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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-09-12 Daily Xml
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Bills

Portable Long Service Leave Bill

Committee Stage

In committee (resumed on motion).

Clause 4.

Mr McBRIDE: My question to the minister is: under this new Portable Long Service Leave Bill, will the employees in the service sector be better off not only in pay but in long service leave that is due to them? And in that, will the employees be allowed to be paid out their long service leave rather than take long service leave?

The Hon. N.F. COOK: In terms of whether they are better off from a pay point of view, I cannot dictate or anticipate what will be happening from an enterprise bargaining agreement within all the awards and the contract negotiations for all of those sectors. I hope so. We all do because that is what workers do and good unions help them to negotiate that.

In terms of long service leave, they will all be better off because there are many of them who have never had that provision available to them before because of the contract length and time and the fluidity between organisations. So, yes.

In terms of their capacity to be paid a lump sum payout on long service leave in lieu of taking a period of long service leave, that is also able to be done under this arrangement and that is a matter for the employer, the organisation and the employee. That has always pretty much been the case, but yes, under this, absolutely. Under the Long Service Leave Act, section 5(1)(a) that provision is available to these people.

Mr McBRIDE: Minister, I just need a yes or no, and I base it on this premise that I think is particularly pertinent. Most people probably do not even know that the less you pay someone on a salary or an annual wage, the less ability they have to take holidays. The lower the wage, the less they are able to do it. We already know we are talking about a sector here that is not the highest paid. Minister, you highlighted—and I fully agree with you—that they are valuable and they will do it for more than just money.

If there is a sector here that really cannot afford to take three months without pay, then I would say that this is actually a flaw in what we are doing here because most of them will not be able to afford three months away and would probably like the money instead. I have not heard a yes or no as to whether they can take the money or the holidays.

The Hon. N.F. COOK: They will get paid while they are on long service leave. People get paid while they are on long service leave. Your pay depends on the hours worked in the months and years leading up to when you take your long service leave. If you are a full-time worker and have been a full-time worker for the period leading up to three years, I think it is generally, then you are going to get full-time pay for your leave. If you are a part-time worker and you work an average of 2.4 days per week over a period of three years, and that might be a combination of different hours per week, you will get paid that time pro rata per week for your long service leave.

As I said, there are provisions in the bill for you to take a lump sum payment in lieu of getting paid that weekly pay for certain weeks and there are also provisions to negotiate with your employer in terms of maybe being able to take that over an extended period of time at a lower weekly rate as well. Essentially, you accrue the 13 weeks of paid leave for 10 years of service, with 1.3 weeks added to that per year, so you accrue the 1.3 weeks of additional leave. This is paid according to your average hours worked over the preceding three years. When you talk about holidays, a definition of a holiday—taking a break from work is what I would say the intent is here.

Clause passed.

Clause 5.

Mr McBRIDE: Minister, in regard to the application of the act, I really love the way that your intentions are talking about employees who need a break and take a break, but I can tell you that they actually do not want one. Two things are going to happen, minister. This is one of the things that, again, the government does not get. When you have a service sector where you are already losing employees in these 29 service sectors, and you do not have enough employees to do what you want, you are moving a system here to actually capture those employees and have them stay on board, but when they get to 10 years they bugger off for three months: 'we can't employ you, but we'll give you three months or 13 weeks to do nothing.'

Again, I will tell you that these people probably do not even want the 13 weeks, they probably just want to work and want the money instead. I can tell you that this is something you should seriously consider. I am not a fool in this game. We employ people for 10, 20, 30 and 40 years and a lot of them take the pay as their long service leave rather than take three months off, like this place does, to go overseas to the United States or Europe. I can tell you that the 60,000 people we are talking about here will not be doing that, minister.

I do not understand, for starters, why you would not be considering that sort of entitlement of rolling out money that they might not want to cash in to have a break. They can have one week, two weeks, three weeks or four. They might not want the whole 13 weeks after 10 years, and that is a provision that you have not even—minister, my question to you, again, is: is there a proviso to pay out those 13 weeks or part thereof?

The Hon. N.F. COOK: Yes. They do not have to take the full amount at once either, so they could split that up or hold onto some of it for another year and then add on to other leave, and what have you. But I would have to say, having worked in or been connected to the community service sector for decades, I want to meet those people whom you say do not want to have leave, because I was with dozens of them at lunchtime and they all are absolutely desperate to be able to have this provision to take a paid proper break.

If you work in this sort of sector for decades, it takes its toll. I enjoy listening to you as the member representing your community. I would be very keen to hear where you got that information from that they do not want to take a break. If it is a paper or some research or something like that, I am very interested. I have always worked as an evidence-based person in all my jobs, and I respect the question you have asked, but I respectfully disagree that people do not want to take these breaks. This has been heavily campaigned for for 10 years, and I do not hear anyone who is subject to a portable long service leave or long service leave provision complaining that it is available to them.

Mr ELLIS: As an evidence-based minister, do you know how long on average people stay within this industry? Are we finding that people are getting to nine years and running out of puff and the incentive of one more year's work to get that full entitlement might push them over the line, or are we finding that people get tired after four years?

