Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026

Michael McCormack

The Housing Industry Association's executive director for compliance and workplace relations, Stuart Collins, has some advice for this Labor government. He said:

This bill—

the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026—

is being sold as a modest administrative tidy-up of the Fair Work Commission. It is not.

He's right. Mr Collins said:

It contains wide-ranging reforms with significant implications for the residential construction industry, procurement frameworks, workforce costs and the capacity of builders to deliver the homes Australians need.

There's a lot in that sentence, and there are a lot of construction companies going out backwards thanks to the policies of this failed Labor government. What our small-business sector does not need right now is more onerous costs and compliance. On the capacity of builders to deliver the homes Australians need, how many homes was it that this Labor government said they were going to build? Was it a million? Then they changed the figure. But, on their watch, they've built hardly a home.

Mr Collins added this:

The Federal Government is making a bad habit of tabling substantial workplace relations reforms with no notice, no industry engagement and no consideration of cumulative impact.

This is particularly concerning given the large number of legislative reviews currently underway that will impose future workplace relations reforms.

HIA's immediate concerns with this Bill are numerous.

But it's not just the HIA; it is so many other stakeholders besides. And yet this government just want to ram onerous legislation that is going to make it so much more difficult, particularly in the small-business sector, through the House of Representatives because they can and because they have the majority. They think that that mandate gives them permission to ride roughshod over stakeholders who happen to employ a lot of Australians and are sick to the back teeth of compliance and costs and regulation and union activity on their worksites and in their workplaces.

This is the modern Australia. This is Australia in 2026. This is the Australia governed by this Australian Labor Party, which has no modicum of care for small business or for getting out of the way and out of the road to make sure that small business can succeed and prosper. This is the Australian Labor Party that has overseen a cost-of-living crisis and has done nothing to fix it, bar bringing in legislation which just makes it more difficult for more people more often.

The government would do well to go back to the drawing board, look at this legislation and review it. And yet there are no Labor speakers on this bill. Labor members so quickly and readily want to talk about unionising and making sure their unions get their fair share, but, when it comes to small business, to the construction sector and to the transport sector, they are nowhere to be seen defending their shoddy legislation.

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