Senator MURRAY (9:37 AM) —The Australian Democrats support the view that redundancy provisions should be provided through the Workplace Relations Act. However, we take the view that you have to be much more flexible than the amendments put before us. We believe that the broad basis for redundancy provisions has been outlined by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in its test case and that the proper extension of that test case should be to the safety net—namely, through the award system. The Democrats have the view that awards should vary. We believe awards should be industry based and national rather than state based. They should be limited to a minimum number of allowable matters—we recommended at least 16—but the redundancy provisions should be designed as appropriate for the industry and, where an award is not applicable, they need to be worked out in an enterprise. Obviously, where there is a collective agreement, it should take into account those provisions. So we tend to prefer that the principles of redundancy are established in legislation but that the application of redundancy provisions be varied according to both enterprises and awards.

Furthermore, we are of the view that there are businesses that are just never in a position whereby they can provide redundancy. Micro and small businesses sometimes fall into that category, and it would be unwise to impose a legislative provision which they would simply be unable to meet. Whilst we respect the intention and the initiative of the Greens amendments for similar reasons to Labor but with our own slant on these things, we regret that we are unable to support them.