Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Hang on, hang on! As Senator Pocock has pointed out, and as I think Minister Burke has pointed out, in essence this right would not apply to employees who are compensated to remain available to perform work—I will take you, Senator Lambie, to clause 333M, which sets out the right to disconnect. Subsection (3) says that some of the things that need to be taken into account about whether it's unreasonable for an employee to refuse to be contacted include:

(c) the extent to which the employee is compensated:

(i) to remain available to perform work during the period in which the contact or attempted contact is made; or

(ii) for working additional hours outside of the employee's ordinary hours of work;

In my experience, the staff in my office who handle media inquiries outside of hours are paid an additional allowance in recognition of, essentially, the overtime they are required to work in their role. I daresay there are similar arrangements in place for most staff who work in this building, in recognition that it is a workplace with unusual hours. Political staffers, under the MOPS enterprise agreement, receive an extra allowance in recognition of the fact they are regularly required to work outside of normal working hours. The terms of employment of political staffers will be a key consideration in determining whether a staffer electing to disconnect is unreasonable. For those journalists following the debate, I don't think they need to be concerned about whether they're going to be able to contact media advisers for politicians after hours; it is recognised that that is quite a normal occurrence in this line of work and that that is the reason those staff are paid an additional allowance for working extra hours.