Page 3586 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 22 November 2022
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Title read by Clerk.
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella—Manager of Government Business, Minister for Corrections, Minister for Industrial Relations and Workplace Safety, Minister for Planning and Land Management and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (10.45): I move:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
Today, I am pleased to present the Long Service Leave (Portable Schemes) Amendment Bill 2022. This amendment bill represents another step this government is taking to improve working conditions for Canberrans. Specifically, it advances this government’s commitment under the Parliamentary and Governing Agreement of the 10th Legislative Assembly to expand access to portable long service leave.
It also addresses two resolutions of the previous Assembly relating to workers in the hairdressing and contract catering sectors. In 2009 when the Long Service Leave (Portable Schemes) legislation was introduced in the Assembly, the government articulated its vision that ultimately everybody who is not employed in the public sector will be able to have their long service leave transferred from one industry to another.
This amendment bill is another important step towards realising this vision. The government is well aware of the systemic inequities faced by many workers, particularly women, in casualised industries such as food services. Many workers in these industries lose access to the accrual of entitlements by undertaking caring roles in families, often returning to their industries after breaks in service but with different employers.
Similarly, workers who have responded to the shifts in market priorities and pressures of mobility are also losing long service leave entitlements. In February this year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that the territory has the highest rate of job mobility, at 12.8 per cent. Workers in the accommodation and food services industry continue to represent the highest mobility by industry according to the ABS statistics. It is the workers in these industries who miss out on the opportunity to accrue long service leave, not because they do not stay in the industry long enough but because they do not meet the traditional requirement of working for a single employer over that period.
Previous Labor governments recognised the accrual obstacles which are necessary for workforce mobility, in building and construction, in contract cleaning, in community services and in the security industry, and did something about it. The benefits of portable long service leave are longstanding and well recognised. Measures were implemented in 1981 to allow workers in building and construction to access portable leave schemes, and similar arrangements were made in 2000 for workers in contract cleaning. The security industry was included in 2013, with the community sector being recognised as a covered industry for the purposes of portability in 2016.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video