Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to go into this a little bit further, if I can, and make sure this is quite clear. The reason the military—and I take it from this that this is where there's the emergency leave, so I'm going to explain all this. Emergency leave is there so you don't need to explain your circumstances. Emergency leave leaves it open for other things. It's not just about domestic violence. There are other things going on in people's lives—whether they're losing someone, whether there is a partner or someone in their family who is suffering serious illness that they do not want to speak to their employer about before they take this leave.

Ours was simply to make it quite clear that, when you're in a rural and regional area—and we are so cliquey and so related to each other that I can assure you that, if I did have a partner, you could guarantee that, if I was working in a firm in that little rural and regional area, my partner would know that person, my boss, if I was working there. I am not very comfortable in telling my boss, who is probably good friends with my partner, what is going on in my home life. I'm just not comfortable with that, and I'm not sure anybody out there would be. I shouldn't have to explain to someone.

I know you want awareness, but at what cost? You don't know everybody's situation, and I don't know why they have to explain their whole life and why they're running around under abuse. Explaining that to my boss is the last thing I would want to be doing. Give them a little more room here. It's great to say we want awareness out there and all that, but at what cost? I'm just being very, very careful, and I would like to make it very clear to employers that I shouldn't have to sit down and explain my story to them, if I am in a domestic violence situation where I have already been reduced to nothing, because they are going to ask. The least we can do is offer them cover. That's all this amendment was going to do.