Page 5070 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 17 November 2009
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I received a briefing on the bill from relevant officials and the minister’s office. I thank both the minister and the officials for this. It was my understanding from the briefing that objections had not been raised by key stakeholders, including unions and business representatives, to the dates that have been proposed in the bill. The Greens’ philosophy of government is that leadership and ideas evolve not only from what we do here in this place but also, to a high degree, from the communities we seek to represent. It is in recognition of the ACT community, and the work we all do as citizens to make life better for everyone, that we support a day dedicated to Canberrans coming together. The Greens will therefore be supporting this bill today.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Planning, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation and Minister for Gaming and Racing) (10.56): I am very pleased to speak in support of this bill and to indicate once again this government’s commitment to ensuring that the entitlements of private sector workers that were viciously and unfairly stripped from them by the Howard government’s Work Choices legislation will be protected.
In the context of Mrs Dunne’s contribution to this debate, it is worth providing a little bit of balance to the explanation of how we arrived at the Family and Community Day. Let us not forget that the ACT government was forced to step in to provide, initially by regulation, for a new public holiday for the territory following a longstanding entitlement for union members to a picnic day holiday, particularly for those in the private sector. As Mrs Dunne indicated in her contribution, there is a public sector holiday—commissioner’s day—that falls during the traditional stand-down period between Christmas and new year. Private sector employees in the territory, until the introduction of Work Choices, had an entitlement to union picnic day. That was written into most awards for private sector workers. It was a longstanding tradition in this territory, going back, I believe, to around the 1930s.
That entitlement was viciously stripped away in what can only be described as a draconian assault on workers’ conditions as part of the Work Choices legislation. Fortunately, the Australian public had their say on the Work Choices legislation. The architects of that particular piece of industrial relations policy now find themselves in the dustbin of political history. And is that not a good thing, Mr Speaker?
The ACT government has a limited range of powers in relation to industrial relations matters. In seeking to restore the entitlement that was stripped away by the Work Choices legislation it was necessary to create a new public holiday that applied universally. In that initial round of consultation there was a diversity of views on whether that extra day was needed. I would acknowledge that the business community indicated at that time their preference that there not be a replacement holiday. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of feedback from the community was that those entitlements should be retained and that they should be retained in a way that ensured that those workers, particularly in the private sector, were not disadvantaged.
In that round of consultation a number of different options were considered as to when the day should fall. Mrs Dunne is right: that consultation came back with the view that Melbourne Cup Day, a day of lower productivity in the workforce, should
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