Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to commend this motion to the House. I thank the member for Newcastle for putting the motion. I note that we've had two speakers from the government: the member for Chisholm and the member for Corangamite. I don't think it's a coincidence that both those members opposite who chose to speak are from Victoria. I think it's a credit to the royal commission. It's in response to the heightened awareness in Victoria, as a result of that royal commission, that all members of this parliament from Victoria are acutely aware of the social, the emotional and, of course, the economic cost of domestic violence in our community.

We measure, in this country, what we care about. We do it to enable us to have a clear view of the issue and the impacts of any interventions or mitigating factors that government might put in place. Domestic violence leave, therefore, is something that would allow us to measure. In the first instance it would allow us to track the number of workers in the workforce requiring leave as a result of experiencing domestic violence. This, for me, is the critical point. Yes, we want domestic violence leave to support those people and to give them the leave they need to deal with the crisis occurring in their lives at that point in time. We want to do it for all of those reasons, but I think, importantly, we also want to do it to ensure that we have a system that is tracking the economic impact of domestic violence, because, as all of the women on this side of the room know, it often takes an economic argument to get action. Introducing domestic violence leave would give us a trigger that would allow us to measure the impact of domestic violence on our businesses. The reason we measure what we care about is that we need to measure the economic impact. If we care about decreasing incidence of domestic violence, we will implement paid domestic violence leave.

Late last year, campaigners from the Australian Council of Trade Unions campaigned strongly for paid domestic violence leave. From an economic perspective, the ACTU claimed that the reform would cost just 5c per employee. Let me be clear: when it comes to the welfare of workers in our society, we should never just be justifying a policy on how little impact it will have on business. However, it helps if we can clearly see that it's a minimal cost for a maximum outcome for those victims of domestic violence. It would allow us to measure the impacts, and it would allow us to study the who, the where, the when and the why through that lens. That would allow us to have a look at the answers that might be able to be put in place, either in protective behaviours or in terms of prevention.

We can look to carers leave as an example of an entitlement incorporated under the National Employment Standards which affords workers with paid leave the time to deal with caring responsibilities. I know that I was in sitting in the principal's chair in a school when carers leave was introduced in Victoria. It gave us, as an education community, great insight into the work that our workforce was doing, unpaid and out of hours, in caring for parents and caring for children. It gave us really good data to help us prepare to support those people in the workplace.

I would argue that this is an extension of that same process. Introducing domestic violence leave would give us insight into where it's happening, when it is happening, why it's happening and who the perpetrators are, but it would also give a level of support to those victims of domestic violence during that crisis. If you think about the processes that are put in place around domestic violence, if you think about being someone who is employed—we know that two-thirds of the victims of domestic violence are in full-time work—first that person needs to get their personal issues in order and find someone to care for the children, then they have to go through an intake process and then referrals to support services. They need the time to do that. They need to have that time without having to lie to an employer about what they're doing. I commend this to the House and I condemn the government for not taking the initiative to implement this.

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