Page 4545 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 26 November 2019
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Amendments 2 and 3 ensure that new section 69A operates as intended. These are technical amendments as necessary, as the definition of “involved person” currently applies only to new part 11B of the Liquor Act but the term is used in new section 69A. I commend the amendments to the Assembly.
Amendments agreed to.
Bill, as a whole, as amended, agreed to.
Bill, as amended, agreed to.
Long Service Leave (Portable Schemes) Amendment Bill 2019
Debate resumed from 24 October 2019, on motion by Ms Orr:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MR WALL (Brindabella) (11.48): The bill before us today makes a number of changes to the long service leave scheme that operates in the ACT. The legislation before us today is, in large part, a solution searching for a problem. ACT Labor have made it very clear that there is an agenda behind this bill, an agenda that is ideologically driven, to dismantle the protections and the legal structure that drive investment in our local economy and create jobs. This is all being done in the name of a fair go for workers, yet it seeks to ultimately punish those that create the jobs.
I accept that a good portion of this bill is minor and technical in nature, and I accept that the amendments have been brought about by a review of the governance board. The recommendation has been to proceed with this bill for the technical components. However, not surprisingly, there is the stench of an anti-business and anti-job strategy here.
The part of this bill that causes me the greatest concern is clause 13, which introduces a new debt recovery provision, allowing the authority to pursue former directors of a company where there have been actions taken to strip assets. I acknowledge that there are company directors out there who do the wrong thing and have done in the past. However, a broadbrush approach and a very flimsy definition of phoenix activity are a significant issue for us to be legislating for today, particularly when it comes to teasing out the very important component of the activity, which is intent.
In this instance, I remain completely unconvinced that there is a problem to start with. I have been provided with no example by government, the minister or the officials who provided a briefing. I asked the officials who briefed me on this bill if they could point me to any cases where unpaid levies had become a bad debt as a result of phoenixing activity. There were no examples they could point to. In fact, when I asked how many instances of this had occurred, the response was that they thought there had been at least one. That is not a convincing case for dismantling the core structure that protects the investment so many people make across such a broad range of sectors. It is not just the construction industry that we are dealing with but also the
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