Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

PUBLIC HOLIDAYS AMENDMENT BILL 2011
1682 COUNCIL Thursday, 2 June 2011
I suspect that is a significant clause in that agreement
for some good reason that the people working at
Luv-a-Duck will understand better than I do. There are
also some arrangements in the EBA about union picnic
day and circumstances in which Christmas Day,
Australia Day or New Year’s Day occurs on a Saturday
or Sunday, when they would be observed on the
following Monday.
Clause 32.3 of the agreement states:
Where in a state, territory or locality, public holidays are
declared or prescribed on days other than those set out in 32.1
and 32.2 above —
that is, the previous list of holidays —
those days shall constitute additional holidays for the purpose
of this agreement.
That is just one example from one of the municipalities
that will be affected by this legislation and by split
arrangements for public holidays. I invite government
members to respond by thinking about how this
legislation will impact on the many and varied
industrial agreements in workplaces right across
Victoria.
Murray Goulburn Co-operative is another large
employer that has many people employed at a number
of locations in regional Victoria. That company’s
agreement provides for Melbourne Cup Day. I urge
government members to think about the practical
impact of this legislation. The examples I have used are
only a couple that I grabbed because they raise a
number of different questions.
Mr Somyurek will be moving an amendment during the
course of this debate. I will leave it to him to speak
about his amendment in more detail. However, in the
context of the debate on the shop trading legislation,
opposition members sought to move an amendment to
the Public Holidays Act 1993 to provide that Easter
Sunday is a public holiday, given that the actions of the
government not so long ago mean it is now a retail
trading day whereas it was not before.
Easter Sunday is caught in this funny place where it is
adjacent to a couple of public holidays, but it is not a
public holiday, which affects the way in which people
are paid if they are required to work in a shop on Easter
Sunday. Government members told us at the time that it
was not the shop trading legislation that we should be
seeking to amend, we needed an amendment to the
public holidays legislation. Here we are talking about
the Public Holidays Act 1993, so we will take the
opportunity to make that case again, and Mr Somyurek
will speak about that in a little more detail.
The opposition will not be opposing the second reading
of this legislation, although we are keen to discuss some
of its practical applications in the committee stage. I
will finish by saying that I spoke to a number of local
councils that were affected by the legislation in 2008
but were also involved in discussions around creating
more flexible and responsive arrangements in 2010.
The feedback I have received — I certainly did not
speak to them all, but I did speak to a number of
them — was that they would be okay with this
legislation if it did not cause any tangible changes to the
arrangements that were in place last year. Flexibility
and discretion are important. As I said, I am interested
in how we apply the split holiday notion and the
part-shire notion in combination, and I am sure that the
minister who will be at the table when we are in
committee will be able to answer some of those
questions in a little more detail. I am grateful for the
opportunity to speak on this bill. Public holidays are
very important to a lot of people, and it is vital that we
get the legislation right.
Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) — The
Public Holidays Amendment Bill 2011 is before us to
clarify arrangements for local councils declaring public
holidays in lieu of Melbourne Cup Day. It could be
argued that we should not be having a public holiday
for a horse race in Melbourne, or indeed in any regional
area, but I suppose that is a wider debate. Other people
may want to have yet another debate about whether we
should have a holiday to mark the monarch’s
birthday — we could go on and have a discussion about
the reasons for all our public holidays. However, there
has been debate in the community over a long time
about whether there should be a public holiday for a
horse race.
Mr P. Davis — Or any public holidays.
Ms PENNICUIK — Mr Davis says, ‘Or any public
holidays’. I note that 11 public holidays are gazetted in
the state of Victoria. It is interesting that in years past,
because of the non-observance of Melbourne Cup Day
in regional areas, metropolitan people were getting their
11 public holidays whereas regional people were
getting only 10 in many cases. Prior to 2008 the Public
Holidays Act 1993 gave councils the powers to gazette
one full day or two half-day public holidays and declare
its applicability either for all or part of the municipality.
The intention of those provisions was to accommodate
local race days and agricultural show days in each local
council area or part thereof each year.
The changes that were made in the 2008 amendment
bill were argued for on the basis that arrangements for