Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm really pleased to get to rise and take a call on this piece of legislation which I know from the number of conversations I've been having in the community is a law change that a huge number of people are desperately waiting for. The Green Party are incredibly pleased to support the extension of the minimum paid sick leave entitlement from five to 10 days for full-time and part-time workers. We heard through the select committee process a good number of submissions and some really compelling submissions from working people who told us unfortunately that life happens. People have experienced unexpected illness. They've experienced mental health problems while they've been employed and they've had sick family members that they've had a duty to care for. Not everybody is in the lucky position to have enough sick leave to be able to stay at home and get well to be able to actually look after their mental health in this mental health crisis that we have because they know their mental health will get worse if they can't afford to pay the rent. So they go to work and just stay on eggshells for an extended period of time and are unable to truly get well.We hear from people who are—like their kids are sick and they don't have paid leave. They have to be at home to be with their kids or we can be pretty sure everybody in this House would be judging them for not being there. But they know that when they choose to go there and be with their kids they are forgoing that income until they can get back to work and that means they do not know how to pay their rent. They do not know how they are going to be able to afford the kai to be able to feed their kids to get them back to health. That is the stress that people are under at the moment because of the extremely limited provision of the minimum sick leave entitlements. We heard from people that they were making that choice.We heard from the Opposition today the really very clear consequences for employers of this—and I'll get to that if I get time unpicking some of their perceptions of that—but what they didn't mention was the consequence for the working people of not having enough sick leave. It's either you go to work sick and work ineffectively because you're either working through that fog or not able to concentrate properly—potentially putting yourself or others at risk from injury or sickness through spreading the disease—or you stay home don't have the income and struggle to pay your bills. Or as we heard from some people of what they've had to do particularly if their children had repeated illness you leave that job to put your children first. We all end up paying for that but most of all that family ends up paying. I would also argue the employer loses out.There's a real problem because this is some of what we heard from the submitters supporting the legislation. What we heard from employers not all of them but a large number who presented was that they opposed it because they saw it as a cost. They didn't recognise the fact that if people are sick they're sick; they're either coming to work and not doing a great job because they're sick or they're not turning up to work and you're just not paying them. But you're not getting the job done because that person is actually sick or you're losing great staff because they can't sustain their health or their kids' health and your limited provision of sick leave. That is an increased cost.So we heard from members on this side that this has nothing to do with productivity and that there are no productivity returns around that. Well the evidence says otherwise. The evidence says that as a country we have a problem with what is called presenteeism. It's the opposite of absenteeism. It's people compulsively turning up to work when they are sick and underperforming and making others sick. That has a really significant impact on productivity and employers lose. Families lose. We all lose from this obsessive culture of seeing human beings as a cost as opposed to the people that actually do the work that create the value in our society.So we're very pleased finally to see these provisions in terms of the extension of the leave. I would say however though that the Greens are disappointed with some aspects of the bill. I acknowledge the point that this was brought in under urgency as one of the very first pieces of legislation that the Government brought in on 1 December and I know from conversations with people that they are really—they've been asking me So when am I going to get my 10 days?" because they are in that situation at the moment of not knowing if their kid gets sick how they're going to be able to look after them because they don't have enough sick leave at the moment. So they are desperate for this support and this is particularly people in care industries and in early childhood education and we heard a lot from people in industries where they can't come back to work until they've been well for like two days. So it's not just the sick day. There's expectations in terms of health and safety that people stay away from their workplace and yet the leave doesn't always match that expectation.So it is disappointing that with this legislation there will be some people that won't get their 10 days until mid next year because of the provisions in terms of phasing this in and I think that is disappointing and unnecessary. From the Green Party's perspective we believe that this is right to do in principle and it can be done straight away. We were also disappointed to see the reduction in carry-over leave entitlement from 15 days to just 10 days and that actually there is—you know and clearly people who are carrying over their leave are not exploiting their leave. It is really just in those cases if somebody gets very sick that they have that and they haven't used it and we don't want to see any reduction in entitlement and it doesn't seem to us that we're in a situation in terms of employment relations in this country where there should be the need for that. I think it's for the benefit of all of us to actually build up that store of sick leave for times people may need it.I also just want to acknowledge that we would have preferred to see the 10 days come in from day one of employment but acknowledge that the holidays working group has come to a consensus on that and that there will be an accrual that will start from the first day of employment. We look forward to that legislation coming in.One of the other points I wanted to mention—and I do believe it will help deliver on the intent of this legislation and the content of it—is the provisions of proof and employers' ability to require people to get medical certificates which is clogging up our healthcare system a completely unnecessary cost. In lots of areas it takes weeks to get in to see a GP. We do not need to see people with colds going into their health clinics putting potentially other people at risk just because their employer has an automatic distrust of everybody in their workplace.If we are going to have that culture that I think it was Todd McClay spoke about where there is a higher-trust model actually we should revert to the pre-2014 requirement where employers can ask for proof and medical certificate if they have reasonable grounds to believe that somebody is not sick. So if they see something on Facebook that somebody has been out partying then actually they can require it or if somebody's got a pattern of taking every Monday off then they require it but not this automatic assumption that people are ripping off the system because that creates workplaces of suspicion and undermines the wellbeing and participation of everybody in the workplace. Progress but not quite good enough."