Wednesday, 8 June 2022

Bills

Child Employment Amendment Bill 2022

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Mr RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (18:01): The numbers are a bit thinner in the chamber than when I left the Child Employment Amendment Bill 2022, but there is no less interest as the member for Bass concludes the matter of public importance. At the time I was talking about the importance of these reforms 10 years after the last recommendations and changes were brought forward, the importance of making sure that we are modernising in an environment where we have seen a global pandemic and the impacts that has had on employment outcomes and the way we get around our state and those impacts but also the technological advancement in a decade and what that has changed in terms of the way we are working and getting around our local communities. There are really important reforms in this space that will take effect from mid July 2023.

I wanted to reflect on a couple of areas that I highlighted before the interruption of debate for the matter of public importance. At the moment there is a significant administrative burden that was learned about during those consultation and engagement phases with industry and the particularly disproportionate impact that is felt in the entertainment industry, with some hundreds of permits at a time creating a significant administration burden. We know how impacted the entertainment industry has been over the last two years of the pandemic. The Victorian government’s support in funding and support during those times was unprecedented. We had to do all we could to save as many jobs and make sure that the industry was viable coming back out of COVID, so reforms like this in this licensing space for those permits are just one element of a range of things the Victorian government needs to do to support our entertainment industry. It is one key critical element as well.

I think it is really important in the context of people working under the age of 15 that we are always child safe in all our legislation and all our engagement, and I was really encouraged to see that a key feature and element of this bill in the new licensing system will enable better targeting of those resources to focus on licence-holders in the highest risk areas. There is nothing more fundamental than the protection of our kids, whether it is at work, in our society, in our communities, in our schools or across every single part of our state. Making sure that resources are channelled towards making those oversight arrangements more targeted in the emphasis on compliance and monitoring audits than in lower risk areas just makes good policy sense, and making sure that our kids are safe in workplaces is a Labor reform and a Labor focus. That is a really critical element. The current levels of protection for children in the workplace will be enhanced under the new system by a really critical element, the inclusion of a fit and proper person test and the creation of new roles for nominated officers and employer representatives in the entertainment industries. These employer representatives will have responsibility for ensuring compliance with the act and licence conditions. So that is another key element, that fit and proper person test—a legal definition to make sure that at all times we have a standard that is set and that the industries are complying with that expectation as well.

Critically, and building on that work, the bill provides for a public register of all employers with a child employment licence, which will enable parents and other persons interacting with child employees to assess a given workplace’s compliance. That is a public representation and an ability for our communities to understand and assess those standards and make sure that at all times our kids, parents, guardians and grandparents always have that oversight. So that is a really critical element as well.

We had that interruption in the bill, and before I hand over to the member for Burwood for some great reflections as well—he looks ready to go, but he has got a couple of minutes to wait—I will say there is an important test around the requirements for auditioning for a role or participating in the casting process and working with children. It is a clearance to ensure they are in a safe setting. That is a standard process that we see across the board, and all that compliance work is really important.

Before I conclude my remarks, I want to make reference to the work that was done on the Wage Inspectorate Victoria to set up that statutory authority in July 2021. It is responsible for having a team focused on supporting children in this area and making sure that some of the most vulnerable, the kids in our community who are working and undertaking those responsibilities, are protected from a wage standpoint as well. We have seen as a labour movement and as a union movement the work that has been done to ensure that working people are protected and their wages and conditions are protected. That is the heart and essence of Labor values, and they are on display in this bill once again. It is something that we should be very proud of in the work that we do and in the tangible changes that we can make in legislation to protect the conditions and wages of all Victorians and to make sure that they are safe and that they are properly remunerated as well. I was really pumped up about that element of the bill and the work that has been done and that dedicated team of the Wage Inspectorate Victoria.

Finally, making sure that the minimum age for persons supervising a child under 15 years old is raised to 18 years old, I think, makes complete sense, from the engagement and consultation that was done, so that those who are requiring protection themselves do not then have that burden and responsibility for young people as well. This is a great bill—a decade in the making from previous reforms—at a time where we see substantial changes in our labour market and impacts on certain industries. To reduce that administrative and compliance burden but make sure that safety for our kids is always at the heart and soul of all those elements is really critical as well and a really important piece of work that has been done by the minister’s team. We commend them—the staff and the department—on their work and for everything that they have done. We commend the bill to the house.

