Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Every worker in Australia has the right to be safe at work, and safe at home.

No worker should ever have to choose between their safety and their income.

It is unacceptable that millions of workers in Australia still face this impossible choice.

This is why, as my first parliamentary act as Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, I am proud to bring forward the Fair Work Amendment (Paid Family and Domestic Violence Leave) Bill 2022which will provide employees with 10 days of paid leave to deal with the impacts of family and domestic violence.

It is not an overstatement to say that this is a workplace entitlement that will save lives.

Family and domestic violence affects people from all walks of life, in every community, in every city, and in every region across this country.

While family and domestic violence affects everyone in our community, it impacts on women most severely. First Nations women, younger women, women with disability, and women in remote and regional areas in particular face acute and significant challenges.

The facts set out by the Fair Work Commission in its recent review are frightening, and I don't use the word lightly. Since the age of 15, approximately one in four women experienced violence by an intimate partner. First Nations women are 32 times as likely to be hospitalised due to family and domestic violence than non-Indigenous women. On average, one woman is killed by her current or former partner every 10 days in Australia. The prevalence of family and domestic violence has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Family and domestic violence devastates the lives and livelihoods of those who directly experience it, and its damaging impacts reverberate throughout our communities, our workplaces and our national economy.

Unacceptably, rates of family and domestic violence are not declining in Australia. For many women, the most dangerous place in Australia is their home, and this must change.

I'm putting this bill before the House because, as a nation, we can and must do better.

An urgent, whole-of-community response is required, and workplaces have a key role to play as a source of critical support for people experiencing family and domestic violence.

Frontline workers have told us that there are two issues at the forefront of the minds of women seeking to escape from violent relationships. First, they're worried about the disruption to the lives of their children. Second, they're worried about the disruption to their income and employment.

More than 68 per cent of people experiencing family and domestic violence are in paid work. However, many can't leave violent situations without risking joblessness, financial stress, homelessness and poverty, leaving workers having to choose between their safety and their livelihood.

Getting out is hard, really hard. Reporting is hard, really hard, and turning up to court can be another trauma altogether. This bill makes all of that just that bit easier.

Getting out will still be hard. But it will be less likely that getting out makes you unemployed or poor. People in family and domestic violence situations have enough challenges already. This bill says that you will no longer have to ask, 'Can I afford to be safe?'

This bill sends a clear message that family and domestic violence is not just a criminal justice or social issue, but an economic and a workplace issue.

Frontline workers have told us that leaving violent relationships costs time and costs money. People leaving relationships often become sole parents; they have to find a new place to live and new schools for their children. People often leave a relationship with just the clothes on their backs, and have to start from scratch to build a new life. The economic impact on these workers and their families is nothing short of devastating. Paid leave provides the financial support and economic security these individuals so urgently need to help them leave dangerous situations safely and rebuild their lives.

The principle behind this paid leave entitlement is simple—getting out shouldn't mean losing pay. Normally, leave entitlements are calculated at the base rate of pay. But applying the principle that getting out shouldn't mean losing pay requires a different approach.

The new leave entitlement will be paid at the rate people would have received had they not taken leave, not just at their base rate of pay. Once in place, the 10 days leave will be provided upfront, allowing immediate access to the full entitlement from the commencement of employment.

In its review of family and domestic violence leave, the Fair Work Commission recognised that family and domestic violence erodes women's access to work, career progression and financial independence. By reducing these negative impacts, paid family and domestic violence leave will help to reduce the gender pay gap, support gender equality and increase women's economic security.

An increasing number of employers—both large and small—are already providing a range of support to their employees experiencing family and domestic violence, including access to paid leave. All states and territories now provide their employees with access to paid leave to deal with family and domestic violence. These efforts are to be commended. This bill will enshrine family and domestic violence leave as a minimum employment standard for all, ensuring that wherever you work and whoever your employer is, you will be guaranteed access to this life-saving entitlement if you need it.

This entitlement will be enshrined in the National Employment Standards and cover up to 11 million employees. It will be a lifeline when women most need it, allowing workers to take necessary steps to stay safe, while retaining their jobs and their income.

Normally casual employees do not have access to paid leave. But get back to that test—'getting out shouldn't mean losing pay'. You apply that test, you get to a different conclusion to where you otherwise might get with casuals.

This bill provides a paid entitlement to family and domestic violence leave for all employees, including casuals.

There are currently 2.6 million casual employees in Australia.

Family and domestic violence doesn't pick and choose based on whether you're a permanent or casual worker.

Casuals are not spared from family and domestic violence. In fact, women who are experiencing or have experienced family and domestic violence have a more disrupted work history, and are more likely to be employed in casual work, than women with no experience of violence.

Casuals are already dealing with the consequences of being in insecure work and are unable to access other forms of paid leave, making them more vulnerable when they're dealing with the impact of domestic violence.

Under this bill, casual employees will be paid for rostered shifts, including where a shift has been offered and accepted, providing employers with certainty about the rate of payment for the casual employee.

Employees facing family and domestic violence will no longer have to ask—'do I have leave to help me get out?'—the answer for every employee will now be 'yes'.

There'll be no gap for any employees who are not eligible for this paid leave entitlement. Casuals, for example, who are not rostered on for the exact shift will still be entitled to be absent from work without pay for 10 days per year to deal with the impacts of family and domestic violence, without having to worry about losing their jobs. But, where they are rostered on, the paid leave entitlement will be there.

Australians are increasingly living in more diverse living situations. For First Nations families and culturally and linguistically diverse communities, they also have familial responsibilities, households, and relationships which we need to make sure are being captured here.

