Grasping the Moment: Some Cross-Tasman Thoughts on Australian Labour Law Reform‪.‬

It is something of a poisoned chalice to be asked to comment on another country's labour law reforms. Even proffering such advice at home can lead to suggestions that one's opinion is lacking in credibility; a former Minister of Labour asserting that my 'assertions stray into the domain of the wild and erratic'. (1) Commenting on a system that has many similarities to one's own, and which until the last quarter of the twentieth century had largely the same legal structure, seems a straightforward task, but carries the risk that nuances may not be fully understood or be overlooked. Close similarities may mask quite different political and economic dynamics that may be misunderstood. The devil, as always, is in the detail. I began writing this comment on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the signing of the Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Free Trade Agreement (CER). Given the very high degree of trans-Tasman economic integration and the existence of an open trans-Tasman labour market, it is worth making the point that one area of law that has remained outside the CER harmonisation project has been labour law. The only exception has been reinforcing free movement of labour. (2) Implementing CER has required a high degree of legal and regulatory harmonisation, in turn dependent on a high level of policy congruence and mutual confidence in the other's regulatory and administrative systems. In this respect CER differs significantly from the European Union, where harmonisation of labour standards has been an important part of the integration program. The reasons for excluding labour regulation from CER are essentially pragmatic. There is no need to include it and every reason not to. Each country can have confidence that at the macro-level neither is disadvantaged by the mode of regulation in the other.