EXPLANATORY STATEMENT

Select Legislative Instrument 2006 No. 99

Issued by the authority of the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations

Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005

Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2006 (No. 2)

Item 2 of Schedule 4 to the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005 (the Work Choices Act) provides that the Governor-General may make regulations amending Acts, being amendments that are consequential on, or otherwise relate to, amendments made by the Work Choices Act.

The purpose of these Regulations is to amend the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act 2005 (the Act) to bring the investigation of contraventions of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) and pre-reform AWAs within the functions of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner (the ABC Commissioner).

The functions of the ABC Commissioner were recently amended by the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2006 (No. 1) to include the investigation of contraventions of any “Commonwealth industrial instrument”.  However, the definition of “Commonwealth industrial instrument” inserted into section 4 of the Act by those regulations did not include AWAs or pre-reform AWAs.  The Regulations amend the definition of “Commonwealth industrial instrument” so as to include these instruments.

The Regulations also define pre-reform AWA for the purposes of the Act to have the meaning given by the Workplace Relations Act 1996. 

The effect of the Regulations is to ensure that the ABC Commissioner retains its function (previously provided to it under former paragraph 10(1)(b) of the Act) of investigating contraventions of AWAs and pre-reform AWAs.

The Act specifies no conditions that need to be satisfied before the power to make the proposed Regulations may be exercised.

The Regulations are a legislative instrument for the purposes of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003.

The Regulations commence on the day after they are registered on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments.