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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4227 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

scheme and the cleaning workers scheme-and 70,000 or 80,000 workers are not covered by such schemes. So there is a lot of work to be done.

They are the workers Labor intended to address when it promised to deal with portable long service leave schemes. I had a great deal of pride in delivering that promise outside Canberra Airport during a meeting of Ansett workers who had just been crushed by the Ansett collapse and had lost their benefits, among which was long service leave.

That will not happen to cleaning workers anymore. That has been fixed. It will not happen to construction workers either. If I have my way with my Labor colleagues, it will not happen to any other workers either. This is about protection of workers' benefits, which has become such a high-profile issue in recent times, with some tragic company collapses which have affected thousands upon thousands of workers. If I can be political for a moment, it is a great pity that you have to be working for a company headed by a relative of John Howard if you want to get benefits. That was the experience in a number of tragic company collapses which affected workers.

Mr Pratt said that the Cole royal commission drew attention to the unfairness of the construction industry long service leave scheme because some workers could not get access to it. If my plans come to fruition, all workers will get access. It will be much fairer, and you will be much happier, Mr Pratt. The aim is to make sure that all workers have long service leave for working.

Things have moved on since long service leave first found its way into the work force, as have so many other work benefits. We have been part of an incremental improvement in conditions for workers. Surely we should be proud of that.

One of the most important features of a long service leave scheme is the protection of benefits. The biggest issue for workers is job security and benefit security. They want security for themselves and their families. It would be a proud moment for me to be part of a legislature able to provide guaranteed protection for workers' benefits, in particular long service leave-the same protection as is provided in other schemes.

As has been pointed out, schemes vary. The 1976 act covers the private sector generally in the ACT. The construction industry act 1981 and the cleaning industry act 1999 provide for various conditions. The construction industry has generous extra provisions that were the product of this Assembly. I introduced amendments to the construction industry long service leave scheme in 1994 to improve the benefit when the then government was attempting to whiteant the funds in the scheme. Happily, the numbers in this Assembly fell in favour of the workers on construction sites. They now have benefits which we as an Assembly can be proud of. We have improved those benefits along the way. (Extension of time granted.)

It is fundamental to these schemes to recognise that employers ought to be provisioning for long service leave. To complain that this is a cost on business is a bit rich when everybody knows that one should provision for long service leave to ensure that when the day comes the money is there to pay for it.

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