Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move amendments (1) to (11) as circulated in my name together:

The amendments were unavailable at the time of publishing.

These amendments do a number of different, important things to improve this bill, but I move them together, as I anticipate that most of them won't have the support of the House. As I said in my speech during the second reading debate, there are a number of ways in which this bill could be improved, most notably by changing the leave from unpaid to paid. We've advocated for that for some time. The amendments that I move here do a number of things, though, that aren't directly related to that.

Amendments (1) to (3) will change five days of unpaid leave to 10 days of unpaid leave. We submit that 10 days paid leave would be the much better approach, but, failing that, 10 days unpaid leave would make a significant difference to a number of women. It's predominantly women who are needing to take this leave. It's generally recognised that 10 days leave is an acceptable standard and, when compared to the other types of leave that are offered to people and that people are entitled to, 10 days is certainly something that would make a difference. In the context where it can take a period of time to deal with the difficulties of an abusive relationship and to leave it, certainly the message that we've got very loudly and clearly from the sector is that 10 days is the appropriate period of time.

Amendments (4), (7) and (8) expand the definition of the relationship that an employee can have to someone in order to be able to claim this leave so that it includes a close relative of the employee. That is defined to include a member of their immediate family or someone to whom they are related according to Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander kinship rules or relationships that are accepted within their community to be related to them. This is an important principle as well. With other forms of leave, over time within the industrial system there's been an expansion of, say, sick leave provisions, or what used to be called sick leave provisions, so that, when someone else in your immediate family is sick, you can take that leave, and some of that's been expanded into what is sometimes called carers leave. That's been its genesis and that's how it's developed over time.

It makes sense here that, if someone is able to take leave because they have experienced family or domestic violence themselves, they should also be able to take leave if there's someone in their immediate family who's experiencing it and they're taking leave to support them. That's going to become crucial when, for example, you're perhaps dealing with things like attending court or attending services where the support of someone would be crucial. As we know, we're dealing with people who are at a very difficult and vulnerable stage, and having that support to exit an abusive relationship may make all the difference. We're not talking about granting unlimited periods of leave. There would still need to be some connection, but making it available to someone who's not just you but who's in your immediate circle, as defined by these amendments, would also make sense.

Amendments (5) and (6) are also very important. If the bill passes in its unamended form, there will be a requirement that, for the employee to access unpaid leave, it would be impractical for them to do what they need to do outside of work hours. That shouldn't be the test. The test shouldn't be one of impracticality. The test should be: what is best going to allow someone to exit an abusive situation? It's a high hurdle to jump and it begs the question about how that's going to be tested and whether people are going to be put to the test of demonstrating that, in some sense, there is that impracticality in their situation. That ought not to be something that someone who's in this situation has to demonstrate. They will be facing enough burdens as it is. Given that the purpose of this bill is to assist people, especially women, to exit abusive situations, then there should not be the additional requirement of impracticality; it should all be directed towards that.

Amendments (9) to (11) extend the confidentiality requirements to third parties so that, for example, if the employee who's taking leave discloses the information to someone in payroll, that person can't disclose the information to someone else. It adds civil remedy provisions should there be that question of breach of confidentiality, and we think that's important in this context as well, given that, to access this leave, there may be a requirement to tell various people about something that's an incredibly sensitive situation.

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