Page 873 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 20 March 2012
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also simplifies the formula for calculating the rate of interest return associated with long service leave payments made to contractors and provides for no interest to be paid if the fund earns no or a negative return.
For the building and construction industry the bill increases the pro rata eligibility period from five to seven years for workers who leave the sector. It also corrects an error in the long service leave formula which apparently and perhaps incredibly has only just been discovered, although I understand the correct formula has been used to date. Finally, for the contract cleaning industry the pro rata eligibility period is reduced from 10 years to seven for workers who leave the industry.
There are a couple of comments I need to make. The first is about the treatment of the scrutiny of bills committee in this whole process, and this is the principal area of farce. I had two briefings on this bill. Before the second briefing, I and my staff were aware of the amendments which were circulated in this place in the last sitting period. I asked that those amendments, some of which do not come as a result of the scrutiny of bills advice, be referred back to the scrutiny of bills committee.
I am the chairman of the scrutiny of bills committee, so I thought it was a reasonable thing that I do people the courtesy of reminding them. I was in a briefing as the responsible shadow minister, but I happened to know a few other things. Minister Bourke is a new minister, and I thought it would do him a service to ensure that this was done properly, so I asked, “Has this matter been referred to the scrutiny of bills committee?” “Yes, Mrs Dunne.”
My staff asked on, I think, three separate occasions whether these amendments had been referred back to the scrutiny of bills committee and they were told variously—and this is a quote—“Everybody has the amendments.” So, imagine my surprise last week when I received a draft copy of the scrutiny report to see that there were no comments on the minister’s amendments to the long service leave bill.
When I went to the scrutiny committee meeting, I asked the officials had they seen the amendments to the long service leave bill. After I had been told on a number of occasions that, yes, they had gone to the scrutiny committee, I was told by the secretary and the staff of the committee that they were not aware of amendments to the long service leave report and nor had they received them. So I got on the phone in the meeting, rang my office and left a message for my senior staff who rang Minister Bourke’s office and spoke to the person he had been dealing with, who said, “But Mrs Dunne’s already got a copy of it.” No—Mrs Dunne, as the shadow minister for industrial relations had a copy of it; the scrutiny of bills committee did not have a copy of this.
I understand that, after that, the senior staff member sent to the officials who support the scrutiny of bills committee a copy of the amendments, but there was no covering letter from Dr Bourke. I was then asked, “Mrs Dunne, what will we do with this?” And I said: “It’s usual courtesy for a minister to write to the committee and ask them to consider these things. Until the minister writes to the committee and asks them to consider it, I’m not prepared to ask the committee to consider these matters.”
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