Page 3533 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 25 August 2009
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$4.3 million in assets, with 4,500 members. This will pave the way for other industry portable long service leave funds to be established, including the fund foreshadowed in the 2008 budget for the community and childcare sectors.
Commencement will be by written notice of the minister, at which time the Long Service Leave (Building and Construction Industry) Act 1981 and the Long Service Leave (Contract Cleaning Industry) Act 1999 will be repealed. The bill carries a range of strict liability offences. The explanatory statement notes that in relation to the purpose of this bill, there has been consultation with the two existing authorities and relevant unions, and that all stakeholders have agreed to the amalgamation.
The main issue to monitor is if the government uses this catch-all legislation and fund management arrangement as a catch-all for a range of other industries. It would be all too easy to establish a portable scheme for any industry, because new legislation, boards and administrative arrangements would not be required; only an amendment to the new act.
As I mentioned earlier, the government intends to use this new scheme to bring the community and childcare sectors under a new umbrella. Indeed, the minister has indicated already that he intends to introduce a bill in the spring sitting to capture these sectors under new legislation. This will only require amendments to the main act, the drafting of a new schedule and the recomposition of the board.
The new board of seven members will actually have one more member than the two existing boards currently have, six in total, and will be further expanded if and when new industries are brought into the authority’s management. It will be composed of a chair, one member each representing employers and employees of each industry—a total of four at the moment—plus two ministerial appointees, one of whom will be the deputy chair. The explanatory statement notes that some rationalisation of the board may be necessary in future as more industry funds are added to the authority’s management.
Mr Speaker, apart from my stated concern that this bill makes it too easy for the minister to simply decide that an industry should be brought under its umbrella and a new portable long service leave scheme be established, this is a sensible simplification of the current system and should create some efficiencies in administration.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (10.37): Mr Speaker, there are occasions in this chamber when we have the opportunity to legislate on things that go straight to the heart of our values as a Labor government, and this is one of those occasions. It is an occasion when we can build upon one of the entitlements enjoyed by many thousands of working men and women and create the potential for that entitlement to be extended to others.
In the modern world of work, fewer of us remain in a single job or even with a single employer for decades, as our parents or grandparents might have done. The very structure of the industries in which we work has changed. But with flexibility has
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