The Hon. N.F. COOK: To the extent that it is available, I will again commit to provide the member with some access to some reports and some information regarding that type of service dedication and commitment, but I would have to again just rely on all the many thousands of conversations I have had in community sector work over many, many years to know that people work in this sector for decades and decades, and they are very much wanted and valued.

However, because of the way funding has previously been, according to block funding and what-have-you arrangements, there has been a lot of movement of people across different organisations. But over and over again I hear the story, 'I have looked after, supported or assisted the same person across not one, not two, not three but four different organisations over a period of decades.' So to the extent that I can provide the member some information, I will catch up with you later and give you or send through some information if I can find some for you.

Mr ELLIS: On my understanding, the justification for this bill was to entice people to stay longer in the industry and prevent them from leaving earlier. Well, the evidence in your previous answer was that people are staying for decades and decades. So is this even a necessary incentive that is required?

The Hon. N.F. COOK: What we are hearing from the sector, to give us some degree of comfort and incentive to have a scheme such as this, is that we know that people do move across from one organisation to the next and into different service components within the sectors. So this we hope will give a degree of surety, and maintain and stop some of that churn from happening across one, two, three or four different organisations. As we said just before, many have been paid on a block funding arrangement before. They still have these three plus three plus three contracts. While there are people who stay for a long time, there are many others who do not. They go into similar skill-based industries that are competing for the same type of workforce.

Mr McBRIDE: I come back to your answer where you talked about staff. I do not want to be misrepresented in the sense that yes, I know employees love a break and they love to be paid for their break. What I would say is that if you ask them if they would like to either accrue the long service leave and be paid out that long service leave or take the break, the majority of these people would say, 'I'd rather be paid my long service leave.' That is on the basis of a few things.

Firstly, they already get four weeks' holidays a year, I would imagine, under normal terms of contract if they are anything like an employee anywhere else in the award system. Secondly, the money is more important to them than the three months away after 10 years of service.

That is the question I ask then: can these staff be paid out their long service leave, can it accrue, and if they do not take it within a certain period can they then also be paid out—because they did not have time to take it, for example, or they love their jobs so much, which possibly could be the case, they do not want to take it, but when they leave is that long service leave sitting there to be used as a nest egg to help them with a house or retirement or their children's education or something like this?

The Hon. N.F. COOK: I think the simple answer is that that can be used for all of those purposes, yes.

Clause passed.

Clause 6.

The ACTING CHAIR (Mr Brown): Member for Heysen?

Mr TEAGUE: Thanks, Acting Chair. I have given an indication, nearly half an hour ago, that there is an amendment on file and it is necessary for that amendment to be moved. It is not until schedule 3. What is effectively happening is the capacity for me to facilitate the conclusion of this debate will mean cutting straight through to schedule 3. I just give that indication to the committee. That is not as to say—other members of the committee may well have questions on the balance, but I am endeavouring to make good on an indication I have given.

Clause passed.

Clauses 7 and 8 passed.

Clause 9.

Mr McBRIDE: In regard to the board and the representation by board members, can the minister just give some indication of what that board looks like and how they will be selected? It does say 'the minister', which I would imagine is the Attorney-General if it belongs to the other place. Sorry, that is not you, potentially, you are filling in for him—and you are doing a fantastic job, too, minister. Could you tell us about these industry boards, who the minister is going to choose, what expertise you are expecting in this area and how that process will work?

The Hon. N.F. COOK: Thanks for the question. It is really important that this board has a good level of experience and skill in there. There will be three who are selected with significant industry, business, provider experience, and three who have significant worker and worker representation experience, and then the Chair must have the skills of governance and leadership requisite to provide the stewardship of this really important scheme. They will be selected by the minister in the other place through a process which is well canvassed.

Mr McBRIDE: I am just looking through the notes here, and it says key features of the industry boards—this is at point 9—and I am trying to look up remuneration. There is no mention of remuneration for these board directors. Is that confidential or can the minister tell the house what remuneration these board directors or members will receive?

The Hon. N.F. COOK: There is a standard circular that the fees will be assessed against and then gazetted.

Clause passed.

Clauses 10 to 40 passed.

Clauses 41 to 45.

The Hon. N.F. COOK: I move:

That clauses 41 to 45, which are printed in erased type, be inserted in the bill.

Mr TEAGUE: For the benefit of the committee and the record, the minister might just indicate what has occurred between the houses and the constitutional requirement for doing so, and that this is not an amendment to the bill, but rather that this is inserting—necessary in this place—those money clauses. The minister might be able to put it better and more comprehensively than me about that.

The Hon. N.F. COOK: In the drafting, they were in the bill, and they cannot be inserted or debated in the Legislative Council so, for the purposes of adhering to that constitutional requirement, they are reintroduced here, but they are not new, they have always been visible and present.

Clauses inserted.

Clauses 46 to 47 passed.

Clauses 48 to 53.