Mr FOWLES (Burwood) (18:08:428:): Once again with timing perfection to the second from the member for Mordialloc. He absolutely put it back over the bowler’s head with that one. I am delighted to make a contribution this evening on the Child Employment Amendment Bill 2022. Clearly this is an area that is an important area for government to have a role in. It is important for government to have regulatory purview over the employment of children because clearly they are a unique cohort, a vulnerable cohort, and need a special set of protections around them. It is only appropriate that it is a Labor government of course that is bringing forward these protections. We know just how important it is to make sure that workers of any age are given the appropriate protections and that their needs, whether as a cohort or an individual, are properly addressed by employers.

There is a bit of background here which I know some other speakers have traversed, but I just want to cover a couple of things because they lead me into what I will say next. We know that part-time and casual work can have positive impacts for kids. We know that they gain self-confidence and they get new experiences, and these are ultimately very, very positive things. This bill does not seek to regulate kids working on family farms or in family businesses. They are probably the circumstances where most of us would encounter younger kids in particular working. But we do know that the benefit of those experiences needs to be balanced off against their educational needs as well as their safety in the workplace, and so whether it is doing a paper round or whether it is other types of employment, it is important to manage those competing tensions.

I was at school with an actor. He was an actor on Neighbours, the soon-to-be-defunct Australian TV drama. He had a great deal of difficulty managing his load in terms of education and work commitments. I think there is definitely a challenge, particularly for those kids who are employed in the entertainment industry, which has at its core a pattern of work that is blocked and intensive and then has breaks in between those periods of work. If you are working on movies or even in churn-them-out Australian soaps, there is undoubtedly an impact there. It is important that any legislation that seeks to protect children working in that environment—any legislation that seeks to protect those children—balances off those two potentially competing goals.

The act sets out the types of working conditions that apply to child employment and seeks ultimately to protect children from doing work that could be harmful, from doing work that could result in their exploitation or, importantly, from doing work that could affect their attendance at school. That is the act. Then a review kicked off in 2019, in the term of this Parliament, and a significant bit of research was brought about, which gathered data about the incidence of child employment in Victoria and the type of work that kids were doing as well as the experiences they were having when they were at work. It is as a result of that review—that very detailed, sensible, methodical work—that we find ourselves debating this bill this evening.

It is fair to say it is not a particularly controversial piece of legislation, because it is, as all good Labor bills are, evidence based. We have gone and sought the evidence. We have gone and taken a scientific view, and I have many times in this chamber spoken about those in other parts of the chamber who might not take a scientific view to policymaking. But in this case we have gone and done the research, done the work, established a proper evidentiary base for making amendments and come forward with a series of amendments that I think balance off the risks we are trying to mitigate and the onus on employers to help us manage those risks. The duty, to be clear, is on Parliament and the government to manage the risks for those kids, and to the extent that we ask employers to assist us with that, we have an additional duty to make that compliance with the lowest level of onerousness possible. That is where we have balanced it.

One of the amendments that is important is the moving from individual permits for each child being employed to a streamlined child employment licensing system which gets rid of that individual permit system. It allows that permission to be granted by way of a licence to the employer, and that licence is renewed annually in the case of entertainment employers and every second year in the case of general licences. That means there is no longer a permit for each child. There is no longer that additional paperwork, that additional regulatory intrusion into the onboarding process of an employee. As long as the business has complied with the rules and is a valid licensee, it can go ahead and do that.

One of the enhancements you can do when you introduce a licensing model rather than an individual permit model is that you can introduce things, and we have, like a fit and proper person test and making sure that there are new roles for nominated officers and employer representatives—so making sure that the licensees and their nominated personnel have responsibility for the obligations of that employer under the act and are aware of those obligations. When it is an individual permitting system, it will always be seen as ad hoc. When you are a licensee with an annual or biennial renewal time frame, I think you are going to take those compliance obligations more seriously. That is a standing basket of obligations, and it is important that we recognise that that is a very good enhancement under the bill we are bringing forward today.

