Page 3200 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
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She then, for a little while in her speech, said that this portable long service leave is going to cost these centres a whole stack of money. I would like to ask two questions rhetorically. The first one is this: have not a lot of these centres already been putting money aside? Any additional cost might be a little on the top but have they, in fact, been giving people their entitlements? The answer is yes.
But for those people who left before their entitlements became due, what happened to those funds? What happened to those funds? I do not know but Mrs Dunne has not said what happened to those funds. It is okay for her to get up here and bang on about the cost of those centres but she should be telling us in this place where those funds went. Where did they go? Were they just pocketed? Were they used for investment? Where did they go? I would like to know. Now, Mr Speaker, the—
Mrs Dunne: They went back into services, and you know it, Johnno. Every time you do that you defame all those community organisations.
MR SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne, you were heard in silence and I expect the same from Mr Hargreaves.
Mrs Dunne: Actually, I wasn’t, Mr Speaker.
MR HARGREAVES: Mrs Dunne did not hear from me, Mr Speaker, but she is going to hear from me now whether she likes it or whether she does not. There is another question on portable long service leave that I would like answered. Presumably, the extension of her view is that the childcare workers would be denied their long service leave entitlements.
If this scheme is about portability, that means that ultimately these people will be paid out their long service leave entitlements whereas the current situation is that people who leave after three years walk away from it. This issue of long service leave for the workforce is a right. It is a right. You get it in the armed forces, you get it in the bureaucracy and you get it in the private sector, but you do not get it—or you did not get it—in the community sector.
Mr Speaker, am I correct, therefore, in believing that Mrs Dunne would deny those workers those rights? I think so. However, the most telling part about all of the speeches of those opposite thus far, and I invite those people who have not spoken yet to address this point that I am going to make to you, is that hardly any of them have referred to the budget itself.
Mr Smyth: I certainly did.
MR HARGREAVES: I heard Mr Smyth and he did not refer to the budget for the Disability, Housing and Community Services line at all. He talked about Billabong and their difficulties as he saw them. But did they talk about the initiatives that were in the budget papers, Mr Speaker? I do not think so. The older carers respite program, with an expenditure of $416,000 in the first year—did that get a mention? I do not think so.
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