Have your say

Portable long service leave for community services

Have your say on the draft Regulation for the new portable long service leave scheme for community service workers.

The NSW Government is extending portable long service leave to community service workers to encourage them to stay in the sector longer.

Feedback received through the Have Your Say consultation in April 2024 helped shape the new Community Services Sector (Portable Long Service Leave) Act 2024. We received 870 pieces of feedback as surveys, stories and submissions.

Portable long service entitlements will allow workers to access paid long service leave based on how long they have been employed in the sector, rather than how long they have worked for a single employer.

Now, the NSW Government is developing the draft Community Services Sector (Portable Long Service Leave) Regulation 2024 (Regulation) to support the new law by providing the detail needed to administer it. For example, setting out the information needed in employer returns and the special circumstances that protect a worker's registration.

For more information, refer to the:

Have your say by Monday 9 December 2024. Your feedback will help implement a portable long service scheme that is fair, accessible and benefits workers, employers and the people of NSW.

Complete our survey

Upload a submission

Stories you shared

Timeline

Timeline item 1 - complete

Draft Bill open for feedback

April 2024
Public consultation on the draft Bill to extend portable long service leave to community service workers.
Timeline item 2 - complete

New law made

June 2024
Community feedback informed the Community Services Sector (Portable Long Service Leave) Act 2024.
Timeline item 3 - active

Draft Regulation open for feedback

Give your input on the draft Regulation by Monday 9 December 2024.
Timeline item 4 - incomplete

Under review

Feedback is being carefully considered and will inform any changes to the draft Regulation.
Timeline item 5 - incomplete

New law and regulation start

The new law and regulation will begin in mid 2025.

Who's listening

Portable long service leave team

NSW Government

Email: portableLSL@customerservice.nsw.gov.au

Community services workers play a vital role, caring for individuals and communities across NSW, such as:

people with disability

families experiencing domestic violence

people experiencing homelessness.

This work is often physically and emotionally challenging with many workers facing stress, burn-out and insecure employment arrangements.

Thank you for your feedback on the draft Bill.

In April 2024, we received over 754 surveys and 51 submissions. Access the summary of survey feedback.

In addition, 65 people shared their stories about working in the community services sector.

Your feedback shaped the Community Services Sector (Portable Long Service Leave) Act 2024.

The documents you gave feedback on were:

002 - South East Women & Childrens Service

004 - Guthrie House

006 - Kempsey Neighbourhood Centre

007 - Sunnyhaven Disability Services

008 - Sydney Womens Counselling Centre

009 - Asian Women at Work

011 - Bonnie Support Services (ASU)

012 - Stacey Gough

013 - Shoalcoast Community Legal Centre

014 - Mountains Community Resource Network

015 - NSW Users and Aids Organisation

017 - Mable

018 - Womens Health NSW

019 - AbilityOptions

020 - Blue Mountains Women's Health and Resource Centre

021- Financial Counsellors’ Association of NSW

022- ASU NSW

024- Unions NSW

025 - Aruma

026 - Waminda Womens Health and Wellbeing

027- Scope Australia

028 - Canterbury City Community Centre

028 - Cantebury City Community Centre

031 - New England Family Support Service

032 - Eurella Community Services

036 - Health Services Union

037 - National Disability Services

038 - Carers NSW

039 - Homelessness NSW

041 - Community Legal Centres Australia & NSW

042 - Mental Health Coordinating Council

044 - Network of Alcohol and Other Drugs Agencies

046 - Local Community Services Association

047 - Australian Business Lawyers & Advisors

049 - Australian Services Union

050 - Aboriginal Community Housing Industry Association letter

Anonymous submissions
005 - Anonymous

010 - Anonymous

034 - Anonymous

Call 131450 for the free interpreter service.

Arabic: بالرقم 131450 لاستخدام خدمة الترجمة المجانية اتصل

Chinese: 致電13 14 50使用免費的口譯服務。

Chinese: 致电13 14 50使用免费的口译服务。

Vietnamese: Gọi 13 14 50 để sử dụng dịch vụ thông dịch miễn phí.

Greek: Καλέστε το 13 14 50 για τη δωρεάν υπηρεσία διερμηνέα.

Italian: Chiama il 13 14 50 per il servizio di interprete gratuito.

Tagalog: Tumawag sa 13 14 50 para sa libreng serbisyo ng interpreter.

Hindi: नि: शुल्क दुभाषिया सेवा के लिए 131450 फोन करें.

1. Who we are

Your information is being collected by the Department of Customer Service (the Department) on behalf of the Commissioner for NSW Fair Trading for use by Long Service Corporation. The Department gives priority to protecting the privacy of your personal information, in accordance with the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 (PPIP Act).

