Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

If I could just make a few comments on behalf of the opposition on the amendment on sheet 1608moved by Senator Tyrrell on behalf of the Jacqui Lambie Network. The amendment, unfortunately, does not just change the name of the leave. What it actually would do is wrap in a new form of leave called 'emergency leave'; hence, the change of name to 'emergency leave'. That would expand what this bill is actually looking at, which is the paid family and domestic violence leave. It would, in fact, extend the leave to a range of other circumstances, including caring for an immediate family member with severe illness that is a threat to their life and the employee is caring for them, of caring for an immediate family member with a severe personal injury that is a their life and the employee is caring for them, or a child is stillborn where the child would have been the employee's immediate family or a member of employee's household if the child had been born alive, or the employee or employee's spouse or de facto partner has a miscarriage.

The coalition will not be supporting the amendment for reasons very similar to those provided by the government. We certainly appreciate the intent of the amendment. I think you have stood up and articulated that well. As we all know, sometimes, though, when you are seeking to move an amendment to legislation, while the amendment itself does look very simple on the face of it but, given we are dealing with the Fair Work Act, a very technical piece of legislation, it already has in place a framework for leave. We are looking at amending that framework in relation to leave to add in another entitlement to a different form of paid leave. In particular, the Fair Work Commission itself, in its most recent review, the four-yearly review of the award system, had undertaken an extensive consultation and inquiry into the question of whether or not the unpaid provision for family and domestic violence leave that is currently in the Fair Work Act should be extended to 10 days of paid leave. They said that it should be, they made their decision and the government obviously determined that it would then enshrine that in the National Employment Standards, going further than what the Fair Work Commission had said.

But that is what this bill is dealing with. Your amendment actually takes it beyond that. To be fair to your amendment, if the government were to look at going down this path I think it is something that would need to be looked at in detail, in particular in relation to whether there are any unintended consequences and, if so, what they are and how the Senate deals with them. In particular, because of the nature of what is being looked at, it should be subject to consultation with the relevant stakeholders, in particular how this provision would actually operate within the Fair Work Act and particularly its potential impact on small and family business. So, I absolutely understand the intent, but it's the unintended consequences, and it goes further than the bill that we're actually debating here today.