Page 1563 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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change reflects the difficult nature of the work and the retirement age in the building and cleaning industries.
I have also expressed some concern or interest in relation to the possible cost impact of these changes. Again, I received a rather brief response from the minister’s office saying that the latest figures indicate improved benefits of around $20,000 for workers retiring after reaching age 55, representing less than one per cent of the total benefits paid. I would have liked to have had more comprehensive information on the cost implications. I have in my office an actuary who would be happy to analyse information they could send me but, again, I am running here by the seat of my pants in terms of advising my colleagues on the elements of this legislation, and that is not something that I particularly relish. Although that will not prevent us from supporting the bill, it would have been appropriate for this information to be provided and would have made analysis of the impact of the proposed changes easier. I will not dwell on this point. The fact that we could not obtain this information in the level of detail I was hoping for will not alter the opposition’s position on the bill.
The bill also allows employees to receive payments for contributions made on their behalf by their employers even if they have failed to register with the scheme at the time of the payments. This is relatively simple legislation and creates new conditions in the building and construction and contract cleaning industries. Accordingly, as I have indicated, the opposition will support the bill.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (12.21): This bill brings the two portable long service leave bills into alignment. It has been a rushed process which is unjustified and unjustifiable. It is easy for government officers to believe that the imperative of new commonwealth legislation, compounded with the end of a financial year, on top of a drafter who is unfortunately ill, makes it entirely acceptable to put a large, supposedly non-controversial, bill into the Assembly and push it through around the edges of the budget debate. Of course, a majority government can do whatever it likes, and members and their staff, I am sure, get used to seeing their imperatives as the only imperatives in that context.
In different circumstances, all the problems would have been dealt with and members of the Assembly would have had a longer period to assess the bill for what it does and does not do, and that is the basis of parliamentary democracy. I am not aware of any concerns being held by those people most affected by this legislation, although I would have to add that there is probably a whole mob of people whose practices or entitlements are affected, mostly for the better we hope, and who do not know the bill even exists. That is all well and good. One could simply argue that the government is competent and well intentioned and that, in reassuring us that there are no controversial aspects to the bill, we should relax. I remind the Assembly of the Tharwa special amendment to the Education Act last year that used a fine general argument to scuttle one small community group’s plans to keep its local school. It will be a while before my office takes on face value the explanations of ministers’ staff.
The portability of long service leave was one of the commitments once made by this government to the community sector. This bill, which cleans up or better organises the two existing schemes, could have been an opportunity to consider amalgamating them completely and expanding the scheme to include workers in the community sector. In
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