Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (11 May) . . Page.. 1451 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

to prevent LA(MS) staff from cashing out leave periodically when members' requirements and staff leave balances make this mutually acceptable. I believe it is entirely appropriate to leave it to members and their staff to manage these issues.

The government is strongly committed to the principle of flexibility in the LA(MS) Act employment conditions. These determinations improve conditions and provide flexibility without detriment to staff. Mr Speaker, these determinations have been the subject of quite significant consultation with staff, at least on the part of the executive and the government. In fact, it was actually the staff who brought this forward, not us.

The reason why staff members brought this recommendation forward as something that could be done to improve the flexibility of their conditions is that they believe, taking into account the nature of the job in the Assembly, it is sometimes very difficult to take four weeks annual leave. That has been shown to be the case for some staff members. Looking at the people involved, and there are a few, they are predominantly staff members who do not have families. In the case of those with families, there is significant appropriate pressure to have time off with their families. This gives those staff members without families an opportunity to take the payout regularly during their employment rather than to take it as a lump sum at the end of their employment, and that is what is happening at the moment.

Remember that under our act there is no requirement to take annual leave, so any view that doing this will make people take their four weeks leave is simply not true. There is no such requirement, and there is no limitation under the act as to how much leave you can accrue, unlike in the public service where, after 12 weeks, in many cases you will be deemed to be on leave.

The reason why there has not been any limit to the amount of holidays that members staff could accumulate, and I understand that this has always been the case, is simply because these jobs tend to run between elections. Nobody knows whether their member will be elected at the next election, so their security of tenure is only three years. I do not suppose there is any security in that three years either. They do not even know whether their boss will have a job in a three-year time frame. That makes the job scenario very different from that in the public service, or, for that matter, just about anywhere else. Taking that into account, giving staff members the flexibility that some of them asked for is appropriate.

Mr Berry made some comments to the effect that this would make unscrupulous bosses tell their staff they could not have holidays. I would suggest that if one member of this Assembly tried to do that it would be two seconds before they were out of a job because it would be on the front page of the Canberra Times the next day. No member could afford to take that sort of an approach with staff, nor, I have to say, would they. I cannot believe that anybody would. Certainly, I can guarantee that nobody on this side of the house would. I would assume nobody would. If staff want to take holidays, then staff take holidays, up to a maximum, obviously, of four weeks a year, and they can accumulate that.

When you look at the figures, or at least the ones that I have access to from the executive, most people do take their holidays, but there is a percentage of people, predominantly people who do not have families, who choose to accumulate their holiday

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .