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Just say play the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's on the Front. I'm Kristin Amiot. It's Monday, September twenty three. Approval for the government has fallen to its equal lowest point since the twenty twenty two federal election. That's according to new data from Newspoll, which shows Labour's
stalled housing plan is the top concern for voters. You can read our experts analysis of the latest numbers right now at the Australian dot com dot a U Taiwan wants un membership and it needs Penny Wong's help to get it. The self governed territory has asked the Foreign Minister to throw her support behind un BID after Australia backed Palestine's admission to the International organization. Mining giants have launched a federal court bid to throw out a ruling
about workers' entitlements. It's the first big test for the Albanezi government's new rules about how employees can negotiate with their bosses. That's today's story. Imagine for a second You're a worker on a mining site somewhere in New South Wales and the supervisor rostered on to monitor safety protocols during your shift is out of action for one reason
or another. You could work, but it's risky. What if something goes wrong, So you and your colleagues go the other route, walking off the job until you can come to an agreement with your employer about how to proceed. The bosses in head office knowe those conversations could drag on, so they make the call shut the site down until
all the necessary people are back on deck. Mining bosses say these costly shutdowns could be their new reality thanks to sweeping industrial relations reforms, which were legislated in late twenty twenty two. For the centerpiece of the government's first wave of UR reforms, a multi employer bargaining is available to employees from today. The reforms or one of a handful of big wins for labor in the early days of this government. Here's former Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke.
The laws so far are working exactly how we'd anticipated and not quite matching up with the fear campaign.
Basically, the legislation allows unions to negotiate workplace agreements across multiple businesses in the same industry. Then once a deal is struck, they can bring in more businesses that stand to benefit from that agreement. The Albaneze government assured big mining companies they had nothing to worry about because the reforms were targeted at low paid industries and smaller operations.
But the minor say unions have left it the chance to enforce multi employer bargaining on mining sites, and a couple of weeks ago the Fair Work Commission gave it a big nudge. It ordered the New South Wales coal miners, white Haven Coal, Peabody Energy and Ewle and Coal Mines to enter a joint bargaining process, saying they have a clear common interest. Now they're fighting back.
This has caused a lot of consternation and anxiety. We've now seen white Haven Coal, Peabody and glen Core joining forces in what really is now a landmark test case of the Urbanese government's multi employer bargaining laws.
Jeff Chambers is The Australian's chief political correspondent.
Now glen Core and Peabody are big multinational companies in Whitehaven is one of Australia's biggest coal producers, all three very important exporters contribute a lot to the New South Wales and Australian economy and they will go to the Federal Court and they will seek an appeal to overturn
the Fairwork Commission ruling. And under that ruling, the Fair Work Commission has pretty much agreed with the unions that brought the action that there is a common interest and that common interest is that these companies mine the same commodity in the same state.
Labour's been under increasing pressure to wind back the multi employer bargaining legislation more or less since it passed. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has promised to repeal the laws if his party wins government at the next federal election.
So we will take a policy that's in our country's best interests, that provides support to workers, but that doesn't make it impossible, particularly for small businesses to employ staff, because particularly when the economy to turns down, we want employers to err on the side of keeping those workers on.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanezi has offered a tacit refusal to walk back the laws. Instead, he's taking the nothing to see here approach. His speech to the Business Council of Australia on Tuesday night avoided any mention of it entirely, and Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt is digging in. He says multi employer agreements are good for the economy because
they increase flexibility and boost productivity. Plus, the Queensland Senator says only one agreement has been struck in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning industry, but mining bosses fear other industries employing thousands of Australian workers like banks, supermarkets and iron ore companies could be in the Fair Work Commission sites as well.
Ultimately, what the mining companies say, and this is the same across all bigger businesses, is that there are differences between the types of companies, the types of areas where people work, and the types of operations. So you're basically under multi employer bargaining. Suggests that one size fits all, and as plenty of workers in the mining industry know whether it's iron ore or coal or LNG, they're in
different locations, there are different considerations. There is also concerns that other sectors could be hit because if you run the same common interest test, you can say the same for banks, supermarkets and very concerningly for the mining industry, the iron ore companies up in the Pilboro and Western Australia now more widely. They're concerned about remaining globally competitive
and sustainable. And it's a concern about the unions growing their power and walking into one work site operated by one company and then onto a different work site by another company and then lumping them all in as one.
So what could it mean for Labour's grand industrial vision if white Haven, Peabody and Yulen get up in court.
I think it's very much a text for the Fair Work Commission and for the unions. If they can hold this up in front of the Federal Court, then we will potentially see this then being applied across the country for the private sector. For business. They want to use this as a test case to show why this is not the right application under the law. So there's a real standoff and we hear a lot about big business
and mining being at war with the Albanese government. A lot of that has to do with multi employer bargaining.
So I think there's been a few bridges burnt and the timing of this putting aside the Federal Court appeal, there will be more widely a lot of campaigning and activity because the unions have great influence over this government and they would be concerned not only did they can't have a open discussion about where things might not be working or some of their concerns, but also more tranches
of legislation than coming through. And they're also really concerned about a hung parliament scenario where it's a Labor Greens independent government, and they're just really concerned at a time of such low productivity, low economic growth, high interest rates, that we are making ourselves more globally uncompetitive with much more complex IR laws.
Coming up. Why the coalition's nuclear energy plan is still up in the air. Subscribers to The Australian get first access to exclusive stories like this one. Join us at the Australian dot com dot au and we'll be back after this break.
So that the government has a renewables only policy which is just not fit for purpose.
That's Opposition leader Peter Dutton. In June, he announced his party will go all in on nuclear energy if it wins the next election.
No other country in the world can keep the lights on twenty four to seven with the renewables only policy. We need to make sure that hospitals can stay on twenty four to seven. We need to make sure that cold rooms can stay on twenty four seven. We need to make sure that our economy can function twenty four to seven, and we can only do that with a strong base low power.
The coalition has proposed building a mix of smaller modular nuclear reactors and full sized facilities on sites of existing power stations around the country, but for months now it's declined to explain how much its big pivot to nuclear energy could cost, saying only that those details would be released in due course. And in a speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia today, Dutton will toe
the party line. He says energy transformation like the one he's proposing could create thousands of jobs, but he still won't get into the numbers. On Sunday morning, Treasurer at Jim Chalmers said that's not good enough.
I think that this is economic insanity. He is a big risk to energy and to power prices in this country. The fact that he's not prepared to release those details I think should ring alarm bells for every Australia. It's time for him to come clean.
Here's Jeff Chambers.
Look, I think from Peter Dudden's perspective, there is such great weight of pressure on Anthony Albernesi and the Labor government around the cost of living and housing, and I don't think Peter Dudden wants to provide any ammunition too early for a government that's really quite desperate on several
fronts at the moment. And we've all got to recall that Anthony Alberzi waited until much closer to the twenty two election before he put out his Powering Australia Plan, and famously, in that plan they promised that they'd be reducing electricity bills by two hundred and seventy five dollars.
So I think Peter Duden is just banking on the fact that a lot of anger is directed at the government and there's this rising speculation that we're all looking at a slightly earlier March election, which means we come out of December into the summer January and we see an election called pretty swiftly after that.
Jeff Chambers is The Australian's chief political correspondent. You can read his exclusive story about the court action launched by some of the nation's mining bosses right now at the Australian dot com dot au