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Committee's report

The committee tabled its report on the Bill on 28 August 2020. The Bill was passed with amendment on 9 September 2020.

View:  Report 
View:  Government Response 
View:  Parliamentary Debate on the Bill - the debate can be viewed by clicking on the  movie icon within the transcript
            - transcript 8 September 2020 
            - transcript 9 September 2020

About the Bill

On 15 July 2020, the Minister for Education and Minister for Industrial Relations, the Hon Grace Grace MP, introduced the Criminal Code and Other Legislation (Wage Theft) Amendment Bill 2020 (Bill) into the Legislative Assembly. The Bill was referred to the Education, Employment and Small Business Committee for detailed consideration and report by 28 August 2020. 

View:  Bill
View:  Explanatory notes
View:  Statement of compatibility with human rights
View:  Explanatory speech

The explanatory notes state that the objectives of the Bill are to implement the underlying policy intent of the recommendations made in the committee’s report titled A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work? Exposing the true cost of wage theft in Queensland, tabled on 16 November 2018. The two recommendations of the report that require legislative amendments are:

• Recommendation 8 (Simple, quick and low-cost wage recovery process for workers), and
• Recommendation 15 (Criminalisation of wage theft).

The objectives of the Bill are to be achieved by:

• enabling the prosecution of wage theft as stealing under the Criminal Code;
• increasing the maximum penalties in the Criminal Code for the offences of stealing and fraud relating to wage theft; and
• facilitating the Industrial Magistrates Court’s jurisdiction for wage recovery matters, including the small claims wage recovery procedure for matters of not more than $20,000 under section 548 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cwth) (FW Act).

Submissions

Submissions closed on Thursday 30 July 2020. Submissions are now available under the "View Submissions" tab.

Timeline

Public briefing and public hearing

Committee hearings and briefings are generally open to the public and are broadcast live on Parliament TV.  Footage will be available to view for 12 months after its live broadcast. Transcripts of the proceedings will be published in due course. Visitors are advised that they may be filmed by broadcast media and/or be included in photos taken by Parliamentary Service staff for purposes including posting on the Parliament’s website or social media sites. The Queensland Parliamentary Service is committed to protecting the images collected for this purpose in accordance with the Information Privacy Act 2009.

*While visitors may attend public proceedings in person, there may be some limits placed on the number of persons permitted in the briefing/hearing room, in order to ensure social distancing can be maintained.

Related information

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