Page 1246 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2016
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projected entitlements up front into a public fund. This also, however, allows employees to leave situations where they are mistreated or treated unfairly without the fear of losing their long service leave entitlements.
Portable long service leave in the territory is governed by the Long Service Leave (Portable Schemes) Act 2009, and the act establishes portable long service schemes for the building and construction, contract cleaning, community sector and the security industries. The building and construction scheme came into effect in 1981—and an equivalent scheme exists in most states and territories—the contract cleaning scheme in 2000, the community sector scheme in 2010 and the security scheme in 2013. All schemes are prescribed in the schedules to the act.
Madam Speaker, the Long Service Leave (Portable Schemes) Amendment Bill 2016 will amend the act to extend the community sector industry scheme to include aged-care sector workers and the contract cleaning industry schemes to workers in the waste management sector. As a result, these workers will have access to long service leave entitlements currently available to workers already in these schemes.
In the aged-care sector the two principal forms of care provided to older ACT residents are residential aged care and community aged care. Residential aged care supports elderly people who are unable to live independently at home. There are two levels of aged care homes: low level and high level, formerly known as hostels and nursing homes.
Community aged care supports the elderly to live independent lives at home. And these services include domestic assistance, gardening and maintenance, meals and shopping, medication supervision, personal care, nursing, palliative care and respite care. The 2011 census data indicates there are approximately 5,600 workers in the aged-care sector with, as I mentioned earlier, a median full-time income of approximately $43,000 for what is often back breaking and emotionally draining work.
Both residential and community aged-care services employ direct care workers including nurse practitioners, registered nurses, enrolled nurses, personal and community care attendants and allied health professionals. Both services also employ ancillary support workers including caterers, gardeners and a range of administrative and management staff. Unlike other portable schemes which cover specific occupations within each industry, the community sector industry scheme captures all occupations within the industry.
To ensure consistency with the existing community sector schemes, the amendments provide for all classes of aged-care workers to be included. This will also promote regulatory efficiency by clearly identifying all workers employed by an aged-care employer and, therefore, minimise employer administrative and accounting costs
The waste management sector in the ACT is roughly divided between waste collection services such as garbage collection under government contracts and commercial waste removal, which includes waste treatment, disposal and remediation services such as landfills and recycling facilities. An ACT breakdown of 2011 census data shows that there are approximately 290 employees in the waste management sector with a median full-time income of approximately $53,000.
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