Page 4546 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 26 November 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
community services, aged-care and cleaning industries. There has been a failure to provide a justified case as to why such broad-reaching and groundbreaking powers are required under the long service leave scheme.
The powers also fail to recognise how some companies structure their affairs where the owners or the shareholders of the company are not the directors of the company. In many instances, those who have the financial stake and the financial interest in the company are not occupying the board position as a director that oversees governance. Holding those people to account—in many cases it is an accountant or a financial planner that is the director of the company, whilst the operator of the business is the shareholder—places liability in the wrong place and does not seek entirely to achieve the outcome that the government is intending.
This government has become complacent when it comes to effective consultation, particularly when it comes to business and, importantly, when it comes to the construction sector. Be it the secure local jobs code, work health and safety amendments or other measures that have passed, there has been a common thread: they are all swept through with little to no consultation. If there is consultation, recommendations made by employers and industry are all too often ignored.
That is the case with this bill. From consultation with stakeholders, as the opposition does routinely with all bills that come through this place, we found that a number of peak industry bodies were unaware of the legislation being presented a number of weeks ago or the intention to pass it this week. That reeks of a government unwilling to consult with all industry stakeholders. With policy after policy and legislation after legislation, industry just cannot keep up. There are battles on many fronts, and they have to pick and choose their battles wisely. To make matters worse, it is getting to the point where they are simply ignored and bypassed in any consultation process, as has been the case with this bill.
The Labor government do not consider the knock-on effects. There are knock-on effects for employers each time a new law comes to pass. The financial and administrative implications of these laws are never measured and are rarely acknowledged as being a possible by-product of some of their actions. This confirms my view that there is an ideological agenda at play here, an agenda to get the bosses. You only have to speak to the Chief Minister. That is exactly the kind of people we are trying to attract to Canberra to drive our economy, make substantial investments and grow jobs in the territory.
As I have flagged, the majority of this bill is technical in nature. The opposition has no concern with amendments clarifying calculations for leave entitlements and reaffirming the calculation measure for entitlements, should an employee be on workers compensation leave. The opposition does, however, remain deeply concerned about the provisions and the widespread agenda which we are seeing through a number of legislative reforms that seek to hold company directors personally liable or offering personal guarantees for actions of the legal entity that they have had governance responsibility for. The opposition will continue to work with industry and consult on how these changes are implemented and the impact they have. We remain very wary of granting these new powers to the government.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video