How often it’s ‘enforced’ is, like you said, probably isn’t great
"Reasonable overtime" is only one example - there's a whole host of other really basic questions that you can't get simple, definitive answers to.
For example, can I employ someone on a 12 month contract? What about 24 months? 36 months? At some point, they become a full-time/ongoing employee and get the benefits of unfair dismissal/redundancy, which means the whole "fixed-term" thing becomes meaningless. The problem is, it's never clear at what point that actually occurs.
Gut feeling is that this is because all politicians know it's an absolute minefield, so none of them is willing to touch it. Better to leave it vague enough that no-one can accuse them of favouring business or employees, because no-one really has any clue what's going on. Kick the can down the road and let FWA deal with it.
I'm talking about "full-time employee for a fixed-term" versus "full-time employee on an ongoing permanent basis".
In both cases, they're employees, not 'contractors' (so you withhold PAYG, pay their superannuation, etc).
But in the first case, you don't have an obligation to continue employing them after (say) 12 months.
The second, you are obliged to do so, so you can't turn around and say "we just don't want to employ you any more" after 12 months. You need to follow the redundancy provisions or terminate them for cause.
The problem is that it's not explicit whether businesses can actually offer the first type of contract (or more specifically, that if I employ someone on an 18-month, it's not explicit that they can't claim a redundancy payout when those 18 months end).