Page 3535 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 25 August 2009

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In the longer term, it may see more and more working men and women get access to an entitlement to which they have been denied through no fault of their own.

As I said at the outset, this is the sort of legislation that we, on this side most particularly—and I do acknowledge the support that Mrs Dunne has just indicated that the opposition will provide for this bill—do take significant pleasure in being party to and being able to proceed with in the Assembly. I commend the bill to the Assembly and thank members for their support.

MS BURCH (Brindabella) (10.41): Mr Speaker, as a matter of background, it is important to remind ourselves, including those opposite, of some of the history of the long service leave schemes operating today in the ACT and thereby put some of the recent reforms into their historical context.

The construction industry portable long service scheme commenced on 1 October 1981. It was established in recognition of the construction industry being primarily project or development based, with the majority of workers not staying with the one employer for any great length of time, although they stayed in the construction industry itself for many years.

Consequently, under normal industrial and long service leave working conditions, construction workers would hardly ever qualify for long service leave. Having many of my family members involved in the building and construction industry myself, I have seen firsthand the long years of employment and contribution that have not often been balanced with their ability to have the benefit of long service leave. These sentiments have also been raised with me through my meeting with many local workers and contractors from my electorate of Brindabella.

Workers within the construction industry quite rightly believed that they required a scheme that was portable and that was managed externally on behalf of both employees and employers. There was a belief that construction workers should have a scheme that registered employers operating in the ACT and registered employees working in the ACT, a scheme that collected and invested their contributions, a scheme that recorded each worker’s length of service—that is, the number of days worked with a particular employer—and a scheme that verified and paid their claims for entitlement benefits and monitored their ongoing status within the scheme.

Consequently, an authority with a governing board was established to manage such a scheme. This concept was developed further so that now all Australian states and territories have a construction industry portable long service leave scheme. Most of these schemes are managed in a similar way to that in the ACT, with their counterparts in Victoria and Tasmania having trustee companies to manage their schemes.

While there are different structures and governance arrangements between the schemes in the states and territories, we have achieved a positive result by having in place reciprocal agreements between all Australian jurisdictions. With this agreement in place, workers’ service credits in any jurisdiction count in a manner that works towards their overall long service leave benefits, regardless of where they are employed before taking their long service leave.


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