Ms SPENCE (Yuroke) (17:31:06) — I am very pleased today to speak along with so many of my colleagues on the Long Service Leave Bill 2017. This bill seeks to repeal the current Long Service Leave Act 1992 and replace it with a new act that is fairer, more flexible and better suited to the modern workplace. Although Victoria referred most of its workplace relations powers to the commonwealth in 1996, the Victorian government did retain responsibility for regulating and administering long service leave. As with the current act, this legislation would serve as the default long service leave legislation applying to Victorian workers in both the private and public sectors unless specifically excluded.

These new long service leave arrangements will better meet the needs of employers and workers and will be fairer for people whose working arrangements change over the lifetime of their employment, particularly working women who take a career break to care for their children.

Long service leave has been a workplace benefit for many years. Everyone is familiar with it. However, the application of our long service leave laws is often not as simple as it seems and the nature of modern work arrangements means that only about one in four workers will ever qualify for long service leave. I think that is an astounding figure. I had a bit of a chat to my own family, and I was quite surprised that neither my mother nor my father nor my partner nor me nor many of the people that I know have ever qualified for long service leave. That is not because we were not working for the one employer or we were in the one position where the employer changed but more because of breaks in employment. Nonetheless, that one in four figure is a very disturbing figure that we should all try to better.

Labor went to the 2014 election with a commitment to review the Long Service Leave Act. This commitment was honoured in 2016, with the review finding that the current act did require updating. The review process was quite extensive. I was pretty impressed when I had a look at the extent of that process. It included a broad discussion paper, and stakeholder submissions were received in response to that. In addition there was public feedback and extensive consultation, including with unions and with employer and industry groups such as the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Industry Group, the Victorian Farmers Federation, the Victorian Transport Association, the National Retail Association and the Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce. This review process highlighted the shortcomings in the current act, and what we now have is a bill that proposes a number of improvements in the current long service leave arrangements.

The bill does not change the rate at which leave accrues, being at one‑sixtieth of the period of continuous employment, but what it does do is make the rules governing how and when leave is to be taken more flexible and easier to understand. The bill also clarifies the definition of an ‘asset’ in a transfer of business situation to include intangible assets; removes the ability of employers to seek an exemption from the application of the act; increases penalties to be comparable with current Victorian standards and changes the two existing civil penalties into criminal offences; and allows authorised departmental officers to require the production of records when investigating alleged breaches.

One of the shortcomings of the current act is that it discriminates against employees who have changed their working hours, which is often due to parental or care responsibilities and is a penalty most often borne by women. The bill will remove this discrimination by ensuring entitlements can be averaged over the entire period of employment if this means that the employee is better off than if they averaged it over the last 12 months or the last five years. The bill also provides an employee whose hours of work are about to change the right to request a statement from their employer outlining the old and new working arrangements. This could be very important if it is later required, because it will have evidentiary value.

Another important aspect of the review, in accordance with our election commitment, included an assessment of how the taking of parental leave and other forms of leave affects entitlements. The bill, like the current act, treats interruptions to service in different ways. Some forms of leave count as service, but other forms of leave, while not counting as service, will not break the continuity of service. So there is quite a mishmash there that this bill seeks to rectify.

Currently the act treats parental leave less favourably than all other forms of leave is the upshot. A period of unpaid parental leave of up to 12 months does not break the continuity of service but nor does it count as service. Any period of unpaid parental leave greater than 12 months will break continuity of service, even though under the Fair Work Act 2009 employees are entitled to take up to two years of unpaid parental leave. Therefore parental leave is treated less favourably than other forms of leave under the current act. If an employee takes more than 12 months unpaid parental leave, they lose continuity of service and any accrued long service leave entitlements. What that means is that when they return to work they have to go back and start that accrual process from scratch. This disproportionately affects women — that is without question. It also undervalues the contributions of parents to workplaces, and ultimately it is an unfair and outdated arrangement.

Under the proposed act parental leave will be treated the same as other forms of leave. This is a huge win for women across our state. The bill provides that any period of paid parental leave and up to 12 months of unpaid parental leave will actually count as service, and no amount of parental leave will break continuity of service. As a result, women and parents will no longer be discriminated against and lose their hard‑earned long service leave.

There have been a number of examples given today, and the one I would like to make reference to is the case of a woman who works for six years at a company and then takes 13 months of parental leave under the current act. When she returns the clock will be set back to zero and she will have to work at that company for another 10 years before she can take long service leave, so 16 years instead of 10 years are required to meet the same entitlements as her male counterparts who have not taken that parental leave. Even then she would not be able to receive the full benefit because, like many women, she returns to work part‑time to care for her children and then it is calculated on that new lower basis as though she had always worked at that lower level. That is certainly not a situation that I support.

This is a bill that makes a number of improvements to the shortcomings in the current act. The proposed reforms include more flexible approaches to the taking of long service leave that will benefit both employees and employers, make it easier for employers and employees to understand their rights and obligations, and ensure that casual and seasonal employees with the requisite continuous service have access to the same benefits as other employees. The bill supports employees to enjoy their rights to take parental leave without adversely affecting their long service leave eligibility or accrual.

This is an incredibly important bill. It will definitely serve us well in the future. I am very pleased that although our parents, our grandparents and the current generation have not had the benefit of being able to continually accrue leave entitlements whilst on parental leave this is something that we know our daughters and granddaughters will be able to benefit from, and that is a terrific outcome.

I congratulate the minister on her work in this area. She has done an outstanding job, and this bill is a great testament to her. I also want to thank all of those that participated throughout the review process. Whether it be the completion of submissions or whether it be participation in the consultation process, all of these contributions mean that what we have before us is a bill that redresses a wrong in terms of the discrimination in the current act and lets us go forward with a much more equitable situation for parents and for carers. I commend the bill to the house.