The other thing it does is it allows us to provide a public register of all employers who hold one of those licences. I have often heard it said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. I am not sure that sunlight is the best disinfectant, by the way. I mean, Dettol is pretty good and there are other disinfectants I quite like. But sunlight is not bad, right? It is good on most bacteria and certain funguses, or fungi, like you, member for Mordialloc—he is a fun guy. There is your evening zinger, folks. It is after 6 o’clock and it is game on—don’t you worry about that.

Members interjecting.

Mr FOWLES: I have got more, do not worry. I have got all these mushroom jokes about backbenchers being kept in the dark.

Anyway, we bring forward a bill that allows for that register to be made public, and that makes it very easy for a parent or guardian of a child to very quickly check whether a prospective employer is in fact licensed to employ children. That is a really important threshold test. Again, under the permit model that is not an easy thing to achieve—finding out whether they have been issued a permit in the past or whatever. But by creating that public register you do have the ability to expose that employer to that little bit of public scrutiny to enable people to find out whether in fact they are valid licensees. That is an important threshold test, particularly because we are now introducing some obligations on the licence-holders around the authorised persons, working with children checks and the like.

I think it is important to note what the bill and the amended act ultimately will not do. We make really clear that this is not about babysitters in domestic employment arrangements, where you get the neighbour at random to look after your kids for 2 hours. This is not an activity that you need to be licensed for. Neither is tutoring, a very common activity undertaken particularly by senior secondary students for younger students, and that also applies if it is in a third venue, not just in your home—like if it is in a library—and there are some amendments around that. But what it does do is include in the matrix door-to-door fundraising by kids, because the evidence collected demonstrated that there were some special risks attached to that and we felt it was important to bring that into the regime.

I mentioned earlier kids on farms and kids in family businesses. It actually does not much matter whether you are working in a family business or another business—there are undoubtedly good and positive opportunities for kids to be employed, and to be employed when they are a bit younger—but the special risks that attach to that cohort and the special vulnerabilities that attach to that cohort do need a regulatory response. I think the response—and I thank the minister for bringing it forward—that has been constructed in this bill does balance those competing objectives well and makes sure that, as long as the employer is a licensed employer, they can go ahead and employ children without feeling a particularly onerous regulatory burden on the way through. With those further thoughts, I will conclude my contribution there and wish the bill a very speedy passage.

Ms CONNOLLY (Tarneit) (18:18): I too join my colleagues to rise and speak on the Child Employment Amendment Bill 2022. This bill makes a number of really important changes to the Child Employment Act 2003, which is responsible for regulating the employment of children under 15 years of age. We know that for lots of young people it is at around about this age that they start looking for work and their first part-time job—although indeed I certainly learned something new when I found out that, contrary to popular belief, the legal age of employment is not 14 years and nine months, as I had always believed. I think that idea comes from my early days and the sorts of part-time jobs that I had. In reality, children aged 11 and over can work delivery jobs with a general industries permit, and children aged 13 and over can work more broadly under the same permit. Of course this age threshold does not exist for children working in the entertainment industry, which often calls for child performers and actors—who fortunately are protected under this act—with a specific industry permit as well as a mandatory code of practice which regulates the industry when it comes to the workload of child employees.

When I cast my mind back—and I feel like as each year passes it is some years ago now—to my own teenage years, I remember when I started looking for part-time work for a little bit of extra spending money whilst I went through high school. In preparing for this bill, I cast my mind right back to my first real job outside of babysitting some of our family friends’ kids. The first job that I had I think was when I was about 14 and nine months, because it was a time when I was starting to learn how to drive. I remember I would drive our Ford Falcon to the back door of Target—or ‘Tarjay’, as some like to call it. I remember being employed there. I think it must have really only been about 6 to 10 hours a week. I remember spending lots of endless nights during what was the Thursday late-night shopping shift when I used to do a stint in the fitting rooms or lay-by, which were always very quiet on those occasions. I cannot say I enjoyed it a great deal. I much preferred to be on the cash register talking to people, but that was really how I started off and I learned a lot in that job. Having your first job is actually really important.