The Hon. N.F. COOK: I move:

That clauses 48 to 53, which are printed in erased type, be inserted in the bill.

Mr TEAGUE: For the same reason?

The Hon. N.F. COOK: For the same reason.

Clauses inserted.

Clauses 54 to 56 passed.

Clause 57.

Mr McBRIDE: Minister, with clause 57, it just struck me a little bit where it says, 'Self-employed contractors and working directors'—and it picks up this under Miscellaneous. Can you just please explain to me why that needs to be put in there, and why there is extra data around self-employed contractors in this sector and how it affects them, and why they have been separated from the other employees?

The Hon. N.F. COOK: The simple answer is that it mirrors the Construction Industry Long Service Leave Act, so it does exactly the same as what it does in there, effectively providing the provision for those people to electively participate in the scheme.

Mr McBRIDE: Minister, just to pick up on that: then there is no difference between the treatment of the contractors and that of the employees? That is all I am really seeking.

The Hon. N.F. COOK: I just needed to confirm the calculation. The difference is that the classification of 'participant in the workforce' can electively engage in the scheme rather than have compulsory participation on the register. Also, the calculation is slightly different because these people might not receive a weekly wage as well, so the remuneration for them is slightly different. So there is a bit of a nuance there.

Clause passed.

Clause 58.

Mr McBRIDE: In regard to salary sacrifice arrangements, I usually see that terminology around superannuation. Can you please explain to me why we are talking about salary sacrifice arrangements when we are talking about long service leave?

The Hon. N.F. COOK: This speaks to a classification of employee who may be working for an organisation that is, for example, a public benevolent institution, and who then has access to salary sacrificing arrangements as part of that classification of charity. Stakeholders identified that many workers in the sector who are in that type of workforce have access to this, so the question was raised about how the legislation allowed for such arrangements to be dealt with.

What happened was we included this provision to ensure that the workers and their employers are not negatively impacted by the scheme. An employer will be able to apply to the relevant industry board for an advance payment of the worker's entitlement so that any necessary salary sacrifice disbursements can be made prior to the worker being paid. The employer will then be required to demonstrate to the board that the worker has been paid that entitlement. That communication must happen.

The provision was drafted with reference to section 77 of the Queensland act that provides for the payment of a worker's long service leave entitlement to the person's employer before the worker is paid the long service leave. So it is a wash-through effect.

Clause passed.

Clauses 59 to 64 passed.

Clause 65.

Mr McBRIDE: Minister, the bill provides that a record required under subsection (1) must be kept for at least 7 years, but long service leave goes way beyond that: it can be 10 years, and you can work in an industry for 20 years. I am wondering why we would only have records being kept for at least seven years when we are talking about a 10-year long service leave-type system. Can the minister please explain?

The Hon. N.F. COOK: Thanks for the question. It is consistent with nearly all record-keeping standards around employment records—for seven years. It is just consistent across the board.

Mr McBRIDE: I am no expert in this game, and I am battling to learn this all within 24 hours. I know that there is a seven-year period; we work with seven years, though we keep them longer than that, and sometimes we have not kept our records long enough for insurance purposes.

In relation to long service leave, can I just pose this to the minister without it being a question: that she—the minister—the Attorney-General and the government make sure that the seven years makes sense, because when you are dealing with employment records and when they first started and what they are at and when it all began, to me it does not make sense that you can have a seven-year clause here for records when you are going to be dealing with a 10-year long service leave provision. That is not a question; it is a statement. I am giving you a heads-up that there might be something that needs to be reviewed there. I have no further questions.

Clause passed.

Remaining clauses (66 to 75) and schedules 1 and 2 passed.

Schedule 3.

Mr TEAGUE: I move:

Amendment No 1 [Teague–1]—

Page 45, line 14 [Schedule 3, clause 4]—After 'a day' insert '(not being a day earlier than 1 July 2026)'

The amendment would have the effect, as I have described it at perhaps clauses 1 and 2 of the committee and before that in the course of the second reading debate, of allowing the bill to start and the necessary work that the minister and the government have described to be done ahead of the implementation of the scheme but at least providing reassurance that the scheme will not commence prior to what would be a modified designated date definition that would actually specify the date. The amendment provides for that commencement to be not before 1 July 2026.

I have not heard in response the government saying, 'That's too far down the track, but we would be happy to specify 1 July 2025,' which is the date that has been repeated over and over in the course of the debate. So that is the amendment that I move. If the minister wishes to take an opportunity to address the question of reasons the government is unwilling to place that or any other date, including the date it has nominated, in that definition, then I would welcome in the interests of time the opportunity for the minister to do that.

The Hon. N.F. COOK: It has been well canvassed and is very clear. We oppose the amendment.

Amendment negatived; schedule passed.

Long title passed.

Bill reported with amendment.

Third Reading

The Hon. N.F. COOK (Hurtle Vale—Minister for Human Services, Minister for Seniors and Ageing Well) (17:58): I move:

That the bill be now read a third time.

Mr BATTY: Deputy Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

A quorum having been formed:

Bill read a third time and passed.

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