Greens to introduce bill to legislate paid family and domestic violence leave
The Greens will introduce a bill to legislate for all employees to get 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave, in line with a campaign from the Australian Council of Trade Unions.
The suggestion for 10 days’ leave effectively outbids the current Labor policy of five days but will need to gain Labor and crossbench support to put pressure on the Coalition, which opposes it.
Paid family and domestic violence leave gives employees time off to meet legal, medical, counselling, relocation and other administrative commitments to deal with or exit abusive or violent relationships.
The Greens’ bill would include the new entitlement in the minimum national employment standards, giving all employees access if they or an immediate family member experience family or domestic violence.
The Greens’ industrial relations spokesman, Adam Bandt, plans to introduce the bill in the lower house next week.
“The time has come for parliament to act,” he said. “I call on Bill Shorten and the prime minister to get behind the bill and take a stand to support Australian workers who are facing family violence. This bill will help save lives.”
Bandt cited the fact that one in three women experience family and domestic violence and it is the main cause of homelessness for women and children.
“Family and domestic violence is the greatest preventable contributor to death, disability and illness among women aged 15-44 years, greater than cancer or heart disease, yet Australia workers have limited access to family violence leave,” he said.
Over the weekend the domestic violence charity White Ribbon and the ACTU launched a new phase of campaigning for the workplace right.
The ACTU secretary, Sally McManus, asked all political parties to back the new entitlement “to support people leaving abusive relationships”.
In July the Fair Work Commission rejected the ACTU’s bid for 10 days’ paid domestic violence leave to be included in all modern awards but left the door open to the possibility of unpaid leave.
Employer organisations opposed the new entitlement. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry claimed it could cost employers as much as $205m to create just one day of domestic violence leave per worker per year.
Unions dispute the figure and suggest the cost would be closer to $11.8m, based on estimates that 2% of female workers and less than 1% of male workers take the leave each year when it is available to them.
Bandt said ACTU figures estimated the cost of family and domestic violence to the economy as $12.6bn per year.
“But the estimated cost of introducing a minimum 10 days’ paid family and domestic violence leave in the national employment standards is just 5c per day per worker,” he said.
About 1.6m workers currently have access to paid family and domestic violence leave through enterprise bargaining or company policy.
Telstra introduced paid family and domestic violence leave in their 2015-18 enterprise agreement and 22 out of its 32,000 employees accessed the leave in a six-month period,
taking an average of 2.3 days.