I then went on to work, funnily enough, for many years right up until I finished school, turned 18 and went on to uni, at one of my favourite part-time jobs—a sushi train. It was one of the first sushi trains. I remember it was in Coolangatta, at the southern end of the Gold Coast. I think it was one of the first sushi trains that had ever popped up, and it was this new eating sensation that was happening in these surfy towns. Lots of surfers would come in and they would load up their plates to a ridiculous amount depending on how long they had spent out in the surf. I remember, having spent some months living and studying in Japan, having to say things like ‘irasshaimase’ and ‘gochisousama deshita’ and being able to hand the bill to them pretty quickly. It was all pretty chaotic as people were chowing down sushi back then. But these sorts of experiences are really important for young people, and I certainly appreciated the benefits of this work. I learned what it was to earn a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. I learned skills that were invaluable that I feel like I continue to use every single day even here in this place—things around communication. I might not be speaking the Japanese language, but there is certainly having good manners and talking to colleagues on both sides of the house as I come to work each and every single day.

There is no doubt that workplace relations have changed drastically in the past—my staff have written here—25 years since I was a teenager, and when it comes to very young teenagers getting their first taste of the workforce they might not be fully aware of their workplace rights and entitlements. They, I would I have to say, are much more vulnerable to being exploited by their employers. When I cast my mind back to Target and the sushi train, I could not honestly, hand on heart, say that I knew the appropriate hourly wage that I was supposed to be paid, only that I trusted my employer to pay me that correct amount. That is exactly why this act exists. It is to protect young people in the workforce from experiencing exploitation and misconduct from their employers.

I come from a very multiculturally diverse community, and it was very interesting having a conversation with the outgoing Sri Lankan Consul General just yesterday. He was on his way back to Sri Lanka, and I wish him and his family all the best as they return to their home country. He raised an issue around students coming over—and I think this does apply even to children who have grown up in Australia and are going to their first job—and getting a job, wherever that may be. They are actually really quite vulnerable because they do not know Australian workplace laws and what they are entitled to be paid and how they are entitled to be treated. They are much more vulnerable to being exploited by employers. That is why this act and legislation of this type is just so important to protect workers, whether they are local or whether they are from overseas and spending a period of time here. We would not be a Labor government if we did not actually believe in and support strong frameworks to go ahead and protect our most vulnerable workers, and children—whether they are around 15 years or indeed aged 11 or 13 depending on what industry they can work in—are no exception. I would say the younger they are, the more vulnerable they are.

I have been to plenty of schools and had talks to young people in grades 11 and 12 about the importance of becoming a young adult and responsibilities like voting, enrolling to vote, but also as they go to embark on their first job the importance of understanding what their workplace rights are and what they are entitled to as an hourly rate and ensuring that most importantly—and a lot of young people do not do this, and I certainly did not—they check their payslip to make sure they are being paid correctly and that money is being transferred into their bank account at the end of each week or fortnight when they get paid.

In 2020 Industrial Relations Victoria actually undertook a review of the act, consulting widely with stakeholders to go ahead and assess improvements that could be made to the bill in order to keep it up to date with the workplace challenges of the 2020s. The bill implements several of those recommendations, and perhaps the biggest change this bill makes is the simplification of the child employee licensing scheme. Under the current arrangement an employer has to apply for a permit each and every single time they hire an individual child employee under the age of 15. This can be pretty onerous if you are an employer that is regularly employing young people. Remember I talked about those industries like deliveries; it might be delivering what I hate getting, the junk mail in my letterbox. But we are also talking about fast-food franchises or local grocery shops.

The bill makes this process easier and indeed more flexible for employers by allowing them to apply for a streamlined child employment permit, which replaces the individual licence with a 12-month licence and allows them to employ one or more children. Of course this does not mean that the safeguards, importantly, around hiring children will be weakened. Wage Inspectorate Victoria will continue to monitor licence-holders in sectors where there is high risk of wrongdoing, and those employers will be required to provide information and receive more oversight—and that is really important, to receive more oversight—in addition to existing safeguards like the fit and proper person test.

This will ensure that whilst it will be easier for workplaces to hire children, there will be sufficient oversight to ensure that those kids being employed are working in a safe and fair workplace environment. This is really important in communities like mine because quite often for children from multiculturally diverse backgrounds, their parents may not indeed know what Australian and Victorian standards are when it comes to safe and fair workplace environments. Again, that is why I say learning that information while at high school is just so important.

