Page 645 - Week 02 - Thursday, 20 February 2020

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Ayes 24

Noes 0

Mr Barr

Ms Le Couteur

Ms Berry

Ms Lee

Miss C Burch

Mr Milligan

Ms J Burch

Ms Orr

Ms Cheyne

Mr Parton

Ms Cody

Mr Pettersson

Mr Coe

Mr Ramsay

Mrs Dunne

Mr Rattenbury

Mr Gupta

Mr Steel

Mr Hanson

Ms Stephen-Smith

Mrs Jones

Mr Wall

Mrs Kikkert

Ms Lawder

Question resolved in the affirmative, with the concurrence of an absolute majority.

Workers Compensation Amendment Bill 2019

Debate resumed from 19 September 2019, on motion by Ms Orr:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

MR WALL (Brindabella) (4.03): The bill before us today is largely one that clarifies a number of matters around the default insurance fund cover and ultimately ensures that a safety net is in place to meet the cost of workers compensation claims when employers and contractors are uninsured, an issue that more commonly occurs as a result of cross-border issues than out of malice. The bill also addresses the issue of including family day care in the definition of a “worker” for the purposes of workers compensation.

Whilst the opposition will be supporting the bill today, we would like to place on the record again the impact and the issues that family day care has faced as a result of changes in this space over recent years. In 2018 the then Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations issued a notifiable instrument listing all family day care services in the ACT, declaring all persons engaged by an approved family day care service to be workers for the purposes of the ACT Workers Compensation Act. In 2006 a similar notifiable instrument was issued that covered Communities@Work in a similar way.

Since 2006, and despite many changes along the way, the operation of the family day care sector has had no review under the act. We think that a review into the application of this is long overdue. The days are gone when anyone could start their own home-based child-care operation. Now, family day care educators and operators are working in a centre-based environment more commonly, rather than the large self-employed sector, with mandatory qualification and training requirements in place.

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