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Speaker 1: Major shake up coming to how your leave is calculated.

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Speaker 1: The workplace Relations Minister Brook van Velden says the Broken

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Speaker 1: Holidays actor is going being scrapped replaced with a more

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Speaker 1: streamlined system. One of the big changes part time staff

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Speaker 1: will no longer get a flat minimum sick leave entitlement.

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Speaker 1: Entitlement's moving to a pro rata basis. Brook van Velden

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Speaker 1: with me now, Minister, good.

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Speaker 2: Evening, Good evening, Ryan.

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Speaker 1: Why a pro rata system? Why that rather than everyone

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Speaker 1: just getting the same.

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Speaker 2: Well, because this is about fairness across the system. You know,

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Speaker 2: there are a lot of businesses that have seriously struggled

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Speaker 2: with the labour's changes to sickly when everyone went to

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Speaker 2: ten days no matter how many hours they worked. And

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Speaker 2: what I've been hearing loudly from the business community is

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Speaker 2: they want it to be proportionate to the number of

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Speaker 2: hours that people actually work. And I'll just give you

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Speaker 2: an example of how that works out. You know, if

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Speaker 2: you've got someone who works full time and they've got

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Speaker 2: the flu for the week, they're going to need five

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Speaker 2: days sicklyve for that to recover. However, if that worker

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Speaker 2: is only working one day a week, they don't need

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Speaker 2: five days sick leave to recover. They only need the

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Speaker 2: one day because they were only expecting to work one

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Speaker 2: day out of that five. So this is actually proportionate

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Speaker 2: for the hours worked and it's much fairer for business.

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Speaker 1: Thanks sad to me. What about the minimum sickly But

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Speaker 1: if you're a part time worker, you don't get a

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Speaker 1: minimum sickly entitlement anymore? Why no minimum?

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Speaker 2: Well, the way that we're wanting it to work is

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Speaker 2: based on this basic principle. People will earn leave for

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Speaker 2: the hours that they actually work. That will be across

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Speaker 2: annual leave and sick leave. So from the first day

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Speaker 2: of work, everyone will earn for the hours that they

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Speaker 2: actually do. This means for a full time employee, the

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Speaker 2: status quo will still remain. Most people won't notice any

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Speaker 2: difference other than the calculations behind the scene. So a

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Speaker 2: full time employee will earn from day one rather than

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Speaker 2: being entitled to leave after twelve months of employment, but

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Speaker 2: they'll get still the equivalent of four weeks. The same

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Speaker 2: for sick leave. If they've done that full year at

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Speaker 2: a full time rate, they'll still get ten days of

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Speaker 2: sick leave. However, for someone who's working fewer hours, they

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Speaker 2: won't be entitled to the ten days sick leave, but

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Speaker 2: it will be based on how many hours did you

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Speaker 2: actually work. And if you look at that from the

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Speaker 2: annual leave side, that means that you get the same

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Speaker 2: proportion of annual leavers. This is fair.

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Speaker 1: Who gets? Does anyone miss out or lose out more

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Speaker 1: than others? I mean, do employers benefit here or employees

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Speaker 1: more or is it pretty much even stevens across the

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Speaker 1: board or you don't know.

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Speaker 2: Well, the way it will work across the overall economy

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Speaker 2: is it should be cross neutral. But there have been

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Speaker 2: trade offs that do need to be made. Not possible for.

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Speaker 1: You are and what your hours are, all that kind

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Speaker 1: of stuff.

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Speaker 2: That's exactly right.

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Speaker 1: What about labor. But I think the big problem here

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Speaker 1: is labour going to agree to what you have proposed,

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Speaker 1: because if they get in interf it out, we are

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Speaker 1: back to square one.

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Speaker 2: I certainly hope that that's not going to happen because

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Speaker 2: what I've tried to do this whole way through is

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Speaker 2: not try and be ideological. I've been very pragmatic about

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Speaker 2: the trade offs. There will be some employees who do benefit,

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Speaker 2: and there will be some employers who benefit as well.

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Speaker 2: It'll be based on all of those individual circumstances. But

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Speaker 2: my overall aim here is to create a law that

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Speaker 2: would be enduring, because we know the worst thing for

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Speaker 2: business is when they don't have stability or know that

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Speaker 2: it's going to be a political football that goes back

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Speaker 2: and forth. So instead of looking at this and saying

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Speaker 2: all employers win on every single part, I've tried to

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Speaker 2: make as many pragmatic calls as possible about employee and

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Speaker 2: employer trade offs to ensure that this bill, once it's

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Speaker 2: an act, will endure for decades to come.

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Speaker 1: Right, mister, appreciate you time, Brooklyn Valden, Workplace Relations Minister.

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