‘Senator baulks at Turnbull union Bill’ featured in The Australian highlighted the political debate surrounding the Ensuring Integrity Bill.

AREEA’s Chief Executive Steve Knott AM was quoted as stating the two unions had “made it very clear the intention of the merger is to ramp up national industrial and economic vandalism”.

“We need investment, we need jobs and we need projects. A power-heavy, lawless union is power-heavy, lawless union is only going to detract from this,’’ he said.

AREEA issued a media statement reiterating messaging there was ‘ zero tolerance for breaching company drug and alcohol policies in the offshore oil and gas industry’ which was quoted by Ewin Hannan, in ‘10 beer ruling quashed’ in The Australian.

Mr Knott said FWC members were too often interfering in company decisions to dismiss workers on breach of safety regulations.

He said that the prospect of FWC members not familiar with the operation of vessels in the offshore oil and gas sector substituting their judgement over established company policy and the experience of vessel industry managers was ‘frightening’.

The story was also picked up by the AFR’s David Marin-Guzman ‘Fair Work Commission overrules ‘unsafe’ dismissal decision over alcohol breach’, where AREEA’s calls for removal of discretionary power were reiterated.

The West Australian reported predictions of good news and jobs for NRW Holdings to win a $300 million mining contract on Gascoyne Resources’ Dalgaranga gold project near Mt Magnet: ‘NRW set for $300m, 200 jobs win at Dalgaranga gold’; and, ‘Nickel West poised to double up Kwinana lithium-ion supply plans’ with Nickel West boss Eddy Haegel telling the  Australian Nickel Conference, in Perth, the company was considering expediting plans for a stage two expansion of its proposed nickel sulphate plant at Kwinana.

In other news, gender equity stories were plentiful triggered by high-profile presenter Lisa Wilkinson’s claims she left the Nine Network on pay equity grounds.

The Australian reported ‘Labor looks to make Fair Work Commission ‘more proactive’ on gender pay gap’.

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