Comment by nmfisher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nmfisher | Hacker News Reader

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Australian employment law is the most bizarrely vague field I've ever come across.

"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.

As far as I know, after working for more than 180 days in a tax year they become an employee.

Sounds like you're referring to the "employee" versus "contractor" question, which is a whole other distinction.

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).

Do places actually offer fixed term contracts now? Last time I was looking at contracts I was stuck between recruiters/employers demanding an ABN and the ATO saying I wasn't eligible. The ATO were right because the work has to be performed on their equipment and on their schedule but most recruiters/employers hadn't adapted yet, so anyone without an ABN were SOL.

Yes this is still common and is covered by the ATO as the Personal Services Income test - you can either work via your own company or a payroll company but basically income is treated like standard PAYG

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