This is a great bill to bring before the house, and there are so many things I can talk about. It brings back lots of great memories of the time that I spent working at, like I said, my favourite place in hospitality, the sushi train, and in light of speaking a couple of Japanese words here I will finish up by saying ‘Arigato gozaimasu’.

Ms GREEN (Yan Yean) (18:28): That is fantastic. It is great to join the debate on the Child Employment Amendment Bill 2022. I am not sure why, I did not quite catch it at the end—oh, now I know. The member for Tarneit just talked about her work at the sushi train. She said ‘Arigato’, and yes, I know what that means in Japanese because I have been skiing. Now I have reconnected to why she mentioned that.

It gives me great pleasure to engage and to speak on this bill. It is only Labor that really connects and understands why this area needs to be regulated. It makes me sad that I have come to this debate not being certain about whether those on the opposite side of the chamber are supporting this bill or not opposing it, but I can remember over many occasions anything that has been around child employment or regulation of child safety in the workplace has frequently over my 20 years in this place been condemned, particularly by the National Party, as overt regulation and not necessary.

I think now I have been in this place for 20 years, and I will be finishing up in November. I do not necessarily want it to be seen as just a trip down memory lane, but as a child that grew up in regional Victoria in Warrnambool and Mildura, I just want to tell my stories of when I began employment. My first job was at 13 years of age. The legal age was 14 and eight months, but my dad was a good man of the church—we were Catholics; I went to Catholic schools—and he said, ‘Darling, a good friend of mine has a milk bar, and he’d like to offer you a job’. And I thought, ‘That’s great. I’ll get money’. I had been assisting my sister with her paper round, but I thought, ‘Yes, I’d love to work in a milk bar’. I loved that job, and I loved the other young people that I got to work with. But I did not like the man that owned the milk bar.

The man that owned the milk bar had a gambling issue, and he frequently took cash out of the till to go and bet with the SP bookmaker that was at the shop a few doors up. His wife would do the till at the end of the day, and when she would say that the till was short, he would say, ‘The girls took the money’. So I, another girl, Janine, who was in the same year as me at school—I am still friends with her to this day—and a couple of other girls that also went to the same Catholic college that I went to, actually three others, were all condemned. This man was being dishonest—dishonest to his wife, dishonest to the business—and we were blamed. But because most of us were under-age, we had no protection.

I also have horrific memories of Saturday lunchtimes being really busy working in the milk bar. The disagreements that happened between this father of three children and his wife would escalate, and he would beat her. She had dual black eyes, and she would be working in this large milk bar. We would hear him beating her outside the milk bar, and their three children, who I think were six to 10 years old, would come in and attach themselves to me or one of my teenage colleagues saying, ‘Help, help! Dad is bashing Mum’. This was the sort of thing that we contended with, so I and my friend Janine left that job. The other thing was that this man who owned this milk bar had wandering hands. It was not enough that he used his fists to beat up his wife and potentially his children and said that we were being dishonest with money when in fact he was the one using the money out of the till.

Then we went to work in another family business that was on the beach, and it was beach kiosks. We loved this family. They were great people to us. However, they were still not paying award wages. They paid us slightly under, but it was like, ‘Well, okay, we don’t give you as long a break and we won’t pay you as much, but we’ll give you free drinks and hot dogs’. But also there was not enough concern about health and safety. My friend Fran’s dad, Barry Doolan, worked for the Department of Labor and Industry and my friend Janine’s dad, Kevin Goodger, was a shop steward with what is now known as the Health and Community Services Union—he is a life member of the Health and Community Services Union—and he reported what was happening with us as young workers. So Barry came in as an inspector from the then Department of Labor and Industry and ensured that we were getting paid properly. But then we were told, ‘Well, you’re not getting your free drinks and hot dogs anymore because you caused the intervention of the regulator’. It just distresses me that some of these things might still occur now.

When I moved to Mildura I actually worked in a supermarket, a large chain—I will not name the chain—and I was sacked unlawfully from that supermarket. The reason I was sacked was that I was considered one of the senior juniors—whatever that means—who collected the money from the check-outs and took it into the office, and the manager of that supermarket and the office manager were involved in an illicit affair and as a 15-, 16-year-old I would come in and disturb them. They did not want anyone to know about that, so I was sacked. But when the manager went on leave the assistant manager re-employed me, and it was the first time I joined a union. I have got to say in respect of the SDA—the shoppies union—it was not called a union, and I was not quite sure why I was in it, because it was called the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association. As a 16-, 17-year-old I was not quite sure, but I did know then that they were there to assist me. Not only do young people need unions, they actually need governments to look after them. I tell those stories not to sound like Methuselah or someone senior who has been in this Parliament for a long time but because I still hear those stories from young people.

