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Last night, I discussed with Alan Jones (Sky News) issues surrounding criminal OHS prosecutions of the Victorian government over the hotel quarantine mess. The discussion is here.

The key point is that there must be consistency in the application of the law. There cannot be one rule for the rulers and another for the people who are ruled. To do that would amount to a collapse of the rule of law in society.  More...

Today we have lodged with the Victorian WorkSafe Authority a letter requesting that the Authority prosecute the Victorian government over failures in relation to the Hotel Quarantine Containment Program. These failures have resulted in 765 deaths to date.  More...

Yesterday we wrote to the Victorian WorkCover Authority requesting them to investigate the Covid-19 hotel quarantine mess for possible breaches under the Victorian work safety laws (Occupational Health & Safety Act). Section 131 of the Act allows us to lodge such a request on the Authority who, under the Act must investigate and respond.

The Victorian government has pretty much admitted that the second Covid-19 wave outbreak happened because of the botched hotel quarantine mess in March. Hundreds of deaths have occurred following this.

If anything like this sort of scenario had happened in a private-sector business, we could be sure that a massive investigation would be undertaken by the Victorian WorkCover Authority. The investigation would look to see if prosecution should occur under the Victorian OHS Act, including application of the new manslaughter provisions. But the WorkCover Authority has done nothing over the Covid-19 disaster. More...

I was in an Uber the other day and got talking to my driver. He was a Sikh. We had quite a conversation about his religion and the importance of it to his everyday life. I’ve never met a Sikh before! He was most interesting. I asked him why he drives Uber. His response was quick. He loves being his own boss. He can make his work fit around his family commitments.

My Sikh driver reminded me of why we at Self-Employed Australia have been doing what we do for almost 20 years. We’ve been defending the right of people to be self-employed. We’ve seen attacks from many directions. The attackers always seem to argue that somehow ‘we’ are being exploited. They can’t seem to contemplate that in self-employment there is economic liberty and freedom! My Sikh driver knows and lives that reality.  More...

The Victorian government is looking to push its new Labour Hire Licensing Bill through Parliament, starting this week. The Bill is a legislative scam pretending to do one thing, but in reality will do something else—namely, open new doors to corruption in Victoria.

The Bill is supposedly a (long overdue) response to the exposé by the ABC's Four Corners programme on 4 May 2015 about the exploitation of migrant workers on some Australian farms. What Four Corners exposed was illegal migrants, working below legal pay rates and organized through some small, illegal 'labour hire' businesses.  More...

I'm afraid we're seeing a big political swing against freedom in the workplace. The most obvious driver of this agenda is the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

Essentially, what unions want are changes to the Fair Work Act to force businesses to do deals with unions. The FWA was created by the Rudd Labor government in 2009. But it has not worked to the advantage of the unions in the way unions had expected. The key to union/business deals is that unions offer businesses corrupt deals that either (a) reduce workers' wages and/or (b) make life more difficult for the businesses' competitors. Businesses pay money to unions for this 'service'. More...

Corruption is at its worst when it becomes institutionalized as ‘acceptable’ even ‘required’ business behaviour. It’s at its worst when corruption has political patronage and cover. More...

Last week we expressed our strong support for the deal to bring forward to this year the implementation of the Building Code for the construction sector. We billed the move as the Senate independents again demonstrating their common sense and willingness to listen to the ‘little people’.

Today we’ve lodged a submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Bill explaining why we support the deal.

Our submission is here. More...

Yesterday we congratulated the Senate independents for moving the implementation date forward for the Federal Construction Code to this year. This will be a big help to small business construction subbies.

Today we noticed some commentary in The Australian that big builders will have difficulties negotiating new compliant agreements with the building union, the CFMEU. We think that’s rubbish. We’ve seen before how quickly these agreements are changed when winning or losing business is on the line!!! More...

We were delighted to see in The Australian yesterday that the Senate independents are backing a deal to bring forward the implementation of the Australian Construction Code. This is a huge win for small business subbies in the construction sector. More...