If you have any questions about this privacy collection notice, or how we handle your personal information, you can contact our Privacy team using the contact details at the end of this notice.

2. Why we collect your personal information

We are collecting your personal information to seek your feedback on a proposed regulation, the Community Services Sector (Portable Long Service Leave) Regulation 2024. The regulation is the next step to create a portable long service scheme for community services in NSW.

3. The kinds of information we collect

We may collect the following information:

Your name and email address
Some information to understand your connection to the community services sector, such as whether you work or employ others in this sector
If you are registered for the Have Your Say site and logged in, the Department will be able to see your login or username, email address and hometown or suburb associated with your survey or submission, even if you choose to answer the survey anonymously
Your feedback and opinion on the consultation topic
Any additional personal information if it is provided in free-text fields or your submission.

4. Failure to provide information

Your information is provided voluntarily however if you do not provide your information, you may not be able to complete the consultation and we may not be able to send you updates and outcomes of this public consultation or contact you about your submission.

5. How we may use this information

We may use the information we collect in the following ways:

To make recommendations to the NSW Government in relation to the proposed portable long service scheme for the community services sector and inform the design of the regulation, for example what clauses to include in the final regulation.
To create a report on the outcome of this consultation and publish submissions on the NSW Government Have Your Say Website. Survey responses will be aggregated and de-identified and submissions will be treated in accordance with your preference being either published with your name, published without your name or kept private.
To share your responses or submission (including any personal information) with the NSW Government's Long Service Corporation and NSW Fair Trading.
Internal administrative purposes, including providing you with occasional updates and outcomes on this topic or to contact you about your submission (if you provide your personal information and agree for us to do so).
To support more informed policy making, program management, evaluation, research, and service planning as it can facilitate more efficient service delivery for residents and businesses in NSW.
We may share personal information you provide with other parts of the Department, including the Data Analytics Centre, for the purposes of conducting analysis across all consultations and to refine our engagement methodology.
Other directly related purposes.

6. Who we may share your information with

We do not publish individual survey results, however we may publish aggregated results which are de-identified. If you provide a submission this will be handled in accordance with your selected preference. This may mean:

Your submission will be published on the Have Your Say website with your name
Your submission will be published anonymously on the Have Your Say website with your name removed prior to publishing
Your submission will be kept private

Submissions may also be referred to in a report on the outcome of this consultation, however, any anonymous submissions will be referred to as such.

There may be times where the government is required to release the information in your submission, such as under the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009. It is also a statutory requirement that we provide all submissions to the Legislative Review Committee of NSW Parliament.

The Have Your Say site is owned and operated by the Department using software licensed from Social Pinpoint. For details of how Social Pinpoint may access personal information, please refer to Social Pinpoint’s Privacy Policy.

We will not disclose your personal information to anybody unless we are authorised or permitted to do so by law or where you give consent. Our Privacy Statement describes when this may occur. 

7. Protecting your information

We will store and manage your information in accordance with the provisions of the PPIP Act. We have measures in place to help protect your personal information from loss, unauthorised access, use, modification, disclosure, or other misuse.

We will only keep information for as long as we need it to fulfil the purposes we collected it for. After which, the information will be disposed of securely in accordance with the State Records Act 1998 and any other applicable legislation.

See our Privacy Management Plan for more information about how we handle your personal information.

8. Your rights

Subject to certain conditions, you have the following rights in relation to your personal information:

The right to request access to your personal information
The right to request correction of your personal information

If you wish to invoke any of the above rights, please contact us using the details below.

Updates on this topic are offered as an ‘opt in’ subscription. You can 'opt out' at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the emailed update.

If you unsubscribe, your information may not be permanently deleted from the service provider system and instead, stored on a suppression list that prevents future emails from being sent to your email address.

To have your data permanently removed from the suppression list database, please send a request to: YourSay@customerservice.nsw.gov.au

9. Contact us

If you would like to make a privacy enquiry or complaint, you can contact us at: FTPrivacy@customerservice.nsw.gov.au.

For more information about long service leave, visit the NSW Industrial Relations website.
For workplace health and safety support, visit the SafeWork NSW website.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this consultation, you can find support on NSW Health's Mental health services and support contact list.

Have your say

Portable long service leave for community services

The NSW Government is extending portable long service leave to community service workers to encourage them to stay in the sector longer.

Complete our survey

Upload a submission

Stories you shared

Portable long service leave team

NSW Government

Popular

About this website

Departments

NSW Government