Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Perhaps we can deal with that in the following way. Currently, unemployment due to misconduct is defined as a situation where a person has contributed to their own unemployment—that is, they have been dismissed or been given the option of resigning from suitable work because of their actions as a worker. The intention of this policy is not to penalise people for something over which they clearly had no control; the intention is primarily to provide a deterrent for those who might behave inappropriately at work in order to be dismissed and avoid a penalty for leaving employment voluntarily. I think we would all agree with that. A person who was dismissed for lack of ability to do the job or even incompetence cannot be considered to be unemployed due to misconduct. There are graduations of that. The government is happy to take you through the guidelines that Centrelink will use in dealing with these, Senator Siewert. What you have outlined is one scenario—there are multiple scenarios in this environment. My advisers might correct me on this, but you do not want a decision maker examining a plethora of individual, minute circumstances and applying the policy inconsistently because it is too discretionary. There is discretion, but the discretion is always narrow. In voluntarily leaving your employment, the discretion is narrower. It is designed to ensure that there is a deterrent to leaving employment. It is there so that the decision maker does not have a wide variety of circumstances to look at to make an assessment, because invariably that leads to a range of inconsistent outcomes. There is a clear deterrent, and that deterrent will be applied.

In circumstances where someone has left employment because they felt uncomfortable, these are always difficult judgments because they relate to the individual. My strong advice to people is always—and I will draw on my earlier career as an industrial inspector, if my advisers don’t mind me talking for a second—that, if there is harassment in the employment market, you do not have to put up with it. There are a range of places you can go to seek redress. The employment market is such that among the Human Rights Commission, the state industrial inspectors and the federal industrial inspectors there is a range of support, including unions—which were also a part of my previous career—to assist those people to adequately deal with that. There are also complaints-handling procedures in many awards—in fact, I am sure in all awards—about how you deal with these things in a practical way. It is about that, rather than simply saying, ‘I’m not quite feeling well today, because of the circumstances,’ and leaving. It is designed to be a deterrent, so that people do not do that and that they consider their options, which are more practical. The practical options are in complaints handling. If there are redresses available then use those; otherwise, you have a circumstance where someone may leave a place of employment and the next day—using even your scenario—it blows over and circumstances change, outlooks change, and they should have been in their employment but they are not. That would be a disappointing outcome for all.