I want to commend the member for Melton—I grew up to be a union official, and so did he. He said today in his contribution on this bill that his youth council have done a program to ensure that their young people know what their rights are at work, because there are still adults who do the wrong thing by young people and do not pay them properly. I want to commend the Minister for Workplace Safety and others that are responsible for the current ad series at the moment which is highlighting how young people still get exploited at work. You hear these stories, ‘Oh, Australians don’t want to work, they don’t want to do this and they don’t want to do that’, but young people do not get paid to come to work and be abused.

I am particularly proud that this bill refers to children in the entertainment industry. I read recently that the horrendous actor from Hey Dad..! who was a paedophile and abused young actors on that show that I watched as a teenager and thought was a wholesome series has been looking at getting out of jail. But the things that he did to those young actors are still impacting those young actors as adults. I commend our government and I commend the minister for ensuring that we are trying to keep young people safe. We should never as a Parliament remove ourselves from ensuring this regulation, and I commend the bill to the house.

Ms SULEYMAN (St Albans) (18:38): I too rise today to make a contribution on the Child Employment Amendment Bill 2022, and I am very pleased to join the many speakers on this bill who have already made strong contributions in this house. As we know, our children are our future, and we have an obligation to protect children in our state. I know that this legislation is really important because it is about protecting our children and giving them the opportunities to be able to work and begin the transformative and important parts of their journeys and their lives through experiencing the beginning of work, which is really, really important. Our government continues to ensure that there is a regulatory framework to protect Victoria’s most vulnerable workers in a strong and effective way. The regulation of child employment is no exception, because children and their families deserve no less.

I recall my first job, which was as a waiter and a kitchen hand at Highpoint Shopping Centre out in the west. I was so grateful when I was successful in getting the job and so grateful to the small business owner, a Lebanese family, who operated a cafe restaurant at Highpoint Shopping Centre just downstairs where the Hoyts entertainment area was. That job gave me the experience to begin my journey. It gave me my first opportunity. I worked there for a few years, and I was able to save up and purchase my first car. It was so exciting. So I am forever grateful to that family-run business in Highpoint that gave me an opportunity when I was 15 to be able to work. It was difficult work, but it was extremely rewarding to be able to meet so many people and to be given that confidence at that age.

Members interjecting.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Settle): Order! There is very audible conversation in the chamber. Thank you.

Ms SULEYMAN: Thank you, Acting Speaker. As I was saying, it is not just about working but it gives you those life experiences and the confidence at such a young age to be able to work and to be in a team environment with other colleagues and also see how businesses actually operate. So that was a really grounding experience for me, and I continued on in my journey in the hospitality industry at the time. So, as I said, a big shout-out to the family that gave me my first opportunity.

This legislation does not propose to alter the current minimum age for work or remove several important exclusions. Under the current act employment of children under 15 years old is primarily regulated through a permit system, and what we want to see is that we cut the red tape and provide employers with a general industry permit for children aged 11 years and over who can undertake the work. Children aged 13 years and over are able to be employed in other non-hazardous workplaces. There is no minimum age for children to work in the entertainment industry, which can include performing, modelling and of course television and film work in that particular industry. However, specific entertainment industry permits are required, and a mandatory code of practice further prescribes conditions around the employment of children in the entertainment industry where it is deemed high risk. It is really important to make sure that there is a blanket protection over that particular industry where, as I said, it is deemed to be of high risk and also—where the vast majority of working children are currently employed, as we know and as I just said was my own experience starting off working—in the hospitality and the entertainment industry.

Children of any age working in a family business, including family farms, are exempt from these permit requirements, and that makes common sense. Children are only permitted to undertake light work and are excluded from employment in a number of hazardous, dangerous industries from performing these sorts of tasks. Again I say that makes pretty much common sense. These age limits for child employment in Victoria are aligned with the international labour standards on child labour.

