Attorney-General Christian Porter is now conducting informal talks with select unions and employers in the hopes of getting agreements over the line after formal discussions ended on Friday without clear consensus.
If the last-minute talks do not get agreement among the parties,Mr Porter said the government would take ideas from each working group and"try and build them into a product that can A) grow jobs and B) make its way through Parliament".
"There's a lot of agreement around the problems,"Mr Porter,who is also industrial relations minister,said on Perth radio."There's imperfect agreement around solutions."
Some working groups got close to agreement. Among them was one trying to manage the fallout from landmark court decisions giving casuals with regular,predictable hours annual leave and other entitlements reserved for permanent workers,which could cost businesses$40 billion.
Unions celebrated the decision as a blow against the practice of businesses keeping their staff on insecure work arrangements for long periods but businesses and Mr Porter worried it would hurt flexibility and the cost would cripple firms already struggling with the pandemic.
In the working group unions felt optimistic they could strike a bargain after the small business lobby split from other employers to back a potential compromise. Casuals would get a right to convert to permanent employment after a set period and in return forgo backpay claims under one proposal.
But unions knocked back the proposal because it would not give workers an iron-clad right to convert to permanent employment but instead the opportunity to ask,said sources close to the meetings who did not want to be named because the talks are confidential. Employers could decline too easily,the unions felt.