In summary, this first round of legislation achieves the following principal outcomes:

• It will not be possible to make new Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) after today, 27 March 2008;
• Workplace agreements of any kind made up to and including today, 27 March 2008, will have to be lodged with the Workplace Authority by no later than Friday, 11 April 2008 (ie within 14 days). These agreements will be regulated by the current (old) system, meaning that they will have to pass the Fairness Test;
• Some employers will be able, until 31 December 2009, to make a substitute form of individual agreement with workers, called Interim Transitional Employment Agreements or ITEAs. In practical terms these will achieve, for employers eligible to use them, similar outcomes to AWAs, although the underlying safety net against which ITEAs will be tested has been changed, by the addition of the new No Disadvantage Test (NDT);
• All agreements made in the new system after today, 27 March 2008, that is both ITEAs and all forms of collective agreement, will have to pass a new No Disadvantage Test. Employers proposing to convert existing AWA templates to ITEA templates for use in the new system will have to review them carefully to ensure that the terms and conditions proposed by the templates are sufficient to meet the requirements of the NDT, rather than the outgoing Fairness Test;
• The legislation removes the requirement for employers to provide new employees with the Workplace Relations Fact Sheet. The ALP plans to introduce a similar disclosure requirement, of its own design, but this is yet to occur and will require additional legislation;
• Existing industrial arrangements effected by the original Work Choices scheme are largely unaffected, so that:
• Pre-existing AWAs and collective agreements will continue to operate for their full terms, and potentially even after their current nominal expiry dates;
• The rules for the commencement and termination of workplace agreements have been modified;
• For those employers subject to ongoing regulation by State Awards operating as NAPSAs - these continue, except that the maximum term of NAPSA arrangements has been extended from 26 March 2009 to 31 December 2009. As in the 'old' system NAPSAs can be replaced by a workplace agreement.
• The legislation authorises commencement by the AIRC of the award modernisation process which is supposed to be largely completed by 31 December 2009;
• The role of the Australian Fair Pay Commission in setting minimum wages has been restricted in some respects.

Overall these changes are just the tip of the iceberg. Labor's 'new' system, according to their current policy, will not be introduced in full until on and after 1 January 2010.

However, they are actively working now toward the establishment of the new Federal safety net, including the development of a series of National Employment Standards, and a new unfair dismissal regime.

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