David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Amendment (Paid Family and Domestic Violence Leave) Bill 2022 is really a seminal event in the process of legislation in this parliament. It will be a marker point. There is no doubt about that. I rise in general support of this initiative. But there are some things that people are not brave enough to say, including that it's not going to be the same for everyone. There are some glaring things that need to be fixed up with this bill. At the risk of being accused of trying to kill Bambi, I would just like to point out a few inequities in what is proposed. There are inequities in the situation for small businesses and microbusinesses and for women who are facing domestic violence who aren't in full-time or casual employment. They don't get the same sort of help because of their situation. Many of them would like to work, but they're not covered. There are 700,000 people running a small business or a microbusiness. If they are a sole trader, are they going to pay themselves their own family and domestic violence leave?

Some small businesses have told me they support the concept that people facing family and domestic violence, whether they're female—most of the time—or male, should have some way of being financially supported to get their life and their kids and everything sorted out. No-one's arguing against that, but why is it on the employer, particularly small businesses? If you're BHP, a big corporate firm or a government employer, sure, you have hundreds or thousands of employees, and this is just a blip. But, for a lot of my small businesses, where they have one, two or three people, it's a big ask on the business, and they are all under pressure. As for the microbusinesses, as I said, if the person is a one-woman or one-man business, and they have to pay themselves, there's no real advancement. So I am proposing that this should be approached like parental leave. The Commonwealth pays the parental leave if someone is in a situation where they're employed and they can't go to work and they can't be paid. In the last parliament, we did introduce five days unpaid leave into the National Employment Standards.

The other thing is that, with this bill, a lot of employers are very worried that, if they are approving and paying 10 days leave for one of their employees because of family and domestic violence but they haven't reported it to the police, they will be dragged into some liability if something really bad happens. There are processes where, if you have concerns for the wellbeing and welfare of individuals you don't know or if, say, your neighbour's having domestic violence, you can ring the police and let them know that you have concerns for the safety and welfare of your neighbour. If an employer is now awarding leave to an employee facing domestic violence but that employee doesn't report it to the police or get an apprehended violence order put against the person or have them charged with criminal behaviour, and the employer hasn't done a co-notification, where are they left?

All these questions are being asked by lots of my small businesses. Paradoxically, it might make some potential employees have a silent counterinitiative that will make them less likely to be employed by some employers. All these things need to be thought through. If we rush through things in this House too quickly and we haven't thought through all the consequences, we may not be getting the outcome we want.

So that is my call to support this bill. We need to look at who's paying for it all the time. There are 700,000 sole traders alone. In my area, I have about 10,000 small businesses with one, two or three people in them, and this will be another impost on businesses which are already struggling. Really I think this should be like Medicare or unemployment benefits if it's a societal thing. The Deputy Speaker just said, 'The nation is now caring for you,' but hang on. It's not the nation; it's employers caring for you and helping you in the situation of domestic violence. We can't keep piling more and more obligations on employers. Those are my thoughts on this bill. I commend the intent of it to the House.

See this speech in context