Holidays Act Review - August 2018

14 August 2018

The Group is made up of employer, worker and government representatives and is chaired by Gordon Anderson, a law professor at Victoria University with extensive experience in employment law.

The review has been commissioned by Government following a joint request from unions and employers.

The Working Group will focus particularly on the provisions of, and payment for, holidays and leave entitlements, but it may also consider any other issues that arise in the course of its work.

The Group will report back with recommendations to government on options for a clear and transparent set of rules for providing entitlements to, and payment for, holidays and leave that can be readily implemented in a payroll system and is applicable to an increasingly diverse range of working and pay arrangements. Their task will not be made any easier by the Minister's desire to ensure no employee will be worse off under any new system.

The review will not consider the issue of remediation of historical underpayments of holiday and leave pay. A new regime is likely to be two to three years away. In the meantime, employers retain an obligation to remediate workers for historical underpayments of holiday and leave pay, and to pay employees correctly.

Read the cabinet paper [PDF 102KB]