party, would actually like to see.

The fact is, if you are running a small business—as even the international conventions show—you do not have a human resources department and you do not have lawyers on tap at great expense to defend claims of this sort. What you need is a practical, user-friendly system that will encourage small business to give people jobs. It is an innovative step for Australia, and an important and useful one, but I would have to say when you look around the world you will see we are not alone in introducing such exemptions.

Mr Speaker, I am also pleased to say that the regulations contain other exemptions. For example, we have exemptions in respect of short-term casuals up to 12 months; we have exemptions in respect of trainees under the national training wage and under the modern apprenticeship training scheme; we have clarified the situation in respect of probationary periods up to three months for people taking on new employees; and we have a better regime in respect of fixed term contracts. All of this is aimed at one particular objective—that is, to give our businesses, and particularly our small businesses, some real encouragement to give people the opportunity of a job.

Interestingly enough, those regulations were the subject of discussions between the government and the Australian Democrats last night. We have come to a sensible position on those regulations, so your notice of disallowance in the Senate will get knocked off. I will tell you why it should. It is for no other reason than this: one of the things you wanted to do was knock off the $50 application fee for lodging an unfair dismissal. Instead of saying to employers and employees, `We are going to have a fair system', the message you want to send to small business and to employees is that it is just an easy system that you can go in and knock off an employer regardless of the circumstances of the dismissal. It really shows your true colours.

When it comes to small business, quite frankly, you walked away from them for 13 years, and you have the hide—even in opposition—to attempt to knock off the very sensible measures that we have introduced to help small business. This is a fair deal. It retains the unlawful discriminatory provisions which protect employees, so if you are dismissed on the grounds of race, colour, sex, pregnancy, disability, union membership—and even non-union membership—those safeguards are still in place. It is a fair deal for employees. It gives them the chance of a job.