Labour Hire Licensing (Scope of Act) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 29 October 2025.)

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (21:30): I rise to indicate that I am the lead speaker for the opposition. We had productive engagement with the minister and a briefing in recent days, but it will not come as a surprise that the opposition opposes the bill.

The short point here is that the act was amended by the Marshall Liberal government, meritoriously so, in the last parliament. What this bill is doing is restoring the status quo ante, and it is no more complicated than that. We are dealing with just a difference of view about the scope of the relevant provisions. I say that kind of matter-of-factly because I understand the state of the numbers in this house, and I think we will certainly continue to do all we can to prosecute the argument for good sense.

The important matters that have been raised, including by the Australian Industry Group, about the need for this this reversion ought to be taken on board by the government. We need not be here. It is a retrograde step to go back and render the situation as it was back in 2017 when the Weatherill Labor government first introduced it. I think it would be well known that that was the result—there was some fairly prominent reporting in the ABC back in 2015, and there was an Economic and Finance Committee report that was done into the industry, which focused particularly on exploitation and underpayment of migrant workers employed on farms and in food-processing industries.

The Liberal opposition at the time, it ought to be noted, opposed the bill on the grounds that such industries should be regulated nationally as labour hire providers, and that we were increasing, by state legislation, the red tape on providers already complying with existing worker protection laws. If these added amounts of red tape were going to do nothing beneficial then they were not going to capture the culprits, the subject of the committee reporting of the media at the time, and providers who were already flouting the law were going to continue and avoid them anyway.

As I said at the outset, the Marshall Liberal government introduced the changes that it proposed by way of an amendment bill in 2019. The scope of those amendments was to establish an industry-specific model relating particularly to horticulture, meat and seafood processing, cleaning and security industries. These were considered high-risk workplaces by various state and federal government reports. At the same time, it removed most of the imprisonment penalties.

So the bill that we have now seen the government come along and introduce in recent weeks would effectively undo those changes, expand the scope of the act to cover all labour hire firms and, by clause 4, do some work to exclude directors, partners, sole traders and high income workers. That would largely capture expert professional workers contracted or seconded to another company. Clause 5 would also exclude from the definition of 'labour hire workers' those who are moved within a single corporate group or public sector employees transferred between government agencies.

As I have said, this is legislation that is not supported by a variety of industry groups, including the Ai Group, and the opposition is opposed to it. For what it is worth, I would urge the minister to reconsider proceeding any further with it and perhaps going back and continuing to engage with those industry groups, and particularly the Australian Industry Group, which I commend for its engagement, and assistance to me, in considering the scope of labour hire legislation in this state.

The Hon. A. MICHAELS: I want to thank the member for Heysen for his comments. I understand we have divergent views on the extent of labour hire licensing. Our aim is to make labour hire licensing a broad-based system to protect as many workers as possible who might be subjected to some of the circumstances, as the member mentioned, that we have seen in the past. With that, I commend the bill to the house.

Bill read a second time.

Third Reading

The Hon. A. MICHAELS (Enfield—Minister for Small and Family Business, Minister for Consumer and Business Affairs, Minister for Arts) (21:38): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.