Summary

Amends the:

and to abolish the Registered Organisations Commission and provide for transitional arrangements; to apply certain provisions of the ; to: abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission and provide for transitional arrangements; repeal the ; and rename the Act to the ; to: amend the objects of the Act to include the promotion of job security and gender equity; guide the Fair Work Commission (FWC) in its consideration of equal remuneration and work value cases; establish a Pay Equity Expert Panel and a Care Community Sector Expert Panel to determine equal remuneration cases and certain award cases; prohibit pay secrecy; prohibit sexual harassment in connection with work; add the protected attributes of breastfeeding, gender identity and intersex status to the existing anti-discrimination provisions; limit the use of fixed term contracts; expand the circumstances in which an employee may request flexible work arrangements and empower the FWC to resolve disputes regarding flexible work arrangements; amend the requirements for approval of an enterprise agreement; simplify the process for initiating bargaining in certain circumstances; amend the Better Off Overall Test; enable the FWC to vary enterprise agreements to correct errors, defects or irregularities; provide for a new intractable bargaining declaration scheme; amend certain processes relating to industrial action and Protected Action Ballots; remove limitations on access to the low-paid bargaining stream and the single-interest employer authorisation stream; amend provisions relating to making multi-enterprise agreements (to be known as cooperative workplace agreements); amend small claims procedures to enable unpaid entitlement recovery; and prohibit national system employers from advertising employment at a rate of pay that would contravene the Act; and to provide that the FWC can only terminate an agreement that has nominally expired on the unilateral application of a party in limited circumstances; to provide for the sunsetting of all remaining transitional instruments; and to update the worker's compensation presumptive liability provisions for firefighters. Also makes consequential amendments to four Acts and repeals the and .