Ms BURNET (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I rise this evening to talk about the issue of portable long service leaves.
Workers in disability and community services, aged care, contract cleaning and security play an essential role in our society. One way or another, we all rely on these workers, but unfortunately, these staff are too often undervalued by our society and that is a big part of the reason staff in these industries have lower pay, fewer rights and worse conditions than those in other sectors.
There are so many things we need to do to improve the lives of workers in these critical fields, and one key area relates to long service leave. So when a contractor or a provider of a service change or when they move jobs within their industry, staff in these sectors lose all the hard-earned progress they have made towards long service leave. Someone could have worked in a job for eight or nine years even, and be so close to having a much-needed break, only to lose that opportunity, which is deeply unfair.
The idea of a portable long service leave scheme is that when employees in these industries move jobs, they keep their long service leave credits and continue to progress towards the well-earned time off. It is not a new idea. The Tasmanian construction industry has had a scheme like this for decades. Other Australian jurisdictions have also moved to address this in industries like disability and community services, aged care, contract cleaning and security. The ACT and Victoria are two examples where this important change has been made. It is time Tasmania caught up.
Introducing a portable long service leave scheme would be a major positive benefit for workers. That alone should be a good enough reason to do it, but it is also a great workforce retention measure. After all, being able to work your way towards long service leave is a great incentive to stay in your industry, and many of these industries struggle with staff retention.
The calls for a portable long service leave scheme are growing louder. We have seen my union, the Health and Community Services Union, the United Workers Union, and the Australian Services Union joining forces to campaign for this change. These unions represent many thousands of workers and we thank them for the strong advocacy they are undertaking on behalf of these Tasmanians.
When it comes to making this change a reality, there is some good news. At the recent state election, candidates from across this Chamber pledge their support for portable long service leave. The Greens, Labor, JLN and independent members all recognise how much of a difference this change would make for thousands of workers. That is a strong majority in this place.
Unfortunately, we have seen the Liberal Party so far refuse to come to the table on this issue. When the Greens asked the minister, Ms Ogilvie, about this issue last week, she said that the government has no plans, unfortunately, to act on the strong calls for action. That is disappointing, though I guess it is not surprising when the government has never truly wanted to take those steps to improve the rights and conditions of working people. They have also dragged their feet on industrial manslaughter laws.
With the government’s reluctance to get on board with this change, it is going to be up to the rest of this House to get on with the job. I want to put on the record today the Greens’ commitment to pursuing this issue and making sure a portable long service leave scheme for those critical industries becomes law. We are keen to collaborate with anyone in this place who shares that goal. For us, this is all about using this minority parliament to achieve the right outcome for Tasmanian workers. I look forward to discussing the issue further with members from across the Chamber.