We need to have a balanced approach. We want our children to be able to experience employment and be able to foster the experiences of working in a team environment and build those confidence skills that really are important for later on in their journey. But of course it has to come in balance with school attendance, which continues to be compulsory for children in Victoria until the age of 17 years. So we want to make sure that there is that balance between providing education, making sure children are attending school, and getting that experience as well. Both education and work provide the building blocks for our kids to succeed in the future, so I am really pleased to see those protections are in place so that we can ensure that kids do receive the appropriate education and also an introduction to employment.

I need to add that recently my niece—and it is timely for me to share this story—who is 12 at the moment and is very active, of course, approached me a couple of weeks ago and said, ‘I’m ready to work. I’m ready to work in government, work in an office and be a manager. I could work in the legal system’. I said, ‘Well, you’re only 12 at the moment, so I think you need to look at what you can do’. So she immediately jumped for joy and said, ‘Well, I can volunteer’. That was another aspect. Children, when they get to the ages of, I think, 10, 11, 12 and onwards are very eager to participate in the workforce. It is wonderful to see that, to see that they are both committed to their education and eager to be in the workforce and are putting themselves out there. That is not only when it comes to work experience, which is one aspect that in my office we are very passionate about. We strongly advocate to local schools to have work experience students, because we know, in particular when you are starting at those ages, you can be a little bit vulnerable. They receive that confidence boost, and I see when they walk into my office that sometimes they are shy, but immediately with appropriate supports and training they are happy to continue on and they actually want to stay working in the office. I think that is really important because it is part of being productive. It is a positive introduction to the workplace.

One story that I do have is of a work experience student who entered my office. He did not really want to continue on with his studies, but through my office he continued on and completed year 12, and today he is working for a major bank. I am really, really happy about that story, because he said, ‘Doing work experience in your office actually changed my journey and my life’, and they are the stories that touch me really deeply as a local member: making a positive difference in someone’s life at a young age. The environment, the workplace, also is crucial.

Today we are not only protecting our kids. We are giving them the opportunities in workplaces but also providing that important education. This legislation is making sure that our child employment laws are up to date and fit for purpose so that kids can gain key skills like independence and earning an income, but it is protecting them and safeguarding them at the same time. I commend the minister for this bill and everybody who has also assisted in the preparation of this bill, and I commend the bill to the house.

Mr KENNEDY (Hawthorn) (18:48): It gives me great pleasure to speak on the Child Employment Amendment Bill 2022. The changes introduced in this bill will ensure that the regulations around child employment are updated and fit our times. We know work can have many positive impacts for children. They learn new skills, gain confidence and independence and of course the biggest appeal is the opportunity for children to earn pocket money for themselves. One of the aims of this bill is to ensure that the benefits from work are appropriately balanced against children’s educational and developmental needs. It also looks at safeguards so children are protected against any vulnerability in the workplace.

This takes me back to my years—29 or 30 of them—as a school principal, and I can remember at school assemblies one of my lines in addressing particularly the senior years in the school was to avoid what I said was imbalance in the two parts. What are the two parts? Part-time work and parties. Certainly I am sure parties and part-time work are an important part of growing up, but it is when they get out of balance—particularly in the case of children who would have every reason to divert time towards their studies and so on.

It is an interesting thing in the latest development of VCAL and what have you—a committee that I was very pleased to chair—that a lot more thought has been given to students who want to leave school earlier, and whilst it is fairly politically fashionable to say, ‘Maximise the time you spend at school to the end of year 12’, in a very small number of cases it does not follow. In fact it can be quite dangerous for some kids to be just forced to stay at school—not many, but a small number. The opportunity to take on some employment can be a lifesaver for some kids. It might be problems in the classroom, but it could also be problems at home or problems of self-esteem in terms of making some sort of progress in what might be seen by them as something of an alien world.

I was always a bit hesitant about the two ‘parts’—the parties and the part-time work—and I know it is not a simple matter. It is something that I suppose really needs the guidance of families in some ways more than the school as such. I am pleased to be talking about this, and it certainly has brought back memories of students who just undertook far too much part-time work, ones who were very able in the classroom but in one sense robbed themselves of opportunities—the short-term gain of pocket money and that sort of thing and the long-term pain of perhaps missing out on other academic aims or whatever might have been there. What I used to say was that too many parties and too much part-time work were often not in the interests of students, or most students. As I said, it is a conversation I have had many times, and I am heartened by the fact that this bill acknowledges these particular considerations.

