Page 13 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 15 February 2011
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The bill also addresses the issue of mobility of provisions. We support the aims of the bill to provide greater clarity in regard to recognition of prior service and the recognition of the existing level of entitlements, particularly within the context of the proximity of the ACT public service to the Australian public service.
Finally, it is worth noting the comment from the scrutiny of bills committee in regard to the explanatory statement. The committee notes that the ES fails to meet standards expected. The committee goes on to say that it does not even attempt to explain in plain English the contents of a clause.
I think that this is a reasonable complaint. We have seen it time and time again. I suppose the message would be that, if you are not going to bother to do an explanatory statement that enlightens the community and the Assembly about the detail of a bill, why bother to do an explanatory statement? It should not simply be a cut-and-paste job from what is actually in the provisions of the bill. I think that the government does need to lift its game, not just in this case but in a whole range of other areas in relation to explanatory materials.
That said, the opposition will be supporting the bill.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (10.35): The Greens support the initiatives in the bill and are very pleased that a proactive approach is being taken to deal with these issues within the ACT public service.
There are two particular points to note about the bill. The first is, of course, the attempt to facilitate the employment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and people with disabilities, and the second is the harmonisation of the act with contemporary workplace arrangements and the revising of the administrative arrangements for public service employment.
In September last year, the Greens moved a motion addressing the issue of disability employment in the ACT public service, and I am very pleased that we now have some definitive action and a proactive attempt to address the issue. I also note that the motion called for a government response by this Thursday, and I look forward to some more details on the implementation of the motion and the government strategy to address the shortfall in disability employment within the ACT public service.
As has been said, people with disabilities make up a very small proportion of our public service workforce—much less than the relative proportion when compared with the number of people with a disability in the community. Sixteen per cent of our population have a disability, yet they currently occupy just 1.6 per cent of the jobs in the ACT public service. In fact, from 1997, when the first ACT public service workforce profile was issued, the percentage of disability employment has steadily declined. At that time, the ACT employed 329 people who declared their disabilities. This represented 2.26 per cent of the ACT public service. Since then, that figure has fallen consistently to the current 1.6 per cent.
This is in spite of the fact that evidence shows that, contrary to the perceptions many employers hold, employees with disabilities have high-level skill sets, with levels of productivity that are equal to or better than those of their non-disabled counterparts.
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