Law Council shares submissions on children’s online privacy, fair work amendments

• The OAIC should carefully consider the extent to which the Privacy Code should promote privacy rights, along with rights such as the child’s best interests 
• Proactive compliance support should back the Privacy Code 
• Ongoing education, industry engagement, and regulators’ transparent enforcement will help ensure that the Privacy Code properly protects children online 

The council said its submission included contributions from the Law Society of New South Wales, Queensland Law Society, and the Business Law Section’s privacy law committee. 

In its media release, the council added that it plans to participate in future consultation phases regarding the Privacy Code, including when the OAIC releases its draft version for public consultation early next year. 

Fair work amendments

Currently, the Senate is considering the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025. 

In another media release, the council noted that this bill seeks to: 

• Amend the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FWA) 
• Prevent the reduction of specified penalty or overtime rates in modern awards 
• Help protect penalty and overtime rates as an enduring part of the modern awards safety net 
• Close the safety net’s loopholes that allow employers to “roll up” penalty and overtime rates into a single pay rate that fails to fairly compensate award-reliant employees for the penalty rates and overtime they would have otherwise gotten 

The council further noted that the bill will add a provision to the Fair Work Act to require the Fair Work Commission to prevent reducing or removing penalty or overtime rates from awards during enterprise negotiations. 

In its submission to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, the council indicated that: 

• Removing penalty awards did not mean that an employee would be out of pocket 
• Characterising existing law as containing a “loophole” was misleading, as the law prevented a roll-up of penalty rates from reducing employee income and as existing robust mechanisms enabled an employee to bring an underpayment claim 
• Existing “exemption rates” under the Fair Work Act enabled employees to receive higher than award rates without needing them to engage in working days that would otherwise attract penalty rates