Why do these changes need to be made? The changes proposed in this bill follow an extensive review that was conducted in 2019. It started with an extensive piece of research that gathered data about the prevalence and nature of child employment in Victoria. This investigation looked at the kind of work children are doing and at their experiences in the workplace. The research found that the three biggest employers of children under the age of 15 were retail and food services followed by the entertainment industry. One of the interesting discoveries was that many employers were unaware of the act and thought that children could only be employed if they were 14 years and nine months old or older. Three issues were identified: the lack of clarity around the meaning of employment, the high regulatory burden associated with individual permits and the inability of the current system to respond to dynamic industry needs.

We come now to the licensing reforms. One of the key reforms in this bill revolves around the licensing arrangements. The current scheme requires an employer to apply for individual permits for each child they engage. The review identified the permit system as one of the biggest issues for stakeholders, who supported a more efficient, responsive and flexible approach. The bill introduces a streamlined child employment licensing system to replace the individual permit system. It will simplify the process for obtaining permission to employ a child by requiring one licence application annually for an entertainment licence and biannually for a general licence. Employers will be able to employ multiple children under the one licence rather than applying for individual permits for each child employed. There will be no costs associated with applying for a child employment licence. Current levels of protection for children in the workplace will be enhanced under the new system by the inclusion of a fit and proper person test and new roles for nominated officers and employer representatives, who will also have responsibility for ensuring compliance with the act and any licence conditions.

The bill also provides for a public register of all employers with a child employment licence, which will enable parents and other persons interacting with child employees to access a given workplace’s compliance. The new licensing system will also enable better targeting of resources to focus on licence-holders in the highest risk areas, who must provide more information and will receive more oversight, including an increased emphasis on compliance monitoring and audits than in low-risk areas. Certain decisions made by Wage Inspectorate Victoria about a licence, such as the decision to cancel or suspend a licence, will be reviewable by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to ensure procedural fairness.

The act sets out the age, types of work and conditions applicable to child employment. It explicitly aims to protect children from work that could be harmful to their health and safety or impact their welfare in any way or their attendance at school. We do not want our children to be at risk of any form of exploitation. To that end the bill makes a number of other targeted amendments to improve the overall operation of the child employment regulatory regime, including an amended definition of employment to provide greater clarity and certainty for businesses about what is covered, and as a result it promotes better understanding and compliance. The amended definition clarifies that children providing babysitting and other domestic services are not covered by the act; that will be a bit of a relief for a few of us. It extends tutoring to outside of residential premises so that when it occurs in a library or other premises, say, it will not be covered. The bill removes the exclusion from door-to-door fundraising as the risks to children in this setting are high and excludes children who appear in the background of news, current affairs, lifestyle, documentary or educational programs where they are not given directions about how to appear in the program.

There will also be a new requirement for children who are auditioning for a role or participating in a casting process to be supervised by a person with a working with children clearance, to ensure that they are safe in the setting. Other changes include making it clear that a child employment permit is not required for formal work experience arrangements.

This bill will ensure that the regulations that guide the employment landscape for our children remain responsible to the contemporary workplace and provide effective protection. I think it has a great deal of balance, it is practically oriented and I think it represents an advance in the employment of children. Therefore I commend the bill.

Ms COUZENS (Geelong) (18:58): I am pleased to rise to contribute to the Child Employment Amendment Bill 2022. For many children the opportunity to work is exciting and is a great opportunity for them to earn a bit of pocket money. Whether it is taking up some part-time work or working after school casually or on weekends, many children see that as a great opportunity for themselves to save up a bit of pocket money, to learn new skills and to gain confidence and independence in that workplace. But we do know that children are vulnerable and can be exposed to things that are inappropriate. As I think the member for Yan Yean mentioned earlier, children in the entertainment industry, as we know, have had experiences that are totally inappropriate. The act does set out the age and types of work and conditions, which is really important to ensuring that young people are not left vulnerable in the workplace. With the benefits for young people—young children—of being able to gain employment, I think those opportunities should be there, but they should be covered by the act to ensure that they are safe and secure in that.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.