Ms THEOPHANOUS (Northcote): My adjournment is for the Minister for Workplace Safety in the other place, and I ask the minister to join me in Northcote to meet some of our casual and contract workers to talk about our new sick pay guarantee. For too long and for too many Victorians there has been a dismal choice to make when they fall ill. The choices are to either stay home and lose out on getting paid or struggle through your workday when your body just needs to rest. And if you have ever worked in a casual job, you know that it is not just that one day that matters. It is the fact that on any given night you might get a call or a text at 11.00 pm to say, ‘Thanks, but you aren’t needed tomorrow’—there goes that day’s pay. It is the fact that at any time at all you might be told, ‘Sorry, but we no longer need you. You no longer have a job’, and there is no severance, no built-up leave to pay out—nothing. When your job and your pay are that insecure, every paid day counts. You may literally not be able to afford being sick. We are changing that.

The industries covered by our new sick pay guarantee are some of the most insecure industries in our state. They cover hospitality, retail, food preparation, cleaning, laundries, security and supermarkets as well as aged and disability care. These represent more than 150 000 workers, who for the first time will have access to five days sick and carers pay. It is an Australian first, welcomed by our unions and thousands of hardworking Victorians. It is also something that only Labor would deliver. This kind of policy would just never make it into the wheelhouse of either the Liberals or the Greens, yet it is the kind of reform that will launch us into a new way of thinking about our work and our wellbeing. It is the kind of reform that will allow us to not just recover from the pandemic, where so many of our insecure workers lost out, but to transform our economy and our society into a fairer, more equal and more prosperous state.

We are not wasting a moment in this mission. Since coming into this Parliament I have been proud to support groundbreaking reforms to protect the lives, wellbeing and rights of Victorian workers: our historic workplace manslaughter laws; a provisional payment scheme for mental health injuries; making wage theft a crime; and wage subsidies for sole parents. This sick pay guarantee builds on our record and will be deeply felt by my community, where we have a very large number of young casual workers, particularly in hospitality and retail.

No-one should have to choose between their pay and their health or the health of someone they love. As the member for Northcote, I will be making it my mission to make sure that as many local workers as possible know about our sick pay guarantee and sign up to receive the benefits of this landmark new scheme. I welcome the minister to my electorate to help me get the word out and to hear directly from our local workers and businesses about just exactly what this means.