Senator CHRIS EVANS (5:08 PM) —I move opposition amendment No. 2 on sheet 1508:

(2) Schedule 1, page 4 (after line 5), after item 4, insert:

4A At the end of subsection 16-1(2)

Add:

and (f) the transferor has no outstanding debts to

(i) a member of staff; or

(ii) a care recipient, or the legal personal representative of a deceased care recipient, because of paragraph 57-2(na), 57-2(nb) or 57A-2(la);

or, if the transferor does have any such debts, the debtors have agreed to the transfer.

This is the opposition amendment that deals with the question of the sale of licences only when there are no debts owed. It is an amendment that inserts a requirement that the secretary must ensure that a provider does not owe debts to either staff or residents before approval for the transfer of bed licences can take place. The provision allows for the transfer to occur where all debtors agree, which covers the potential situation that the provider may only be able to pay out the debts following the sale of the bed licences.

We think this provision guards against the situation highlighted again by the Alimar Nursing Home example, where the department is made aware of the debts owed to staff but agrees to the sale of the bed licences and allows the provider to go into hiding owing staff money. If the amendment is not carried then staff in nursing homes will have to continue to fight for entitlements owed to them through the courts while the department allows the provider to sell their bed licences for substantial sums of money and simply walk away with that money. We are not talking about peanuts here; we are talking about bed licences that sell for $30,000 or upwards of that figure each. If it is a 60-bed nursing home, we are talking about very large sums of money.

We have had examples already in the courts of people, reacting to the accreditation and new standards of care required of them, leaving the industry. But they are leaving the industry owing their staff thousands of dollars in unpaid wages, redundancy entitlements, long service leave entitlements, et cetera. Those staff are having enormous difficulties trying to pursue their entitlements. Many of these people are the nursing staff who are providing care to the residents, or domestic staff, many of whom are on very low wages. This is an important issue for them, because they cannot afford to lose the entitlements that they have accrued while working, some of them for very long periods, at some of these facilities.

We think it is a very simple measure to implement what all parties in this parliament have been talking about in the last few months. There has been a great deal of fuss about the Oakdale miners and about other situations where workers have lost their entitlements to wages, accrued entitlements, long service leave and redundancy payments because of the closure of a business. The government says that it is very concerned about that. The government says that it is looking at ways of introducing legislation to provide protection for those people.

The Democrats also agree that something needs to be done. Senator Murray and others have been very vocal in advocating that we do something to address these concerns. I say: let's take a small step now. This measure provides a small step; it provides protection for workers in the nursing home industry. The very thing we talk about on a grand scale—protection of entitlements on a nationwide scale, which is proving a fairly difficult issue to come to terms with—can be achieved in some cases by an industry by industry approach. In the nursing home industry, the sale of the bed licence is the bonanza for the provider getting out of the industry. For that person getting out of the industry, it seems to me that this is a reasonable measure to ensure that they have met their debts, both to their residents and to their staff.

This is within the power of the department and the minister. They have to approve the sale of bed licences. All we are asking is that we put a reasonable measure in place that ensures that some check is made before the sale occurs to ensure that those entitlements are covered. I do not think it is an unreasonable thing. We do not want to put overly onerous provisions on the department or the minister, but it seems reasonable that they do take the step, because they do have a great deal of bargaining power in this situation.

If someone has hundreds of thousands of dollars at risk, they will settle outstanding wage and other entitlement issues with their staff, because they will have to in order to access those funds. What we are seeing at the moment is those people trying to pursue their entitlements through the courts, trying to track down and serve writs on people who leave no forwarding address, et cetera, and who go into hiding to avoid their debts. The simple way of solving that is to support these amendments, to put the trigger in place that allows the department to make sure that all reasonable debts have been paid before the sale of the licences is allowed to occur, before the provider leaving the industry has access to that considerable amount of money. I think that is a reasonable step to take along the path that we have all been discussing about providing some protection for employees when a business fails or when a provider goes out of business owing them money.