Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move opposition amendments (8) and (9) as circulated in my name:

(8)    Schedule 1, after item 22, page 36 (after line 3), insert:

22A At the end of section 613

Add:

        (2)    Notwithstanding the other factors set out in this section or a provision in a workplace agreement or an award, an employee who wishes to attend to religious activities on Good Friday shall be taken to have reasonable grounds for refusing a request to work on Good Friday.

(9)    Schedule 1, after item 22, page 36 (after line 3), insert:

22B At the end of section 613

Add:

        (3)    Notwithstanding the other factors set out in this section or a provision in a workplace agreement or an award, an employee who wishes to attend to religious activities on Christmas Day shall be taken to have reasonable grounds for refusing a request to work on Christmas Day.

These amendments deal with the very important question for many in our community of the way in which they can observe Good Friday and Christmas Day. This is about real protections for public holidays. The current Work Choices act says, on the one hand, that employees are entitled to a day off on public holidays. Then, in the very next section, it says that an employer may request that an employee work on a public holiday. But later, in section 612(3), the legislation says that an employee can refuse the request where they have reasonable grounds to do so. The force of these amendments is to clarify what are reasonable grounds for someone to decline to work on Good Friday or Christmas Day. The clarification is that it is reasonable grounds to decline to work on those very important religious holidays when the employee wishes to attend to religious obligations or other commitments on that day.

This could not be more simple. This is to apply to people who understand, and feel within their personal lives, the significance of the Christian tradition of Good Friday and Christmas Day and, because of the significance of those days to them as a matter of personal faith, they seek to have those days not working ones so that they could attend religious observances on those days, attending a religious observance on Good Friday—the day that Christ was crucified, and one of the most sacred days in the Christian calendar—and to mark the birth of Jesus Christ, also one of the most sacred days in the Christian calendar. This would enable people who wish to attend religious observances on those days to have that as a reasonable ground to decline to work on those days.

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