Page 876 - Week 03 - Thursday, 2 April 2020

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(f) Anti-bullying and harassment — employer is not defined for the purposes of bullying and harassment regulation, to the extent that bullying and harassment is covered under work health and safety legislation and other legislation the relevant definitions in those statutes would apply.

(2) What definition of “employee” is used for the purposes of (a) payroll tax, (b) workplace health and safety regulation, (c) long service leave portability, (d) working with vulnerable people regulation, (e) anti-discrimination regulation and (f) anti-bullying and harassment regulation.

(a) Payroll tax — under the Payroll Tax Act 2011 an employee is not defined for the purposes of payroll tax except to include persons supplying services under contracts and employment agency contracts as being taken to be employees under section 34 and section 39 respectively.

References to employees throughout the Act may have specific meanings for specific sections within the Act. Examples of this can be found in section 17 (Wages includes superannuation contribution) and section 24 (Inclusion of shares and options granted to directors as wages). Rather than defining what an employee is, these sections state what is included within the meaning of an employee for the purposes of the relevant section.

(b) Workplace health and safety regulation — under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 the term employee is not defined, rather the work health and safety legislation defines a worker, which includes and employee, under section 7 as:

(1) A person is a worker if the person carries outwork in any capacity for a person conducting a business or undertaking, including work as—

a. an employee; or

b. a contractor or subcontractor; or

c. an employee of a contractor or subcontractor; or

d. an employee of a labour hire company who has been assigned to work in the person’s business or undertaking; or

e. an outworker; or

f. an apprentice or trainee; or

g. a student gaining work experience; or

h. a volunteer; or

i. a person of a prescribed class.

Note Power to make a regulation includes power to make different provision for different classes (see Legislation Act, s 48).

(2) For the purposes of this Act, a police officer is—

a. a worker; and

b. at work throughout the time when the officer is on duty or lawfully performing the functions of a police officer, but not otherwise.

(3) The person conducting the business or undertaking is also a worker if the person is an individual who carries out work in that business or undertaking.


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