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

I thank the member for Corangamite. We often refer to individual members regarding their commitment or association with an issue. The member for Corangamite, with respect to paid family and domestic violence leave, has the status of having been the first employer in the world, when she was mayor of the South Coast, to establish this as a workplace right.

Two years ago this parliament as a whole did a really good thing. We voted on world-leading legislation. There'd been arguments about how soon we could get there. There were arguments about amendments. But ultimately when we got to the final question as to whether we should take this step the parliament voted together in this place and in the other place. Effectively, what we decided was a very simple principle—that nobody should have to choose between safety and pay. That's the principle of family and domestic violence leave.

As part of the legislation we put through, there was a requirement that there would be a formal review. That review, two years later, has been conducted and is in. The program itself has been, so far, extraordinarily successful. Fears that some had that there might be abuse of it and it wouldn't be used properly have not been well founded. But where it has been used, it has been life-changing.

One of the decisions that we took was unusual for a leave decision. Normally paid leave is something that only applies to somebody who is in permanent employment, be they a full-time or a part-time employee. But there are a number of characteristics for people who experience family and domestic violence. They are more likely to be women, and women experiencing family and domestic violence are more likely to be casuals. So we took the unusual step to have this as a leave entitlement that would apply to casuals.

I want to give one very simple case study that's appeared in the review that has been brought down as a result of the legislation we passed. A casual at a discount department store accessed family and domestic violence leave to leave her relationship and accessed it again at a point where her former partner tried to re-enter her life. As a result of having the leave available, she was able to organise temporary accommodation and able to spend time finding care for her children, and at no point did she have to compromise her capacity to pay her bills. That is exactly the scenario we wanted. This is a leave entitlement that in an ideal world would never be required. But in the world in which we live, where we know this will be the experience of far too many Australians and in particular far too many women, if we as a parliament can do as we have done and make sure that those who experience this don't have to choose between safety and pay, then we've truly done a good thing. (Time expired)

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