Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Australia is a wonderful, extraordinary country in so many respects, but the prevalence of family and domestic violence is not one of them. It is true that this violence is more common on average in other countries, particularly in comparable places like Britain and the US, but we lag behind countries like Austria, Ireland and Spain, where women are almost half as likely to suffer intimate partner violence as in Australia. We are closer to the middle of the OECD distribution than the bottom, and that's where we ought to be. According to the Institute of Health and Welfare, around 2.2 million Australian adults have been the victim of physical violence from a partner. A woman is killed every single week in Australia by a current or former partner. That is the statistic. It is the lives of people we should never forget.

Domestic violence is typically associated with a current partner but is most often perpetrated by a previous partner. The chance that you know someone, a friend or family member, who's been the victim of violence is very high, though you may not know it. Many people who experience this violence don't want to be known. I remember in my own working life, a team mate coming into the office with her clothes in her bag, leaving her home that morning to escape family violence, with no plan of where she would be sleeping that evening.

Around three-quarters of the victims of violence were women and around half a million of the victims were men. It occurs across every age and demographic. The impact of this violence can be costly and long-lived. Firstly, there's simply the economic cost to the state. My local police commander told me that up to 50 per cent of police time was used on domestic violence incidents. But the higher cost is on people. Many victims later experience anxiety, depression and disability. Domestic and family violence is a leading cause of homelessness.

I want to draw attention to the wonderful grassroots organisations that do so much work to support victims of domestic violence. It was only the other day that I visited the Bondi Cottage, an organisation in my local electorate of Wentworth, which provides counselling for women suffering domestic violence and occasional emergency child care so that those women can actually access that counselling. It is absolutely vital that we continue to support organisations like that and continue to focus on the grassroots organisations that have been shown time and time again to be most effective in supporting victims of domestic violence. I take my hat off and pay homage to all those who work in this space, as well as those who have supported other family members, friends and colleagues through one of the most difficult times in people's lives.

Let us come now to the legislation. It is absolutely true that, when people experience domestic violence, many need to take time off work to restart their lives or to get the counselling or support to even leave. Around 20 per cent of women and 17 per cent of men who've experienced violence from a de facto partner have had to take leave. Under the National Employment Standards, as they currently stand, Australian employees have the right to five days of unpaid domestic violence leave each year. This leave is available to someone who is experiencing violent, threatening or abusive behaviour by a current or former partner or family member or someone related by kinship. Let's be honest, employers can and often do provide more than this, but this is currently the minimum standard by law. Employers can also ask for evidence, such as police or court documents, support service documents or statutory declarations. They have the right to, but they're not obliged to do so. My understanding is that most employers would not normally insist on an employee providing such documentation.

Under the new standard proposed in the Fair Work Amendment (Paid Family and Domestic Violence Leave) Bill, employees would have the right to 10 days of paid leave each year rather than five days of unpaid leave each year. This would be available to full-time, part-time and casual employees at the full rate of pay that they would normally receive. This principle of 10 days of paid leave at full pay is one that I wholeheartedly support. I suspect many other employers would feel the same way. But we should be aware of the danger of applying it as a sensible principle to all workplaces without first thinking through the details of how this will operate in practice. I am thinking most particularly of small businesses, where I've spent so much of my career. I'm not implying that small businesses would impose this entitlement or they're too hardhearted to support their staff. Frankly, it's quite the opposite. Most small businesses are small and have close relationships with their people. They want to make their people feel valued and obviously safe and do enormous work with their people so that they feel that. They want to do the best for their people. This change will impose some potentially difficult obligations on them, which is the basis for the concerns that I and others have with this change.

One obligation is financial. Larger, even medium-sized, businesses will no doubt be able to cope with these changes. But, for small businesses, there are times when money is very tight. This bill applies new financial obligations to those businesses without offering any relief from other financial obligations, not even obligations on the bureaucracy that government imposes on small businesses. I understand that a number of business groups have raised their concerns with the government and through the Senate inquiry process but without resolution.

Another obligation would be figuring out how to provide casual employees with leave at their full rate of pay. For some casuals, their working hours are consistent and predictable, and I'm sure that in most cases there won't be much trouble, but for other casuals their hours are inconsistent and unpredictable, and therefore I think we run the risk of having quite difficult conversations. What is the full rate of pay for someone who works different hours every week? What if their hours are taken sometimes in ordinary time and sometimes with loading? It's not difficult to imagine a scenario where fair-minded people come to different views of what the full rate of pay should be, potentially creating a dispute and another source of stress when an individual is already experiencing a hard time.

A third concern is that this might require quite personal conversations between employers and employees—conversations that some small-business people may not be equipped to handle. But I am not aware currently of any support the government is providing to ensure that businesspeople are able to be as delicate and sensitive as their employees deserve. I know that the Fair Work Commission has published a fact sheet for managers. It includes tips such as, 'Stay calm and respond appropriately,' and, 'Take the matter very seriously.' I think the Commonwealth of Australia can do better than that, and it must do better, because this affects small businesses. If we want to do right by people in desperately difficult situations, we need to provide support that is actually useful to employers, ideally supported in conjunction with those who are expected to use it and also reflecting the multicultural Australia that we have and the number of different languages spoken in the workplace.

These concerns will not stop me supporting the bill, because I support the principle behind it and I believe in providing real and valued support to Australians in these situations. But I hope that the government rethinks its stance on how the bill will apply to small businesses and whether we can secure the outcome of paid leave without imposing additional obligations on those businesses or at least while providing best-practice advice to those businesses and reducing administrative burdens on small businesses in other ways. In fact, I hope it rethinks its stance on small businesses more generally.

It is terrifying how easy it is for parliament to solve a problem by passing a law and leaving it to businesses to figure out how to implement the change, with businesses facing huge penalties if they fail to properly implement ill-designed policies. When businesses raise concerns, they are often brushed aside, as small businesses were in the case of this bill. Well, let me tell you: a cost that seems small when you're sitting in the houses of parliament can be the difference between viability and nonviability when you're a small business out in the community.

This government—and, indeed, this parliament—is filled with many smart, well-intentioned people, but it doesn't have as many people as it should who have run small businesses and understand how they work. When a government lacks expertise in something relevant to a community, it's sensible and appropriate for it to engage with that community. The government needs to engage appropriately and with an open mind at an early stage so that policy can be designed around the legitimate concerns of businesses and ensure that it works as much for them as for workers and for larger businesses. On this issue and on others, they haven't done this.

Let me offer a channel for that engagement, I've spent most of my life from an early age in and around small business. If you talk to me, I'm very happy to help you understand their concerns. Come along to an event organised by the Parliamentary Friends of Small and Medium Businesses and Entrepreneurs and meet some of those people who these sorts of bills affect. Talk to your businesses, share your policy goals and listen to their thoughts on how it will work in practice. I promise you they'll be constructive. Their goals are not political. They are retailers, cafe owners, small fashion companies or small technology companies. These are people trying to create jobs and prosperity in the Australian community, and they deserve our wholehearted support. They just want to do what the government asked them to do, and then they want to get back to running their businesses and focusing on what they do best, which is supporting their customers, working with their suppliers and supporting their employees.

I support the principle of this bill and I look forward to it passing into law and providing relief to so many people facing domestic violence. But I do hope the government reconsider how businesses can be supported in its implementation and how they can engage with the small business community in the future.

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