Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

QUESTIONS ON NOTICE
Thursday, 2 June 2011 COUNCIL 1701
initiated postponements, hospital early warning systems
data and like data on transfer times. That information
ought to have been in the public domain to enable the
system, the hospital and the community to make better
judgements about how the system is performing and to
assist it to improve.
QUESTIONS ON NOTICE
Answers
Hon. D. M. DAVIS (Minister for Health) — I have
the following answers to questions on notice: 178,
255–318, 323–35, 598, 622, 623 and 676.
PUBLIC HOLIDAYS AMENDMENT BILL
2011
Debate resumed.
Second reading
Mr ELASMAR (Northern Metropolitan) — As I
was saying before question time, giving the
non-metropolitan councils the authority to determine
which public holidays its workers can take is an
either/or decision. It is not both Melbourne Cup and
Melbourne show days. This bill treats people in rural
Victoria as second-class citizens, not sophisticated
enough to stop work to celebrate the race that stops the
nation but hopefully sufficiently dedicated to their own
rural communities to choose their own show day. I
think it is heartbreaking that we cannot celebrate a
public holiday on Melbourne Show Day as we used to.
It is a fantastic family event that ranks with school
holidays.
The honourable man, as Mr Finn called my colleague
Mr Somyurek, has proposed an important amendment
to this bill. That amendment is about Easter Sunday,
which is a very important day for families. I urge
members in this house to support the amendment as I
will support it.
Motion agreed to.
Read second time.
Referral to committee
Ms PULFORD (Western Victoria) — I move:
That the Public Holidays Amendment Bill 2011 be referred to
the Standing Committee on Economy and Infrastructure
Legislation Committee for inquiry, consideration and report
by 28 June 2011 and that the committee consider in particular
the impact of the half-day public holiday provisions in the bill
on employers and employees.
I will make a couple of brief remarks in support of my
motion as it is reasonably self-explanatory. Mr Finn
was right when he said the committee was busy, but
this is a very narrowly defined matter with a short
reporting date of something less than four weeks. The
reporting date I am seeking is the Tuesday of the sitting
week before the long recess. We are hoping to use the
legislation committee in the way it was intended — that
is, as a quick Senate-style committee to look at a very
narrow subject. I envisage the committee will consider
the specific impact of the half-day provisions in this bill
on employees and employers who may be affected by
these changes.
I am proposing this inquiry because we are concerned
about the way in which the provisions in this legislation
intersect with other types of industrial arrangements
that govern various workplaces in regional Victoria.
We are concerned to ensure that Victorian businesses
are not overly burdened with additional red tape and
that councils, when making the types of decisions that
are envisaged by the legislation, can do so knowing
they have as much information as possible about the
impact on businesses in their municipalities and on the
employees who work for them.
Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) — The
Greens will support Ms Pulford’s motion to refer the
bill to the Standing Committee on Economy and
Infrastructure Legislation Committee for inquiry,
consideration and report by 28 June, which is not that
far away and will allow for the bill to come back to be
reconsidered by the house.
There have been issues raised in the debate on this bill
about the implications for workers and employers of the
provision which would allow the declaration of
half-day holidays and also half-day holidays in different
parts of the municipality. This may create confusion,
whereas the existing provisions that were put in place
with the 2008 amendments to the act allow for
flexibility but also allow for more clarity across a
municipality as to what is a public holiday, whether
there is a particular holiday for that locality or whether
the default public holiday is in fact Melbourne Cup
Day.
The issue is worthy of consideration by that committee.
However, I also remind members who attended the
address by the Clerk of the Senate, Dr Rosemary Laing,
that she said as a matter of course many bills were
referred to Senate committees for even short periods of
time, and many of them came back with small changes
or amendments. In most cases small changes or
amendments to the bill to make sure it operates
properly are actually put forward by the government;
they are not put forward by the other parties.