Page 2576 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 August 2019
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The human rights implications of such an amendment were extensively considered and safeguards have been implemented to ensure that an individual’s right to privacy is not unnecessarily infringed upon. New starters will have the opportunity to opt out from their information being provided to the relevant union through the new starter pack.
In providing this information to the relevant unions, the territory will inform the unions of their privacy obligations in order to ensure that information disclosed is handled and protected in accordance with privacy legislation. As registered organisations, relevant unions are subject to the commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 and Australian privacy principles.
The amendment will not apply to existing employees; it will apply only to new ones.
The bill amends the definition of employee under the Long Service Leave Act 1976 to clarify that it does not apply to an ACT public employee. Amendments to the Public Sector Management Act in 2011 inadvertently removed the provision that prevented application of the Long Service Leave Act for ACT public employees. However, the Long Service Leave Act has never applied to ACTPS employees. Current practice also reflects that the public sector management standards of 2006—the repealed standards—and the enterprise agreements have been applied in calculating long service leave entitlements. The intention of the amendment to the Long Service Leave Act is to clarify that fact.
Public sector management standards and enterprise agreements provide superior long service leave entitlements in all but a small number of circumstances to those under the Long Service Leave Act. The particular circumstances relate to where an officer who has completed at least five years of service but less than seven years: the officer is entitled to a pro-rata payment in lieu of accrued long service leave where their employment is terminated by the employer for reasons other than incapacity, illness, retirement or redundancy or for a reason other than the person’s serious and wilful misconduct, such as termination for underperformance. The Legislation Act 2001 protects the entitlement if there is any detriment caused to a current employee by this amendment. No current or future public servants will be worse off from the proposed long service leave amendments.
To further support these arrangements, the government will introduce amendments to the public sector management standards of 2016 that will sit alongside and complement the provisions of the repealed standards in these limited circumstances to ensure that there is no detriment to either a current or future employee as a result of these amendments. The amendments will allow for the consistent and correct management and application of long service leave entitlements whilst also protecting employee rights.
Other amendments contained within the bill are minor and technical in nature. A definition has been inserted to clarify the meaning of permanent resident in terms of an eligible person for employment. A permanent resident means a person who holds a permanent visa under the commonwealth Migration Act 1958 or a New Zealand
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