National IR changes will benefit NT public servants

Commonwealth IR changes kicking in this week could make a difference to Territory public servants, writes IR consultant Lucio Matarazzo.

Finally, the Commonwealth Fair Work Act is being amended by the Albanese Federal Labor Government to tackle the worst practice usage of rolling fixed term employment contracts in the Northern Territory Public Service.

This change will hopefully have a beneficial impact on the NT’s 24,008 public servants.

The scourge of rolling fixed term employment contracts impacts on over 800,000 Australian employees every year, predominantly in the public services, non-government organisations and the education and higher education sectors in Australia.

From Wednesday December 6 2023, a new fixed term employment contract cannot be longer than two years or have an option to:

• Extend or renew the contract so that employment period (including the extension or renewal period) is longer than two years, or

• Extend or renew the contract more than once

There are also limitations around the use of consecutive fixed term contracts for the same or substantially similar work.

Lucio Matarazzo believes Commonwealth IR changes kicking in could make a difference to Territory public servants.

As a professional industrial relations practitioner, I put on the public record my disappointment at the failures and non-empathetic attitude in relation to not fixing rolling fixed term employment contracts in the Northern Territory Public Service, by successive Country Liberal Party and Labor governments from the mid 1990s to 2023.

Rolling fixed term employment contracts have been a feature of the Northern Territory Public Service for around 28 years now.

It is time rolling fixed term employment contracts are stopped with immediate effect for non-executive NT public servants.

At my private industrial relations consultancy in Darwin, I have dealt with countless of these cases in the Northern Territory Public Service and seen first-hand their detrimental impact on employees.

In 2016, a former AO 4 level NT public servant attended my industrial relations consultancy office and advised me that she had been on eight rolling fixed term employment contracts during a period of 60 consecutive weeks of continuous employment.

In other words, this employee’s average fixed term employment contract rolled-over every 7.5 weeks – and the CEO of the relevant NT Public Service Agency confirmed this in writing to me.

The same chief executive also confirmed to me the public servant’s appointed came to an end via an “effluxion of time” after eight rolling fixed term employment contracts and sixty (60) weeks continuous employment.

It will not be a surprise the public servant left the Northern Territory, never to return.

How many thousands of other people and their families have moved interstate from the Northern Territory because of the use of fixed term contracts.

In the 2022-23 NT public service State of Service report it was noted that in the 12-months months from July 1 2022 to June 30 2023, 6410 Northern Territory public servants – 0r 26.7 per cent – ended their employment with the Northern Territory Public Service.

I note the deafening silence by senior executives of the Northern Territory Public Service as to the recruitment and turnover costs of this extraordinary churn within the NTPS for taxpayers.