Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill

Part 2 of the Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill provides for the transition from the old to the new and sets out how the existing Chief Electoral Office and the existing Electoral Commission become the new integrated Electoral Commission. Part 2 enables the new Electoral Commission to be established immediately after the bill comes into force so that it can—as the honourable member Jim Anderton was concerned about—immediately prepare itself to receive the electoral functions required. At the close of 30 September 2010 the bill disestablishes the existing Electoral Commission and revokes the appointments of the current Electoral Commissioners and the current Chief Electoral Officer. Employees of the current electoral agencies will be transferred, if they agree, across to the new Electoral Commission. These employees are also assured, as far as possible, of continued enjoyment of their current terms and conditions—their service will be deemed to be unbroken. Other mechanisms provide for the assets, liabilities, rights, and responsibilities of the current electoral agencies to be transferred over to the new Electoral Commission on 1 October of this year. Part 2 also amends the Electoral Act 1993 and other relevant electoral legislation and regulations to make the technical and consequential amendments necessary to implement the policy of integrating the electoral agencies.

I will not take a lengthy call on Part 2; it is the machinery to bring into effect the new Electoral Commission. But I thought I would not let the opportunity go by to comment on clause 26, “Restriction of compensation for technical redundancy”. It identifies that when somebody moves into the new Electoral Commission from one of the existing agencies—the ministry or the existing commission—he or she has substantially equivalent employment, which means substantially the same position and on terms of conditions that are no less favourable than those applying immediately before, on terms that treat the period of service with the previous employer and any other service recognised by the previous employer as continuous service—sorry, I left out that bit before—including any service-related redundancy and superannuation conditions.

The point I make is that there is a whole stack of people out there in the private sector who get no redundancy when they are made redundant, and this House had a really good opportunity recently to pick up my colleague Darien Fenton’s member’s bill, which would have provided for at least some minimum redundancy to apply. I think what we see reflected here is that the Government is, appropriately, concerned about technical redundancy being picked up in an area where there are widespread redundancy provisions designed to protect people should they be made redundant from their position and not be able to take up substantially the same position on ongoing conditions that recognise all of their previous continuous service and that continuous service lasting. But that is not so for the private sector—in very few instances now do we see it. It is really only those areas where there are well-organised, unionised workplaces that have built redundancy provisions into their conditions of employment.

I will say one other thing, because it is important. I would like the Government to reflect on this: in other parts of the State sector, there is a practice being developed in order to get around those redundancy provisions, which are quite widespread within the public sector. There is a practice of trying to develop short-term fixed-term contracts and then enticing people to resign their existing position when they are being made redundant and putting them into a fixed-term contract. That would not stand up in a court of law. It would obviously be challenged. But a lot of people are feeling quite vulnerable and want to maintain some income—facing, alternatively, redundancy and not knowing whether they will be able to pick up another job. I thought that it was an ideal opportunity to simply mention that this is going on. I hope that the Government will do something about it, next time it has an opportunity. I acknowledge my good friend Darien Fenton for the good work she attempted to do in this area.

Part 2 agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Schedule 3 agreed to.

Schedule 4 agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment presently.