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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 9 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 2879 ..

MR KAINE (Minister for Urban Services and Minister for Industrial Relations) (10.47): Mr Speaker, I present the Long Service Leave (Amendment) Bill 1997, together with its explanatory memorandum.

Title read by Clerk.

MR KAINE: I move:

That this Bill be agreed to in principle.

Mr Speaker, this Bill and the Annual Leave (Amendment) Bill 1997, which I will be presenting shortly, have a single major objective. That is to streamline the operation of the principal Acts - the Long Service Leave Act 1976 and the Annual Holidays Act 1973, respectively - and to overcome ambiguity in the construction of the legislation which complicates interpretation. I am seeking to make the legislation more user friendly for both employers and employees, as well as for public officials responsible for interpreting the legislation.

The area of my department responsible for administration of the legislation, as well as the Attorney-General's Department, which is often asked to assist in interpreting the legislation, and, of course, those employer and employee organisations that provide advice about the legislation to their members have, over recent years, identified a number of practical difficulties in the construction of the legislation. The amendments proposed by these Bills are designed to overcome those difficulties.

I mentioned the importance of the legislation. The Territory does not have its own industrial relations system, relying instead on the industrial relations framework provided by Federal legislation, principally the Workplace Relations Act 1996. Given the unitary nature of the industrial relations system in the ACT, employees rely almost entirely on Federal awards to provide minimum entitlements and industrial protection. I acknowledge that agreement-making is on the increase; but many small businesses still regard awards as a useful guide to minimum employee entitlements.

Unlike the States, we do not have a State - or, in our case, a Territory - award system to complement the Federal award system. Despite the existence of the common rule application of awards in the Territory, there is still a range of circumstances where employees have no award protection. The result is that ACT labour legislation, such as the Long Service Leave Act and the Annual Holidays Act, provides an important set of protections, establishing the minima in relation to leave entitlements for the non-award segment of the ACT work force and for those who are covered by an award but where the award is silent on leave entitlements. This is particularly important in relation to long service leave, where there are only a few long service leave awards remaining with application in the Territory.

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