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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 4286 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

of his motion, I think, is rather wishy-washy, suggesting only an education campaign to inform employers and employees of the rights of casuals. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it would be informing employers that casuals currently have precious few rights. We could be going further and creating laws that stop employers overusing the casual form of employment where it is clear that they could and should be employing a permanent work force.

I will finally comment on the fact that the motion seems to demonise the private sector and to imply that things are going very well for workers in the public sector. In fact, employees in the public sector have also witnessed a shift to insecure employment. But, rather than to casual employment, they have witnessed a shift to temporary employment and the engagement of consultants to do the work that was formerly done by permanent employees.

Although temporary employment provides a slightly greater level of security than casual employment, it still falls well short of the security of permanent employment. Many workers in the public service endure consecutive temporary contracts of as little as three months duration, and this is justified by claims that government funding for a particular project may dry up when in fact government departments previously managed to respond to changing government priorities by reallocating staff, rather than through hiring and firing.

The ACT government should get its own house in order in this regard to make sure that we are no longer putting workers under the stress of temporary or casual employment. I thank Mr Hargreaves for raising this important issue. The ACT Democrats are happy to support the motion and hope that there is legislation in the pipeline to address the misuse of casual and temporary employment in the ACT.

MRS BURKE (10.55): I have just a few points that I would like to bring before the house. These have probably been well said by other people but I just want to reaffirm them. It must be remembered that most people undertaking casual work do so as a career or lifestyle choice. This has been argued against in this house, but it is a point open for debate. If we look at the word "casual", it is all about definition and interpretation of the word, but I will go on to that in a moment.

Many more people are seeking to balance work and private life, as Mr Hargreaves well said, and job sharing is not uncommon. Indeed, I have talked to two young women this week in the Chief Minister's Department who do exactly that. Mr Hargreaves talks of a disproportionately high number of persons in the private sector employed as casuals. I think this statement rather shows a lack of understanding of, firstly, modern day society and its desire to effect a better balance to their lives and, secondly, the needs of business-in particular small to medium enterprises and how they operate.

It is often simply impossible or impractical for business-and indeed the public sector, as I have already indicated by way of my example-to always have full-time work for every person; and not everyone wants that either. Unfortunately, we do seem to have a government totally hung up on the fact that every person working is not employed full time.

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