Woodhouse Michael: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoodhouse Michael: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 03 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9394. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I move That the Employment Standards Legislation Bill be now read a second time. I thank the members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and its chair Jonathan Young for their hard work and consideration of the bill. I want to also add my thanks to the hard-working officials providing support both to the committee and to me behind the scenes. I think they have done an excellent job. I also want to thank all those who made submissions on the bill. The bill has come back from select committee in very good shape. The select committee has recommended that the bill proceed with some amendments which I am in support of.Although much of the public discourse on the bill has been about zero-hour provisions this bill does much more than address that issue and I want to touch on those matters first. There are very important changes to paid parental leave included in this bill which deliver on my party’s 2014 election promise to modernise and extend paid parental leave.Part 1 of the bill remains largely as it was at introduction although the committee has made some useful changes that will improve the clarity of the bill. The definition of “primary carer” has been tightened to ensure there is no misinterpretation. A primary carer if not the biological mother or her spouse or partner is a person who takes permanent primary responsibility for the care development and upbringing of a child who is under the age of 6 years. The outlined provision in Part 1 has also been revised in response to feedback from some submitters about the complexity of the bill.I also requested that the committee consider the proposal to extend the parental leave payments for parents of pre-term babies following discussion with ACT leader David Seymour. The proposal reflects the extra and unexpected time the parents spend in the hospital with the baby and away from work and the delay in establishing bonding and settling the baby into the home environment. The committee agreed that eligible persons should receive an additional week’s parental leave payment for each week of prematurity from 37 weeks and additional keeping-in-touch hours the extra paid parental leave up to an additional 13 weeks. I want to thank Mr Seymour for his contribution to this very important amendment.Part 2 of the bill amends the Employment Relations Act. The changes introduce broad new accountability provisions around knowingly and intentionally committing breaches of employment standards measures improving record-keeping requirements and the overturning of the statutory obligation on the Employment Relations Authority and the Employment Court to send employment standards cases to mediation. No substantive changes have been made to Part 2 of the bill but again the committee’s consideration of submitters’ comments has led to minor improvements in their clarity and workability. Legislative guidance has been added to clarify how to meet the new requirement to have a record of both the hours worked each day and the pay for these hours. This requirement is necessary for the correct calculation of and demonstration of compliance with minimum employment entitlements. Some other minor changes have been made to the provisions overturning the statutory obligation on the Employment Relations Authority to send employment standards cases to mediation.I want to turn now to the provisions to address what are known as zero-hour contracts. These attracted the most comment from submitters. Most submitters opposed the proposals particularly relating to availability provisions on the grounds that they believed they legitimised the very practices the bill attempts to stop. This is quite wrong in my view. It does however underscore the difficulty that arises when there is no clear definition or shared understanding about what zero-hour means. Zero-hour is a type of employment that requires the employee to be ready willing and available for work when work is offered. Sometimes this obligation is paired with an exclusivity clause that also prevents the employee from working for others even when the employer has little or no work to offer. It is the equivalent of being on call all the time without being paid anything to recognise the demands that poses.This is distinct from casual employment where there is neither obligation on the employer to offer work nor obligation on the employee to accept it. Casual agreements have been a part of the employment relations landscape in this country for a long time. Some in this House may be concerned at the increasing casualisation of the workforce but these changes are not aimed at eliminating casual agreements which I believe have a place in our employment relations landscape.A number of the submissions highlighted a range of ways we could better achieve these objectives. In my view the committee has taken a sensible and pragmatic approach to the concerns raised by submitters and the bill is in better shape for it. Under the amendments employers must have a genuine reason based on reasonable grounds to include an availability provision—that is a provision requiring an employee to be available for work. It must be in the employment agreement and must provide reasonable compensation for that availability. The bill provides guidance to employers and employees on both of these requirements. Compensation for shift cancellation will also have to be reasonable and the bill provides guidance on this as well. The committee has also clarified the provisions relating to wage deductions by adding that if an employment agreement contains a general consent to a wage deductions clause the employer must consult with the employee when the employer wants to make a specific deduction. Finally to give employers more time to make the necessary changes to the employment agreements particularly those employers with large workforces the original 6-month transitional period to amend existing individual employment agreements is extended to 12 months.After the committee reported back to Parliament there was a strong backlash from some who claimed that rather than eliminate zero-hour provisions the bill had entrenched them. I absolutely disagree with that assessment but felt that for all the hyperbole the gap between where we were and those views was not as large as the drum-beating would suggest. So after discussion with the Council of Trade Unions and others I am prepared to make further minor changes to the clauses around availability and the definition of reasonable notice to close that gap. I acknowledge the input of the Council of Trade Unions and also that of Iain Lees-Galloway and note that Labour has publicly indicated that with those changes it can support the bill through its remaining stages. The changes made to the bill—Sue Moroney: That’s a stretch.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —I am quoting the press release—both recommended by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and in the upcoming Committee stage reflect a careful consideration of submitters’ comments and a shared desire to improve support for new parents strengthen sanctions on non-complying employers and eliminate zero-hour clauses. They make the bill clearer and more workable. With those changes I commend the bill to the House.