Ms Patricia King:

I thank the Senator for the question. Our guide on this would be the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act, which provides that someone must give 13 weeks in terms of their notice and so on to an employer. We think that is a good guide. It is explicit in other legislation as well. Therefore, 26 weeks should be 13 weeks in our view. There is very little flexibility cited in the provision. That there would not be that in-built flexibility in the piece did not surprise me considering the main pieces of the legislation are framed in the way they are.

As the Senator well knows, those are the sorts of pieces that should and could have been reasonably resolved in a tripartite engagement on these matters. They have gotten some of these pieces badly wrong in our view. When we leave that alongside the main issues - that is, the grounds and non-right to appeal of the grounds - that is why I make the assertion that it is useless.