Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move Greens amendments (6) and (7) on sheet 6111 together:

(6)    Clause 36, page 44 (line 24), omit “56”, substitute “84”.

(7)    Clause 36, page 45 (line 7), omit “56”, substitute “84”.

These amendments relate to the definition of permissible breaks as outlined in the work test eligibility criteria that are limited to eight weeks. These came out of evidence presented in the Senate inquiry that the work break time did not effectively reflect some of the various different seasonal work that exists and, of course, the university and school terms where people work on various contracts.

The Greens propose to extend this eight-week limitation to 12 weeks, recognising that a number of casual workers may miss out on the payment despite working for a significant period during the previous 12 months. This was a problem identified, as I said, in the various submissions to the Senate inquiry. In particular, the extension of 12 weeks covers people who have casual employment in occupations that often have a break over the summer such as universities. For a lecturer, a tutor or a researcher for example, who are only employed for the official semester periods, that eight-week period permissible break would cut them out from being able to apply for this parental leave. Surely, it seems to be something that the government should just be able to accept. This does not change the operation of the bill at all; it is simply saying, ‘We know there are significant numbers of people—women in particular—in those fields which will be caught short if we keep the permissible break period at only eight weeks.’

Twelve weeks seems to cover most people; in fact, I found it difficult to find anyone who would not be able to fit into that category of the 12-week break. But those who need to work on a semester-by-semester basis need to have that 12-week permissible break. That is what these amendments are about.