Page 2533 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 23 August 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Even the federal tourism minister, Fran Bailey, was unable to defend that approach. She agreed that it is a major problem that one-third of full-time workers in Australia do not take any annual leave; two-thirds take less than their four weeks entitlement. That is the sort of industrial relations system we have. Is it any wonder that in the last six years domestic tourism has taken a big hit? The evidence was that, no matter how much additional money the states and territories throw at marketing campaigns and put into their tourism budgets, the major issue is the 70 million days of unused recreation leave.
I am pleased that Tourism Australia and the federal minister are seeking to address that and I fully endorse the “No leave, no life” campaign. I think it is important that workers are able to use their full four weeks annual leave in a year. It is important for all of the health reasons that Mr Gentleman has outlined in his motion, and all of the research underpins that. You need that break, and all workers should have that entitlement.
In the remaining two minutes, I would like to respond to Mr Seselja’s assertions about the strength of the economy. Whilst we all acknowledge that the economic performance of Australia in the last 15 years has been outstanding, we need to look a little further back to see where that derived from. It was the economic reforms undertaken in the 1980s by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments that have underpinned Australia’s economic success over the last 15 years.
Even the Prime Minister, begrudgingly at times, has accepted that those major economic reforms drove the significant change in the Australian economy in the last 20 years. Any student of economic history who looks at the long-run implications of those reforms to the Australian economy would have to acknowledge that the position that we are in now is as a result of those major reforms that occurred in the 1980s.
Those reforms were, and continue to be, important. What is not necessary is the extent to which the playing field has been unbalanced by the WorkChoices legislation. We are starting to see the effects in other industries, such as tourism, where the fundamental unfairness of the WorkChoices legislation is starting to be seen. These problems will grow under the current arrangements, particularly as a result of the concept of being able to cash in two of your four weeks of annual leave. Those workers who desperately need that extra money will have no choice but to do that, and that will have poor outcomes for health and domestic tourism.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (12.25): It looks like Mr Barr’s staff had to trawl through the internet to find the evidence to back his arguments, but so did I. The fact is that WorkChoices has not been around long enough for us to be able to make definitive statements about its impact on health. However, I believe that there is enough evidence from trends and from research that has been done—and Mr Barr quoted that research—to indicate that WorkChoices is very likely to have deleterious impacts on the health of workers, and probably their families too. We all know that it is going to be quite difficult for some parents to get time off to spend with ill members of their family and other people that they are caring for.
There are other issues related to stress in the workplace. It has been well understood that stress in the workplace is a precursor to disease. It is not good for people. But there is also work being done that shows that people who have more control over their work have
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .