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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 9 Hansard (1 September) . . Page.. 2694 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

The Chief Minister said that there was no evidence of exploitation. I can tell her now that there is a case before the courts on the issue of long service leave for 50 cleaning workers. That matter will be dealt with under the Long Service Leave Act, as I understand it. Those sorts of incidents would be fewer were this Bill that I have proposed to be passed by this Assembly today, because it would put in place a portability scheme which would take the matter out of the bailiwick of the employers and put it into the area of a statutory authority which would look after the fund and make payments out of it.

The other thing that I think needs to be made clear is that mediation has never been the answer to exploitation of workers in this area. It has always been resolved in the courts. There will be less of it with this legislation because control of the money will be taken out of the employers' hands. The money will be put into a central fund. Therefore, the system will be much fairer. Mrs Carnell said something about the Third World. I certainly do not want Australia to be part of the Third World as a result of the adoption of the lowest common denominator.

I should deal with a few issues about whether these workers are transient. Mr Smyth seemed to say at the start of his speech that there was no evidence that they were transient. He said later that they were transient and Mrs Carnell confirmed later that they were transient, but said that there was really no evidence to suggest what the level was. I have in front of me a survey of 120 cleaners, of whom 58 per cent have already had more than one employer in two to three years. I think that is fairly compelling evidence about the transient nature of the industry. I am happy to table that document. The results of the survey were provided to me by the LHMU, which is the union that covers these workers. I seek leave to table the document, Mr Speaker.

Leave granted.

MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, I should add that some workers do stay in the industry for a long time. We have in the audience a cleaning worker who has been in the industry for almost 20 years and she has never had long service leave. Mrs Carnell wants to see that sort of situation continue because she thinks that it would be an impost on business if business had to pay for those sorts of conditions which are provided for in the legislation. It surely would be a repeat of Third World conditions if we were to continue to endorse that. Ms Tucker made the point that it is a great shame that we had not recognised this problem before and dealt with it.

I want to go back to the issue of consultation. I was talking with the ACT Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Contract Cleaners Guild of the ACT, which is the peak body for cleaners in the ACT, as far back as 30 April. Therefore, I have been talking to them for a while about this issue. At that meeting there was in-principle agreement on this portability scheme and they wanted to see the detail of it when the legislation was tabled. I have consulted widely with non-Executive members of this place about the legislation as I have developed it - I think Mr Rugendyke would confirm that statement - as is common practice in this place. If the Government is so virtuous on this issue, why is it not that all of their legislation on any particular subject is not given to the

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