Violence can be and is perpetrated by people who are not your relative but who live in the same household. In a tragic recent example, a woman at the Sunshine Coast was killed, allegedly at the hands of her unrelated housemate.

People increasingly live separately to their intimate partners; young people in particular. The amendments I will make to the definition of family and domestic violence will ensure that violent or abusive behaviour in intimate relationships—whether or not the partners cohabit—will also be captured, and employees can take paid leave to seek necessary assistance.

Some might suggest that these additions broaden the definition too much. During the two extensive hearings on family and domestic violence leave conducted by the Fair Work Commission, there was no evidence whatsoever of any misuse of paid family and domestic violence leave. This is just not an entitlement that employees rort.

Unless we include intimate partners in this way, we'd be left with a situation where a person suffering violence or abuse at the hands of an intimate partner would need to move in with their abuser in order to access paid family and domestic violence leave to seek assistance. That would be the most absurd and perverse outcome.

People experiencing violence in their home or at the hands of an intimate partner should have access to paid leave to escape or to deal with such situations, and the changes I've made to the definition of family and domestic violence will ensure that this is the case.

Employers are bearing the significant costs of family and domestic violence. They're bearing it in the form of reduced productivity caused by absenteeism, recruitment and retraining costs. The costs to the national economy are huge, with estimates ranging between $12.6 billion and $22 billion per year, with the cost to employers being about $2 billion per year. Paid family and domestic violence leave will assist to reduce this cost.

Now I recognise that business will need some lead-in time to adjust their payroll systems in order to ensure this entitlement can be provided confidentially and appropriately to employees. The government recognises that small businesses face a number of unique challenges here. They often have lower cash flow and lack the full sophisticated human resources capacity to administer a new leave entitlement and manage the associated sensitive issues.

Support for small businesses is essential.

My department's consulted with business representatives on implementation. To assist business, the entitlement will have a phased commencement, with most businesses having around six months from the date of introduction, and small businesses will be afforded an additional six months to prepare. We will also be consulting on a package of implementation support measures for small business to assist with rolling out this entitlement.

It's a fair question to ask why the government is providing these lead times for business. The truth is, I wish the starting date was years ago rather than next year. But I need to ensure the entitlement is understood both by workers and by employers.

For example, I don't want a worker being refused leave simply because the employer didn't yet understand the new entitlement. I want there to be a chance for business to work through essential principles, such as how to describe the leave entitlement on a payslip without using terms that could make an awful situation even worse.

We will work with businesses, large and small, so they will be equipped to have a sensitive conversation with their employee, understand their obligations, and have appropriate mechanisms and payroll practices in place to sensitively manage leave information.

Gender equity, women's safety and women's economic security are at the heart of this government's agenda.

We're serious about tackling family and domestic violence in Australia. In addition to paid family and domestic violence leave, our commitment includes measures to bring about long-term cultural change to tackle entrenched discriminatory attitudes and behaviours, as well as ensuring supports are in place to help people safely leave abusive situations. We are establishing a new Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence Commission; investing $77 million in high-quality consent and respectful relationships education in schools; and delivering more safe and affordable housing to assist women fleeing violence.

This bill is an important part of that framework.

I might have the honour of introducing this bill—but it didn't start with me. This bill is the result of the tireless efforts of frontline workers, unions and gender equity advocates who've been campaigning for this entitlement for close to 15 years. In 2009, a group of experts from the Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse at the University of New South Wales approached the trade union movement in New South Wales to discuss the possibility of a groundbreaking new paid leave entitlement to help workers impacted by family and domestic violence.

One of those experts, Ludo McFerran, is in the gallery today. I acknowledge and thank her for her vision and her leadership on this issue over the past 15 years. Ludo drafted the first-ever paid family and domestic violence clause. That first clause did not get up, but it set in train a nationwide community and union campaign—a campaign which ends here today with this bill.

In 2010, the Australian Services Union and the Surf Coast Shire Council in Victoria negotiated a collective agreement providing access to 20 days paid family and domestic violence leave for staff of the council. As far as we know this was the very first example of this kind of entitlement anywhere in the world. And as a beautiful conclusion to that, the person who was assistant national secretary of the Australian Services Union at the time, Linda White, is now a senator waiting for us to send the bill there. I acknowledge and thank her for the key role she has played in the development of this life-saving entitlement.

Since the first clause was negotiated in 2010, the Australian Council of Trade Unions and its affiliates, including the Australian Services Union, the ASU, which represents frontline family and domestic violence workers, has led a national campaign to have the entitlement rolled out in more and more workplaces, with the mutual benefits for workers and employers increasingly recognised.

About 1.13 million employees, at this moment, have access to paid family and domestic violence leave through collective bargaining between workers and employers. This legislation takes that figure from just over one million employees, to 11 million employees.

I would like to acknowledge our incredible frontline workforce, who strive day in and day out to support and assist individuals and families impacted by violence, including our paramedics, doctors, nurses, police officers, community legal centre lawyers, educators and community sector workers.

I want to acknowledge those on the floor here and in the other place, my colleagues who have campaigned for this moment for so many years. Some of you are here in the public gallery as frontline workers. I acknowledge you and I thank you for your commitment to supporting those impacted by family and domestic violence. We respect and value your essential work.

But I also want to acknowledge those in our community who have lost their lives due to family and domestic violence.

I recognise those we've lost, those who've survived and those who, at this moment, still feel trapped.

This bill is for you.

You've asked us to do more to help, and we're here now, getting this done for you.

This bill will not by itself solve the problem of family and domestic violence; but it does mean no employee in Australia will ever again be forced to make a choice between earning a wage and protecting the safety of themselves and their families.

I commend the bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.